RTA Guide/New Players
Welcome to Ukikipedia, the Super Mario 64 community wiki and resource hub! We're glad you're here and interested in the game!
This page will help you get started with concise beginner-friendly tutorials, equip you to navigate Ukikipedia and find other community resources, and showcase some of the many ways to enjoy Super Mario 64 and the speedrunning community.
Why Super Mario 64?
Super Mario 64 is an iconic title and watershed moment in gaming, but at its core, the movement is what keeps people playing to this day. Mastering the movement is an endless journey and a whole lot of fun.
The mechanics are fluid and satisfying, the skill expression is amazing, and the many advanced techniques raise the skill ceiling to impossible levels. People also love to create and play mods of the game because it's such a good foundation for 3D platforming. the foundation laid by the movement is so good that to this day, very few games have rivaled the level of control and precision that is possible in Super Mario 64 (2 of those being Sunshine and Odyssey!). If you don't believe us, here is videogamedunkey :)
Setting up
Emulator
Speedrunning
Emulator is the easiest way to start playing! Follow this guide to set up Project 64 v1.6, the approved PC emulator for speedruns. The guide is super accessible and well-organized with plenty of graphics.
If you are not on Windows, you can find your platform's approved emulator here: RTA Guide/Emulator
ROM hacks / Casual
If you are interested in playing ROM hacks (mods), there is a huge variety of fun and impressive new hacks being made all the time! For example, Mario Builder 64 (Super Mario Maker-like level creator), SM64 Randomizer or IronMario 64 (IronMon-like hardcore randomizer challenge), and completely original experiences!
Parallel Launcher is super easy to use and generates a ROM file from simply double-clicking a patch file. ROM hacks download as a patch file because you need to obtain the vanilla ROM on your own. Prolific ROM hack creator Kaze shows how to set it up in under 2 minutes:
Practice ROM
Excited to start playing yet? We highly recommend the Usamune Practice ROM. It's a very powerful ROM with a lot of features, and virtually every SM64 speedrunner uses it.
The Google Doc explains everyOpen the link and scroll down a page to the "Download" section to get it. Here is a video introduction of how to use it:
Note: The first ~1:30 of this video is slightly outdated. You now just download an HTML that you can open to patch the ROM, which the Google Doc explains.
Try out the presets; they range from vanilla to practice mode!
Splits
Most speedrunners use an awesome free program called LiveSplit to time their runs and add their own personality to their splits! SmallAnt made a great tutorial about how to set it up.
Super Mario 64 has an autosplitter you can use called AutoSplit64. Follow this al to set it up. You can import your splits file and it will split on the right fadeouts for you!
Gameplay Tutorials and Resources
Feel free to explore Super Mario 64 to your heart's content, but if you are looking some guidance, here are some great videos to start out:
Movement guide
This video by SeanRaider covers the various movement options and how they work together. It is a great resource for any new player to get a better understanding of the game.
Here are a couple tips we hope will help you starting off!
- Mario moves with a lot of force, but most actions lock you into the direction that you are facing. With great power comes great responsibility!
- Especially when you are starting out, line up your angle and check your spacing when performing actions.
- When swimming or flying, small movements around the neutral zone will often give you enough control. It's very easy to overcorrect, especially when flying.
- Neutralizing (letting go of) the control stick
- The camera is hard at first (and sometimes later on), but once you make friends with it, you will find it can work really well in a lot of cases. The geometric game design combined with the camera angles allow you to do a lot of movement in the 8 notched directions (if your controller has notches).
- The left and right C buttons feel inverted from most modern games because you are actually controlling the camera's position, not Mario's perspective!
- For a general-purpose camera, try Mario Cam C-down. It will pan to follow behind Mario and you can press C-left or C-right twice to turn it by 45 degrees.
- If the camera is stuck somewhere you cannot see Mario, try double-tapping R to go into and out of Mario cam to reset it.
- Strats save seconds, movement saves minutes. Learning the fundamentals as a beginner is super important, and you're unlikely to
- There's no harm in trying advanced movement, but if you're getting frustrated, go back to doing what feels right for you. There's a lot to get used to, and it's easy to overwhelm your brain.
- When you make mistakes, remember that lots of people have played for thousands of hours and still make mistakes all the time! That's what makes great players so impressive.
Drogie and Squeex 16 Star Walkthroughs
This tutorial by Drogie walks through the entire 16 Star speedrun for beginners, and by following along, most people can complete the run from scratch in a couple hours!
This tutorial by Squeex (our very own 2024 Best Speedrun Streamer) also walks through the entire 16 Star run with super simple strategies to help new players do their first runs. "All good 16 Star runs begin with a perfect bridge skip and a great attitude. Let's figure out how to do one of the two."
All categories RTA ("Real Time Attack") Guide
Ready to dive into speedrunning Super Mario 64? Here is the main page with links to lots of other great community resources: RTA Guide
Final Thoughts
There are many ways to enjoy Super Mario 64: playing casually, speedrunning, TASing, ROM hacking, and more. It is a game, but to many of us, it also means a community: a shared space for growth, cooperation, competition, and social connections. Being part of this community has been rewarding in ways we never anticipated. If you want to see what it is like, try chatting in a Twitch stream or joining races and grassroots tournaments. There is an annual Summer League where players get drafted onto teams and earn points with PBs. And don't forget to join the Super Mario Speedruns Discord! We hope to see you
Whatever brought you here, we appreciate you taking the time to read this. Looking for more SM64 content? There are always streamers live on Twitch in the Super Mario 64 directory, and great YouTube videos for entertainment, information, inspiration, and everything in between. Click here to check out some great SM64 videos by many different content creators.