Coconut Mall

Coconut Mall is the second course of the Flower Cup in Mario Kart Wii.

Overview

Current BKTs

Type	Unrestricted	No Ultra	No Glitch
3lap	22.714	1:28.918	1:50.608
Flap	3.395	19.697	35.939

Coconut Mall has a 3lap viable ultra shortcut, and currently benefits from HWG (which is used to drive OOB), delayed lap counts, wallclips, superhopping, and supersliding in both 3lap and flap categories. Hence, it has three 3lap and three flap categories.

Unrestricted 3lap

Video: 22.714 by Malleo, Justin, Estaloy, Ejay, sorry, Braixen, and Kierio (2023)

The current strategy for UR 3lap is to perform the ultra shortcut. The best way to perform the ultra shortcut is to repeatedly drive from the finish line to the last KCP in the parking lot to the right of the finish line.

To start the race, you drive over to the wall on the right and perform a parallel clip, propelling you up to a horizontal wall (HW) flush with the "Coconut Mall" sign. By hitting the sign at its rightmost point, the sign will be facing diagonally, pushing you slightly towards the invisible wall to your right. As you are colliding with the HW and the sign, HWG is active for the next 20 frames, so you have enough room to barely pass through the invisible wall and fall OOB. The specific location you land is important, as the time spent in the air falling is time not spent on the ground accelerating. The stair collision extends partially OOB, so landing there lets you keep a small amount of speed forwards.

You must hit CP1 here as otherwise you will be 95% ruled when entering the last KCP. Once close enough to CP1, you decelerate in such a way that you can SSMT and turn to the right, have your hitbox extend to the left to hit CP1 for a frame, and then immediately be pushed by a wall to the right (where you want to travel). Once turned far enough, you use the second mushroom to accelerate, during which you charge a miniturbo. The miniturbo is faster overall due to an interaction with another wall during the hop, which decreases airtime and allows for sooner charging. The third mushroom is used as you drift around the last turn, where you hit the last KCP, and then align yourself for the finish line.

On lap 2, you enter the lap with a spin hop wallclip and get a delayed lap count, skipping the need for hitting CP1 again. This hop is continued into a drift, where you charge and release a miniturbo and wheelie towards the last KCP, then drift once again to hit the last KCP and align yourself for the finish line. Lap 3 is exactly the same as lap 2, except for the fact that optimal wheelie turning is used to get better angles in the lead-up to the finish line, which you enter immediately, rather than delaying the lap count, as there is no other lap to prevent yourself being 95% ruled in.

Unrestricted Flap

Video: 3.395 by Monster, Thomas, Wade, and xi (2023)

The current strategy for the UR flap is to perform the ultra shortcut. The premise of the route is to get OOB, get into a Wario Bike superslide (WBSS) state, enter the lap facing forwards with significant EV in the backwards direction, hit the last KCP, and then use two mushrooms to reach the finish line. Thus, Wario Bike is used.

Only two mushrooms are necessary for the flap, so any method to get OOB which uses one mushroom is also optimal. In this particular TAS, Monster opted for the shroomless HWG entry near the shortcut path. Once OOB, you can navigate beneath the track towards the finish line, then perform the ultra shortcut. After entering the last CP, you can navigate to the edge of the track's collision to enter the WBSS state, and then navigate back to the parking lot to prepare for a delayed lap count.

In order to have the EV required to move backwards to the last KCP, you need to superslide in circles for over 20 seconds, before you can eject from the superslide state to have the bike's hitbox extend over the wall, finally entering lap 2. The knockback from the wall redirects the EV towards the last KCP, where you can perform momentum hops to maintain it. Once close enough to the last KCP, you can use two mushrooms to reach the finish line. Unlike the end of the UR 3lap, it is faster to stay in the parking lot and hop over the wall, as you don't have to spin hop clip to get over it with mushroom boost.

No Ultra 3lap

Video: 1:28.918 by Kierio (2021)

The current strategy for the NU 3lap is to take advantage of various methods to get into and navigate OOB. The premise of the route is to get OOB on lap 1, skip several turns before returning back in-bounds in the middle of lap 2, then getting OOB again on lap 3, where you skip the same turns as lap 1, before finishing the race. As a no ultra TAS, every KCP has to be hit, so the route taken OOB is slightly unorthodox.

To get OOB on laps 1 and 3, you need to; drift into the ramp next to the shortcut path, trick off it, land from that trick, get a high trick with the trick boost, use a mushroom to extend the boost long enough for you to land near the end of the fence, and get HWG. As a further optimisation, you can get a low enough bounce off the HW to let you drift left slightly, and trick off the banister, the collision of which extends partially OOB. The best place to use the remaining mushroom is immediately before passing through a wall on lap 2, such that you can get a clip drift, charge a miniturbo, and release it as you enter back in-bounds, skipping the need to accelerate up to wheelie speed and realign around the pillar.

For a full explanation of the rest of the TAS, see the NG 3lap section, as this entire TAS is not very optimized and misses out on a plethora of strategies.

No Ultra Flap

Video: 19.697 by ThatsSlick, Ancient, Aaron, and Ejay (2021)

The current strategy for the NU flap is to perform a delayed lap count OOB, go in-bounds and OOB, before completing the lap, hitting all KCPs in the process.

Unlike the UR flap, all 3 mushrooms are needed in the lap, so a shroomless OOB method is required (though, as already stated, the UR flap uses an optional shroomless OOB method anyway, so this is not a problem). From here, the ultra shortcut is performed solely for convenience (if it were necessary, this would not be a NU flap), where you once again enter the last CP before navigating in front of the finish line to perform a delayed lap count. Again, unlike the UR flap, this is done at the very front of CP0, in order to start as far into the lap as possible. From here, the same general route from lap 2 of the NU 3lap is used.

You use the first mushroom to accelerate from a stop upon entering lap 2, then using a bounce from accelerating, get a slip drift, charge a miniturbo, and release it, letting you align back in-bounds. You use the second mushroom as you pass through the wall used for a clip drift in the NU 3lap, but here you do not return immediately in-bounds; you drive underneath the U-turn before drifting, charging a miniturbo, and releasing it to align for the fountain. Upon hitting the fountain, you launch off it, trick with STA, and clear the invisible wall opposite, landing back OOB. Finally, when clipping through the outermost wall, you perform another clip drift, then wheelie towards the last KCP, and drift and wheelie towards the finish line. As with the UR 3lap, optimal wheelie turning is used to perfect the angle leading towards the finish line.

No Glitch 3lap

Video: 1:50.608 by Luke (2018)

The current strategy for the NG 3lap is to drive 3 laps normally.

To begin the race, you must lose some time in order to get a stick on the stairs at full speed. In this particular TAS, it is opted to lose time during the start slide and then wheelie slightly late during the start boost. After the stair stick, you perform a sequence known as the "double banister trick" where you; drive onto the edge of the left banister, fall off and trick such that you immediately land, hop and drift to realign to the right, wheelie to reach max trick boost speed, hop such that you can land flush on the back end of the banister, wheelie to ensure you stick, then trick. You then align yourself towards the shortcut path.

Using the first mushroom, you immediately hop to drift through the shortcut. During this drift, you charge a miniturbo, which you release when the boost runs out, as well as wheelieing. Next, you perform a RFH low trick and pass through the fence below to fall to the ground faster. You then wheelie and align towards the rightmost banister, where you perform the double banister trick (on the hop to get the stick at the top, you can use the opposite edge instead of the middle, which can be done on all double banister tricks except the initial one on lap 1).

After this, you are coming in from too far to the right, so must spin drift around the U-turn. However, it is fastest to hold the drift and bonk clip as you release the miniturbo instead of doing a chain drift as soon as the miniturbo is charged and charging/releasing a second one. After the bonk clip, a wheelie is done to align with the left of the first planter, on which a low trick is performed. This leads into a similar low trick done using the edge of the second planter. Upon landing from the second trick, you align to the right side of the fountain, and buffer the first of two tricks, allowing you to delay the second.

The next U-turn is taken similarly to the first, and the miniturbo is released at a point which balances the time spent in a drift with the time spent on the following boost panel. On the following turn, you clip drift the pillar in the middle of the split path to release the miniturbo from the drift sooner. When exiting the mall, you low trick the planter with a drift, then hop trick off the boost ramp before hitting the wall beside it, performing a wall trick. The last two turns are taken relatively normally; you hit all three boost panels, using rehops to navigate around the cars.

Laps 2 and 3 use the exact same strategies, except for the first escalator using the modified double banister trick, the wall trick exiting the mall using a spin hop trick (this was found after lap 1 was completed), and the different car cycles requiring differing types of hopping and drifting on each boost panel.

No Glitch Flap

Video: 35.939 by Luke (2017)

The current strategy for the NG flap is to drive 1 lap normally.

The strategies used are slightly earlier revisions of those demonstrated in the NG 3lap. The first mushroom is used to RFH over the stairs before the first double banister trick, the second mushroom is used in the regular shroomspot, and the third mushroom is used on the turn before the boost panels.

History

TODO: History of all strat developements. Section devoted to the ultra shortcut and its variations over time, as well as all different OOB routes for NU, and the different NG strats over time (there have been more than most tracks).

TAS Competitions

Coconut Mall has featured in one of the MKCinema Challenges open to TASing (#12) and six tasks of the MKWii TAS Competition (Task 22 2020, Task 7 2021, Task 15 2021, Task 7 2023, Christmas Task 2023, Task 4 2024).

Future

Known timesaves

UR 3lap

• Justin has bettered the lap 1 of the current UR 3lap by approximately 1 frame.

NU 3lap

• Flame Runner is faster than Mach Bike.
• On lap 1, it is faster to go OOB after the first escalator using HWG (commonly referred to as "TAS comp entry") to skip directly to the "Coconut Garden" area, then use the first mushroom to perform the "high jump strat" to return OOB and complete the lap.
• It is faster to charge a miniturbo when entering the parking lot OOB.
• On lap 2, it is faster to use the second mushroom to perform the high jump strat to return OOB in a similar manner to the NU flap.
• On lap 3, it is faster to perform the exact same route as lap 2 (as described above).

NU flap

• It is faster to charge a miniturbo during the second shroom.

NG 3lap

• It is possible to get the initial stair stick without losing time due to a better start slide.
• On cycles where the escalator is going up, it is faster to land the first banister trick on the escalator, then RFH eject to perform the second trick, thanks to MRV provided from the escalator.
• On cycles where the escalator is going down, it is faster to perform the second banister trick by dropping your wheelie to stick instead of hopping and wheelieing.
• It is faster to trick off the banister leading towards the shroomspot.
• It is faster to perform a double trick combined with a wall trick on the second trick after the shroomspot.
• It is faster to do the double trick on the fountain slightly differently (I'm not entirely sure what Monster did differently, need help from Jello to explain).
• It is faster to rewheelie after releasing the miniturbo at the top of the second U-turn to get less time spent in a drift and more time spent on the boost panel.
• The spin hop wall trick at the mall exit (as done on laps 2 and 3) can be implemented on lap 1.

NG flap

• The lap entry can be improved by being at max drift speed before releasing the miniturbo, potentially with the double wheelie SSMT slip drift strategy.
• The RFH ejection double banister trick (as described above) can be implemented on both escalators.
• The extra banister trick (as described above) can be implemented.
• The double trick and wall trick after the shroomspot (as described above) can be implemented.
• The bonk clip on the first U-turn (as done in the NG 3lap) can be implemented.
• Slightly better planter tricks (as done in the NG 3lap) can be implemented.
• The faster double trick (as described above) can be implemented.
• The spin drift into the second U-turn (as done in the NG 3lap) can be implemented.
• The rewheelie on the second U-turn (as described above) can be implemented.
• The clip drift after the boost panel (as done in the NG 3lap) can be implemented.
• The spin hop wall trick at the mall exit (as done in the NG 3lap) can be implemented.
• Better car cycles would allow for a faster ending section.

Potential timesaves

UR 3lap

• It is not known whether or not Bullet Bike is slower than Mach Bike.

NU 3lap

• It is not known whether or not ODB can perform the "high jump strat", which would let the vehicle rival IDBs, due to the use of superhopping being viable.

NU flap

• It is not known whether or not ODB can perform the "high jump strat", which would let the vehicle rival IDBs, due to the use of superhopping being viable.