Bianco 2 | Windmill

1. Grab Setups
   1. Wall-Kick Hover
   2. GWKH
2. Wall-Kicks
   1. Right Ledgegrab
   2. Left Sideflip
   3. Y-Turn Wall-Kicks

The windmill turns one full circle in 60.06s (that’s 60×30 frames at 29.97fps), meaning its cycles repeat every 15s. We’ll look at 3 setups for windmill wallkicks, covering different cycles and difficulties.

Grab Setups

The first step before each wallkick setup is to ledge-grab the windmill’s alcove. Where exactly depends on the setup, but the methods are the same. Here are two:

Wall-Kick Hover

This is the usual setup; some tips to do it quickly:

1. After landing from the hover to the windmill, buffer a spin-jump, and release it after taking a step towards the left edge of the alcove.
2. Once airborne, hold up-right to drift rightwards, setting up a more obtuse angle for the wall-kick, which will let Mario turn more quickly.
3. Press A to kick, then hover right after – how much later depends on how high up the wall the wall-kick hits, but optimally it’s immediate.
4. After the kick, hold up-left to turn, then drop the hover into a ledgegrab in the right spot.

GWKH

HALP

Wall-Kicks

The three wall-kick setups cover different arrival times into the ledgegrab. A brief summary first; times are discussed using the in-game timer from practice codes, but there’ll be an example of catching each cycle early and late, since you need to be able to tell from the windmill’s position when doing runs without cheat codes.

• Right ledgegrab: this is the easiest setup, and is fastest for its cycle. This can be done by dropping the ledgegrab in around the 29.20–34.50 window (as low as ~28.70 is possible but the wallkicks become risky). The intermediate strat is to wait for this cycle if arriving early.
• Left sideflip: this is a backup for being too slow for right ledgegrab. It can be done by getting up from the ledge, then starting a sideflip in around the 32.00–39.50 window.
• Y-turn wall-kicks [advanced]: the fastest possible alcove arrival is around 25.82 sideflip time, which is the same cycle as 40.83, just barely outside the left sideflip window. Instead of waiting for right ledgegrab, there’s an immediate setup for any arrival time; it’s slower than right ledgegrab so shouldn’t be done if you’re on-time for that strat.

We’ll take a look at each setup, with detailed inputs and cues. The first two setups are very lenient, so it’s far from necessary to perform each tip every time, but they give a solid grounding to build consistency and good habits, as a basis for muscle memory.

Right Ledgegrab

Fast (ledge-release at 29.32)

Slow (ledge-release at 33.95)

Where to grab the alcove: this white area just right of centre is a good balance of safety and speed. The further right you grab, the faster and riskier the setup becomes - particularly after Mario’s left hand exits the dark region he’s holding in this picture. Left is easier and slower, but it stops working if Mario’s left side crosses into the left half of the ledge.

When to start the wallkicks: firstly, make sure to let the camera settle after the ledge-grab if you’re looking for a visual cue. There are a couple of cues for when to start if you’re too early, and when is too late, but you’re often on time (it’s a ~5s window) and can go right away.

• Early: start as soon as Mario becomes fully occluded by the windmill. This means that the further right you are, the faster you’ll start the kicks and the faster (by about the same amount) you’ll enter the loading zone at the top.
• Late: the setup works up to when Mario peeks out past the rightmost edge of the windmill blade.

What the inputs are: press B to wallslide, then hold down, then press A for the first kick. Do 6 wall-kicks, then hover, turn towards the roof, and dive onto it.

Wall-kick specifics: what matters here is the direction of the left stick (affecting the trajectories) and the duration of the A-press (affecting hight) at each kick. Maximum hight is gained by holding A for 5 frames or longer, which we think of as a long press; we do short presses (≤3f but it doesn’t matter since the strats are lenient) to try to space on the windmill.

• The directions are down-left on odd kicks and up-left on even kicks, except the kick 1/6 is straight down and 6/6 is up-right.
• The A-press durations are all long except 5/6 is short.

Wall-kick intuition: the basic ideas are to stay just-to-the-right of the windmill axis, to space safely on the windmill blades, and to not get stuck under the eaves. The up/down-left inputs pull Mario towards the centre, so if you start kicks further on the left, go for more straight up/down inputs. It’s hard to hit every diagonal input cleanly, but much more important if you start kicks further on the right. On the final kick, going straight-right can be safer to avoid the eaves, and hovering for longer gains hight to give more clearance over the roof. Take your time when starting out to get wallslides before kicking, and clean, high kicks.

Left Sideflip

Fast (sideflip at 32.12)

Slow (sideflip at 39.36)

Where to grab the alcove: this white area just left of centre.

When to start the wallkicks: there aren’t many good visuals for when is too late, but the 2 videos above loosely show the time window (7.5s – 50% of the time – at least). It overlaps with the right ledgegrab window by about 3 seconds.

What the inputs are: there are two setups to get the sideflip. First press L after the ledge-grab to centre cam, then:

• Press A to get up, start holding down during the get-up, then time an A press to do a (buffered) sideflip. The window for the A press is 2 frames, and can be learnt by timing and visual feel.
• Press A to get up, then hold up for a bit to walk forward about a Mario foot length. Now, if in the window, hold L, then hold down, then press A, each about 4 frames apart. This is removes the 2-frame window but the turnaround animation can sometimes not come out for unknown reasons. If Mario hits his head then you likely walked too far forwards; walk too little and Mario will turnaround off the ledge. After the sideflip, do 4 wall-kicks, then hover, turn around to get over the roof, then dive.

Wall-kick specifics: check the right ledgegrab paragraph for the basic principles. Many patterns will work, since the 7.5s window allows for lots of windmill positions, but we’ll go over one set that should always work.

• The directions are up-left and down-left (i.e. outwards), except for kick 1/4, which is straight up.
• The A-press durations are all long except 1/4, which is short.

Wall-kick intuition: again, check the right ledgegrab paragraph for the basic principles.

Y-Turn Wall-Kicks

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