SMS Any% Strats Guide
A set of strat recommendations, links and discussion for every segment in SMS Any%. Made in Jan 2023, with some updates in Mar 2024.
Using This Guide
q is shorthand for Pianta (p for Pinna).
Strat difficulty marks:
- ☼ denotes basic strats: for beginners serious about getting good.
- ◊ denotes competent strats: for players around 1:17–1:23 Any% level.
Key level marks (see Getting Started below):
- ¤ denotes levels/segments with important skips.
- ° denotes secret stages.
- † denotes levels with specialist skills.
This guide refers to RTA Strat ILs a lot, which is a sheet that links to demo videos for individual strats.
For my own demos, be sure to check the video descriptions for things I overlooked in the video itself.
Getting Started
Version
Play on a Wii rather than a GameCube, for (~1–2m) faster loads and practice codes. The two game versions that can be used competitively are NTSC-J (1.00) and PAL. PAL is around 1s slower at intermediate level (2s at advanced) but is generally much easier (in s6, eyg, p1, n4; it’s harder in q1). NTSC-J also has a greatly increased chance of Pianta 5 early cycle (saving 20s), so is recommended when going beyond competent level (1:17). NTSC-U and NTSC-J (1.01) are each >13s slower than PAL.
Route
The shine order here is follows the double-savewarp Ricco-late route, which moves Ricco to after Noki, and so moves Sirena (RNG) and Noki (hard) one world earlier, cuts out Pinna-to-Ricco movement, and loses ~1s to the optimal route on intermediate strats (closer to 2s on advanced). This is recommended until reaching 1:23, after which point you can decide for yourself which you prefer. For more information on the comparison with the optimal route, see the route note in the p7 section below.
Things To Learn
Before starting Any% runs, it’s important to have the following things consistent:
- important skips (¤)
- FLUDDless stages (°)
- specialist skills (†)
So you are encouraged to start with these levels.
Important Skips (¤)
These skips are required by the route and can’t be avoided without much complication:
- gbs
- pianta early
- yoshi skip
This skip replaces two shines with one, and is worth learning starting out (the alternative is equally hard):
- eyg (saves ~45s at beginner execution, ~1:05 at intermediate)
These skips are contained within levels and are worth learning starting out (the alternatives are much more complicated):
- s3 banana clip
- s4 casino skip
- n2 spring clip
This skip is contained within a segment and can optionally be learnt (it’s quite easy and the alternative is trivial):
- honey skip (saves ~12s at intermediate execution)
FLUDDless Stages (°)
Death in a stage is much more likely without FLUDD as a crutch. The relevant stages to learn are:
9 secrets (b3, q5, p2, p6, b6, s2, s4, n6, r4) and 1 damage boost (q3)
Specialist Skills (†)
These are stages for which improvement doesn’t help and isn’t helped by improved movement, and so must be gotten down independently. They are:
- b2 [spider]
- q1 [chomplets]
- p1 [mecha]
- p4 [snoozakoopas]
- s1 [manta]
- s6 [beach clean]
- n3 [underwater coins]
- n4 [eel]
- r6 [blooper ride]
The skills you will need are:
- b2 and q1 are flowchart-based stages where bad decisions or sloppy execution can leave you stuck in the mud losing time indefinitely; they require careful inputs to control.
- p1, p4, n4 are cycle-based stages whose extra cycles cost 5–10s (p1), 9s (p4/n4).
- p1 requires controlling a rocket gun; n3/n4 underwater hovering; r6 blooper riding.
- s1, s6 are intensive goop stages that require proficiency with spam-spraying to save a lot of time (and avoid death in the case of s1).
Table of Contents
Airstrip/Bianco I/Gelato
a | fludd
i never got any common airstrip down and do this instead
◊ the standard (ubiquitous) strat is like Samu’s but with a spin-jump-dive instead of the first jump-dive
a | airstrip plant
◊ on hacked-file may consider learning y-cam distance unlock (either hoverslide or backflip-dive variants), but losing your timing can take you down a reset rabbit-hole
b2 | bianco plant
☼◊ Samura1man tutorial covers these
the distance unlock that goes around the building may be worth checking out as well, particularly to avoid the goop slide Gooble RNG.
b2 | delfino sm
☼◊ my video tutorial, with both consistent basic strat and an instakill setup often used with hacked file resetting
b2 | entry †
☼◊ my wiki tutorial comprehensively covers the spider and windmill (and now has videos!) but is old and cryptic. both of these sections are very hard to learn and take ages to master; for ☼, i recommend taking the spider slowly and riding the windmill
b2 | inside
it seems to be missing a ground pound cue – backflip when petey’s clockwise rotating leg reaches the 1 o’clock position, then ground pound at peak of jump
b3 | entry
☼◊ Samura1man tutorial – advanced strat. check the beginner strat there to learn how the pole works, and how to do the pole movement slowly as a backup
one-slide and pole spin are both approachable for players with good movement – check rta strat il sheet
b3 | secret °
☼◊ my video tutorial (and strat demo)
b4 | ricco plant
☼◊ there’s nothing i have to recommend for travel skip – i made up my own setup but it’s iffy. check the tutorial index and try out a variety of setups
b4
☼ my demo
◊ consult rta strat il and the wiki for ideas:
- do fluid coin 4 movement;
- do the coin 7 momentum spin;
- do grass-slide once you get it down (saves 0.8s);
- a spin-jump hover from the right is a good option for reaching coin 8, or gwkh if you get it down (saves 0.3s)
b5
approach
☼ check rta strat il (log triple-jump)
◊ check rta strat il (try rope-Y and grass-slide triple/spin-jump)
fight
☼◊ wiki; pattern calculator
g8 | gelato plant
☼◊ see rta strat il
g8 | gbs ¤
☼◊ my video tutorial (and strat demos: basic, competent). my tutorial for the clip itself (normal spot) is extremely detailed, with exact positioning cues, inputs, frame windows and intuition for improv, but is imo well worth learning to cut out the notorious inconsistency within the glitch
g7
Pianta
q1 | pianta entry ¤
☼ wiki: beginner or beginner alt (but also ledgegrab after the big hover and centre camera to make it much easier)
◊ wiki: same as above but try to skip ledgegrab, and do initial movement from intermediate instead
q1 †
☼◊ no good tutorial exists but Samura1man video tutorial is a start; stare at a lot of rta strat ils and ask questions
bridge waterslide for q1,2,4,7: hold up and r during load, and press a+b at the right time (big window). this is almost never failed by most runners
q2
☼◊ my demo. read the description for setup instructions; input display for the approach movement is at the “approach” timestamp.
q3 °
☼ my demo. the one bug this strat has is that gooble hits during the damage boost can be hard to back up. mario turns when bouncing in lava if the left stick is neutral, so you can do that and then hold up to try to reach safety
◊ my demo
q4
☼◊ DutchJ video tutorial. i admit i cba to learn faster variants for competent level so don’t know what to recommend
q5 | entry ¤
☼◊ Samura1man video tutorial (advanced strat) for approach, and DutchJ video tutorial for Yoshi Skip (shuffle all the way right and straighten out camera before releasing the ledge to make the clip itself faster and more consistent). competent level includes going for hoverslide at start of level (inputs should be as fast as possible to make it work)
q5 | secret °
☼ my demo
◊ all optimal strats for best chance of early cycle are undocumented so you’re forced to pore over rta strat ils and ask questions
q6
☼◊ FoundYourGun demo w/ my notes. the recommended strat for 4th clean has changed; land the rollout straight in front of the pianta (as you would naturally) but hold back during the rollout to consistenly avoid bonking
q7
Pinna/Bianco II
p1 | pinna entry ¤
☼◊ honey skip: my video tutorial (and strat demo and setup reference). i heavily recommend my skip setup because it is safe and exact – it makes death impossible, the cues are all calibrated and easy to see or time to within 1f, yet the timing hits the middle of a 11-frame window. you have to go out of your way to fail it, even while learning it
honey skip is worth learning at all levels but if you can’t be bothered yet, watch the cutscene:
- load in with left-stick right and c-stick left
- run, jump + spray, and dive to waterslide
- hover and dive onto the roof towards the Pinna cannon
p | park entry
see rta strat il
p1 †
☼◊ mwolfe11 video tutorial is the best available general tutorial. all players can learn this strat and practise finishing mecha within 7 shots.
improvements and backup shots:
- shot #1: 1st rocket (DM shot): visual cue. the white circle is the coarse cue (that wing should swing round to point up-left of mario); the pink line is the fine cue (the central axis of fludd should cut it between 1/5 and 2/5 of the way along from the right). on PAL, this shot is iirc a 3f window, a dead frame, then a 2f window; firing exactly when you pass the 2nd rocket is good for hitting the 3f window. JP has to delay 1–2f to avoid rocket collision, so it is probably better to aim for the 2f window after the dead frame
- shot #5 (normal 4th rocket): grab normally and shoot when clear of the poles/the swinging stops
- shot #6 (5th rocket): after spraying the bullet bill, spam-spray only once to grab this, then turn and shoot immediately
- shot #7 (5th rocket regrab): immediately after shot #6, turn right and spam-spray only once to regrab this rocket. shoot it fast (tho it is possible to go too fast and hit mecha-bowser while invulnerable, so there’s a sweetspot)
1st cutscene skip: approach back poles with waterslide speed, pause and exit area after mario’s tip clears the poles
2nd cutscene skip: pause and exit area when mecha starts exploding (orange spherical blasts) – pressing y may aid visibility
p2 | entry
☼◊ rta strat il (sideflip-dive). do the inputs slowly in full-game runs. the simplest backup is running behind the grass/sand line (to spawn the mole) and immediately doing a (slow-input) unbuffered sideflip-dive back at it (don’t wait for the mole to pop out; anticipate it)
p2 | secret °
☼◊ my demo
p3
☼ my demo. if you get behind the boat cycle too much then you may have to wait or jump off the boat, but the window is huge
◊ i don’t know what the best resources are for boat hop since i never learnt it, but stuck to the basic strat, just with a spin-jump off the boat instead of grabbing the left grate (saves ~3s). tas strat is also worth trying, since you have about 10s of leeway to make mistakes and backtrack for coins before it breaks even with the basic strat i describe in this paragraph
p4 †
i do not recommend any strats here (none is really good enuff imo), so try them out yourself
p6 | eyg ¤
☼◊ my video tutorial (and strat demos: basic, competent). all beginners should learn the basic strat and not waste time learning pinna 5+6
p6 | secret °
☼ my demo
◊ my demo
p7
to savewarp optimally, start holding x+b+start or press reset on the console at least 4 frames after the screen turns fully white (same with both methods). this is a bad cue, so practise it/go whenever you’re comfortable. as long as the savebox comes up, you have at least 17f to press a to save, so make sure you have some way of pressing/mashing it during/right after the reset input
Route Note
the normal route heads to ricco, at the end of this page, then returns to b6; from n7, it goes straight to corona. the route suggested by this page is double-savewarp ricco-late, which does a savewarp here (to b6) and after n7 (to r1)
pros:
- sirena earlier (rng)
- noki earlier (hard + choking, especially at beginner level vs ricco)
- cuts out pinna→ricco movement (alternative: pinna→ricco savewarp loses 0.7 to advanced strats and breaks even with ◊ strats)
- every savewarp resets life counter to 3 if it was below 3
cons:
- loses 1.7s to advanced, 1s to ◊ strats (assuming 0.2s lost on each savewarp vs optimal timing)
- ricco 4+6 easy to choke (precise yet low input density)
- requires memory card faffing
b6 | entry
☼◊ despin’s guide. for a beginner, make sure you have some sort of consistent movement pattern down to get a waterslide on the bridge
b6 | secret °
☼ my demo (no cube skip + left side)
◊ my demo (cube skip + left side)
b7
Sirena
s1 | yoshi sm
☼◊ my video tutorial (this doesn’t cover right-side much but the idea there is just to try to follow shadow mario with a spray and good spacing. if you can’t get left side down then this is ok)
s | hotel entry
s1 †
s2 | entry
☼◊ see rta strat il – learn sprinkler-spray strats for consistency, and practice backup movement when falling down or missing inputs. hoverslide or jumpdive+redive, then long rollout, to set up the spin-jump
s2 | secret °
☼ my demo (if you can run on the sandblocks but can’t do the jump-dives then that’s ok)
◊ my demo
s3 ¤
☼ see rta strat il (front-side pole). execution notes:
- short-rollout from waterslide holding b when you cross the dark line to pick up banana.
- while landing from last jump, time a downward tilt followed by a backflip, to quickly turn around and backflip.
- for beginners who struggle with the clip, take your time learning the input timing, and practise from multiple positions (always with straight-on angle).
◊ see rta strat il (back-side pole no-gwk)
s4 | entry ¤
☼◊ see rta strat il (beginners should hover further along the ledge for casino skip, sidestep at least halfway, and do a clear jump input followed by a late dive)
s4 | secret °
☼ my demo; can do standing spin-jump-dives instead of sideflip-dives per preference
◊ the basic strat holds up well; 1st buttslide and 2nd momentum spin can optionally be introduced (see rta strat il)
s5
s6 †
☼◊ my demo
JP version requires more spam-sprays in the same places; the goop will visually disappear at the same rate as on PAL, but on JP, it is secretly not yet fully cleaned:
Sirena 6 partitions space into buckets, small regions where goop is counted and rendered. Each bucket has a value that’s decreased in proportion to the amount of water that lands on it, so a spray will partially decrease the values of several nearby buckets, like an eraser on pixels in an image editor. The timer stops when a fixed proportion (the same on both versions) of buckets is below the clean threshold.
The bucket clean threshold is <50 on JP and <128 on PAL. However, both versions have a bucket visibility threshold of <128. Thus, JP has invisible goop and it pays to respray cleaned areas.
s7
Noki
n1 | noki entry
☼ i do this but haven’t thought about it much; try the Samu strat below
n1
☼ my demo
◊ my demo. read the description to understand where to grab to catch first cycle more quickly
n2 ¤
☼◊ see rta strat il; various bits can be simplified to casual movement as required. short rollouts and a jump + delayed-dive help a lot with getting the first spin-jump. neutral stick during first wallkick set cuts out midair spins. consult other tutorials if spring clip is a struggle
n3 †
☼◊ my demo
n4 †
entry
☼◊ Samura1man video tutorial
inside
☼◊ Samura1man video tutorial is the best of a bad bunch
for 6-tooth, it is useful to hover just before the eel stops its initial spin, aiming to be 1/3 of the way along the mouth (closer to the end behind you), then hold the stick down+left if turning left or down+right if turning right to hover over teeth from the opposite side you’re turning towards. on pal/u, it’s helpful to get the bubble on the right on the way down, so that air damage comes out during the 5-tooth cutscene skip window (you may even explicitly go for that instead of tooth damage, if you can read cycles and sandbag)
n5
☼◊ my demo. read the description for setup instructions; input display for the approach movement is at the “approach” timestamp.
n6 | entry
☼ do your noki 2 movement until the triple-jump, then spin-jump towards the rope to the shell. you can mount the rope safely by facing it, then holding up and r, pressing l while they’re held
◊ see rta strat il (old rope entry)
n6 | secret °
☼ my demo; note the backups in the video description
◊ my demo
n7
Ricco/Corona
r1
☼◊ see rta strat il (box spin, ramp spin + slink strat). i recommend slink to all players because i think it’s easier than respraying the blooper, tho that’s a backup you must still learn. to do slink well, take your time to get into a good position before starting the first spray, and pay attention to where the tentacle is when you grab it, adjusting accordingly how far you pull back before the blooper becomes damageable again.
r2 | entry
☼◊ see rta strat il (blooperless). for ☼, if you find blooperless risky (y-turns are hard) then try blooper. i wanted to recommend a strat that’s useful for your development so blooper isn’t my main rec here
r2 | inside
☼◊ see rta strat il (blooperless). important movement practice so no matter how slow you are, don’t do blooper. you need an igt below 45s to pass the level iirc
r3
☼◊ Samura1man video tutorial (i won’t make a specific recommendation for competent strat here, other than to move the camera to the side to make timing the hover easier)
r4 | entry
☼ fyg’s demo (smoke stack). do take it slowly compared to the demo :p
◊ see rta strat il (scaffolding wallkicks, no beyblade). early-buffered spin-jumps are ideal for skipping the ledgegrab
r4 | secret °
☼ my demo (35 cycle). this strat is a bit untested so try the ◊ strat as well
◊ my demo (spinless yellow cycle). blue cycle may also be a shout – i don’t know which variant is most reliable, but will suggest Samura1man video tutorial for now
r5
☼ my demo (sewer)
◊ see rta strat il (catwalks)
r6 †
☼ my il. hoverslide is timed holding right notch. steering is done with c-stick (holding up on l-stick) except 5th coin, which turns both sticks. approaching 6th from far to the right makes the coin 6/7/8 slalom much easier. can swap l-stick up + c-stick steer with l-stick left/right steer but it isn’t really easier
◊ see rta strat il (⟲ route, right of first pillar)
r7
☼ my video tutorial (walking spray)
◊ see rta strat il (dive-rollout spray)
c | corona entry
☼◊ see rta strat il (roof movement). you can swap sjds for spin-jumps to avoid punishment for dropped spins
c | corona
☼ my demo
c | bowser
☼◊ all the tutorials are shit and i forgot else i would’ve made a demo aaaaaaa. basically:
- copy the rta strat il wr, but don’t do dives while approaching the first 3 and last platforms (on ☼ strat) or 4th platform (on ☼ and ◊ strats);
- aim for up-right corner of every target (4th requires more precision);
- start charging rockets after each ground-pound – from simultaneously if you have optimal hight on your ground-pound to 0.7s later if you get maximum hight;
- sliding on the bathtub after the rocket dives away from the targets helps a lot with spacing the rollout to cut drift distance for the next ground-pounds, but also makes getting gooped more likely.