Return to Dinosaur Land : Choco Peninsula 6 - 338
Flyover levels aren't usually terribly interesting to optimize, but this one is somewhat interesting just because the flight is more difficult than usual due to some blocks at the end. The easiest way to get past these is to use B+left to slow your flight to 6 speed or less, and climb up. However you can also just fly under the blocks. Here I did a stickyfly without big air. It is completely possible to do the ending without a stickyfly and without slowing down (see • R2DL CP6 no stick ending ). You want to cape pump as soon as possible after bonking the blocks under the level, similar to the 6-pump method for Royfly. It's a bit precise but with practice quite reasonable. But if you do that the ending section is quite tight to get enough altitude to hit the goal. It's possible to do so without slowing down, but much easier to press left+B a couple times to get an extra cape pump in. The stickyfly essentially gives me one free cape pump's worth of altitude, making the ending free. I also wanted to show off stickyfly without big air. I did it before a few times in VoB1 but never in a speedrun. This is an annoyingly precise trick. It's typically frame-perfect when possible, and depending on your approach to the corner it can be completely impossible. There are some places in Vanilla SMW where this would be helpful if it were consistent, such as Vanilla Dome 3 lower route (see e.g. fabian's TAS). Getting p-speed at the beginning was done alright, but likely a few frames can be saved (possibly more with yellow blocks). Beyond that (and ignoring corner boosts which are possible but surely not worth the effort) there aren't any ways I can see to improve this. We'd need to cut 8 frames off to get 339, and I don't think there's any way to do so without tools. Note that it is faster to do a spinfly onto the moving platform than to just normal jump immediately if you do it well, but not if you do it poorly. Running all the way across a platform saves 6 frames over not taking it, assuming both are at p-speed. I didn't run all the way across, but I probably ran enough to save 4 frames. You do lose time from getting 51 speed later. In particular, for every 14.93 frames you spend at p-speed instead of flight speed, you lose 1 frame. For this setup you pretty consistently lose 1-2 frames. Hence overall I saved 2 or 3 frames. If you aren't going to try to land as far left on the platform as possible (which means guessing when you'll have p-speed), it's better just to get flight right away. I think the speedrun route typically tries to use a blue yoshi for this level. The best I could get with that (locking 49 speed quickly and flying under the blocks at the end) was a 336.
