Noki 1 Cycles

The Cannon Mole shoots Goop Balls every 6.74 seconds, starting at 4.53 seconds. What we call “cycles” are determined by the Goop Ball shots between which the Cannon Mole first throws a Bomb. At a very high level, what we call 1st cycle occurs when the mole throws his first bomb after the 3rd set of Goop Balls, 2nd cycle occurs when the mole throws his first bomb after the 4th set of Goop Balls, and so on.

However, within each cycle, there are three separate intervals which I will refer to as Fast, Normal, and Slow. I believe this is due to the timing of Mario entering the mole’s trigger zone compared with where the mole is within his Goop Ball cycle. If Mario enters just before or during the first or second Goop Ball being shot, a Fast cycle will be triggered. If Mario enters during or just after the third Goop Ball being shot, a Normal cycle will be triggered. If Mario enters more than roughly 2 seconds after the third Goop Ball is shot, a Slow cycle will be triggered.

For Fast and Normal cycles, the first bomb will always land on the same exact frame. However, for Slow cycles, for every frame that the Normal cycle is missed, the first bomb will be delayed by a frame. Speedrunners most typically enter the mole’s zone by ledgegrabbing the approximate location is shown below. The details of what frame ledgegrab trigger what cycle (and subsequent first bomb landing frame) are shown in the table below. The fastest human-viable cycle (for now) is the “Normal 1st” cycle which is why this has sometimes been referred to as “Maxed 1st” in the past. However, the TAS achieves the Fast 1st cycle and we may discover it to be human-viable one day.

The fastest ledgegrab achieved by humans is a 21.11