Are you ready for adventure? Do your eyes gleam with the promise of treasure, riches, fame, and glory? Are your ears thirsty for the most angelic voice in all of gaming? Well too bad! It all belongs to Swordsmankirby! But you can still watch him claim it if you want. Oh, and rescue Toadette as well. Eh, who cares about her? This is Captain Toad‘s show now, and his show is Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker.
There are three categories for Captain Toad – any%, all gems, and 100%. None of them take particularly long, with the longest being doable in just under four hours. There’s a pastebin with videos walking through each stage for that category. Also note that there are several intentional deaths during this run in order to save time backtracking. They’re pretty obvious to spot, and the run is entertaining enough with the bite-sized levels that you’ll lose track of time watching the Toad Brigade’s fear(less) leader romping through them. The stages start to become quite intricate, but they retain their simple size, and thus, always have simple solutions.
Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker is an underrated gem that’s collected a more than noticeable fan base, enough to warrant a port to the Nintendo Switch. The port brings a few differences to the table in terms of the way certain stages function, but they’re minuscule at best. It took a long time for the Mushroom Kingdom’s cowardly citizens to get a game all about them, but the wait was worth it.
And not content to merely take a back seat, Toadette attempts the daring feat of braving the dragon’s lair. It does not end well… What does end well are these action-packed speedruns of the Splatoon series by Movefish and Hashedrice. Maybe Toadette would have had better luck if she were a squid – on second thought, probably not.