{LOTAD} SMG2: Cloudy Court Galaxy - Green Star 2 (0x A Presses) [M]

Link to the SMG ABC Server: https://discord.gg/qWVzVF6

Small splice at 7:21 because I forgot to shoot out my starbits until I was dumping frames. Also at 2:40, I realized I forgot to crash the cymbal before starting the raising

So the midsection of this stage is incredibly unique (and also very out of place? I really don't get the big floating drums theme in the middle of a Sky Garden stage), between the windmill, the bouncy drums, and the collapsable cymbal. If you've ever played this stage, you've probably noticed that the galoombas actually bounce when you land on their drum; getting these guys airborne made me think you could reasonably get 3 enemies to the cymbal at the end, then squeeze out enough distance with a triple bounce and cloud movement to reach Green Star 2

This stage is really just an exercise in massaging every obstacle until everything just happens to work.

Problem: How do you actually raise the galoombas up to higher drums / the cymbal?

Solution: We already do goomba manip via clouds in a few different stars, notably Green Star 1 of this very stage. Instead of trying to squeeze out distance, though, we'll go for height. Clouds in this game are big enough that if you and an enemy are both on one, you can produce a new one without spinning into your cohabitant

Problem: You only get 3 clouds worth of height at a time, and they disappear quickly. How do you raise the galoombas any higher than this?

Solution: We just return to keep returning to a nearby cloud flower before your last cloud expires. Normally we use this strategy to get about 5 clouds worth of horizontal distance, but since the drums let us travel so fast vertically, we chain clouds to raise enemies for such a long time

Problem: Since you're spending time falling and bouncing on the drums, now you're really pressed for time with the clouds.

Solution: You can get into a quick rhythm of grabbing the cloud flower, producing a cloud right at the drum's height so you can directly walk onto it, bouncing on the drum, raising the goomba with a second cloud, luring the goomba to a better position, creating a third cloud to gain more height and get closer horizontal to the cloud flower, walk off and groundpound to reset the cycle

This process seems pretty obvious but it took a little bit to finetune

Problem: The cymbal and the highest drum are too high up to land on without airspinning or burning a cloud. How will you bring 3 clouds to the cymbal once you lure all the enemies over?

Solution: You can produce a cloud right around the peak of your jump from the second-to-last drum and reuse it after grabbing a fresh cloud flower. It's also a good height so that you can just walk on the rim of the drum when it disappears from under you

When you groundpound the cymbal to produce starbits, the height of the cymbal actually decreases enough so that you can just land on it normally. Of course, this means you'll have a tiny bit less height to help you get to the green star, but it's worth it for the extra cloud you get access to

Problem: There's only 2 galoombas on the drums. How do you get a third enemy up to the cymbal?

Solution: There's a paragoomba right before the windmill. You could probably de-wing it, bring it up using windmill-pushed clouds, and then raise it the same way you do the galoombas

Problem: Goombas don't actually bounce on the drums like galoombas do.

Solution: That's not actually an issue. The fact that galoombas bounce a significant bit only saves time; this bounce isn't critical to starting the raising or anything

Problem: The galoomba keep trying to chase Mario, both on the drums and on the cymbal. Also, due to awkward slopes along the cymbal, they keep walking off the side even when Mario isn't around.

Solution: Yeah this one sucks, but fortunately you can just position them far away enough from where you're going to be ascending so that they won't see you. I actually waste a good amount of time trying not to lose all my progress after I didn't position the 2 galoombas on the cymbal well enough

Problem: Even when you're on a cloud above the goomba and galoombas, they still want to chase after you.

Solution: Luckily player 2 can hold one of the enemies in place. Using player 2 isn't necessary for this star, but locking the goomba's position was a luxury too nice to pass up on, especially since W1 TAS set the precedent of always having P2 active in every star

Problem: The cymbal is too small to position the 3 enemies into convenient spaces to do the triple bounce.

Solution: IDK just shoot them with starbits and hope they end up where you want them lol

Problem: Once you're actually on the cymbal there's no good place to start the triple bounce.

Solution: Guess we'll have to burn a cloud then. If lacking 1 of our clouds causes us to come up shy on the star grab, I'd have to redo this whole stage with Luigi.

Oh but hey look at that-it was more than enough, even with that mediocre triple bounce angle