Diagram of the hammer brothers in Super Mario Bros. 3, World 2.

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   mcc (mcc@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 28-Jun-2023 05:37:26 JST mcc

   in reply to

   If this video confuses/bores you: Read this post then jump to 10:19.

   In warpless SMB3 runs, there's an early (second world) instance of randomness where a hammer brother can run either right or left, and if it runs left you can skip three entire levels and save an entire minute:

   https://smb3.bf0.org/smb3mechanics/2018-08-22-early-hammer/

   Getting this randomness is important, so players use a "manipulation"– they play in a very precise way (in Mitch's case, literally miming along to a video of a TAS) to get exact random numbers.