On December 2nd, 2019, Nintendo announced
that the next update for Super Mario Maker 2
would include a new mode: Ninji Speedruns.
For one week, players would race to complete a specially designed course in the fastest
time possible while the titular Ninjis would
run in the background, representing other
players’ attempts. Two days later, the update
was pushed out and the first Ninji Speedrun began.
Over 365,000 players took part in the competition, resulting in one of the most
participated speedrun events of all time.
In one week, the level became wildly optimized
over and over again by some of the best players
in the game. In this video, we’ll take a
look at the players, the strats, and the records
of Ninji 1: Rolling Snowballs.
For a Mario Maker level, Rolling Snowballs
was pretty easy, and relatively short.
It showcased a couple of new features that had
just been added in the 2.0 update, including
Spikes and Pokeys, and of course, snowballs.
There were also quite a lot of slopes and
platforms, creating many different possible
paths that could be taken to complete the
level. However, we’re not going to see any
of the bottom half of this level, as it was
quickly found that to go fast, you needed
to go up.
Players had quickly found a direct route where
you could hold run and right the entire time,
but at this point had no optimizations. All
sloped sections were slid down the entire way,
and after jumps, players just landed
wherever they could.
The earliest known World Record was obtained about 25 minutes after
the event took off, by Metballs.
Sidenote, there is no in-game leaderboard
for Ninji, other than a rough histogram that
is divided by whole second increments. So
the only way we knew who had the current world
record was if they decided to share it online,
usually by using the Nintendo Switch Share
feature which allows players to post clips
and screenshots directly to Twitter.
Back to the world record.
Metballs obtained a world record of 20.022
by following a route that will, for the most part,
be the same route used throughout the
entire week. You can see that many ninjis
were already using this route. But Metballs
was able to get world record by using a subtle
strategy: never touching any upward inclines.
Whether you are running, sliding, or even
just jumping off an upwards slope, your character
will slow down. You can see that many other
players’ ninjis, failed to do this and fell
just slightly behind from that loss of momentum.
Soon after Metballs’ run, the first known
sub 20 run was obtained by suisoumaru, with
a time of 19.984. There is no video of this
run.
But 12 minutes after suisoumaru, thabeast721
would claim his first world record, a 19.911.
"Yeah!! Let's go! Let's go."
Thabeast is an experienced player, familiar
with a lot of the subtle physics of SMM2 that allow you to move ever so quicker.
(except for the first-frame spin jump… that didn’t actually save any time)
The most important
speed strat he utilized was slope optimization.
It’s barely noticeable, but there are slight
differences in speed for both slope types.
And it’s not always faster to slide on every
slope. Here’s a quick rundown on slope speeds:
Slowest of all is sliding on steep.
Slightly faster is running on steep. Running on flat is about equal.
After that is running on gentle,
which is significantly faster than any movement on steep.
Fastest of all is sliding on gentle.
Most players had just been sliding on entire
slopes, whether they were gentle or steep.
To move as fast as possible, you had to actually
stop and start sliding at the moment a slope
changes incline. Once thabeast figured this
out, records came easy. Another player actually
tied this world record before thabeast improved,
but we’ll talk about him later.
Thebeast improved his world record 5 more
times in the next 20 minutes. Around this
time, runs started to look very similar to
each other, unless you were watching closely.
Most of the timesave came from better slope
landings. Any time spent in air that could
be spent on a gentle slope was a waste. The
same thing applies for any time spent running
on a gentle instead of sliding.
While thabeast was knocking his time down,
a Japanese player named yuu briefly broke
his streak by using a simple trick: jumping
into the final slope. By jumping off the flat
part at just the right time, the player’s
trajectory would bring them down to the slope
sooner than if the player just ran straight
off.
Because traveling in air is slower than any movement on downwards slopes, this small trick was a nice timesaver.
However, this trick was easy to miss. A frame too early,
you bump the corner, throwing your trajectory
off and making you land much later. A few
frames too late, and you could hit the snowball
backwards, which would prevent you from running
underneath the pokey, and killed the run.
Thabeast used this trick to bring his time
down by 22 milliseconds before stopping for the night.
"Oh, that was..."
"Yes! Untied!"
At the very end of his PB streak, thabeast
shared two tied world records with polysaw
shortly before FlySMM got an 834. This record
seems to have been held for quite a while.
Keep in mind, at this point, the event had
only been active for 2 hours. It was 6 hours
after Fly posted their 834 that maru tied
it, but now 834 was second place. Ninji speedruns
uses a 1224 ranking system, meaning that any
ties would share the same rank, so we know
there must have been only one person ahead
of Fly and maru at this time.
This was likely MW, who posted a screenshot
of a 822 shortly after maru’s 834. And shortly
after MW’s world record came another, an
819, this time from that player from before, yuu.
Overnight, the record had dropped from
834 to 819. Where had all this timesave come from?
MW had only posted a screenshot, and
although yuu had often posted clips for most
of his runs, they sadly no longer exist.
However, we do have video from maru who had gotten
an 826 around this time, and we can actually
see yuu and MW’s ninjis just in front.
A slightly different route was emerging at
the start of the level. Instead of jumping
on top of the blocks at the start, you would
go below, and time a few precise jumps to
reach the top just as before. The advantage
of going below came down to acceleration.
You see, in the top route, players would jump
before they had reached full speed. By going
below, you could build all the speed possible
before getting into the jumps. As seen here,
this saved at least 16 milliseconds, a full
frame, but it probably saved even more.
So, why was this not used earlier? Well, the jumps
up the slope were pretty unforgiving, and
the first jump occurred on an upwards slope,
which meant any extra frame spent running
on it would slow you down significantly. This
route change was reset-heavy, so it took some
time before players were willing to try it
out.
Amazingly, using this new strategy, yuu held
onto the record for nearly 16 hours straight,
even though it was still just the first day
of the event. Only a couple of other players
got anywhere near yuu at this point. MW remained
in second with his previous world record of
822 for almost that entire time. Meanwhile,
yuu managed to drop the world record down
to 815. But then, out of nowhere, it was broken
again, this time by a player named KingBoo.
About a day and a half after the competition
began, KingBoo obtained a massive PB, going
from 824 to 813, and bringing him from 4th
to 1st.
By now, all world records use a technique
called a cornerboost off the corner of this
brick block. By crouch-jumping into the corner
at just the right moment, the player is pushed
forward a tiny amount. In some cases, you
can see the player suddenly blip forwards.
However, the timesave from cornerboosts isn’t
consistent across all levels, ranging anywhere
from a full frame of timesave to only a couple
of milliseconds. For Rolling Snowballs, the
cornerboost was hardly visible, so it was
probably the latter. Still, with world records
this close, every timesave mattered.
The run was now looking to be nearing perfection.
Maru, and then yuu, both got 813 and so there
was a 3-way tie for first place. Then yuu
finally managed to break 813, but just by
2 milliseconds, bringing the world record
to 811. Not long after, shinno tied that world record.
There just didn’t seem to be that
much time for improvement left.
So despite having his streak broken, yuu was
quickly back on top. Or so it seemed.
Just when it looked like yuu was once again comfortably
leading the pack, he found himself in 2nd.
And this time, it wasn’t KingBoo who had
caught up.
A twitter user named sakyo_luckymilk had obtained
a 806. A five millisecond jump which seemed
nearly impossible with the current strats.
But sakyo was doing something new.
It turns out, the slopes were not yet utilized to their
fullest. Sakyo posted two clips showing a
couple gentle slopes that everyone else had
so far just been running on. He was sliding
on these and then slide-cancelling as soon
as they ended. A pretty clever way to save
some precious time. This was all that was
needed for sub 800 to become real, and it
was now a race to see who could get it first.
Turns out, pulling off a run with all the
best strats was not easy. Between both pairs
of gentle slopes was a steep slope. Sliding
on steep slopes was the absolute slowest way
to move, so if you slide cancel just one frame
too late, or begin a slide just one frame
too early, your run is basically over. To
put the difficulty of the run into perspective,
only five players have ever beat sakyo’s
806. The first to do so was yuu, who tied
the 806, then just minutes after, broke it
and improved the world record down to 19.804.
Once again, this record was on the brink of
perfection. It stuck for 16 hours, just as
yuu had done before. And just like before,
KingBoo was there to finally smash it.
For the second time, KingBoo came right back
and knocked the record all the way down to
a 19.8 flat. At this point, not only was it
hard to see where any time was lost in the
run, it was hard to tell runs apart. The movements
were precise down to the frame, for almost
the entire 20 seconds that it took to complete
the level.
Just like before, yuu was able to catch up.
The two players were tied for first once again,
this time only 1 millisecond away from an
incredible milestone… It literally couldn’t get any closer than this.
Who was going to
be the one to break it first?
That’s when "you" (yuu) did it. Yuu beat the level
in under 19.800 before anyone else in the
world. What followed was a huge outpouring
of congratulations from both the Japanese
and Western communities. At this time, yuu
was not only at the top of the charts for
Ninji, he was also the highest ranked player
in Versus mode. He was a Mario Maker god.
Unfortunately, the video of this run was removed
from the internet after yuu deleted all his
socials later that month. But the competition
wasn’t over yet. In fact, it wasn’t even
halfway over at this point. There were still
3 days left, and players were going to fight
to be king of the hill until the last minute.
It’s also worth mentioning that no one really
knew who was going to receive the gold stars
that Nintendo had shown off in the trailer.
Was it only for the Top 1000? Top 10? 1st
place? In the end, it turned out that gold
stars were given to anyone with a time below
21 seconds, totalling about 70,000 players.
But at the time, the only guaranteed way of
getting them was to be the champ. It was enough
incentive to keep players grinding for perfection.
Pulling off the seemingly impossible once
again, yuu broke his own record just one day
after the last, with a 797. It’s hard to
find a single fault in this run. Every jump,
slide, and slide cancel looks like it happens
at the best possible moment it could. This
was it, Rolling Snowballs completed in the
fastest way possible.
When KingBoo managed to tie the 797 just hours
before the end of the event, it solidified
the time as essentially perfect. Even watching
the two runs overlapped, it appears that the
same movements are done at the same exact
moments. But is it perfect? It doesn’t seem
possible that a speedrun could be completely
optimized within a week. Likely, there is
still some indiscernible improvement that
can be made somewhere. While Rolling Snowballs
had over 365,000 people attempt a run, interest
quickly died after it ended when the ranks
became permanent. As of the posting of this
video, still no one has beaten 797.
Because there are no official leaderboards
for Ninji speedruns, we often don’t know
who holds the world record, or even what the
fastest time is. So, I made an unofficial
leaderboard to keep track of the Top 100 runners
for each of the Ninjis starting all the way
back at Rolling Snowballs. If you know of
anything missing from it, and have some sort
of proof, please submit to the google form
or in the ninji discord. I’ve left links
for these as well as a link to the leaderboard
in the description if you’re interested.
Thanks for watching!
