After 23 years a new Super Mario World glitch is discovered
Adds cloud to inventory, saves time on speed runs.
You'd think after 23 years society would have mined a game as popular as Super Mario World of all its secrets, but you'd be wrong. YouTuber A+Start has detailed an incredibly obscure glitch discovered by his pal Masterjun3 that gives players a Lakitu cloud in the game's second stage that can be used to breeze through the title in record time.
Since it's something anyone can do with the original cartridge, it's considered a valid speedrunning technique and is now being employed by speedrunners worldwide to set new records.
So here's how to activate it:
- Select Yoshi's Island 1-2 from the world map.
- As small Mario, grab Yoshi from the block at the stage's beginning.
- Eat the first red shell you come across.
- Immediately jump next to the two bushes right after the red shell. Spit fire at the peak of the first bush.
- Eat the next green shell you come across (and hold onto it).
- Jump over the next three ledges and stop before the fourth. You'll need to keep up your speed during this, so jump on the first ledge, then over the second.
- Hit down and Y to place the shell on the edge of the fourth ledge.
- Quickly hit left so the fireball you spat earlier will hit the green shell producing a coin.
- Hit right, X and A together at just the right time to make Yoshi eat the coin while Mario spin-jumps into Yoshi's tongue.
- During this motion, hit the R button to make the camera pan right.
- Voila! The cloud will appear in your item box as a glitched sprite that looks like something like a leaf torn to bits.
Why does this happen, you ask? You see, when Mario collects a coin that Yoshi is in the midst of eating, it creates a null sprite on Yoshi's tongue. For some reason panning the camera right fills this sprite with a Charging Chuck. Normally eating Charging Chucks isn't even possible, but for some reason it works under these incredibly specific circumstances and the action of devouring them is linked to getting a power-up in the game's bit set. I'm not sure why this is exactly, as it's a task that's supposed to be impossible, but the world is full of strange things that we can only hope to understand.
As you can imagine, performing the cloud glitch takes practice as if it's performed improperly it can crash the game or kill Mario since the Charging Chuck is still real enough to harm the portly plumber.
For more information on why this Chuck-eating glitch manifests bizarre power-ups, A+Start detailed a similar glitch last year that lets you spawn a level-completing green orb. It's wild.