Super Metroid - Reverse Boss Order TAS v3 in 0:26 by Saturn

Recorded on Snes9x 1.43-improvement12 (but should work fine on future versions of the Snes9x 1.43 series as well)

Sync Settings

  • WIP 1 Timing: ON
  • Left+Right/Up+Down: ON
  • Volume Envelope Height Reading: OFF
  • Fake Mute desync workaround: ON
  • Sync samples with sound CPU: OFF

Attributes of this run

  • beats the main bosses in reversed order (without game-breaking glitches or codes)
  • aims for fastest ingame time (due to universal recognition, regardless of emulator)
  • takes damage to save time
  • manipulates luck
  • abuses minor non game-breaking glitches
  • Genre: Platformer
  • Total Frames: 168143

About the Game

Super Metroid is a classic platformer with many advanced techniques and a very fine, subpixel-based move engine. The story is about a bounty hunter called Samus who has the goal to explore a foreign planet called Zebes to find and destroy Mother Brain, the evil leader of the galaxy who is breeding a mighty species called Metroids to abuse them for her own benefits. During the journey you will find a lot of items such as new ammo, energy tanks, special upgrades that speed you up or allow to pass certain areas you would normally not be able to, and making your character strong enough to be ready for the upcoming showdown against Mother Brain.
Despite being over 18 years old by now, it is considered as one of the best games ever made, and is still played by many people on a regular basis. Due to the many different move techniques, a high variety through the new upgrades, and a lot of route possibilities, this game is a very common target for many types of speedruns and playthroughs.

Moviemaking & Comments

This is my 3rd version of the Reverse Boss Order, which after almost 7 years since the first attempt [dead google video link removed] finally found it's completion after a lot of planning work, tests and delays due to other projects. It's one of the most difficult run forms in Super Metroid, as it forces to go through heated or water filled rooms without any of the suits for constant energy loss or greatly restricted movements, creating unique conditions not seen in any other run. The improvement to the previous run by Taco, Kriole, and Hero of the Day is 5056 realtime / 3993 ingame frames, with the main timesaver being from skipping the Grapple Beam, which due to new/improved tricks and strategies I developed for Maridia this year turned out to not justify the time it takes to collect after all.

Thanks

I would like to thank the following people for their useful contributions towards this RBO project since it's start back in 2005:
  • Catnap222
  • Cpadolf
  • Hero of the Day
  • Kejardon
  • Kriole
  • Moozooh
  • NameSpoofer
  • Taco
Enjoy!

Nach: In regards to in-game time. Since the Metroid series also made it prominent by changing the endings according to it, and players were competing based on it, it seems quite sensible for records. However, in terms of TASing, of course everything will be as fast as possible, and things like pausing the game during a long run to answer the phone or attend to human needs don't really factor into it, therefore in-game time makes little sense.
In this excellent run though, the real time surpasses the existing time, so the run should be accepted. It is disheartening though to see old emulators being used, specifically with options to make timing as inaccurate as possible. Here's to hoping someone makes Lsnes runs in the future.
Accepting as improvement to existing run.

Guga: Processing...


Joined: 2/18/2010
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Well Saturn, you've done an amazing job on this run. It's great to see the RBO improved, yes vote.
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hero of the day wrote:
2. I like the route change, but I still feel that you had too much equipment for the need of this run.I really think green brinstar cleanup could have been comfortably omitted. If you got the pink brinstar PB pack, I think LN would have been just as doable without the extra etank and super missiles. This route change is something I was even considering for our run, but I didn't think we could do LN with 1 less etank. In retrospect, it seems very possible. The ridley fight ends with a full etank being burned in acid, and everything prior to and after the ridley fight can be compensated by with a little more time spent on enemy energy drops. Maybe my math is wrong here, but I would love to here from you on the topic.
Hero your funny man!!! You do realize you guys collected 4 more items then Saturn right? You might be right about Norfair though by manipulating drops and collecting more from the pods or bugs before Ridley. That would definitely have to be tested.
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lxx4xNx6xxl wrote:
hero of the day wrote:
2. I like the route change, but I still feel that you had too much equipment for the need of this run.I really think green brinstar cleanup could have been comfortably omitted. If you got the pink brinstar PB pack, I think LN would have been just as doable without the extra etank and super missiles. This route change is something I was even considering for our run, but I didn't think we could do LN with 1 less etank. In retrospect, it seems very possible. The ridley fight ends with a full etank being burned in acid, and everything prior to and after the ridley fight can be compensated by with a little more time spent on enemy energy drops. Maybe my math is wrong here, but I would love to here from you on the topic.
Hero your funny man!!! You do realize you guys collected 4 more items then Saturn right? You might be right about Norfair though by manipulating drops and collecting more from the pods or bugs before Ridley. That would definitely have to be tested.
Are you sure it was 4? Remember we didn't do the green brinstar cleanup. That's 3 less items right there which offsets the 3 items grabbed in croco land. We did however collect the pink PB pack, and missile pack after speed booster. Did I miss some other missile packs?
They're off to find the hero of the day...
Joined: 11/26/2010
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First you can just check the item collection at the end to see for yourself. I will name them off for you though 3 Missile Packs, 1 Power Bomb Pack and Grapple Beam. Saturn picks up a Super Missile Pack that you guys didn't so that equals 4. Missile Pack 1 - Pink Brinstar above the Charge Beam Missile Pack 2 - Pink Brinstar Breakable Blocks before Hopper Room Missile Pack 3 - After Speed Booster Room Power Bomb Pack - In Croco Land (I like that BTW) Grapple Beam - Self Explanatory For those who don't know the game has 100 Items so each item counts as 1% of your rate of collection.
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Joined: 7/16/2006
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Yes vote. Cool run with lots of neat tricks. Speaking of which, how did you get speed boost activated in the Draygon fight, anyways? Also, whatever happened to that Redesign TAS?
Joined: 7/2/2007
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There's a short-charge technique you can perform to get speed booster in less distance than necessary. The basic technique is to avoid pressing the run button until Samus has taken two steps at "walking" speed; this can be done easily even unassisted. However, there's not quite enough space in Draygon's arena for it to work, so you have to go for the more advanced from, where you only press the run button during a specific frame of Samus's running animation. Doing this once in addition to the two-step delay is enough, and you can do that unassisted with a little practice; I've done it myself, though not while Draygon was actually present. For more details, see this description.
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That's not what happened at Draygon though, because he doesn't have gravity suit and can therefore not charge up a shinespark by running at all. It is done by letting Draygon catch you while performing a Crystal Flash. While doing a crystal flash your shinespark timer oscilates between 5 and 1 (for whatever reason), and when it's finished it goes back to 0. Having Draygon catch you breaks the crystal flash unnaturally, so the spark timer never goes back to 0 but keeps oscillating until a shinespark has been performed (or, I assume, until you charge another one), this essentially gives you one free shinespark that can be preformed at any time without any charging up.
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Cpadolf wrote:
That's not what happened at Draygon though, because he doesn't have gravity suit and can therefore not charge up a shinespark by running at all. It is done by letting Draygon catch you while performing a Crystal Flash. While doing a crystal flash your shinespark timer oscilates between 5 and 1 (for whatever reason), and when it's finished it goes back to 0. Having Draygon catch you breaks the crystal flash unnaturally, so the spark timer never goes back to 0 but keeps oscillating until a shinespark has been performed (or, I assume, until you charge another one), this essentially gives you one free shinespark that can be preformed at any time without any charging up.
I'd just like to add that because he killed Draygon with the shinespark, he was able to maintain this odd property and get a second "free" shinespark which he used to escape the room outside of Draygon's.
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Actually, Dessy...
Cpadolf wrote:
He had already hurt him a lot with PB combos and missiles, so he didn't have much HP at the end. The shinespark itself didn't actually do too much damage, but there were some PB combo projectiles that trailed behind just after he hit draygon with the shinespark that killed him (this is necessary, as killing him with the shinespark itself would break the shinespark before reaching the ledge).
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Dessyreqt wrote:
I'd just like to add that because he killed Draygon with the shinespark, he was able to maintain this odd property and get a second "free" shinespark which he used to escape the room outside of Draygon's.
Actually, it's a different glitch that allows him to do the second shinespark. If Draygon dies while you are in a shinespark, Samus state resets into standing position and she goes out of the shinespark, but the booster level, which isn't reset, maintains the max level as that's where it is during a shinespark, and when the booster level is maxed you can crouch to charge a new shinespark. So the first one (after the crystal flash) is pre-charged, and can be performed without crouching first, while the second one is the standard bluesuit glitch that allows you to charge a shinespark anywhere by crouching.
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
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Due to some encode problems this was a bit delayed, but here is a comparison between this run and its two predecessors: Link to video I just watched it now: Yes vote, of course. I especially liked maridia. Now, if only Saturn would submit super metroid redesign too...
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Cpadolf wrote:
That's not what happened at Draygon though, because he doesn't have gravity suit and can therefore not charge up a shinespark by running at all...
Wow, I'm really not on the ball today. You'd think I could remember that you can't run up a shinespark when you're underwater with no Gravity suit! Thanks for the correction. And yeah, seems like the timing there is very tight -- he has to Shinespark up to the top of the ledge, then have Draygon die before he hits the ceiling, so he can get the Shinespark back.
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Ace Of Hearts wrote:
So pausing the game to do it manually saves in-game time, even if it would otherwise be slower in realtime.
I really wish that authors of TASes of this game would stop paying attention to the "in-game time". It just ends up producing completely arbitrary rules on how much the pause screen can be used. By abusing the pause screen, I'm sure that you could produce a 5-hour run that nevertheless is a few seconds faster from the in-game timer's perspective than the current best. But nobody would want to watch that. Therefore, the author will apply some completely arbitrary rules on how many times he uses the pause screen. IMO wallclock time is all that counts.
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It's fabulous. Easy yes vote.
Post subject: Re: #3652: Saturn's SNES Super Metroid "Reverse Boss Order" in 46:42.38
Tub
Joined: 6/25/2005
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TASVideoAgent wrote:
The story is about a bounty hunter called Samus who has the goal to explore a foreign planet called Zebes[..]
It's not foreign! She grew up there! Despite your lore weaknesses, I'll have to vote yes. I still don't like the choice of ingame-time and the consequences it brings, but since this obsoletes an ingame-run there's no point arguing about it.
m00
Joined: 11/16/2009
Posts: 68
Cpadolf wrote:
Actually, it's a different glitch that allows him to do the second shinespark. If Draygon dies while you are in a shinespark, Samus state resets into standing position and she goes out of the shinespark, but the booster level, which isn't reset, maintains the max level as that's where it is during a shinespark, and when the booster level is maxed you can crouch to charge a new shinespark. So the first one (after the crystal flash) is pre-charged, and can be performed without crouching first, while the second one is the standard bluesuit glitch that allows you to charge a shinespark anywhere by crouching.
Well, I realized that the second spark was a bluesuit, but I didn't realize that the PB combo is what actually finished off Draygon, I had assumed that he just wanted the extra damage to finish off Draygon.
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Personally, I've barely played Super Metroid. But this is one category I find consistently quite cool to watch. So, here's a late, needless yes vote to add to the pile.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [2078] SNES Super Metroid "Reverse Boss Order" by Saturn in 46:42.38
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Very high quality encode (886MB): H.264 10bit444 CRF 0, FLAC lossless audio https://mega.co.nz/#!CI5GgTiR!Z4j91yUF8rZAxNI8EgwIxjmig2YRsUisByQu4yRnrIA P.S.: Just noticed the rerecord count in the hardcoded subtitles got cut off, mea culpa...
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RGamma wrote:
Very high quality encode (886MB): H.264 10bit444 CRF 0, FLAC lossless audio https://mega.co.nz/#!CI5GgTiR!Z4j91yUF8rZAxNI8EgwIxjmig2YRsUisByQu4yRnrIA
"Your browser does not allow data to be written. Please make sure you use default browser settings." Why can't websites today just give you the file you want, period? Why all the hoops?
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I know this website is full of pitfalls, yet it's the only one that is free (as in gratis) and accepted such a large file. If you have a suggestion for a better host, let me know.
All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
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I got 2 comments: 1. The run was kinda......"ok-ish" until around 20 minutes in, where it then became alot more intense due to you losing health rapidly. 2. This may sound kinda dumb, but is there anyway to kill Mother Brain first?
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jlun2 wrote:
I got 2 comments:2. This may sound kinda dumb, but is there anyway to kill Mother Brain first?
You can use the X-Ray Climb glitch to get into Tourian without killing any of the other bosses, as the any% run does. And you can easily get enough gear to kill her before killing any of the other bosses. However, so far as I'm aware, killing her directly causes the planet-blows-up sequence. Even if you ignore the time limit this imposes, you get locked out of almost all of the map, including the locations of all of the other major bosses. You might possibly be able to reset the game state to void the planet-blows-up sequence, using the Space-Time Beam glitch. That would require figuring out how to get the Plasma beam without killing Draygon (the giant green shrimp boss). Of course, resetting with that glitch would also reset Mother Brain to being alive again...
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WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
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