I started this run almost immediately when nitsuja released his VBA with re-records, and as a result there is some lag during sections of the game. nitsuja has since found a solution to the problem, but it changes the timing during the laggy rooms, so I would have needed to restart the run to take advantage of it. You can watch the movie with nitsuja's latest VBA, but make sure Options->Emulator->Lag Reduction (GBA) is turned off. That means there is no check mark beside it.
Yet another Metroid game. This time it's a remake of the NES version with a little bit added on the end. Alot of people find this game too short, and too easy as you can get alot more items than you actually need. The level designers also added a whole bunch of secrets into the game to help people sequence break. Unlike Metroid Fusion where skipping anything gives you one hell of a problem, if it's possible at all.
In this run I kill Ridley first, and then Kraid. The same route which was taken by GameCube04, who currently holds the record for an normal any% run. My run is actually very similar to his, but only with a few small changes, and little tricks. The ingame time of my run is 23:39 with an item collection of 23% for all you people who like to time things that way.
The main reasoning behind doing Ridley first is because you get super missles in Ridley which can be used to kill Kraid extremely quickly. It also takes less backtracking to do Ridley before Kraid, but that doesn't save too much time. This route also lets me get highjump and grip before I head into Kraid, which saves more time. However, there is a benefit for doing Kraid before Ridley; which is the Speed Booster. I does save time in Ridley, but I wasn't sure if it was enough to offset the time 'wasted' by going to Kraid first. I do plan on working on a Kraid first run now that the Ridley first one is complete. Right now i'm just in the planning stage, as I will be making the route up as I go along in terms of which items I get.
I would have to say that the most annoying part of the run was at the very beginning, including first boss (charge beam beast) and the hives shortly after it. For some reason the boss sometimes shoots his little spikes no matter when you hit him, which is completely unacceptable as that wasted alot of time. Getting him to not do so is a pain because you have to wait until 75% of the way through the fight to see if he will do let you shoot him without him shooting his spikes or not. If he shoots his spikes regardless of when you shoot him, you have to start the battle all over again. The hives were in a way were worse than that, as optimizing the room which contained them hinged on the movement of the bats. There were so very many times where a missle would hit a bat, or a bat would be unavoidable in mid air so I would need to wait for it. I got lucky on this version of the run, as I only need a very small pause in the room before to get the hives to behave in a pretty decent way.
The next big even in the movie was the room where I had to bomb all the small bugs to exit. This room was very hard to optimize as the bugs have strange invulnerability time, and the last bug to fall from the roof has a habit of not being killed. I tried escaping the room completely ignoring that last bug and found that my current attempt is only ~10 frames slower, so it's pretty well perfect.
Now for a list of some points from the movie:
- Bombjumping diagonally out of the pit where you got grip is actually faster than going up vertically. You lose a bunch of frames getting into position and laying the bomb to go up verticallly.
- After the battle with the cacoon I spend a little bit of time shooting it's body. This is because the screen is locked and moving to the right immediately will just make you run into the side of the screen.I waited the amount of time to get the best speed through the transition.
- Not much to say about Ridley. Went toe to toe with him, and he fires half the speed I do.
- At one point I wasn't sure if I wanted to get high jump or not, as it's a bunch out of the way. Although in the end it would be slower to skip it.
- Shinesparking metroids doesn't work; I tried it and the only thing that happened was Samus ended up with a brand new hat.
- Jumping and morphing takes only 3 frames of non-forward movement, while stopping to morph takes 7 or 8. Morphing and unmorphing break your vertical speed, so it's best to switch states as few times as possible, and as close to the beginning or end of a jump as possible.
- When you shoot, the distance and angle the shot travels at depends on your movement. If you shoot and then stop moving it won't travel as far as if you keep moving.
- Grabbing a ledge with grip is the fastest way to climb, as there isn't any frames where your not gaining height. Unfortunately you do not gain as much high this way as you do wall jumping or jumping onto the ledge and jumping normally.
- Wall jumping takes about 5 frames of non-verticle movement to do. As a result it is often faster to just jump onto the block your walljumping off of.
- After you get space jump you lose the ability to wall jump. This isn't good because wall jumping is actually faster than space jumping.
- I tried saving a shinespark all the way up the shaft between Kraid and the Kraid/Ridley statue. I made it all the way to the top, but because I had to run all the way into the save point to build the charge, it ended up being slower. Pitty, as it looked so cool.
- I shot a missle into the robot during the escape way before the other missles and it bounced off. This it to make it "wake up" and "accept" more missles
- People tend to ask me if skipping x missle tank would be faster, but in the end the answer will be no. Getting one less missle tank would slow things down at Mother Brain.
- I guess that the last battle in the escape room proves it. Ninjas can beat pirates; pirates just spend all their time jumping around. The ending shows that they also don't seem to mind killing each other and sacrificing themselves to take down their enemies. Even if it's completely impossible.
This movie also does a nice job of showing that Samus's abilities don't just come from her suit. She is a beast even without it; all she needs is a bigger gun.
Bisqwit: Congratulations for the first GBA movie publication! :)