There's something about this course that makes me nervous. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Hey, I wonder if he'll actually be able to tell what I'm thinking", but some others among you might think that what makes me nervous are the ghosts that float about. Then again, there's that whole section of you that are just sitting there thinking about cheese. Wake up guys! Try to stay with me. I know I ramble on a bit, but I eventually get to the strat stuff. Anyway, no it's not the ghosts that make me nervous, nor that mysterious giant flying fish. (These are words I never thought I'd actually say. Seriously, you could go your entire life without saying "mysterious giant flying fish") No, I'm generally nervous on this course, more than most others, because all mistakes tend to be big mistakes. There's no slight touching off the grass or wide open straightways. It's narrow and it's cruel. The two hazards when trying to take the corners tightly are that you either slam into a fence, or worse still, you fall off the edge. It's like that pretty much the whole way through. Oh, and you also have to jump over a hole in the floor. Yippee! I mean who designed this place? Imagine walking into your kitchen to get some breakfast to start the day, and then suddenly falling down a star shaped hole that's appeared from nowhere. It's just crazy. This course doesn't reward success, it punishes failure.
 The dark, and haunted boardwalk of the soul. Still with me? Excellent Here we go! Get a boosty ghosty everett start and slam into the lefthand fence whilst trying to be quick. Then retry a few times until you accidentally miss it. The thing about mariokart is that often it pays to be really stubborn about something. Like, for instance, when you go too close and make a mistake on a corner, the temptation is there to take it wider next time around. Sometimes it's better just to keep trying to take it tightly until you finally do it right. I'm not saying to go crazy and end up not finishing any runs in pursuit of absolute perfection, but there's no real sense taking a safe wide line. You may actually fall into bad habits after a while and not realise that you're actually taking it safely. This is perhaps the worst course of all to be giving you this advice on, since touching any corner will effectively lead you to retrying, but you gets what you gets.  There are 12 arrows on this track, making it hard to get lost So I just realised (after writing 5 or 6 strats. As I said random order here), sometimes writing a strat for a corner is incredibly pointless. With most corners in this game, you should take them as tightly and as quickly as possible. There isn't much more to say on them. So, for this first corner, you should (wait for it) take it as tightly and quickly as possible. Because you have a boost on the first lap, you'll be propelled wider on this first lap than on the other laps, so be careful not to go too far to the right after this corner because getting the right angle to jump over the gap at the second corner is kinda important. :) The kinda important jump When I say "kinda important", I really don't mean it. It's really no more important than anything else, but this corner has been ignored for long enough, and I need to stand up for it now. So treat it with respect. The important thing to remember about this jump, is that landing in the water is (in this case) bad. Yep, you heard me. Try and land on the road if at all possible. :) Right, now there are many ways to take this jump from jumping really early, to not jumping at all. Neither extreme is good. Jumping really early (Oh by the way, did I tell you to work up an MT before this corner? No? Ok...well do that. I'm handholding here), now I've lost my train of thought. There it is. So back on track, if you jump too early, when you land you'll go wide and will be compromised setting up your MT around the next bend. If you don't jump at all and just MT around the corner, well....well then you just wasted an opportunity to cut out a bit of the track, and whilst it's not always preferrable to do this (because hopping actually slows you down), the gain on this corner is worth the leap of faith. So on this corner you have to find the mystery point (for you), that lets you cut as much as you can, without compromising your setup for the next corner. The next corner you take tightly, fearlessly and quickly. Also you basically hop straight into this MT when you land from the jump across the gap. There is no pause This is a small part of the track where I almost fall into a daydream state, because there's nothing to do for at least a second. Sometimes I think about places I'd like to be, or items I could purchase. Mostly I just sit there and stare blankly off into space. Now, this next corner...hmmm. I have no idea how to drive this corner. How ridiculous does that sound? I'm going to have to go down and play this course now. Back in a second. 2'07"20 (1'45"79) Not bad, not bad. It's interesting how you can just do something without knowing exactly how you're doing it. For instance I can solve a rubix cube quite quickly, but I couldn't teach anyone to do it, because I honestly don't know what sides my hands are turning. They just see that I have to swap 3 pieces from this position to that position, and they just work on autopilot. Obviously, at some point in time, I learned off these set of moves, and after years of practice it's just second nature to me and no thought is required. It's the same with mariokart and with anything you practice over and over. A different part of the brain is at work so you can almost drive without thinking about it......(this would probably be a mistake) Whilst I was down playing I realised just how late my MT was coming from the previous corner. The corner was over and gone almost before I started the MT, so mostly you'll be finishing that on the straight. Drive straight. Fasten your seatbelt. The next corner. You know I went down and drove it, but I'm still not entirely sure what the best way to take this is. What I did when I was down there, was work an MT up and let it go just on the corner where the road meets the gap (I don't hop over any of this gap), but after I let go the MT I do hop once or twice so that I can quickly get an SSMT down the following slope. It may be possible though, to MT around that bend and _not_ hop and to just turn before starting your MT. OR, you could try to jump over this gap too and take your chances. I haven't personally settled down to anything concrete on this corner. I'll still experiment against ghosts from time to time to see what works best. So you should too. So here we come to a really tricky ssmt. It's tricky only because you're doing some of it on a slope, so the angles become slightly different. It's quite difficult to actually pull this off consistantly and effectively until you reach the right place with it (ie after you've practiced it a hundred times or so), so good luck with it. On a flap, I noticed from a vid that MJ doesn't do this ssmt at all. So just drive straight down this if you're going for a flap and get ready to use your first shroom. As a brief aside, I just pr'd here on this track for the first time in over a year. 2'05"83 (1'44"65). I wish just talking about a course made me better at it, but we can put that down to coincidence and the fact that I still haven't capitalised on my potential on this course yet. I should be able to get 2nd here without too much trouble, and I should probably also stop talking about myself in the strats. Right, back to the road! The technique I use to MT here is pretty simple. You start the MT before the slope upwards, you bring it to yellow as you get airborne and instantly change it to red upon landing. This is a very easy corner to hit if you're not in full control of the angle of the MT. If you find you're hitting the fence before getting the MT to red, you should probably drive more to the righthand side of the straight before setting up this MT. My advice for the flap is pretty much exactly the same, except that you're moving a little faster because you've fired a shroom off. Since the effect of the shroom will be pointless after you land and complete the MT around the next bend, time the start of it so that any effect wears off upon reaching the top of the slope. This basically means shrooming almost the instant you've driven down the first slope. Oh and no, that wasn't a fish..it was your imagination  Look at your imagination go! This next little bit is super tricky, and only if you're very good at ssmts will you like it at all. There are alot of ghosts here trying to distract you, but I can't really remember a time where they messed up a run on me. Basically here you have a straight with a little left/right section where you have to do a quick left-facing SSMT and then a quick right-facing one. There's really nothing I can do to help you with these. If you're starting out on this track, you should just probably try to get one of these, or ignore them completely because this is the point you're most likely to fall off the road. I had a dream once where I discovered a SC on this track, and went around and finished the lap in some stupidly quick time like 14 seconds or something. You know you're playing too much mariokart, when you start to dream about it. And this is where it gets really tough There's a drop in the road here, and you have a few options. Firstly you should decide whether or not you want to use a shroom here. If you're on a flap run then you don't have to decide anything, because you're definitely using a shroom here. The way to do this is to jump into a left-facing MT just before the dropoff point and upon landing hit the shroom. The problem with the landing, is that some of the time the kart feels it would be a nice time to start bouncing and mess up your perfect lap. This is quite annoying and can lead to bad things. Try randomly shouting at someone in your house. It'll make you feel better. No, really. The key to this shroom is to make sure you take the finally bit of the corner as tightly as possible. Obviously it would be great if you could take the whole thing really tightly, but if you have to choose, make sure you get the end bit right. The difference between using a shroom here, and using on on the last corner is actually quite small, and I've only noticed about 0.1 seconds difference between them when I've really nailed this corner perfectly. But, it's much harder to get this right consistently than it is to get the last corner right, because the slope at the beginning makes things a bit difficult to judge properly. So that's if you want to use your shroom here. If you don't there are two other ways to take this part of the track. The first, and easiest. Is to jump straight off the ledge before this corner and then get one long MT around it. I'm not sure why I jump, but I do. You can try not jumping if you want. The second way (and something I haven't really tried much) is to start a left-facing slide at the top of the ledge, like you're going to use a shroom, but then get an MT really quickly upon landing, and then get another quick MT around the corner. This 2 MT approach is faster, and might actually make the last corner shroom strategy a real contender, but it's really hard to pull off properly, and to be honest, I haven't really tried it much. I'm the sort of driver who tends to stick with a strat until I feel it's almost maxed out and then start to play around with different ways of doing things to see if they're promising or not.  Such a nice place. Maybe we could go on vacation here. And so we get to the indoors part. This is where your MT technique is tested to the fullest. If you can pull of these next 4 MTs in a row, then you can do any MT anywhere. Depending on the angle you got from the previous corner, setting up the 1st of these MTs can range from difficult to almost impossible, and I like to see this MT as more of an SSMT (even though you're clearly going around a corner) because you tend to drift out to the right as you're doing it. It's really almost like threading a needle trying to get between the gap. I tend to aim slightly to the left of the corner I'm trying to get around before sliding into this MT, but you can change your runup to it so that you're aimed to the right of it, so you can treat it more like a regular MT. This is probably easier starting out. Whatever way you take this MT, just make sure that when you're finished it, you're driving to the left of the pole and over a little bit of the star hole in the floor. The next corner is one of the last MTs I mastered in the game, because it's a lot easier to just hop over this gap in the floor and then hop a few times around this corner before setting up MT 3. You can easily (note: I'm not saying God times are easy) get a God time here without doing an MT on this corner, if you decide to opt for the hopping approach. If you do decide to do the MT though, there isn't much advice I can give you except to use the jump over the star shaped hole as the jump into the slide for the MT. I've seen people jump over the hole and then try to MT, but that's a bit silly. All in all, this MT has to be super quick, and I still mess it up quite often.  I wonder what happened to the wall MT 3 is actually the easiest to get if you've opted for the hopping around corner 2, but it's tricky to get quickly (without slamming into the wall) if you've MTd around the previous bend. Basically this 4 MT section is non stop switching from left-facing Mt to right-facing to left-facing, to right-facing. Get Mt 3 quickly and glide for a fraction before jumping into the final MT out into the open again. Hug this corner tightly. Try not to be afraid of it. Take a deep breath. It's done with now.  Spooky lanterns light the way This is another one of those straights where you can almost shut your brain off for a second. I've always been very tempted to try and fit an SSMT in here but I'm not sure if it would be any faster at all. We got one corner left. Actually there are multiple corners, but they're all part of the one entity, and the ghosts this time are really really annoying. They frequently mess up my vision of the corner enough so that I can't tell if I'm about to hit into it or not, but hopefully they won't get to you too much. There's 2 ways to take this corner. 1 way is to use a shroom here. There's not much to it. Jump into a slide, hit the shroom button, and turn each time you pass the parts of the corner that jut out, leaving the MT go just before the corner ends. Always try to anticipate the end of a corner, and time your MT so you can let it go at the earliest possible opportunity.  Outta my way! Can't you see I'm driving here! If you're on a 3lap run though, and you've already used your shroom elsewhere, you'll need to perform 2 MTs around this final bend. You start the first one pretty early, whilst you're still on the straight, and you let it go so that you're gliding alongside one of the edges of the corner for a brief moment, then you jump into your final MT, (it's really hard to describe this one without sounding vague and odd and like I don't know what I'm talking about), and you hold the white part of the MT longer than you usually would, so that you can properly turn into the corner, and then the yellow/red part has to be performed pretty quickly at the end. It's easy to mess this up. Again, anticipate the end of the corner and release your MT before you're on the straight. And so you're here, on the last straight before the line. I only actually SSMT once here nowadays, although I remember from early testing a few years ago, that 2 SSMTs seemed to be faster on laps 1 and 2 (Note: not on lap 3 or on a flap run). You can play around against a ghost using 1 or 2 ssmts here. 2 will have to be performed quite quickly and it will make the first corner of the next lap quite tricky to get, so watch out for that. If you're just doing the easier 1 SSMT approach, just glide quite a bit from the previous corner before getting it. I frequently fall into the water when I'm sliding with this ssmt, and usually when I'm on a really good lap. Another thing that happens is that I hit off the fence before completing the SSMT and waste precious tenths. Like in RRd though, and other places, if you can hit the wall just as you're bringing your MT to red, it will straighten your kart more quickly without losing any of the boost of the MT, so (I believe) it's faster to hit the fence when you MT. Note, I mean the back of your kart, so if you're doing a left-facing MT, I mean hitting the righthand fence at red will be slightly faster. (By only a hundreth or too of course) So endeth the ghostland.  Sleeping with the giant fishes |