Yoshi Valley

This is one of, if not the most daunting of all the courses. Similar to its partner in crime Moo Moo Farm, you will find yourself retrying over and over again, and rarely ever will you actually finish a race. This is due to the small spiked animals which we have traditionally named spinies. Interestingly though, Yoshi Valley offers a challenge which is almost opposite to that offered by Moo Moo Farm. The spinies are 100% predictable in their movement and position. On Moo Moo Farm, the appearance of the moles from the holes is completely random, and hence the challenge is to find a route which completely avoids passing over these fixed holes. On Yoshi Valley however, no fixed path can be learnt, as the spinies are constantly changing position as your speed improves. It's up to each Karter which challenge he prefers. Personally, Moo Moo Farm annoys me more.


This is like, a way cool, totally awesome maze of death


You start off up on the hill and immediately upon getting your everettstart you need to turn to the left, straight into the grass. The quickest way to do this, is actually to hold A+B and to spin slightly to the left before jumping into a normal slide. This will take a bit of practice to master, but you will have to get a feel for this yourself. Doing a normal turn to the left and then jumping into a slide is slightly slower, but it certainly won't cost you the God time...(unless of course you miss the God time by less than 0.05. In which case, curse my name and send me an angry letter) You must hold this slide for the duration of the boost you get from the start and then immediately use your first shroom as an extension to this.

So if you picture that from the start, you basically have to hold one extra long slide all the way through the grass and to the first corner, all the while working up an MT to red. You don't really get a choice in working up an MT, because after a few seconds holding your slide at white, it will destabalise and turn very sharply to the left and send you headlong into the nice white fence. This fence will become a good friend to you in the time you spend on this course. You will hit it many times and shout at the screen in frustration, but there is an important thing to keep in mind. It's just a fence. Try again. So the beginning part of this course, the A+B spin (or normal turn) and hop into a slide, the use of the first shroom and building up your MT for the first corner, is actually one of the most difficult first sequences in the game. How much you initially turn will have to be something you learn for yourself. You'll soon get a feeling for exactly how much you should do it.

And now the really fun stuff begins!

Try to get as close to this first corner as you can without hitting it. This is basic sensible advice. There's little point in actually saying it. I'm hardly going to tell you to take any corner wide. You must release your MT the moment you reach this corner and then immediately hop into a short slide around the corner. This will enable you to take the corner without going too wide. The alternative to hopping into a slide is to just turn normally around the corner. Choose whichever method you find easiest to do consistently. Neither method is considerably faster than the other. Now you will be faced with the dreaded spinies, but thankfully on this first lap, they are conveniently placed off the racing line. This does not mean that you won't hit them though. In fact, it is your duty to hit them! Otherwise, they'd feel useless. So please, every now and then, make sure to spin out on one of them and bring happiness to their day. The most likely cause of you hitting them is what I'm about to propose to you now.


Next stop. The bottom of the valley.


The next corner is to the right and there is a nice gap here where the spinies have moved out of the way on the very right and this is where we must go. How we get there is very much up to you. You can either turn right with just the stick, or you can do a small hop to the right like I do, but do try to get as far right without hitting the fence as you can. This will make the next MT easier to perform quickly. However, this is another fence you'll hit time and time again, and it happily provides the extra insult of bouncing you into the spinies to the left. As you spin to your doom, remember that these guys are just doing their job and that they don't actually hate you....that much.

The moment you finish this hop to the right, or when you've turned, you must immediately start an MT around the next corner to the left. This is not an easy MT to perform and for years I didn't do it. Instead I just drove straight and tried to compose myself for the next set of spinies. Even now, I have trouble doing this MT on all 3 laps, but that's mainly down to the trouble the spinies give me on the 3rd lap. It's very vital that you don't get much air here when you jump into the MT. If you have troubles doing this, then all I can say is to keep practicing at it and try starting the MT at different spots. Eventually it will become second nature to you and you won't worry about it anymore. It's very easy to take this MT rather wide too, so it's obvious here that the closer you get to the fence on the left and the quicker you perform the MT, the better.

After this MT, you'll see a ledge and the next spiney field. You have to start a right facing MT before dropping down and depending on how quickly you managed the MT before, you may have very little time to jump into this one. On the first lap, the spinies are positioned so that you can 'easily' pass on the right handside of them. 'Easily' is of course, a lot easier said than done. The ledge causes problems, chiefly the problem of bouncing when you land. Bouncing is bad. Very bad. Sometimes you bounce so much you feel like you could land on the moon. This is not a good thing, because the moon route on YV takes you way off course and your lap time can really suffer. Also, it doesn't exist, and might indicate that you've become delusional. So. Ideally you want to land without bouncing in the slightest. I find that I tend to bounce less when I'm turned more to the right with my slide, but this is another one of those things you'll have to test for yourself.


The ledge of bouncification. The racing line is clear though!


I used to hold the one long slide up this hill and around the corner, releasing it when I reached the straight, and that's still a safe and valid strat, but it's a slower strat. For a really fast time, you must work up a quick MT after landing, and then drive or hop up the hill until you reach the top of it and then at this point leap around the right and into another quick MT. It's quite important to get some air with this jump and you'll see the difference if you race a ghost who doesn't. Occasionally you'll get a huge amount of air and this will make you slower. Aim for a decent medium sized jump here.

You'll want to be on the right hand side of the road now before the hairpin jump. The farther right you are, the more you can turn and the less likely it is that you'll fall off the road when you land. The fence on the right hand side juts out a little on this straight and it is just after this that you perform the quick MT, turn, and at the last possible second jump! Use the fence on the road you're landing on as a guide to improve your time. If you land too far right of the fence, then you're performing the MT too late, or you're not turning enough. Ideally you want to land right where the fence begins or even a little bit to the left of that. I've seen people hop before the jump too, in order to turn more sharply to the left. Occasionally your kart will snag the fence and turn drastically to the left and slow down a bit. Don't worry about this. If you can perform a very quick MT here, then you won't have lost too much time.


Glory awaits. Also the Valley floor.


This next bit is the easiest part of the entire lap and where silly mistakes and errors can creep in. All you have to do is to perform 3 MTs before the bridge. Unfortunately you may find that the giant egg is in your way on certain laps and might have to work yourself around this. Alternatively you might find that you've lost your concentration and have accidentally driven off the road. I still do this every now and then, either because I'm trying to take the quickest route to the bridge which means staying quite close to the edge on the left, or else I momentarily feel like some kart skydiving and drive straight off the road for no reason whatsoever. It doesn't make me feel very clever, but you should know that no matter how highly ranked you are, you will still make the stupid mistakes. In fact you'll make all of them, and probably regularly too. The only advice I'll offer on these 3 MTs, is to space them out nicely and to try and release the 3rd MT so that you're driving perfectly straight for the bridge. Ideally you won't have to adjust the kart left or right once you reach the bridge.


You don't want to see the thing that laid that egg


The bridge. This is one of those precious few moments in kart where you're doing absolutely nothing, if you're driving completely straight. If you have to adjust your line, make quick sharp turns and counter turns to adjust your line and straighten up again. I'll take a quick detour here and talk about the flap. The flap on YV and the 1st lap of a 3lap run are identical all the way up to the bridge. I find the start of the bridge is a good place to pause the game and have a look at the timer to see if you're on pace for a flap pr. Of course if you want to tape your replay, you should probably race against a quick ghost and use that to guage your pace instead. Anyway, just before the very end of the bridge you should hop twice to the left into the grass. This is easier to do if you've been driving on the righthand side of the bridge. So hop from the righthand side of the bridge into the grass and into a slide and immediately hit your 2nd shroom. On a perfect line this will take you very close to the cliff edge. This shroom will wear off before you reach our old friend the fence. You should use the final shroom here and stay very close to the fence without hitting it, until you cross the line. These last 2 shrooms can go wrong in very many ways. Most of these ways will see you hurtle headfirst into the canyon, but many times you'll hit the fence before crossing the line, or for fun you'll decide it'd be nice to hit the tree.

If you're not going for a flap though, you'll stick to the road route after the bridge section. You can wait til leaving the bridge before hopping into an MT to the left or you can do the slightly harder strategy of starting the MT whilst still on the bridge. Either way is just fine. This MT is quite easy to perform. The next MT can be quite tricky though as the ground as you're going uphill here sometimes causes your stick movements to fail to register so you may have to hold your slide from yellow to red a little longer than normal. The quicker you release this MT though, the better. When you release it, aim for the right of the road here. There's always the danger of hitting some grass on these last few bends so don't go too close to the edges. Then you have a choice. You can drive straight for a little while and perform one last MT around this final bend and drive straight for the line, or you can perform a quick MT here, glide a little and then get another SSMT just before the finish line. I'm a fan of the 2 MT approach as it feels more natural.

Laps 2 and 3 are definitely trickier and the spinies are destined to cause you trouble. Even now, I'm lucky to complete 3 good laps without hitting a spiny and I've never completed 3 laps doing every MT. As I can't help with advice on the positioning of the spinies at your speed level (you'd know better than I would), I'll just comment on the start of laps 2 and 3. After crossing the finish line you should hop into a left facing MT and let it go into the grass, passing to the left of the tree there. Then hop into a slide and use your shroom. Also, at the end of lap 3, you leave the bridge in the usual way, perform the first MT, but do the second MT quickly and stay to the left of the road. As you come near the top of this road, slide into the grass over a little bump and release a final MT driving straight for the point where the finish line would meet the fence. The reasoning here is that it's a shorter distance than staying on the road, and also the slightly downward direction you take maintains some of your speed whilst in the grass.


Aim for around about where the finish line hits the fence


In summary, memorise the positions of the spinies, avoid trips into the valley, and stay clear of the moon.


Driving the track backwards is equally scary