Speedrunner Kolthor the Barbarian
World Records Held: Any% Warpless (1H 42M 57S)
Yoshi’s Island can be enjoyed immensely by both casual and hardcore players. This is key to its popularity as a speedrunning challenge, says Kolthor the Barbarian, the current world record-holder for the Any% Warpless category. “You don’t want to spend countless hours playing a game you hate. The aesthetics of the game still hold up to today’s standards due to its unique storybook graphic style.”
That doesn’t mean Yoshi’s Island is easy to master. Quite the opposite, as a single world record run can take anywhere from an hour and 45 minutes, to over two and a half hours for the 100% category, which requires all 30 Stars, 20 Red Coins, and five Flowers to be obtained on every level in the game. Or you could try learning the Credits Warp, in which case Yoshi’s Island can be beaten in less than three minutes.
There are many crowd-pleasing techniques used to shed time in Yoshi’s Island, so many that longtime Yoshi’s Island speedrunner Trihex coined the term “swag.” Swag has since become a community-wide colloquialism for anything in any game that puts on a show, even at the risk of a good run. “As we say in the speedrun community,” explains Kolthor, “‘If it saves time, it’s not swag.’”
The length, popularity, and immense amount of skill required to competitively speedrun Yoshi’s Island makes it an extremely prestigious accomplishment. “From asking around,” says Kolthor, “many said Yoshi was one of the most difficult speedruns out there, and a world record in Yoshi’s Island is considered by many in the entire speedrun community to be a heavily sought-after title.”
“The controls for the game are some of the best you will ever find in a platformer,” Kolthor says. “Every movement you do feels fluid and natural. There is also very little random chance involved in Yoshi’s Island. I like the feeling that every success and failure is in my control. Yoshi’s Island is, in my opinion, the pinnacle of what a speedrun game should be.”
Basic
Quick Movement
When you need to turn around or come to a stop, the fastest way is to either tongue a wall or ceiling, or if no wall is available, press Down briefly.
Never Run on Slopes
Running on slopes increases the distance Yoshi needs to cover, so always jump over hills or slopes.
Ledges
Running off a ledge causes Yoshi to fall at max speed. Thus, the quickest way to fall down from an area is not to jump like in other games, but to simply run off the edge.
Tonguing Effectively
Normally using Yoshi’s tongue causes him to slow down, but this can be avoided by doing two things. Always tongue in mid-air and let go of the D-pad after starting the tongue action.
Making Eggs Effectively
Yoshi loses all forward movement when making Eggs while standing on the ground. Whenever possible, make your Eggs while in mid-air.
To do this effectively, do the following: 1) Tongue an enemy; 2) While traveling at max speed, jump; 3) As quickly as possible after jumping, remove your thumb from forward, and tap Down for as little time as possible; 4) Continue holding Jump so that you do not land until the Egg swallowing animation is finished (you should not be pushing any directional buttons at all); 5) Return your thumb to pushing Down forward when the Egg animation ends. It may sound complicated at first, but with a little practice, the whole motion will become smooth and natural.
Lag Reduction
Certain areas of the game naturally have a lot of assets on-screen and can cause the game to slow down. To help reduce or prevent this, shoot some Eggs to reduce your Egg count and thereby also reduce the number of sprites on-screen.
Item Clipping
Many levels have items that are completely walled off, and appear to be out of reach. However, Yoshi’s tongue can pass through walls. If the item is directly above Yoshi, hold Up, press Y, and then jump shortly after. The trick can initially take a bit of practice. A major skip can be done in 6-6 using this, resulting in getting the level’s first Key early.
Quick Goal
Whenever you enter a goal ring, always try to enter at the bottom of the ring. Hitting the bottom of the goal ring saves a small amount of time (one to ten frames) over hitting the middle or top of the ring. This is due to Mario being caught by the next Yoshi sooner. The difference between the very bottom and peak height of a jump is 10 frames.
Advanced
Perfect Jumps
Perfect jumps are performed by jumping on the first frame possible as Yoshi is landing on the ground. These jumps produce several interesting effects, most notably because the game does not seem to register Yoshi as having landed on the ground at all if a perfect jump is performed. This is often used in conjunction with an extended flutter: whenever Yoshi bounces on an enemy, he gets a much longer and higher flutter that can be used to reach high areas. However, the flutter must be initiated before landing or else it is canceled, i.e. you must use an extended flutter immediately after bouncing on an enemy. This cancellation can be avoided by using a perfect jump, as the game never registers Yoshi as having touched the ground.
Perfect Flutter
Normally, a flutter is done simply by pushing Jump and holding it down until a flutter begins. This produces a flutter which both comes out later, and does not give Yoshi optimal height. If Jump is manually released right as Yoshi begins to fall, and then very quickly re-pressed (one to three frames later), Yoshi performs a flutter, which travels a bit higher up. This trick is used to access several locations otherwise too high for Yoshi to jump to naturally.
Pipe Glitch
While standing on a pipe that can be entered from above, press Down on the D-pad and Jump simultaneously. Yoshi jumps in the air and enters the pipe at the same time. Doing this skips the animation you would normally see when entering a pipe and saves about .5 seconds. This glitch is also used in some places to activate a 1-1 Warp.
Gate HackThere are many one-way gates in Yoshi’s Island that can actually be opened backward by several methods. By far the easiest real-time method for opening a gate from behind is to throw a straight upward-aimed Egg at just the right spot toward the top of the gate. The Egg glitches into the gate, and knocks it open, thus allowing Yoshi to go through an otherwise closed gate. This is used to save time in 2-4 Any%, skipping the staircase that is typically used in that area.
Piranha Skip
After shooting an Egg or spitting an enemy onto a Green Piranha Plant, it is possible to travel through them for 32 frames (about half a second) without taking a hit.
Red Coin Duplication
It is possible to duplicate Red Coins carried by Patrolling Fly Guys. You do this by tonguing the Fly Guy, not picking up the Red Coin, going off-screen and spitting it out without killing it, and going back to respawn the Fly Guy.
Expert
Sprite Overload
You cannot load more than 24 sprites on the screen at once. Keep in mind that some sprite slots are reserved for important stuff such as Baby Mario, Toadies, etc. For speedrunning, this mechanic has both pros and cons. It can be abused to despawn almost anything such as enemies, Save Rings, and gates to save time. Most notable is the Bullet Bill Launcher despawn in 2-7.
Chicken Baxter
The 4-7 Chicken Baxter is a way to bring a chicken (Huffin’ Puffin) to 4-8, which can be used against Hookbill to flip him over instantly. A Chicken Baxter is performed by aiming the chicken and canceling the aim at the same frame as you enter a goal ring. However, a certain setup is needed to make it work, along with a deep understanding of how sprite IDs behave in Yoshi’s Island.
1-1 Warping
The glitch is performed in different ways depending on which level you are in. Each glitch follows the same general format, though. The area that Yoshi warps to when he goes through a pipe is dependent on where Yoshi actually is when the screen transition is triggered, and not which pipe he goes down. Thus, entering a pipe from a different position than usual can result in the game not knowing where to send Yoshi. This causes him to be sent to coordinates (0,0)—the top left corner—of the default level (1-1). You can trigger a 1-1 Warp by performing a Pipe Glitch on the first pipe you can enter in 1-1.
ACE (Arbitrary Code Execution)
To perform the credits warp, a glitch called “Tongue Glitch” is used. This causes Yoshi’s tongue to stretch infinitely, eating up the game’s memory. If manipulated correctly, the Tongue Glitch can cause the game to execute instructions from the memory addresses associated with the positions of recently spawned
sprites. This is great, because sprite positions can be manipulated. By positioning various sprites at subpixel perfect locations, a sequence of instructions is used to run the credits. This run was made possible by the work of ArneTheGreat.
5-4 Skip
This “skip,” as we call it, is a combination of a few techniques performed in 5-4 that allows a player to avoid riding the platform ghost toward the end of the stage. This is possible because of the mechanic that doing a perfect flutter can prevent you from losing height on flutters. Each perfect flutter has a three-frame window to release and re-press the Jump button, and while there are variations on how to perform the 5-4 skip, you have to perform about 30 perfect flutters in order to successfully do it. You start off by riding the platform ghost to the first platform, then you jump off as soon as you can and begin fluttering to the right. Keep going until you pass four bats on the ceiling. You then turn around and get the bats to come to you toward the bottom of the screen. You then use the bats to jump on and help you navigate the rest of the skip. This is by far the HARDEST thing I have ever had to do in a video game. It took me approximately 700 attempts before I was able to do it for the first time. It is worth it, though, as it saves about one minute and 20 seconds.