Editorials > Super Mario Kart Boosting Technique

Super Mario Kart Boosting Technique by Simon Laflamme
4/10/2003

The following article was written by the #2 NTSC Super Mario Kart time trailer in the world, Simon Laflamme. He writes about the Super Mario Kart boost technique that can help you get better times in Time Trial mode. This article is more for the advanced Super Mario Kart time trial player than a beginner. Special thanks to Simon for a great article!

A quick explanation/history about the new boosting techniques debate
I feel this is something people have been talking about a lot during the past months, but unfortunately, it was easy to get lost into the discussion as many of the players were new to SMK, to yahoo-groups or to the boosts themselves. I’ll try with this page, not to convince anyone if that technique is either good or bad, but simply to make it clearer for new players (don't know if this is gonna be even more confusing but, oh well!) :-P

A “boost”?
What we call a boost consist into making a power-slide long enough (more likely close to a 180° angle) while holding down “R”. When you finish your slide and release “R”, you should hear the engine noise a bit louder. That is a boost! You will notice it’s pretty subtle but it still can save a worthy 0”10 each time it is used. Some good places if you want to practice it can be at MC2, the u-turn just before the jump, or at DP2 very last turn where you can do easily a wiiiide power-slide.

It is also to mention that it is possible to “hold” a boost to use it in a further place. In example in MC1, you can power-slide at the last turn (this will get you a boost), you make a couple of jumps along the way until the 1st turn after the finish line, which you would normally cut with a jump (R button) and then, stop moving which would get the boost to come out and give you the normal burst speed that comes with it, but a few seconds after the power-slide. Another thing that is to mention about boosts is that they “freeze” your kart. While you are boosting, you can move your kart without spinning out of sliding at all. This will last until the boost ends or until you jump (R button).

The boosts have been used since very early for SMK time trial competition (around 2000-2001) and they are quite frequent for high ranked players (possibility of 0 to 3-4 boosts/lap depending of the course). They have always been used out of a turn to be released on a straight, which following the turn and everything always worked fine even if some players liked less/more the boosts than others.

So, what’s the deal now?
As most of the techniques generally bring many alternatives, the boost wasn’t an exception. It is in fact possible to use a boost to cut through any sand (MCs), dirt (CIs) or grass (DPs) area without slowing down at all (due to the freezing property of a boost), just as long as the boost starts BEFORE your kart enter the sand/dirt/grass and finish AFTER your kart exit the sand/dirt/grass. This alternative of the boost, even if probably figured out/guessed by a few players in the past, has never been used officially for any WR until 2002.

Note that as from now until the end of the page, each time I’ll be talking about the “boosts”, the “new techniques”, the “ boosting techniques”, it will be referred to the new boost’s alternative explained just above and NOT to the single boost itself like explained in the “A boost?” section.

The first time we can officially tell a player has used a boost to cut an important part of a track was in march 2002, when Jamie White has tried a power-slide around the 1st half of DP1’s last turn, to get a boost which will be used to cut the 2nd half of the turn through the grass. This technique, well done, could save up to 0”20 and be used as much for 5-laps than 1-laps times. A few players only will try this technique along mid-2002, and we won’t hear from any new boosting technique again until September 2002 when more players will try more seriously the DP1 last turn technique, which eventually will lead to a new technique for the very 1st part of the course, to be used for 1-laps times. That technique consisted into making a wide slide at DP1’s last turn to hold the boost all the way to the 1st part of the next lap to cut through some grass there, just before the bridge.

In the following weeks/months, many new places were found to boost through, including DP3 1st turn, MC2 completely at the left of finish line, MC4 just after 2nd turn through the sand and also through last turn before finish line, MC3 through sand at the end of the straight that follows THE middle u-turn, MC1 through 1st and 4th turn, CI1 through last turn and eventually even at GV1 and GV2 where you could jump the platform gap more easily if you held a boost until the gap. Those jumps otherwise needs pretty much perfect timing. PAL WR for GV1 5-lap was in fact totally crushed (passing from a 2/5 laps jump technique to a 5/5 technique with the help of the boost).

However, during all that time until now, only PAL players have used the new boosting techniques: Sami Çetin, Michael Jongerius, most of the French players and a few other players into legend ranks mainly. In NTSC, WRs still remain old way (except for DP1’s last turn boost) as nobody was really interested into trying the new techniques or didn’t know enough of them. This is more likely not gonna last though, as more players get informed and as Sami’s pressure on the NTSC side to get players to try the techniques is quite important. :-P

Ok, but my question is: what’s the deal???
Well, as new boosting techniques were coming in, WRs were crushed in many courses, and players who could get those boosts to work nicely would take out a lot of points off their SR scores which obviously, advantaged them a lot. In example, if we estimate the MC1 boosting technique to save up to 0”30/lap, the DP1 one 0”25/lap, the MC2 one 0”45/lap, the CI1 one 0”30/lap, the GV2 one (considering it could help you to land the jump platform) about 0”25/lap, the MC3 one 0”20/lap, the MC4 one nearly 0”50/lap and the DP3 one 0”15/lap, well those are only estimations but that gives a big total of about 2”40 seconds saved for best lap times for anyone who would master the boosts and use them to cut inside turns everywhere they could, which is obviously a lot.

This in fact, gives a total of 48 SR points, or around 1.200 advantage in the SR score, which can be taken to 2.000 if you include courses where the new boosting techniques are also possible for 5-lap times. So, a player who used and mastered the boosting techniques was obviously advantaged compared to a player that didn’t use any. So, this was in some way on debate the fact that the boosting techniques would disadvantage retired players or players who didn’t try them.

Also, some players would doubt about the skill needed to make those boosts, comparing them to some of the techniques that have been used in MKSC (Mario Kart Super Circuit for Game Boy Advance) where you can save a lot of time by voluntarily hitting trees... : ) SMK, especially, being one of the racing game with the most technical control ever, some players consider the new boosting techniques as pure racing killers.

Another problem, more obvious, that the techniques were bringing was the credibility of the standards, GOD times especially. The GOD times in fact, could be beaten by a large margin on most of the courses where you would use boosts, and players were reaching more easily several bonus pts in those courses. We had a sudden rise of GOD players in the PAL ranking, as 5 new players (so far) have reached GOD overall standard since the discovering of boosting techniques, and have used them more or less depending of the case... So, very recently, players began to talk about the possibility of changing standards

Other problems we can mention about boosts, as simplest as they might seem, are the fact that some players will find them simply boring/frustrating/or not funny and also killer of tight competition. We can take for example MC1, where top 10 for best lap times passed from 12”08-12”14-12”15-12”16-12”18-12”20-12”20-12”20-12”20-12”22 to 11”82-11”86-11”90-11”90-12”10-12”14-12”15-12”15-12”16-12”16 with the new boosting technique.

And what are we gonna do about it?
Well, even if using boosts to cut through sand/dirt/grass can bring a lot of controversies and not make everyone happy, it still remains 100% non-shortcut driving at the opposite of water trick times where we take advantage of the game’s bugs.

In the current situation, we have:

1. Some players who consider the new boosting techniques as a normal evolution of the game that takes it to a further/deeper/better level of playing than ever.

2. Some players who don’t like them too much but still agree to say there’s nothing to do about it and that a game’s evolution is meant to involve worse moments at times

3. Some players who just hate the new techniques, for some of the reasons mentioned above and would just love to get old-way driven times back on the site (in a 2nd ranking or as “alternative” times).

So, what is gonna happen in the future is still very uncertain on some points, but one thing is sure, we can’t ignore the new boosting techniques as they officially are in SMK and are the fastest way of making WRs where they can be used.

Finally, all this will have brought a lot of discussion, experience, controversies and probably even a few retirements to the site, but Super Mario Kart still remains a game where everything will be done to keep players motivated and active. So,

Keep on karting! : )

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