recommended version: NTSC
recommended character: Fast (Myth or above can use penta for lap)
mushroom SC
Difficulty: Beginner
At the end you can cut in the grass to join the finish line faster and save a lot of time. At beginner level, try to have sacred fire while doing this SC, and keep making reserves in the grass. If you take this SC without speed you can get stuck in the grass and lose a lot of time. You can go to the left of the mushroom to cut better, although with a higher chance to crash on the wall or the mushroom (Difficulty: Intermediate). If you have full SG speed and a high bounce, making a mid air and going to the right of the mushroom to avoid a crash is better but very hard to anticipate and change direction quickly enough (Difficulty: Titan). You may want to make a mid-air on that SC everytime, even when going to the left of the mushroom. You’ll have more reserves, but it’s slower and less consistent (blowcircuit’s tech, Difficulty: Hero).
Important note: don’t froggy in the grass. especially don’t bounce when you first land on the grass, as it’s possible to gain an SG there by landing, if your jump is low and you land in the early portion of the grass, which is a slight downhill (Difficulty: Expert).
Saffi Fire
Difficulty: Intermediate
Same as Crash Cove: you don’t actually need saffi, and can make reserves in the first two laps, or just in the SL if you cut wide and make good reserves. If you’re not comfortable with reserves yet, you can make saffi fire by turning back and completing several laps of the track backwards until you get saffi fire, then turn around at the curve before the finish line.
Standard powerslide strats in the long uphill curve
Difficulty: Advanced
There are two basic strats: 3+3 turbos, and 1+3+2 turbos. It mainly comes down to personal preference which one you choose. 1+3+2 might be easier for beginners.
1st SG / Peruvian JUMp
Difficulty: Expert
Simply powerslide to the right driving down the slope (make 3 turbos if you’re doing an SL), and start froggy when you reach the bottom of the downhill (the exact moment you start the froggy depends on people and versions, find what works for you). Froggy until the top of the next hill, if your froggy didn’t stop and you’re lucky, you’ll still have SG. That jump with SG is called a peruvian jump, because peruvian players playing with NTSC got it far more often than european players. Indeed, it is easier to froggy in NTSC, so the SG requires less luck in that version. When you land, don’t forget to take the turbopad for extra reserves. You can even continue froggying afterward as long as you still have SG if you have enough reserves in a course, or if you’re in a lap (Difficulty: Master). It can be hard to know how much froggy you can do without losing reserves at the end of the lap. At least in the last lap, you can always froggy until the turbopad mid-way through the uphill, and make 4 turbos afterward, and have enough reserves to close the lap (your reserves may end but the SG speed can be maintained until the line anyway).
In a lap, if you kept SG all the way until the top of the long uphill curve, you can keep froggying to get extra speed landing on the downhill and 2nd SG of the track (Difficulty: GOD), but it’s highly random, and the chances are you’ll just jump over the downhill and completely miss out on the 2nd SG. If you do that in the last lap of a course, you can do a mid-air at the top to get at least two turbos on the downhill and enough reserves to finish the lap, but it requires extraordinary reserves and a lot of luck, and has only been done in TAS so far (Difficulty: GOD+)
You can add a mid-air to the peruvian jump to increase reserves, and if you stop the turbo before you land, you can continue froggy afterward and keep SG (Sam Bennett’s tech, Difficulty: Master). In the SL, this technique allows you to add 3 or 4 froggy jumps after you land, if you got SG, and still do 6 turbos up the hill and keep reserves at the end of the lap(Difficulty: Titan).
Another SL technique that can also be used in laps if you don’t have SG in the peruvian jump: make two turbos with that peruvian jump mid-air instead of just one (luca’s tech, Difficulty: Hero). When you finish the second turbo, you’ll be slightly too much to the left, but you’ll have time to make 6 more turbos up the hill, which means you’ve made 1 extra turbo, at the cost of slightly worse cutting. Obviously don’t use that tech in the laps if you have SG, as it’s much better to froggy then.
In your best lap, you can jump into the 1st downhill before the peruvian jump instead of making powerslides, and get a more powerful SG (difficulty: Master). In the 2nd or 3rd lap of the course, you can also make a mid-air into the downhill instead of simply powersliding. You will get an extra hang-time turbo and may get some extra speed, but the technique is less consistent and you can fail to get any SG this way (Difficulty: Titan). If you lost sacred fire at the end of the lap, it’s a good idea to try this technique in order to save your course (example: Justin Zimmermann’s 2nd lap in his 1’10″11 ex-WR).
2nd SG
Difficulty: Expert
Simply powerslide on the downhill, and start froggying when you reach the bottom to keep SG. Start powersliding again when you lose SG, or if you don’t have enough reserves, start powersliding at the double turbo pad. In a lap, you don’t need to worry about powerslides and can just drive the downhill without sliding and froggy until the last SC. The froggy after this SG often gets stuck in PAL, which is another reason NTSC is better in this track.
Froggy stop
Difficulty: Hero
This tech was found by Ntropy44. It consists of stopping the SG in the small downhill when the track curves slightly to the right, and continue the froggy after. This increases the SG speed and makes keeping SG at that curve more consistent. With this tech, keeping the SG until the finish line is a lot easier. The stop froggy timing can be hard to master, though.
V4E/luca’s tech
Difficulty: Hero
instead of simply starting the powerslide at the top of the hill, jump slightly before and make a mid-air, making the same powerslides (don’t jump over the top of the hill when making the mid-air, you have to land the mid-air before the downhill). This tech is supposed to make getting a good speed in the downhill more consistent, however it’s not easy to do right and will cost a little bit of reserves due to the extra jump, besides it’s only possible if you use a powerslide pattern where you start the powerslide just before the downhill. So if you use the 3+3 turbos strat, you can’t do it.
Using penta for the lap
Difficulty: Myth
Anyone can use Penta of course, but it’s hard to drive better with it than with a fast character. The main reason is that with Penta, you must do a control froggy up the long uphill curve, since Penta turns too much for this curve, unlike fast characters. You must perfectly master that control froggy in order not to lose time in that portion. The time gain comes in the 2nd SG, where you can stay to the left of the track at the straight uphill with the double turbo pad, thus cutting much better and saving some precious time.
Starting a lap with SG
Difficulty: GOD+
You can start a lap with SG by finishing the previous lap with SG and taking the mushroom SC, but you will enter the lap in a bad angle by doing this and not win that much time. The right way is to actually get a powerful 2nd SG and skip the mushroom SC. Then, by making key froggy stops and continuing froggy, it is possible to keep SG at the finish line and beyond, although this technique has mostly remained a TAS technique so far, because it is so difficult and requires insane luck.
dream scs
Difficulty: Impossible?
If you have a peruvian jump with great speed and height, some people theorise that you can U-turn to the right, out of track, and skip the uphill curve completely by landing at the top of the 2nd SG’s big downhill. Even TAS runs cannot do this yet, however, and it’s probably impossible. Another SC was found by Amaraticando and made in video by luca, wherein you jump on the left track border when the border starts near the finish line, drive down that border, and jump out of bounds to the left to land in the track underneath, skipping almost the whole track. However, the mask will take you back. In order for the mask not to take you, you have to drive forward in the track until beyond the 2nd turbo pad, come back and take the SC, and this loses a lot of time compared to not taking the SC.