Mario Kart 64 / Advanced Strategy / Page 2

Toad's Turnpike
This course is hard to write a strat for. Basically, it's all about your MTing technique. It's also very important to go on the inside of the traffic rather than go around them if you can manage it. For example, on the very first corner of the first lap, it is quicker to go on the inside of the Bus than around it although a lot more difficult. You'll find that the end of the 3rd lap is the most difficult part of the course because traffic tends to build up near that area. Firstly find a safe path through the traffic and then worry about getting MT's and SSMT's around there. I use my 3 shrooms on the second lap. One on the first corner and 2 on the second. 59"56 (49"54) God. 6th

As you improve as a player, this course should improve with you. It's basically non-stop MT/SSMT's from the start to the end. Avoid the traffic, keep straight between MT's and watch Kevin's movie.

Frappe Snowland
This used be my very worst course, but things have changed a lot since then. So, boost start and slide and MT around the first corner leaving it go when the boost starts to wear off. You should be aiming for the next corner now. I do 2 quick MT's around this corner and end up driving between the right-hand side snow and the snowman. For the next corner, do an MT as quick as you can and then for the remainder of the corner, hop! hop, hop, hop and then hop into an MT for the next corner. Then drive straight for a second or two before moving slightly to the right and MTing around the left corner and pointing myself so that I'm facing pretty straight on the left hand side of the track for the jump over the little river. I do nothing but drive straight here until I've landed (if you're unlucky, through no fault of your own you'll be slowed down here. A smooth hill and landing is ideal tough) and then MT around the next corner before the snowmen field. Now, this is the bit I was doing wrong all along before. YOu'll be presented with a field of snowmen. You want to be pointed towards the leftmost 2, either to the right or the left.. doesn't really matter what side. When you reach the first of these two, immediately start a left facing MT and hit your shroom. This is probably the hardest NonSc thing in MK64 for time trials to do consistently well. You want to cut as much of this hill as possible. Try not to see it so much as a straight line shroom as a gradual arcy shroom. Leave the MT go before you reach the top of the hill and jump and hopefully...with practice (and yes, you can get this consistently right after a long while [well it took a long while for me.. actually up until the day I got the WR would you believe]) you'll land on the road in the middle and before the 2 leftmost snowmen. Then I then turn my kart right enough to then start a left facing MT around the next corner. I then do a right facing SSMT along the road before the big turn. Then, I start an SSMT and let it go just as I reach the next corner and start hopping around it. I think I hop around three times. Just make sure to stay as close to the corner as you can without hitting it. After hopping I then jump into another quick MT and leave it go pointing towards the last corner. With this corner, I MT quickly and SSMT before the finish line. I don't do that SSMT on the last lap.

Flap: The flap I do on the 2nd or 3rd lap and it's much quicker than trying it on the 1st lap because of where you use the 1st shroom. I set this flap up by driving into the snow on the right on the lap previous and then stopping. STOP. Stop dead. You're on the snow to the right of the finish line and you haven't crossed it yet and you're motionless. Yes, this is probably the only time in the game you'll ever do this. Now, back up a bit (but be careful not to go too far back and fall into the water). Line up your run to the virtual finish line. There's a point in the snow that's too far right and you don't want to hit that. What you want to do is triple tap A to get your speed up before the line and then slide and shroom a microsecond before the line with a right facing MT. So when this shroom wears off you should be on the road and near the first left-hand corner. You should MT around this once and point towards the next corner. Pretty much straight away after passing this snowman (and he should be on the right this time), I jump into a left facing MT and hit my second shroom cutting up to the left of the next corner as much as I can without Lakitu stopping you. On my PR lap, I managed to jump at the top of the hill and end up landing on the road and getting an right facing SSMT before the left-hand corner before the river jump. The 3rd shroom I use in the same place as for the course time, over the hill to the left of the snowman field. It's a hard lap to master, because there are three places it can all go wrong. On every shroom there's a possibility of messing it up completely. And it's one of the few laps that you can't get close to a decent time by using all 3 shrooms on the first lap. Good luck!

Choco Mountain
I've pretty much had the same strat here since I had times above 2'00 (1'40) but with practice this has come down to the time you see above. Start the lap with the usual jump/slide/MT around the first corner. I get one MT on the first lap but I take two around the first 2 corners on the 2nd and 3rd laps. This MT should have you roughly pointed in the right direction driving very close to the hill on the left. This next corner is the one I shroom around to the right. You have to cut this corner as tight as you can to gain valuable tenths of seconds and hopefully have an MT ready to let loose as soon as you're around it. If you don't want to use your shroom here, just MT twice around this corner. Now there comes a long road down until the next corner. For some reason I didn't SSMT here for a long long while but I've recently changed to doing one here. I then get 2 MT's up around the next corner (but you can always use a shroom here). When you let go of the second one you should drive straight so that you just barely miss the side of the road to your right. Just after this you should jump into a very quick left facing SSMT before the next corner which you then MT quickly around leaving you pointing straight and on the left side of the road before the hill. Immediately when you land, jump into a left facing SMMT, (the road should start to gradually turn to the left) wait a second, jump into another, wait a second and then jump into a final one and just as the corner starts to turn sharply, start hopping like mad around it until you can see the next corner. At that point jump quickly into a right facing SSMT, then MT properly around the corner, drive straight along this short road and MT tightly around the next one so that you're pointing yourself at the final corner which you MT tightly around as well and drive straight to the finish line. You may find that hopping at the top of the first hill will gain you time if you land in between hills. It's hard to tell whether hopping will be good or not until you've done it of course. Hopping and landing in between the hills is faster than driving normally and hitting the hill, but the fastest of them all is just driving smoothly, no hops.. and smoothly driving down and up out of the dip between the hills. This is pretty hard to do right all of the time and I have no trick to it. The last thing I have to say is that you don't have to worry about falling anythings once you reach a certain speed around this course, but you might want to watch yourself before you reach that level.

Flap: This is easy enough to explain. I wait until the 2nd or 3rd lap for starters, although I have to admit that for my PR I got it on my 1st lap because I was tired of spending 40 seconds setting up the start of a lap just to mess up the first corner. If you want to wait for the 2nd or 3rd lap, an interesting way of starting this is to have an MT ready to let go as you cross the line. On any other course this might seem easy but for Choco, you have to start the MT before going over the hills. This can be quite difficult to pull off but you'll get the extra speed you want. I use my first shroom in the normal spot as described above. The 2nd I use one the following corner and the 3rd I use after hopping around the long corner after the boulders bit...I jump into a right facing MT after hopping.. then let it go and then jump straight into another one and hit the shroom. It should wear off after the 2nd last corner. It's a toughy, and one of my last remaining GOD time targets.

Mario Raceway
Shroom/Slide/MT start cutting across the grass on the right getting close to the wall but make sure to be out on the road again before the shroom wears off. Let go your MT when you're back on the road and then jump across the grass again aiming for the edge of the wall, keep jumping until you're near the road and the turn to the left and then do a left facing MT back onto the road. Keep it as straight as possible along this road to the next bend. MT around this and point slightly to the left of the gap between the giant mushroom and the wall. Now start a right facing MT and slide between the leftmost mushroom and the one next to it. I leave my MT go around there and start hopping until I'm back onto the track. (It takes about 3 hops or so). That was the hardest part of the track. Getting a clean run through there is vital to a good time, but dont worry to much if you hit the mushroom slightly. Then do a left facing MT around the next small bend and then a right facing one at the next. At this point you should be driving pretty much straight and getting ready for the next MT into the grass. You want to let the MT go before you enter the grass and then start hopping around the corner (making sure not to hit the wall or go too wide). I think I snagged the wall on the 3rd lap of my PR run When you're around the corner totally, you should use a shroom and jump into a left facing MT. This should bring you across the grass, across the road and across the sand and you should make sure to get back out onto the road before the shroom wears off and leave go a MT at that point. This should leave you on the road with the pipe a second or two up the road. Now some people do an SSMT here and others don't. My view is that it's quicker to do one if you can manage it and if can't manage it then practice, because it's quicker. I then get one quick MT around the last corner and an SSMT just before the line. Yes, this is quicker too. Both myself and Sami do this and I wouldn't say it if I wasn't sure. You have to do it right though, and it's only slightly faster if done right. It's much more difficult than SSMTing in the pipe and not so important. The 2nd and 3rd laps are the same except that you don't cut across the grass at the start of the lap on the very first corner and don't SSMT before the line on the last lap..

Flap: This, I do on my 1st lap. There are a few different shroom spots that you can try. The one I use to get my best times isn't the same as some of the people with similar times to me, but I'll give you the basic spots. The first one is to use a shroom just before the starting one wears off and to shroom across the rest of the grass and MT back onto the road at the first left turn. The next spot is where I use my shroom on each lap of the course strat. And the last one is on the last turn cutting across the grass. For this one, you jump into a right facing MT just before reaching the end of the pipe and then hit a shroom, cut across the grass, just barely miss the wall and land (hopefully) on the right side of the road just before the line where you then release your MT. A lot of poeple, including myself until recently, don't use a shroom here though. They prefer to use 2 across the grass/sand. Just after the big mushroom, you do two MTs and you should be on the left side of the road coming up to the wall you normally hop around. Instead, you jump into a right facing MT and shroom around this corner and before the shroom runs out, you hit a second one which should bring you across the rest of the way and leave you near the pipe. The last shroom spot that I hear some people use, is using one near the big mushroom but I've never gotten that to work myself.

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