[ANALYSIS] Cartoon Strip-Mine 0xA Ideas

There are 3 A Presses remaining in Taz: Wanted. Those 3 A presses are all in Cartoon Strip-Mine, required to destroy the Minecart Sign. Here are some ideas I have to one day (possibly) reduce this number.


A) Skip Strip-Mine altogether

A1) Wrong Warp to/past Dodge City

Going from the most extreme/abstract/general theories to the most plausible/concrete/specific ones, we start with wrong warping.
Wrong warping usually means touching a loading zone and being taken to somewhere other than its intended destination. In the case of Taz: Wanted, for example, you could enter Ice Burg but be taken to Disco Volcano instead.
Wrong warping to Dodge City, Tazland, Disco Volcano, The Hindenbird or the credits with 0x A presses would mean Taz: Wanted Any% could be completed with 0x A presses. One funny consequence of this solution is that Cartoon Strip-Mine would still remain at 3x A Presses.
It should be obvious to anyone that wrong warp glitches are very hard to find, if they can even happen, and no such glitch has been found in this game.


A2) Unlock Planet X's Tazland door

Another similar solution to wrong warping is to activate the Planet X door to Tazland, thereby skipping Wile E. West and maybe even Sam Francisco too.
Unfortunately, the only known way to unlock the Tazland doors is the intended way: complete Granny Canyon, Taz: Haunted, Cartoon Strip-Mine and Dodge City. Until a memory manipulation glitch that allows us to alter those flags is found, this solution is unfeasible.
More information on Planet X and doors here: https://pastebin.com/Wa86dZNa


B) Complete Strip-Mine without destroying the Minecart Sign

B1) Activate the end zone early

This solution would involve finding and reaching the end zone to end the level without destroying every sign like we do in Tazland Any% (assuming it exists before you destroy every sign) or trigger it through any other means.
As far as I know though, it appears that the end zone isn't loaded in at the start of the level and moved to its intended location after destroying every sign but instead loaded in when the end cutscene starts.


B2) Destroy the same sign more than once

This one has a 0.01% chance of working, because I'm almost certain the end zone activates after the 7 different signs are destroyed, not after 7 signs are destroyed. By this I mean that when you pause the game and see that X/7 signs are destroyed, the game doesn't use X to figure out if it needs to spawn the end zone, but it checks which of the seven sign flags have been triggered to calculate both X and if the end zone should appear.


B3) Make the game forget that the Minecart Sign exists

Hilariously, this one is much more likely to happen than the above one. I'm basing my theory on this video, so check it out before you continue reading: https://youtu.be/YRBNIdoL_MU?t=23s
Notice that the game says that there are 0 signs in Ice Burg and that the end zone isn't there, but when I destroy the Igloo Sign the level ends immediately. It's hard to know for sure because of the nature of the Incomplete Load glitch, but what if the game thought Strip-Mine only had 6 signs? Would the end zone appear if you destroyed those 6? Would the level end immediately if you destroyed the 7th one?
Now, in the case that this one happens due to Incomplete Load, I wouldn't consider it legitimate since, as far as anyone knows, this glitch only happens due to a damaged disc, making it count as hardware manipulation - a big no-no in speedrunning.


C) Destroy the Minecart Sign without using the minecart

C1) Clip into the Minecart Sign area as Taz and destroy the sign

Clipping into the Minecart Sign area is possible, even with 0x A Presses, but the Minecart Sign just doesn't seem to work that way: you need to be on the minecart to destroy it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1NkdnnvNhg
It's literally the most painful thing about this game; the Rollercoaster Sign in Haunted CAN be destroyed that way, so why can't this sign? Because "Strip-Mine was programmed by Satan" ~ SpongedCube.
What's extra weird is that if you pass by the Minecart Sign again after it's destroyed, Sam will sometimes yell at you as if you destroyed a sign. It seems that the sign is destroyed when you pass through where the object is on the minecart, not by actually destroying it.


C2) ...uhhhhhh, any other suggestions?

Shockingly, there's not much to work with in this level. No vehicles, no power-ups, nothing. Escape the Cage doesn't do much either.
If there's any hope to be had, it's that there's a cheat in the debug menu that destroys every sign in the level you're in and you don't need to be on a minecart for it to work, so it's not a hard requirement, just an absurd and unnecessary one.


D) Take the minecart ride without jumping

D1) Just don't jump 4Head

Unlike the gaps in the tracks, which can be boosted over, there is no way to get past those barricades other than jumping. Even with cheats, nothing works: moon jumping only makes Taz rise a little, not the minecart, power-ups don't do anything, teleporting with the fly cam does nothing, etc.


D2) Jump over multiple barricades at once

Although this solution would probably only reduce the A press count to 1x or 2x, it feels like the most likely to happen. Even though the barricades are too far apart to clear in a single jump (and doing speedcart involves jumping multiple times), it is possible that there may be a way to extend the duration of a jump enough to do just that, although nothing has been found to suggest such a glitch exists... except for one thing.
If you watch an Invisible Hint Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1NkdnnvNhg) while on the minecart, it will remain in its state until the end of the ride. This means that if you jump and watch a hint video, you can clear gaps and barricades without any additional A presses. This solution has a bunch of problems though:
1) It takes two A presses to achieve this state: the first one to jump on the minecart and the second one to watch the invisible hint video, so you'd only be reducing the A press count by one;
2) Once you've watched the invisible hint video, you are essentially frozen forever - this means that you can't tilt the minecart (which you need to do to reach the sign). Even if you tilt the minecart during a jump, which you can do, before watching the hint video, that's still not good enough because you need to tilt both ways to avoid all the obstacles (and you can't tilt in both directions at the same time);
3) Even if you could tilt in both directions in mid-air, it still wouldn't matter because once you finish the ride you're still frozen with no way to unfreeze yourself and no way to save the game and reset.


E) Find a way to jump while on the minecart without pressing A

Yeah, good luck with that.



In conclusion, there is a pretty good chance that Strip-Mine will remain forever at 3x A Presses, but speedrunning and glitch-hunting is full of unexpected discoveries, so who really knows? Only time will tell.