User blog:Suprsilver/Brett's automatic mode guide to Moonview Highway

This guide was written by Brett (former WR holder on Moonview Highway) specifically for the Wiki. All credit goes to him.
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1-1-1 Strategy
For 99% of you willing to try automatic, 1-1-1 is the way to go. There are limitations, getting the WR requires a very good run with this strategy, but it is nonetheless attainable.

There are a few things to note when trying this strategy:

1. You basically need to use the controller grip shown in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39J8iDH5XQ8 this video. This is crucial because it rests your thumb on the D pad, allowing you to wheelie out of turns quicker, and also you can spam much faster with your right thumb when going for luck wheelies.

2. Luck wheelies are CRUCIAL for this course. If you are not good at timing wheelies, GCN controller is a must. I've never tried classic controller so I have no comments on that. GCN doesn't require batteries either, which is always nice. Batteries can be used for better things, like throwing at people that annoy you. Don't waste their precious life juice for use in an inferior controller.

3. If you can not get low 34"9 or high 34"8 1-shroom laps on MH, then don't bother with this strategy. You need at least that in order to beat the milk truck on the last turn. Getting low 34"4 is doable with 1 shroom, but then you will hit the car at the lap 2 shroom. However, if you are fast enough to get low 34"4 I'd recommend 1-0-2 which is not limited by the car positions. Paul has done high 34"3 lap 1 on 2 separate occasions, however he's a genetic freak and was born with 6 toes. 34"3 isn't possible if you have 5 toes on each foot, which is probably most of you.

Now that all of this is out of the way, lets move on to the strategy itself.

Lap 1:

Mastering the shroom is not too difficult. You want to wheelie before the mushroom ends and hope that you get launched over the remaining grass that you are unable to cut across with the shroom. Other than that there really isn't much more to the shroom itself. If you are going for the trick edge on lap 1, you want to aim more to the right coming out of the shroom (but not too far right so that you will go up the wall). If you don't want to trick and instead want to go for the luck wheelie, you can cut the 2nd grass patch a bit tighter and angle more to the left. An average trick is still a little faster than even a perfect luck wheelie, so I would recommend learning the trick. However, if you don't want to, feel free to skip the next paragraph.

In order to trick, you want to align with the trick edge, which is shaped something like <. You must side trick, but whether you want to left or right trick depends on your personal preference. I right trick myself, but the best known auto time does a left trick. If you want to right trick, aim for the bottom part of the less than sign, cancel the wheelie, drift left, and hit the right trick button (should be possible if you are using the controller grip linked above). Ideally you get a very low trick and can continue from there. Straighten out and wheelie from there. If you are left tricking, you want to align with the point of the less than sign, and hit the very edge of it while simultaneously left tricking.

Now, the hairpin turn is something that takes a bit of timing. You want to cancel and drift right, and never let go of the control stick once you start drifting. All 3 laps you have to go inside of a vehicle, which you will hit if you do not take the hairpin correctly. So basically you can't really take it that badly, as the game will just make you fail otherwise. You can still lose a little bit of time here, but not much. This isn't something I can help you with, just cancel and drift right, but make sure you have a somewhat wide angle when approaching the turn so you can maintain a tight line throughout. Spear can't drift tight enough otherwise.

Next up is the first problematic car. The red car at the bridge. If you have done everything thus far fast enough, and your wheelie alignment coming out of the hairpin turn is good, you can spam left turning while in your wheelie and squeeze ahead of this car without ever breaking your wheelie! If you have to steer out and readjust to get inside of this car, you will lose close to 0.1. From there the rest of the lap is very simple. Just 2 luck wheelies and the 2nd half of the course is all boost panels. You can't really gain or lose much time here. If you aren't comfortable wheelieing while in a boost you can skip it, as you only lose a few milliseconds.

Lap 2:

Depending on how good your lap 1 is, you could be in trouble on lap 2. If you have 34"6 through 34"8, the shroom isn't a problem. If you have a 34"5, you will lose a small but of time on the shroom, as you will have to cut behind a yellow car in between the two grass patches. If you have 34"4, well that's a beast lap and you probably have to take the first part of the shroom wide to squeeze in front of the yellow car. Expect a lot of fails here if you have 34"4, as the course is evil and punishes you for going too fast. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, because trust me when I say by the time you can do a 34"4 or even 34"5 on lap 1, you will know exactly how these cars behave and know what to do when you have whatever time you have.

Don't go for the trick this lap, there's cars in the way so tricking is next to impossible, plus you would have to trick in such an awkward way that you wouldn't actually save time. Therefore you are going to go for the luck wheelie. You want to get close to the back right corner of the truck before the hairpin before drifting the hard right for the hairpin itself. This time the milk truck at the hairpin is very close to the inside wall, closer than the cars on lap 1 and 3 are, so the drift has to be done very well to get past. This is the hardest hairpin to get right.

The rest is easy. There are no more obstacles you have to face until lap 3. Just hope that you don't bounce on the bridge (it seems random, there's really no consistent way that I have found that helps with the bouncing), and hope to get 2 more luck wheelies. Get ready for lap 3, as it is the hardest yet!

Lap 3:

Best case scenario is you have two low 34"8's at this point. If you do, you shouldn't really have problems with the cars, but if you're one of those people that can sub 1'44 with this then I will describe the rest of the cars in detail. First up is the truck at the lap 3 shroom. This one is basically impossible to pass if you get 34"5 twice in a row, but the slower you are the further ahead the truck will be in his driving line (he's driving the wrong way around the course, so he will be more and more out of your way the slower you get here). You can't beat this truck, no matter how fast you go, so you have to go behind it. Again if you are not on sub 1'44 pace this shouldn't be a problem, and crashing here at that point simply means your shroom was bad, and that isn't really the course's fault. One thing about TTing this course is you learn when you can blame the course for punishing fast times vs when you just made a mistake and you're to blame.

Now don't go for the trick. There's a truck in the left lane that you will be heading straight for if you trick, and it will mess your alignment up for the hairpin if you miss the truck. You want to drive to the right of this truck. There's a blue car in the right lane coming out of the hairpin driving in the opposite direction, so you might have to swing a little wide before entering this turn in order to get past this car, but it shouldn't be a problem. There's a yellow car traveling in the inside lane around this hairpin, but it is considerably further away from the inside wall than the vehicles on the last 2 laps, so it shouldn't pose much of a threat.

This here is the last obstacle, and boy is it ever a heart breaker. The red car. This car doesn't get in your way unless you are on about 1'43"6 pace. So if you aren't at that pace don't worry. But this car is precisely the reason automatic is limited with the 1-1-1 strategy. Like a few other vehicles, you go just behind this car, so going faster doesn't do you any good, and even if it did, you probably would have failed at a lot of other vehicles that you have to barely get behind. I don't have any advice for this guy, just hit a good line and tap left a little on the control stck if you feel it is going to be close. And then pray.

So lets see. You've now gotten past all the obstacles. If the red car came close to getting you then there's no way in hell that you will hit the milk truck on the last turn, or the blue car on the slight right handed turn just before that. Note that if you are around 1'44"1 pace you have to go a little wide on the last turn to avoid hitting the milk truck, but anything faster and you can take it as tight as you want, just don't hit the inside wall, that isn't good. Funky Kong managed to get his Spear through the rest of the course just fine, don't scratch the paint job now. For the last straight, hug the left wall after the final boost panel to get the straightest line into the finish. Just don't fail and hit the left wall like Paul did.

The strategy is basically the same for the other two laps on the bridge straightaway. Just spam the wheelie button as if you're fingering your girlfriend. Don't think about anything else. If your nose itches ignore it. As Eminem one said, you only got one shot do not miss your chance to blow this opportunity comes once in a lifetime. Take that advice and run with it, or in this case drive with it. Do not focus on anything else. You can itch your nose after the run is over. Never frown if you fail. It takes 43 muscles to frown, but only takes 4 muscles to extend your arm and bitchslap your television. Once you finish, congratulations! If you are satisfied with this time you can just move on, but if you're one of those insane people that already has a very good time here and wants to improve further to get the WR, then I'd recommend the 1-0-2 strategy.

1-0-2 Strategy
Welcome, you are in the 1% of people that have managed to use the auto strategy enough to get a low time, and by low I mean 1'43"6, so that I can recommend this strategy for you! This is a fairly new strategy, one that is by all means very hard to get the WR with, but at least it isn't limited by how fast you go. In fact, it's quite the opposite. If you go too SLOW, you will be limited by the cars.

Lap 1 is the exact same as the 1-1-1 strategy. Ideally you want to get a very good time (34"500 or faster) because this is all about speed rather than being creative in driving. Therefore I won't elaborate on lap 1, if you're reading this far you already know what to do. So lets start with lap 2. Because 2 is always better than 1!

Lap 2:

Taking the first turns tightly is not easy at all. You need to also wheelie in between the right handed turn and left handed turn. If you want to trick, good luck. You need to pray to the Egyptian Moon God Ra (or is that the sun god?) to make this. You want to ideally ride the edge of the rock wall just enough so that it gives you a good alignment into the trick. Not easy, since this game is generally unforgiving with bounces. Paul is notoriously good at this trick, but in addition to having 6 toes he's also in a secret relationship with Ra. So he gets whatever he damn well pleases. It's much easier to go left and just wheelie around the cars than it is to get the trick, but tricking saves a good amount of time. The rest of the lap just goes normally, nothing special to it.

Here's a video of Paul tricking on lap 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tLsHuQEVLw

Lap 3:

On lap 3, the blue car at the shroomspot will stop you if you go too slow. You need to be very fast to squeeze ahead of it, which Paul did in the video linked above. It's not easy to do, but the faster you go the better you can make the shroom.

You can trick here if you please, but the truck in the left lane might cause problems like with 1-1-1. Fortunately, the red car won't be in your way. On the bridge you want to use your mushroom so that you don't have to do any luck wheelies. Ideal splits should be around 34"450, 35"200, 34"050, but even that gives 1'43"700. So as you can see getting the WR with this strat is very hard. Lap 2 is the hardest to do properly.

If you manage to get the WR, good job. You can celebrate however you want, but celebrate responsibly. I'm not responsible for any drunk driving you do, whether it be on Moonview Highway or in real life. I'd also like to just remind you all to say no to drugs, and if you are ever in doubt on a multiple choice test, the answer is probably C.