Submission #3410: Taco, Kriole & hero_of_the_day's SNES Super Metroid "Reverse Boss Order" in 48:06.65

Merry Christmas!

This is a Reverse Boss Order (RBO) TAS of Super Metroid. As the name implies, we aim to kill the four main bosses (excluding Mother Brain, who must be fought last) in reverse order as quickly as possible. This presents a unique challenge; as the varia and gravity suits are guarded by Kraid and Phantoon respectively, all of Norfair and Maridia must be traversed with Samus' standard power suit.

The first changes in this run come as early as Blue Brinstar; a really cool CWJ was applied to an opening door in the Morph Ball room, allowing us to keep our speed in the next room. This also gave us some extra falling speed.

We were also able to collect the Blue Brinstar energy tank extremely early with a precise, zero-momentum jump followed by a CWJ. As we were in the room anyway, we also collected the missile tank. We estimate that this saved roughly 1000 frames.

Due to using some missiles in Blue Brinstar, we collected three extra refills on the way to Bombs; one in the OMBR, one in the OTES and one in the Crateria Main Street. They are all easy to access and cost only 1-2 frames.

The extra missile tank makes this area much smoother than before, allowing us to avoid revisiting the early super missile room. We also CWJed from the last gate to reach the missile door much faster than usual.

We skip the Charge Beam until after collecting Power Bombs. It's slightly faster this way and is easily compensated by our surplus of missiles.

After acquiring Power Bombs, we immediately return to collect some necessary items for Norfair. Killing Crocomire and collecting his energy tank later allows us to completely avoid the Etecoon area.

And thus begin the Hellruns. Energy management is pivotal here and you cannot neglect ammo management either. We had 2 things in mind here - Crocomire and Lower Norfair, and preparation had to start very early. We got some energy in our Reserve Tanks given that this was undoubtedly a good time to do so.

Hi-jump comes with some interesting properties: jumping with a speed of n.61440 instead of (n+1),0000 generally gives a higher vertical speed (I say generally because it doesnt always reset, how else would it progress to higher values), this was abused whenever it would save time.

While there is nothing new to the Hellrun, we applied a minor change to the Bubble room, by changing it from a upward CWJ to a normal CWJ. It was not only faster but also much smoother. The Skrees were fairly kind to us. Skrees have a 1% chance to drop Big Energy balls, and getting two of them was very lucky. On the way back we change it up by adding another Skree refill for just a handful of frames, which we actually desperately needed instead of waiting for another pipebug round.

We used a Power Bomb Shield to avoid additional rounds on Crocomire. The CWJ on Crocomire's dying body was just to gain enough distance to make the warp around shot open the door on the far left side of the room. And we also had just enough energy to survive it all (1 more frame spent in a heated room and we would've died).

We used the acid dive after the E-tank plus the refills from Crocomire to optimize the amount of energy we had in our Reserve Tank.

A different approach was used in the lava lake before Lower Norfair to avoid one of the pause screens (avoiding all pause screens was one of our goals while making this run).

The lack of Super Missiles forced us to use some different strategies concerning the sanctuary. First of all we used a Power Bomb Shield to refill a Super Missile from a Golden Pirate. This took quite some time to achieve, since framerules and lack of knowledge when it comes to Super Metroid RNG made it hard to determine when the Super Missile would drop. In the end more lag wouldn't cut it; the Super kept dropping on the same ingame frame. We then cut back on the lag as much as possible to get the Super drop on that exact frame. This Super would then save a lot of time on the wallmonster in the sanctuary.

We also used a different strategy in the sanctuary which not only gave us an additional Power Bomb, but also saved a lot of time by not having to land on the spikes again; spiking on the first possible frame allows you to keep your speed when spiking, giving you a lot more distance. With enough speed built up you can reach the platform and still get the last Power Bomb drop.

We needed 22/10/25 for Ridley, and the rooms just prior to Ridley were the perfect place to refill. This is also a good place to show what Grapple can really do. Also note the first application of a Grapple animation cancel; holding the fire button while triggering an animation causes the Grapple to stay extended for the entire animation. Canceling Grapple into an animation also avoids the position reset that occurs when you kill an enemy. This was abused a lot, in Maridia especially, (where animations are much longer) to save single frames.

We used the rooms before Ridley again to refill in preparation for the Maridia CF during Draygon. Power Bombs are fairly rare to get in Maridia, so getting them here is optimal. In the revisit of this room it looks like we miss a refill with the Grapple Beam, while in reality we are getting the refill right under it. While Power Bombs are rare, they weren't worth the delay it took to get this particular refill.

The Kago room used the reverse crumble glitch, with some very careful Dessgeega manipulation which allowed us to avoid damage altogether. The room after that used a very nice mockball which was possible thanks to a zero-momentum jump, which ultimately saved about 9 frames. Also showcasing a very nice momentum spike morphball bombjump to gain a frame; when you first start rolling as a morphball, your momentum increases from 0.49152 to 1.32768, 2.16384, 3.00000, 3.49152 and finally receeding back to a 3.16384. Since momentum and speed is added to the morphball bombjump, catching the morphball bomb when the momentum is at 3.49152 gives the highest speed, and allows us to lay the morphball bomb a frame earlier while still clearing the ledge.

Exiting LN with 10 or less energy to be able to die from one hit by a Waver.

Back in the Bubble Room, not only do we need energy but we also need to get rid of our reserve tank for the Draygon CF. The best solution is to trigger it during the Power Bomb explosion, since the timer for the Power Bomb still counts down during the refill sequence saving some time.

Momentum is gained at 1/12th rate while running underwater, but it instantly maxes out when jumping. This makes optimizing underwater segments a little bit weird.

This is the place where Grapple is ment to save all the time it costs to collect it plus a lot more. Avoiding the wallcrawl with the Pincer in Mount Doom and avoiding the Underwater Walljumps before Botwoon save a ridiculous amount of time.

We managed to avoid the crouch just before the Mocktroid freeze before Botwoon. This required some very good Mocktroid positioning, who thankfally do not act differently due to RNG.

The mocktroid bridge was very tricky. Not only getting the Mocktroids in the right position, but also avoiding to fall in between them while charging the shinespark. We eventually managed to make it all align, which resulted in one of the coolest speedtricks ever. We also managed to save 1-2 frames on the shinespark itself, by unspinning 1 frame before sparking (this gives you a free pixel in vertical position) allowing us to spark a frame earlier.

Draygon was very tricky. We had trouble deciding on a strategy, most revolved around killing him with the grapple - it's undoubtedly the fastest but costs a lot of energy, which we desperately need for both Mother Brain and all the shinesparks in both Wrecked Ship and Red Brinstar before and after Kraid. We eventually went with a strategy which required very little effort and even ended up being faster than the other strategies we had in mind; instead of using Grapple we use an early CF to give us a free shinespark, which we then use to finish off Draygon which in turn gives us a bluesuit. By using the lower right turret to trigger a morph/unmorph Grapple glitch we can exit the room without being grabbed by Draygon, which saves a ton of time.

The bluesuit is used to exit the eyedoor room, since it's impossible to clear the last ledge just where the water meets the air.

The corridor leading to the Wrecked Ship elevator is a perfect place to squeeze in a lot of refills for practically no cost of time. We still need quite a lot of energy for Mother Brain and the shinesparks later on.

We managed to freeze and collide with one of the Choots, not only does it save time, it also gives us a free refill and allows us to avoid the 80 damage you would normally take from the Choot that comes just after that.

Unlike the other bosses, Phantoon is terribly straightforward.

We skipped the shinespark during the Wrecked Ship exit which cost us 11 frames but saved around 140 energy.

Kraid was very clutch. We just barely managed to make the charged shot connect in his first mouth opening. This triggered the improved Kraid fight, but with a little visual inaccuracy: it looks like Kraid's mouth is closed, but in reality it's still open. Shooting his face with a missile finishes him off.

By leaving his room with 10 Super Missile we get 80 energy from Mini-Kraid, another big step in our plan of skipping the Kraid E-tank.

Our plan here is to get atleast 15/10/XX and 740 energy. We were a bit worried but it clearly worked out in our favor.

The Big Metroid skip is very weird. He behaves similarly to Mocktroids (touch his hitbox and he immediately changes his trajectory), but is still subject to RNG. After a ton of work we finally managed to get an excellent skip. Note that it is possible to freeze the Big Metroid with the Grapple, but it delays the fadeout by a very long time, making it worse than useless since the Big Metroid can still move during the fadeout.

Mother Brain looks fairly similar to most other runs. We tried to center the camera as much as possible after the glass phase, since the game still runs during the time it takes for the camera to center on the room.

The escape has always been awkward thanks to difference in luck. With the help of lag and transitional doorlag we changed the steam patterns to our favor.

DarkKobold: Judging.

feos: Encoded HD.

DarkKobold: Derakon's, Tub's and Hero of the Day's posts made this decision much easier. Thank you.

In short, this movie provides a different enough challenge and content from the currently published runs. This movie is much like [1868] SNES Super Mario World "no powerups, maximum exits" by PangaeaPanga in 1:18:23.22, which shows off techniques that can really only be pulled off via TASing. Thus, I am accepting this new category.

As far as obsoleting a movie, I consulted with Hero of the Day. From what he said, the any% in-game (which is currently the most similar run) will be obsoleted by the next any% real-time. Thus, for a more natural and reasonable chain of obsoletion, this movie will not obsolete any other Super Metroid category.

It will, however, obsolete Combatribes. Because seriously, F that movie.

KIDDING! KIDDING!

ledauphinbenoit:Processing the new movie file posted in the discussion thread. Someone with privileges should replace the movie file...

sgrunt: Replaced the submission file with one containing a two second improvement to Mother Brain.