Luigi Circuit

Luigi Circuit is the first course of the Mushroom Cup in Mario Kart Wii. It is significant in that it was the first track where supergrinding saved time.

Overview

Current BKTs
Type	Unrestricted	No Ultra	No Glitch
3lap	1:02.466		1:07.788
Flap	15.495	18.426	21.325

Luigi Circuit has a flap-only ultra shortcut, and currently benefits from supergrinding, superhopping, and supersliding in both 3lap and flap categories. Hence, it has two 3lap categories and three flap categories. The Unrestricted 3lap record is also technically the No Ultra 3lap record, since no ultra shortcut is used.

Unrestricted 3lap

Video: 1:02.466 by Jellopuff, Ejay, Kierio, Malleo, and Thomas (2020)

The current strategy for UR 3lap is to perform two supergrinds on each lap. The first supergrind takes you down the back straight, and requires a mushroom. Performing the supergrind shroomless loses more than sacrificing the pipe shortcut on the last turn, so the pipe shortcut is never taken on any lap. The second supergrind takes you down the front straight and past the finish line, and can be performed shroomless each lap.

Unrestricted Flap

Video: 15.495 by Jellopuff (2022)

The current strategy for UR flap is to perform an ultra shortcut. The strategy is dependent on an OOB hop, so requires an outside-drifting bike; in this case the Shooting Star is used. Before entering the lap, you use the 1st mushroom to wallclip the surrounding fence near the second turn (the invisible wall is lowest at this point) and clear the invisible wall. After landing on the seam, you seam ride forwards until the finish line. The second mushroom is used to enter the lap at full speed in the offroad. It runs out in time for you to brake, SSMT to turn around, and use the third mushroom to accelerate again. By hopping to the right and drifting off the seam, you can angle the bike such that upon performing an OOB hop to the left on the solid OOB plane beneath the track, you will have enough sideways momentum to send you into the required checkpoint for respawning. After respawning, you simply SSMT to turn around, drive backwards to hit the last KCP, perform a wall bounce SSMT to turn around again, and finish the lap.

No Ultra Flap

Video: 18.426 by Monster (2023)

The current strategy for NU flap is to perform WBSS for the entire lap, and as such uses Wario Bike. The setup starts off similarly to the UR flap, by wallclipping over the invisible wall near the second turn. However, instead of seam riding, you get into the WBSS state, and start building EV. After enough EV has been built, you approach the finish line, and then superslide until the last turn, where you leave the WBSS state, and use the 2nd and 3rd mushrooms to wheelie into the finish line. This is marginally faster than continuing to superslide until the finish line.

No Glitch 3lap

Video: 1:07.788 by Alego11, César, Corvid, ego, Ejay B, Marth, sorry (2025)

Funky Kong + Spear is optimal; it's the fastest bike combo, and none of the sections require high drift.

First turn: Hard drift to the right. Minor optimizations include getting a small landing bounce, and doing a small spindrift with a couple neutral inputs, for a tighter drift. A quickhop is performed to align to the left after exiting the turn.
Second turn: A chain happens right before the turn, so it's slightly faster to hop slightly early to spend less time below 98 u/f. To compensate, the drift starts with soft inputs briefly, then switches to hard right.
Third turn: Taken suboptimally on purpose, in preparation of the ramp. The aim of the turn is to release the MT far on the right side of the road. For this, the curb is used for greater airtime, allowing to hop much later than usual with a spindrift; the combination of rotation conversion from the curb and the spindrift allows for a very tight drift initially. An extended quickhop is done exiting the turn, to align for the ramp.
Ramp lowtrick: With the angle from the third turn, optimal wheelie turning, and a twist chain, enough angle is obtained that with good airtime from the curb, it's possible to hold the wheelie through the air and land close to the ramp. The best airtime QM lands a bit short of the ramp, thus dropping to ~71 u/f from the offroad is forced. A small drift is done on landing for realignment. Aiming for the edge of the ramp precisely allows for a lowtrick, with STA to gain speed in the air. This interaction is the only QM lock in the track. This strategy for the ramp lands much further left than other methods, eliminating the rehop before the shroom.
Offroad cut: The mushroom is used here on every lap. It is delayed as much as possible, by hopping late from the curb, and doing a wallclip on the corner of the wall. Despite this wallclip gaining (a small amount of) height, its main purpose is to change the bike's alignment to the right, so it was allowed in No Glitch. The combination of the spinhop and wallclip allow for a tight landing angle. Small bounces upon landing are common, and prevented because they delay acceleration from the shroom. A low spindrift is done shortly after landing to set up a good drift through the shortcut. A small airtime pocket upon exiting allows for a better exit line.

No Glitch Flap

Video: 21.325 by Corvid (2024)

Like for the NG 3lap, Funky Kong + Spear are used for high top speed.

Lap entry + first turn: The flap is entered on the right curb; this not only reduces distance driven, but also allows to reduce the airtime from the first turn hop with a spindrift, using TF physics.
Second + third turn: The first mushroom is used here, to cut through the third turn tighter. It's faster than the first turn shroom by about a frame. Getting airtime out of the curb after the third turn is a small optimization.
Ramp lowtrick: The second mushroom is used on the sand before the ramp, setting up for a RFH low trick with STA. The wheelie is dropped briefly to facilitate starting RFH. With good QM, low airtime can be gotten while touching the soft wall behind the ramp, allowing for one frame of direct position update (up to ~164 u/f). The shroom is used early to allow for optimal boost distribution with the following trick boost.
Offroad cut: The third mushroom is used here. Very similar to the 3lap, although the wallclip is not necessary for a good line.

History

TODO: History of all strat developements. Section devoted to supergrinding as well as one for the ultra shortcut and all the theories that led to its discovery.

TAS Competitions

Luigi Circuit has featured in three tasks of the MKWii TAS Competition (Task 2 2020, Task 2 2023, Christmas Task 2023).

Future

Known timesaves

UR 3lap

Monster and Marth have a 19.446 lap 1 using SG and SH. Were a full 3lap run finished, it would bring the TAS under 58 seconds.

UR Flap

Ejay improved the post-respawn section to achieve a 15.341, however the improvement has not been published due to over potential improvements in the lap existing.

NG Flap

Starting the lap with different QM, to allow for the best soft wall interaction possible at the ramp.
Delaying the hop on the first turn by a couple frames was a missed small optimization.
At the cut, there is a 1 f bounce during shroom acceleration, which can likely be prevented.

Potential timesaves