Initial thoughts:

Start right off the bat with Mute City 1, Night Thunder/Blood Hawk (either one will be max acceleration), do the first lap and see how much time I save with frame perfection. From there, I'll post an AVI.

One thing that concerns me is that I don't want the TAS to look too familiar to the WR vids. when I'm doing MK64, I'm doing GP and it looks soooooo much different from the WR TT vids. I don't want to simply recreate the WR vids and get the exact same times, because that's simply too much work on my part to recreate what has already been accomplished.

It's been calculated that courses with massive air time would lead to faster TAS times compared to courses where you're mostly on the track, so Mute City is probably a poor place to start, but it should be in sequential order so....

when it comes to Blood Hawk vs. Night Thunder, which is better? NT for all courses with no jumps, BH where you're in the air more often, and Twin Nova for when you are in the air almost all of the time? I might make a list of which car I want to use for each course (which I'll post later) and you can disect it.

Does anyone know of improvements that can be made to MC1?

Racers per Track list (brainstorm):

Jack Cup

BB1: Blood Hawk/Twin Noritta

-I have a few ideas to make the car gain massive amounts of air time, making DTD's essential, hence why I wonder if TN should be used on jumper.

DF1: Night Thunder

-No air can be gained from what I've seen

MC1:Blood Hawk/Night Thunder

-Most likely NT, there's one very very brief time when you're in the air, and that's from dropping not jumping.

PT1: Blood Hawk

S1: Blood hawk/Night Thunder

-Don't know if there's enough air time to merit BH

So1: Blood Hawk, Twin Noritta

-I think Sliding can save a lot of time here, and there's some room for getting in the air, but not enough to merit using TN.

Queen Cup

BB2: Blood Hawk

DF2: Blood Hawk

MC2: Blood Hawk

RC1: Blood Hawk, Twin Noritta

Sa1: Blood Hawk

WL1: Blood Hawk

King Cup

FF: Blood Hawk

MC3: Blood Hawk

RC2: Blood Hawk, Twin Noritta

S2: Blood Hawk

Sb: Blood Hawk, Twin Noritta

WL2: Blood Hawk, Twin Noritta

Joker Cup

BH: Night Thunder

DF3: Blood Hawk, Night Thunder

-Blood Hawk if the possible shortcut is doable.

PT2: Blood Hawk

RR: Blood Hawk

So2: Blood Hawk

SP: Blood Hawk, Twin Noritta

Note: I am not sure about all Twin Noritta choices. Blood Hawk should do fine in those courses, but a LOT of air time can be had in those courses, and I suspect TN should be able to really capitalize on that, especially if I can catch more air time than in the WR's.

I follow that page & i'm very interested on having a run of F-zero X ^.^

Any comments?

BTW, if you don't know anything about the site, I recommend you to read their FAQ first...

I'm having major questions about car use, because I am getting mixed feedback on which car to use for which situation.

Only 3 cars would be used, Blood Hawk, Night Thunder, or Twin Noritta.

There are 3 basic course descriptions which will determine which car I would use; a course where the car does not go in the air at all or very often; a course where the car occassionally goes in the air (enough to be significant) or frequently goes in the air; and a course where the car spends the majority in the air.

The problem I see is that there's 3 cars, 3 scenarios, but based on the information I've gotten from many places, they don't match up evenly.

I see most of the WR vids use Blood Hawk, for courses varying in the 3 different amounts of air time. I heard of a discussion between whether Night Thunder or Blood Hawk is the better slider on the track, based on weight. (what were the findings on that btw?) I saw the floater guide which recommends Twin Noritta for maximum float time, but recommends Night Thunder for mximum DTD speed because of the weight. I then see a recommendation to use Blood Hawk because his lighter weight leads to better floating, but then Night Thunder's heavier weight gives him better speed. So all in all I am very confused about which driver to use on which course. I made my initial brainstorm list based on NT = only sliding, BH = sliding + floating, TN = floating only, but at the moment I can;t figure out who to use for what.

I know there hasn't been any response yet, but how much is the F-Zero community looking forward to such a run?

I like what I'm reading. o_O

It would be a great thing if you could really do this and I hope you won't base your decision (whether you should really do this or not) on the responses you'll get in this topic. I'm positive though that there'll be quite a few interested players. As for MC1, there could be a helpful video by Jimmy Thai. I don't think many players have actually seen it. It's the best opening lap he got on this course:

Jimmy Thai - Mute City 1 - 27''331 [Opener, NTSC].avi

If you want I could upload it for you. I know you don't want to just copy an already existing video but this video could surely be of help. I wonder if a 1'06"xxx NTSC is possible...

Very interesting ideas Comicalflop (I've seen your stuff for MK64, very nice).

You're mostly right about the machine thing - NT techincally gives the best DTDs, BH the best slides and TN the best floats; but of course in most course runs you're doing a mixture of usually the former 2 (the latter is only really used in attaining speeds), which makes the choice of BH or NT harder, though it is usually accepted that BH is generally the best to use. If I'm not mistaken, heavier machines have a slightly faster deacceleration rate, which makes the lighter BH again ever so slightly more desirable. It's also usually down to preference or stigma more than anything - I know I found certain courses just plain more comfortable with the NT even if I knew the BH was faster.

I think you should speak to Westu as well about creating new strats for courses utilising hard DTDs - he has great strats he hasn't yet fully implemented yet in runs: for example on Fire Field, where he feels another 10 seconds (PAL) could be chopped off with a different DTD strat that in a normal run is too hard to do consistently.

As for DF1: well, there is an area you can get 'air time' but I'm not convinced it is beneficial to a 3-lap run, as it takes too much energy and time to prepare (the hump before the finish line can be used as a pad for a float-into-DTD). Perhaps for a flap it could be beneficial.

Nice, I look forward to seeing any runs you make.

I recommend talking to JKT, he probably knows more than anyone else about this game. He has some crazy strats that you should be able to pull off on a TAS, the sub 1 minute Silence 1 strat comes to mind; TN on jumper settings, with a DTD in all 3 laps. Good luck.

Nice. Looking forward to it.

Unfortunately im a noob on F-Zero X so I can't come with any advices.

I'd definitely be interested to see this. 
I think BH is the machine you want to be using over NT on practically all the tracks. Its weight is a good advantage on tracks like White Land 2 where you'll want to get as much height as possible during the jumps.

Also, thinking about strats I wonder if somebody will finally figure out how to get sub 1'15 PAL times of Devil's Forest 2. I have an N64 magazine dating way back may 2000 where a lot of players got ~1'15 PAL while all their other times were nothing but average. This is also in DVM's faq over at gamefaqs so there may be some strat on this track nobody has figured out yet. Best I came up with is some crazy TDDTD around the point where the DTD is now in the regular strat but I've yet to get it to work.

Good luck

Well, this response is exactly what I was looking for

the Jimmy Thai - Mute City 1 - 27''331 [Opener, NTSC].avi, if you could upload it that would be nice. I always prefer to have fastest vids, because strat wise it means at least I know if I'm not missing anything that can be faster. I know for sure I won't start until I can see what that vid has to offer.

I'm definitely going to want to strategize imrpovements per level with you guys beforehand, so for sure input from Westu and JKT and pretty much everyone is desired.

I'm sure that every "almost impossible would-save-time" trick would be utilized in order to get those dream times on some courses, like FF and DF2.

So I get the vibe that BH should be used pretty much throughout, except for possibly those three WR's that use jumpers instead. So unless anyone has objections, going to start MC1 with BH, and stick with him.

 I remember having some magazines from the same period with DVM's times in too, but don't remember people having ~1'15 on DF2... that sounds like cheat to me, I can't really imagine DTD strats being so far advanced at that time of X competition, and all of the members we have now not knowing of how to do a 1'15. What were the names of the people in your magazine Wouter? (If "Guillaume Bertrand" is in there I will piss myself laughing)

That said, I think the resources are here now for a TAS run of 1'15 for DF2; would be awesome to see.

I scanned the page from that magazine dating December 2000 (stupid photobucket with their limited resolution makes it a bit hard to read): http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u198/woutermj/F-ZeroXTimeTrailsDecember2000.jpg

It seems the record is 1'15"011 from Phil Hughes. I believe he is also a pretty good Perfect Dark player at http://www.the-elite.net/ so that makes is more believable I guess. They were also pretty good at Sand Ocean and Big Blue but at least those records are possible with current strats.

Hm, thats very interesting. That Damien Golding fellow looks like he cracked DTDs early on in the game's life - however, do remember that at the time N64 Magazine did used to receive a lot of hoax times with people using computer equipment to modify times and stuff - at the time it wasn't nearly as prevalent or identifiable as it is today. I distinctly remember one issue where a score for a Tony Hawk's game was found to be completely illegitimate, and the staff apologised to those who had been mislead by the 'proof' screen shown by the cheater.

Andrew Mills, theres a name I haven't read in a while! He wrote a strat in N64 Magazine detailing how to beat all the Staff Ghosts - do you have that particular issue Wouter, it may detail his strat for DF2 in there, since he seems to have a great time there too? (Unfortunately I don't have many of my old magazines left...)  He was quite respected amongst readers at that time, both for his skill and his fanzine which included dubious pictures of scantily clad women and articles such as "Best Tits" lol.

This has made me very excited about X again

EDIT: Just thought, its entirely possible someone like Golding was playing an NTSC version of the game and passed off his times as PAL - I mean no disrespect to him but some of those times are genuinely unbelievable for 2000, imo...

Unfortunately I don't have that issue but I've heard of it before. At the time this was the only decent Nintendo mag in The Netherlands as there were no Dutch ones but it was also really expensive (8 - 9 euros) so I only bought it once in a while.
Andrew Mills is still active with speedgaming I believe as I've seen him post a few times over at SDA and Google says he owns http://www.samus.co.uk/ which seems to be a pretty good Metroid site.

It's very interesting indeed they got all these times back then. It's quite incredible Damien Golding actually figured out the dive on Sector A but it's possible I guess. DTD's were well known at the time but I'm not sure about railsliding and I can't believe they already knew things  as TDD's and such. 
Those Star Wars Racer times are ridiculous by the way . All of them are very obviously cheated, just watch my speedrun for the Boonta Training Course and then imagine doing it in 13 seconds or just a lap for that matter .

Yeah, I get the feeling a lot of times in the magazine are not real... props to players like Mills and Hughes, but guys like Golding are very dodgy in my opinion.

Might have to make contact with Mills then, see what hes up to and if he can shed light on DF2. And yeah, N64 Magazine was really a great magazine - fantastic 'British' sense of humour.

Argh, this is completely offtopic- we should be helping comicalflop with his TASing lol! Well if DF2 does indeed have some far-out strat we've overlooked then it can only help to find out

Those times in the N64 magazine are most likely to be NTSC times. Look which ones DVM manages to match or beat, the courses with big DTDs.

Yeah.. I've emailed Mills anyway, see if he responds

Hmm... this seems like very interesting idea.

It could be a good way to find out the best possible splits for each track, then maybe someday they could be utilized to make standards (Like on the Mario Kart sites).

Like for Mute City 1, so far the best known 1st lap is 27"331 (NTSC). But what about the best 2nd & 3rd lap?
I'm positive it's possible to have a 2nd lap of under 20 seconds and I'm sure it's been done, though without finishing the track because the player probably messed up on lap 3. It's hard to say if it's possible to go under 20 on lap 3 though.

This is the best splits I know of so far:

1.27"331 (By JKT) On his clip
2.20"027 (By Miguel Lefebvre) His best lap. He hasn't tried the lap strat with TN.
3.20"461 (By Muumu) On his clip.

Total : 1'07"819

After downloading and watching the vid, I could not see any noticable differences between the WR vid that I have in my folder... *shrug*

Well, I guess I'll get started then. Looks to be just frame improvements to be made in MC1, and then maybe try to find some way to break the 20 flap barrier, correct? and possibly last lap utilize the little time spent in air just before the finish line to do something to gain as much as just a little bit of time for the 3rd lap?

 I'm not so sure that trying to perform a DTD of sorts for lap 3 is really that beneficial. The current flap WR is already at 19"287 with a float-assisted DTD going into it, but far too much time is used up beforehand in the floating for a benefit of ony 8 tenths of a second. Unless you somehow manage to reach the same height JKT/Jim MItchell reached for their floats in a far faster time than them, then an air-assisted DT or DTD going into lap 3 could do more harm than good. Thats just my 2 cents.