Welcome back to another edition of "Ready? Go!." Last time the feedback indicated you wanted a more beginner friendly article, but did not necessarily want to give up the professional side of it. I am here to offer you that today.

-Starting Off-

Introducing yourself to Stadium can be a scary experience. As with any pre-established community, you can easily feel intimidated and become scared that people may not warm up to you. While it is true that you should worry a little, we strongly encourage you to dive in with any records or social topics you have. (We will not force you to talk about Stadium. One of the greatest things about Stadium is its rich, respectful social aspect.) With the Stadium Rankings you can find players who are close to your skill level. For example, if you have only 80,000 feet in Brawl's Home Run Contest mode (about 24,400 meters) you can go to the main list of on-site high scores, click the "Total High Score" URL at the bottom with the "1st" picture next to it, then sift through multiple pages of users. Remember to check the date they last edited their scores. You want to be sure your potential Stadium chum has recently played! Discussing real life, strategies or comparing scores with a person around your own skill level helps break the general tension you may have toward Stadium, plus you will not feel threatened or afraid to talk to the person you find because there will not be such a large skill gap to separate you!

If you feel that may not be enough, you can visit the Stadium Social Thread and interact with users with an endless number of subjects. The more you feel welcome, the easier it will be to play. Also, never feel ashamed of your records. People who make fun of others for not having good records are disliked. We were all bad at one point, but thanks to practice and a community full of users who are willing to help, many of us have turned out to be very good at it. You should never feel ashamed to ask any questions you may have. For anyone to expect you to know the answers would be very unreasonable.

In the last article we discussed some pointers on how to increase some of your Home Run Contest records. This time we will focus on general Break the Targets. Luckily for all of you, Brawl has some pretty dull physics. On the flip side, this means records are very difficult to obtain because scores are usually almost perfect. It is very important to focus on exactly where your character is at. Hitting targets on the edges is very crucial to saving time. Choosing your attack is also important. Each attack has a different amount of power, so they will also have different amounts of "hit lag." In Stadium, hit lag is when you attack a target (or Sandbag even) and your character is frozen in place for a slight period of time. I personally find it strange how targets (or even the game) have hit lag, but that's how they programmed it. Let's say you have 3 up A moves in your strategy and back A happens to be one frame quicker. (1/60th of a second) Let's switch those 3 to back A for all 35 characters. You are saving 105 frames, or (about) 1.75 seconds just from changing your moves a little. There is a very easy way to tell which attacks are faster or not. Visit Stage 5 - Intense (Stages 3 and 4 also work) and keep holding left. DO NOT fast fall. Break one of the two targets (preferably the bottom one) with an attack, the suicide on the bottom to reveal your results. We will demonstrate Mario's moves in this video.

4.56 - No Targets Hit
4.68 - Neutral A
4.70 - Up A
4.70 - Back A
4.71 - Forward A
4.63 - Down A

From what we have learned, down A is your most likely candidate for a physical attack choice when using Mario.

Projectiles are also your friend. You can shave off multiple seconds from each character who has a projectile. Projectiles also have no hit lag, so as soon as you recover from your animation, you're free to go! This means you can constantly travel in one direction while carefully sending an attack another way. Let's check out an example of how a projectile can change your decent strategy into something to be proud of in this video. As you can tell, there is already a huge difference when you start to apply the abilities of a projectile. They can be used to break targets in tight spaces, bounce of walls, avoid traveling through big, empty spaces or even go completely through walls! Be creative. You may also be wondering how you change the direction of your projectile. That's easy! Imagine you're facing left. Jump while facing left, flick the control stick right (or quickly tap the D-pad on the right side if you use the Wii Remote) and let it return to the neutral position. When you are absolutely certain your control stick (or pad) is in a safe place, press B. Your character will turn around in the air and unleash the powerful projectile on unsuspecting targets.

-TAS Argle Bargle-

Last time we had a lot of exciting TAS videos. This time I am very pleased to announce we have many new ones to show you, but showing you all of them would take a long time, so I've grabbed some of the nicer ones. Sorry if you thought one was nice and I didn't select it. If you feel one should be featured, check the end of this article for where to deliver feedback.

02.65 - Toon Link and Falco (Stage 1 Co-op) - SW-1988

Despite there being a better co-op TAS out there, this one gains respect for being the one to finally thwart the elusive 2.66 JPleal10 claimed to be the max score. Mixed emotions were set when discussing a maxed score that was obtained in less than a year after Brawl was released, but thanks to SW, we can ease our minds. Best known non-TAS record is 2.66 by giggs and mooonstermunch.

02.55 - Fox and Falco (Stage 1 Co-op) - Zampa

Using a new strategy, .10 seconds have been removed from an already near perfect score. Falco is able to laser 4 targets at the end by replacing Toon Link with Fox so he can shoot a laser at the target through the hole. If you're familiar with how target lag works (red the beginner's section if you are not) you will know exactly why this is faster. Read above for the best known non-TAS record.

114,723.7 feet / 34,966.5 meters - Peach and Ike (Home Run Contest Co-op) - Zampa

The video itself contains a great description, but the beating heart of the operation is the quadruple bat drop that requires Peach floating to act as a third double jump. Mix 999 percent of damage with the strongest finisher move this game has to offer and you have quite the feat. Best known non-TAS record is 35,427.2 feet / 10,797.8 meters by Jim and Gen using Ice Climbers and Ike.

07.92 - Donkey Kong (Melee Target Test) - EyesofDarkness

With the recent increase of Melee TAS videos, I thought it would only be fitting to share those too. This video pulls nearly half a second off the best known record. Even after many years, Melee is far from perfected. Best known non-TAS record is 8.41 by Zampa.

03.77 - Mewtwo (Melee Target Test) - Zampa

Using a new strategy, this TAS yanks off over a full second from the best known world record. It requires a little perfection, but it looks possible for people as a whole. Maybe we'll see some crazy records of 4.3x from people soon? Best known non-TAS world record is 4.78 by Zampa, Demon9 and Nox. Best known (and highest quality) video is 4.82 by LinksDarkArrows.

-Hacked Stages-

Recently, our very own Midnite created two hacked Target Smash!! stages for Brawl. The first level places targets around Hyrule, and the second one uses a shaft of a sewer system from Subspace. If you play Hyrule, you should be prepared to cover mass amounts of ground in a short period of time. If you were to go for a combined total high score for Hyrule, I would say about 6:59 would be a good starting place. Sadly, the Hyrule players have not done the best job offering you some modern videos, so I don't have anything worth showing you.

On the other hand, Sewers is booming. If you play that stage, you can expect to cover small amounts of land, but be prepared for some eye-popping same frame hits. There are two compilations of our efforts that we can show you. One is a miniature compilation by DWM and it can be found here. It shows some very good records and is a great place to start off if you want to see how a few characters are done, but do not want every strategy spoiled. The other one is a full compilation with a total high score of 3:14.87 by LinksDarkArrows which can be found here. Though not the best (with 3:10 potential and about 3:07-05 with maxing applied) around, it does provide a stepping stone for players who want to play Sewers to its fullest. A suggested total high score for Sewers would be around 3:25 for beginners.

I'm sure some of you want to try out these hacked stages for yourself. I am very happy to say I can offer that. If you follow this hyperlink, you will be directed to a thread dedicated to hacked stages. In the second post there is a tutorial that shows you how to apply them to your own disc. If you have any further questions on how to set them up, or their affects on your save file, do not be afraid to ask.

-A New Record!-

10,130.9 feet / 3,087.9 meters - Ganondorf (Home Run Contest) - Sin

This is the first score for any single player to exceed 10,000 feet in Brawl's Home Run Contest. Through many months of effort (and endless pestering by some of the less patient fans) Sin has finally achieved the most demanded goal Hom Run Contest could provide for any individual character. The video contains the efforts in a somewhat entertaining story, so it is recommended that you watch the full video, but if you do not have time, you can skip to about 5:03 to see the clip this video was created for.

999,999,999 - Ice Climbers (Glitch) (Melee All-star) - Treklink256

Even though this is a very old record, I do not believe it has received as much recognition as it should have. Over the course of many months, Treklink256 has jumped, dropped and caught fire flowers for over 400 in-game hours! The amount of dedication required to get this score is admirable. The rest of us will probably never know the satisfaction of maxing out our Melee All-star score. When applied to his own personal total, Treklink256 will probably have the world's best All-Star total forever.

-The Uncommon Extra-

Best of Smash 13 - Reborn (Part 1) - (Part 2) - (Part 3) - (Part 4) - (Part 5)

A 5 part video by Dream Team presented by ssb-experience.com. This video was compiled over many months of work and includes multiple clips from various parts of the game. Video clips from dozens of players are in there, the best as the video inquires. Whether you're in it for the Stadium clips or the versus combos, you're bound to get something out of it. For me, the highlights of this video are the various Event Match 51 techniques. I strongly advise you check this video out as soon as possible. The music tracks in these videos place user Samplay3 (the uploader) at risk, so the videos will be deleted, sounds will be muted or the aforementioned account will be banned, so catch it in its full glory while you can! You can also download it with the links provided in the video descriptions.

That concludes another issue of "Ready? Go!." I hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to subscribe to lpzampa, ssbm4ever and sockdude1 on YouTube if you're interested in seeing TAS videos for Melee and Brawl before they're listed here. Also, feel free to join the official Stadium Mode Group, and if you have any feedback of any kind for the "Ready? Go!" series, please feel free to leave feedback of ANY (from the good to the bad) kind in this thread.