Conquering the Top

Top O’ the Town is the star at the top of Wet-Dry World. Interestingly, it’s exactly 1 unit too high to reach with a rollout, which is why it originally took 1 A press to collect (   • SM64 - Top O' the Town (Low Water Lev...  ). Later, we discovered the “light chuckya via edge” glitch, which allowed us to collect the star in 0 A presses by having chuckya throw Mario into the star (   • SM64 - Top O' the Town - 0x A Presses  ). Even later, we found that the “light chuckya via edge” glitch wasn’t necessary for getting chuckya over to the star, as we could do it with heavy chuckya (   • WDW Top O' Town 0xA Alternative Strat...  ). However, I believe it would be most consistent to label strats just by what provides the extra height to reach the star, not the setup to get to that point. So I’m retroactively merging the light chuckya and heavy chuckya strats to be just the chuckya strat. Later, we found that chuckya wasn’t necessary at all, as we could use vertical speed conservation (VSC) to reach the star (   • WDW Top O' Town 0xA Alternative Strat...  ). And after that, we found 2 more alternative strats, which were to use a skeeter (   • WDW Top O' Town 0xA Alternative Strat...  ) and to use a fire (   • WDW Top O' Town 0xA Alternative Strat...  . In total, that made 4 unique strats.

But now, I present 2 more alternative strats: using a heave-ho (   • WDW Top O' the Town 0xA using a Heave-Ho  ) and using a teleporter (   • WDW Top O' the Town 0xA using a Telep...  ). I had known for a while that both of these were close to working. In fact, I knew the heave-ho strat would work if we could just achieve a particular HOLP that was super high up (   • WDW Top O' Town 0xA Heave-Ho Clone Idea  ). Recently, I re-examined how feasible that HOLP was, and found that it was just BARELY possible to achieve in BitS, by using BCA to construct a goomba staircase. Note that there are 3 heave-hos in WDW, and they’d all turn back towards their home after being thrown high up. That meant each heave-ho works with a different HOLP, since they’d heave Mario at different angles, and you need that angle to be towards the star. Only one of these HOLPs was reachable in BitS, which was the HOLP for the highest heave-ho. But that introduced another problem: we normally use that heave-ho to get up to chuckya’s platform. But if that heave-ho is at the high HOLP, it can’t help us with that. So I found a workaround, which was to rollout off a sign, use a star dance clip to get onto the slope, and then dive grind over to chuckya’s platform.

Once I got the heave-ho strat working, that meant we had 5 different strats. But I realized 6 strats would look so much cooler in terms of filling up the screen elegantly. So with that as my motivation, I worked hard to get the teleporter strat working. I had known already that a teleporter clone released on top of the star block would allow us to teleport directly onto the star block. And that HOLP was definitely achievable in WF. But the issue was that that HOLP placement was incompatible with the way I get chuckya into the tunnel. In contrast, let’s say we currently have the HOLP used for the skeeter clone and fire clone. That HOLP is near the very front edge of the star platform. Then if Mario’s on the bottom of the course, has the hat in hand glitch, and drops chuckya, chuckya appears at Mario due to a failsafe, since that drop would have placed chuckya out of bounds. Specifically, it would have placed him underneath the floor that the blue coin block is on. But if the HOLP is instead above the star block (which is not as near the front edge of the star platform), then dropping chuckya from the bottom of the course would place him inbounds, and so we don’t get the failsafe anymore. And without the failsafe, I couldn’t make chuckya appear at Mario to get chuckya into the tunnel. But that didn’t stop me. I wanted the 6 simultaneous screens so bad that through sheer force of will, I found a workaround. Specifically, I found that we can use the pushable block to clip chuckya through the wall, causing him to fall into the tunnel right at the loading zone. And with that final breakthrough, the 6 strats for collecting Top O’ the Town 0xA were achieved.

And so I present this video as a testament to how far we’ve come in terms of SM64 knowledge. Top O’ the Town is placed at the very top of the course, just 1 unit too high to reach, almost as if to taunt us. We originally needed a whole A press just to overcome that 1 unit gap. But now with years of accumulated knowledge (cloning, hat in hand, light chuckya via edge, chuckya wrong throw, behind camera anywhere, hyper speed walking, vertical speed conservation, star dance clip), we’ve not only reduced this star to 0 A presses, but did so in 6 different ways. And so without a doubt, this star has been conquered.

Thanks to clintd7 (https://www.fiverr.com/clintd7/make-s...) for voicing Mario. And thanks to Kaze (   / @kazen64  ) and his wife Zeina (  / of_zeina  ) for making Mario’s bowing animation.