246 pastebin

1. "What is the Super Mario 246?"
If you've ever heard of the Super Mario 602, this will sound somewhat familiar to you. The 602 is a biannual (once in summer, once in winter) event where a bunch of people race the "100%" categories of the four primary 3D Mario games (at least, before Odyssey fell into the mix). The 246 is similar, except this focuses more on the "any%" categories.
The games run in this are:
- Super Mario 64 - 70 Star
- Super Mario Galaxy - Any%
- Super Mario Sunshine - Any%
- Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Any%
The number 246 comes from the total number of collected stars (or shines, for SMS) across all 4 games (70 in SM64, 61 in SMG1*, 44 in SMS**, 71 in SMG2*).
*The final grand star counts toward the total in both SMG games, which is why the numbers are not 60 and 70.
**Technically, you need 51 shines for SMS any%. However, you can skip 1 shine in Bianco Hills (Bianco 1), 5 shines in Gelato Beach (via Gelato Beach Skip), and 1 shine in Pinna Park (via Early Yoshi-Go-Round, or EYG), bringing the total to 44 (note: beating Bowser in Corona Mountain also gives you a shine).

2. "What are your PBs in these games?"
(as of 2/23/2020, when writing this)
SM64: 49:40
SMG1: 2:41:13
SMS: 1:40:23 (this is the weakest of the 4 games for me)
SMG2: 3:01:51
246: 8:22:40 (51:48, 2:41:13, 1:43:04, 3:04:22) (sum of PBs is 8:13:07)

3. "What are the WRs in each game?"
(as of 2/23/20, when writing this)
SM64: 47:08 by Dwhatever
SMG1: 2:22:52 by HardcoreGaming07
SMS: 1:14:13 by Weegee
SMG2: 2:58:39 by Nemi43
246: 8:06:28 by Vallu111 (1:03:54 SM64, 2:32:02 SMG1, 1:21:08 SMS, 3:08:03 SMG2)

4. "Holy... you have to play for over 8 hours straight!? Where are your breaks?"
There are actually a couple of small breaks throughout this run where I can eat or go to the bathroom (hopefully the latter won't have to happen, but we'll see). The big one is the opening cutscenes in SMS (which is about 6 minutes total), but the grand star cutscenes in the SMG games are also useful, and the SMG games have a lot of downtime in general, which is really useful for eating.

5. "What do you play each game on?"
SM64: Nintendo 64 using NTSC-U Super Mario 64 cartridge
SMG1: Wii using NTSC-U Super Mario Galaxy disc
SMS: Wii using NTSC-U Super Mario Sunshine disc
SMG2: Wii using NTSC-U Super Mario Galaxy 2 disc

6. "How does switching games work?"
SM64 -> SMG1: Because these two games are on different consoles, I can already have SMG1 set up and ready to go throughout the SM64 run. Then, once I'm done with SM64, I can switch out the cables and be on the file select for SMG1 within 10-15 seconds.
SMG1 -> SMS: Because these two games are on the same console, I have to return to the Wii menu after finishing SMG1 and then swap discs for SMS.
SMS -> SMG2: Exiting a GameCube game on a Wii works weirdly. I actually power off my Wii by pressing the power button, and then swap discs, turn my Wii back on, and switch games.

7. "Why are you able to play as Luigi in SMG1?"
For anybody who doesn't know, after beating SMG1 with all 120 stars as Mario, you're then able to play through the entire game again as Luigi. Luigi runs faster and jumps higher than Mario, but more importantly, he skips the 5 minute intro sequence at the start of the game, and instead jumps straight to Gateway. Character selection doesn't matter in these multi-Mario categories, so almost everybody opts for Luigi for the free timesave.

8. "Where can I find more information about this?"
Multi-Mario Discord: https://discord.gg/YAkzG9r
Multi-Mario speedrun.com page: https://www.speedrun.com/multimario
Or you can just ask me in chat. OpieOP