Aside from the fruit delivery segments, most of the Shines were fun to work on. The pre-flood section overlaps with Any%, so aside from a few Blue Coin-influenced routing changes, there wasn’t much of that “feeling-it-out” experimentation. But this section was almost entirely brand-new content for me. I think this is the part where I put the most effort into researching—comparing RTA single-Shine runs and full-run times in detail.
I also felt like this section introduced more new techniques into the TAS than before. I had avoided using the analog input from the R trigger in my TAS work up to now, but I realize I need to reconsider that stance moving forward.
During production, Super Mario 3D All-Stars was officially announced—a game that had long been rumored. Even though it’s just a barebones port without new features, I couldn’t help getting sucked into it since I’d wanted an official modern way to play Sunshine for so long. The fact that it had Switch-exclusive bugs (like the cleaning glitch) and was featured in the “Sugowaza Mario” showcase was a big part of it too.
The Switch version loads much faster, and if you trigger the cleaning glitch as fast as possible, you can save over 30 seconds. Plus, you can choose Italian—the fastest language—which makes it incredibly optimized. The only real gripe is that you still can’t skip cutscenes on the first watch. If I made a TAS in this environment, I think I could break the 1 hour and 5 minutes mark... if I could pull it off, that is.
Anyway, back on topic—let’s go through the individual Shines.
I wasn’t sure whether the Turbo route or the fruit route would be faster, so I made both.
It was surprising that the RTA time for the Turbo route was almost the same as the TAS time, but I realized this was due to the difference in the initial movement right after the cutscene—since it's slower in a full run. So in reality, the TAS is probably about 0.4 seconds faster.
With the fruit wall clip, I learned that whether you clip through or not depends on the height difference between Mario and the fruit. Because of that, the wall sliding time ended up longer than optimal.
Why height matters is probably due to quarter-frame mechanics, but I can’t check Mario’s collision data precisely, so I can’t say for sure.
I’m always stuck on what to call this Shine. In Japanese RTA circles, “Throw Guy” is the common nickname, though nowadays he doesn’t actually throw Mario much anymore.
Adjusting the banana toss is super difficult. Most of the time, it just bounces off the nearby building and goes flying toward either the Sirena pipe or Corona, instead of where you want. Precise positioning and RNG from the shotgun spray are key to getting it to go where you want.
Even when you get it to fly properly, the next problem is the banana’s bounce. It often bounces too much and falls into the ocean when you try to place it near the wall clip point. Same reason it can’t land neatly on the crate.
For the actual wall clip after grabbing the banana, throwing it during landing is slightly faster than the RTA-style walking throw. But landing throws are tricky to optimize, since you have to chuck the banana at the earliest possible frame for the clip to succeed.
This Shine was “saved” by the production delays earlier in the TAS. A new route was found that doesn’t require Yoshi, cutting over 15 seconds—huge for Sunshine.
The hardest part is delivering the banana to the island with the warp pipe. There’s a single palm tree between the fruit stand and the island, and its leaves can kill the banana’s momentum—super annoying.