Mario Superstar Baseball - Superstar% Petey Piranha in 9:46.233 (World Record)

Well alright, this is more or less what I was looking for! The Bowser Jr. 5 Catch segment could have gone 30 seconds or so faster and my batting against Mario wasn't exactly blazing fast, but I'm really happy to have completed what I am confident is the optimal route for this category. I don't think it's possible to get 5 Catches as the pitcher against Mario without voiding the shutout - that's the only thing that can change my approach at this point, I think. The key was getting a feel for how the Bowser Jr. match needed to go, which took some time. I eventually learned that Petey in CF gave me the best overall odds of converting any given Dry Bones or Bowser Jr. swing into a valid catch, i.e. Petey being the first fielder to touch the ball *without bobbling it first*. Due to the constraints of the match and being limited to half an inning, you need to get all five of your catches before accumulating three outs OR allowing two runs. With that in mind, you have two 'free' outs and one 'free' run each of which can be 'spent' getting the first three of your catches; gun down two runners from the outfield and let the third cross home plate for free to keep those bases clear. The fourth catch will have to come from allowing a base hit that can be up to a triple, but you need to act fast and throw the ball to home before Dry Bones gets any clever ideas about trying to score early, thus derailing everything. The fifth and final catch can be on the play that ends the match, whether that's by nailing a fly out or (as happened in this run) picking the ball up while a second member of the Fangs crosses home plate and sends Wario off grumbling. Focusing on the outfield rather than the infield makes a huge difference - your LF and RF movement can quite often coax Petey towards the ball even in situations where you might be inclined to think that it wouldn't; on the flipside, if Petey is anywhere in the infield you need substantial luck on every infield hit in order to make any progress. King Boo on Catcher is crucial so that Petey can "off-brand Laser Beam" down his opponents in order to keep them from scoring more than once before you're ready. Weirdly enough, planning to get the goal in 5 plate appearances exactly worked out a lot better than merely trying to get it "within 7", which is the absolute maximum you can get. That's on top of getting it in 5 PAs being faster, of course. This is Mario Superstar Baseball for the Nintendo Gamecube, and we make our own luck whenever we can! The Mario match was decently smooth. Perhaps if I'd played things differently I could have avoided the second pitcher switch, but I was too excited about everything else going right to handle that aspect of the run perfectly. I was very worried that mishandling the Body Check setup was going to do me in, as you have only 40% odds of success against Pianta (as opposed to 60% for Monty and 50% for Mario or Luigi). But hey, just win the dice roll, right? A few more line drives later and we're three up, three down, and off to Yoshi Park for some creative gardening/plant-on-plant violence. Reminder: if you don't play Piranha Panic on Hard, even when you don't need to, you're not a God Gamer. I went for high score rather than funny score this time. If you want to get the exact Bowser Jr. encounter that I get in this run every time, guaranteed, simply soft reset your console, select Exhibition Game, call for a random captain precisely once (the randomly called captain will always be Bowser Jr.) and then go directly to Challenge Mode to start your Wario Greats playthrough on Star Difficulty. You'll need to walk to the node that I walk to and then stand still and let Jr. encounter you - starting things any sooner will cause you to be batting. Special difficulty does not work for this run because the Bowser Jr. scenarios are different (i.e., worse). Similarly, there's no opportunity for Team Swap because we must have Petey on our starting roster for him to be in the Jr. encounter and fighting Jr. before any baseball undoes Team Swap. Also, who needs any other players, the Greats are called the Greats for a reason!