Rocket Storage

**Rocket storage** is a technique with the rocket nozzle that allows for a faster release of the rocket upon shifting to the rocket nozzle. After rocket storage has been performed, one rocket can be done regardless of whether the FLUDD power meter is full or whether Mario has any water remaining. This allows for more advanced tricks such as Triple Rockets and Double Rocket Storage.

## Method

1. Begin holding C or spacebar on the keyboard to charge the rocket.
2. After the rocket has charged for 9 or more frames (0.3 seconds), press the shift key to switch away from the rocket nozzle.
3. To activate the stored rocket, switch back to the rocket nozzle. You do not need to hold C or spacebar. If the rocket does not automatically go off, you did not hold C or spacebar long enough before shifting.

For video of rocket storage, see the Super Mario 63 in 63 seconds tutorial.

Note: If the rocket does not automatically go off, the animation frame was still saved which means if you hold C or spacebar when switching back to rocket, you could still rocket faster than normal, but this is not useful for speedruns as most uses of rocket storage take advantage of the fact that the FLUDD power meter doesn't need to be full.

## Uses

Rocket storage is most notably used RTA in the Huge Rooms of Bowser's Castle. In 100%, it is also useful in Lethal Lava Land to skip the timer in the volcano. Although many other opportunities for rocket storage exist in the No Major Skips and 100% categories, most of them are only used in the BTT due to being difficult and not saving very much time.

## Cause

Rocket storage works because roughly halfway through the rocket animation a state is created that marks the beginning of the rocketing animation. By interrupting this, the state is preserved and when Mario re-equips the rocket nozzle, the state is loaded along with the rocket nozzle and the animation starts from this point.

## The inner workings of rocket storage

Rocket storage has some small details that can be useful for TASing, but are impractical to be considered for RTA speedruns. If you shift on the last possible frame before the rocket goes off, when you shift back to the rocket nozzle the rocket will go off immediately. This allows Mario to gain more height than a normal stored rocket if he was in the air during the rocket. The caveat of this is that if Mario is falling while performing this last frame rocket storage he will not have access to the FLUDD power meter meaning he cannot use the turbo nozzle until touching the ground. Although possible to have access to turbo and get this instant rocket storage at the same time, it is not well understood how to do this. One theory that appears to be the best explanation is that there are certain actions that give Mario "fractional rocket charge". To explain, consider each frame Mario is holding C or spacebar, the rocket charge goes up one. Now suppose that if Mario holds C or spacebar while say, in the dive recover state he would not normally be able to charge the rocket. However, on the last frame the game may allow Mario to partially charge the rocket thus giving the rocket charge value a .5 value essentially creating a super position which allows for a functional FLUDD meter and instant rocket. Please note that fractional rocket charge does not exist and is simply an illustration. Further, something else could be the cause and more rigorous testing needs to be done.

1. ↑ https://imgur.com/g70bCFn