I got 286 coins in the Impossible Pack of NSMB2, which beats the previous known record of 282 by Timtanium707 ( • NSMB2 Impossible Pack ... ). These levels might be the hardest official ones created by Nintendo (but can't be compared in any way with hard SMM levels, obviously).
The way this pack works is: there are no obtainable coins in the levels, which means that the only way to get coins is from the timer at the end of the level. Which means that the pack becomes basically a speedrun through the levels, to get a high remaining time on each one of them. The checkpoint gives 50 extra seconds on each level too. The number of coins you get on a level is the result of dividing the remaining time by 5 (for example, 50 seconds remaining would give 10 coins). Getting the top of the flagpole will double the amount of coins. Another important thing is that it doesn't matter whatever time you get in the range of for example 50-54: you'll get the same amount of coins, so to truly get more coins, you need to save enough time to get into the next "range" of the timer where you would get an extra coin.
I'll explain now some things about each individual level.
- Level 1: the first section is pretty easy, I entered the pipe at 90 but a 91 is barely possible (which I did many times). The second section is the hardest thing in the pack, it has a pretty precise skip involving ground pound cancels to jump on a bomb and tight jumps on the flying enemies. The last section is not that hard but it has two tight jumps at the end to get the top of the flagpole (you need to barely turn around after hitting the hammer bro to not lose too much speed to be able to reach it, and also jump at the edge of the last platform) and also if the RNG of the first Chain Chomp is bad and he goes to the right, it's a big timeloss and basically the end of the run. There's a pretty low chance of that happening, but it happened 3 times in a row to me before.
My time here was 112 but my best was 113 with an earlier 90/91 at the first pipe.
- Level 2: this level is the easiest of the 3, it was pretty consistent, but some things are harder than they might look. At the second half, I wait intentionally for a bit on a platform to line up the flame chomp to the cycle of the rotating platforms, so I can jump off him and wall jump later to get on it quickly. I got a very early 91 here but my best was a 92.
- Level 3: probably a bit harder than the second level, but not as hard as the first one. It was a bit tedious having to beat the first 2 levels to get one chance to try and test things in this level. The noteblocks of the first half are a bit annoying since it's easy to bonk on them, and if you aren't fast enough on the first half, you won't be able to make the early cycle on the conveyors after the checkpoint, losing a lot of time. I figured it was possible to damage boost at the last section and skip using any springs by being quick enough and triple jumping. Also to grab the flagpole I just jumped straight to it instead of using the spring, which is something I haven't seen anyone else do for some reason, and it's really easy.
Is this improvable? Maybe, but I'm not sure. The 115 time range could maybe be reachable in the first level (which would result in 8 more coins at the end) with a 91 in the first pipe and not waiting at the first hammer bro, but I have no idea. I think 114 could be possible that way, but an extra second would need to be saved. In the second level there could be a way to jump on the flame chomps to get up quicker and reach the 95 range, I'll look into that more. In the third level the 100 range seems out of reach.
#NSMB2 #ImpossiblePack