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...


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3652: Saturn's SNES Super Metroid "Reverse Boss Order" in 46:42.38
Editor, Skilled player (1437)
Joined: 3/31/2010
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Very nice improvement, I enjoyed the new strategies a lot. Also glad to see Super Metroid still has some lifeblood in it - yes vote.
Player (100)
Joined: 3/20/2008
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Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
I think the universe just imploded- Saturn submitted an uncontroversial run! See here for the door skipping script. Yes vote, I liked the Maridia improvements.
Skilled player (1443)
Joined: 7/15/2007
Posts: 1468
Location: Sweden
Well this was certainly an unexpected and awesome birthday present :P The new route is very good, my only problem with it is that parts of maridia aren't as entertaining (no mocktroid bridge in particular), and that there is several pause screens. But that doesn't bother me too much. It's all around a expertly planned out run, full of clever strategies and meticulous optimizations. I had no idea you would get pushed up like that when walljumping against the fish in Maridia, I had to watch that several times to be sure that my eyes didn't deceive me. Also, the way you ended Draygon is definitely the new "coolest thing that ever happened in Super Metroid" One question, what did the bomb spread at Mt. Doom do?
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
Joined: 11/16/2009
Posts: 68
I consider the current RBO run to be the pinnacle of TASing, and you just beat it by almost a minute and a half. Unquestionable yes vote here. It's only too bad that the hardest form of Super Metroid, speed booster 14%, is too boring to be published here.
Player (89)
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1058
Location: United States
Absolutely awesome run. Never did I think that our run could be bested by this amount of time. I loved your new maridia strategies, especially the epic conclusion to the draygon battle. It sucks that so many pause screens had to be included, but I understand why you did it. It is also a shame that there is no more mocktroid bridge :P Couple things: 1. I found that it was possible to enter kraid's area (right after the elevator, and shooting the wall out with the super missile) with a jump/morphball. This would eliminate the need to use a walljump in the blue section. It might be faster by a few frames, if any at all. 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.
They're off to find the hero of the day...
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Joined: 11/26/2007
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hero of the day wrote:
1. I found that it was possible to enter kraid's area (right after the elevator, and shooting the wall out with the super missile) with a jump/morphball. This would eliminate the need to use a walljump in the blue section. It might be faster by a few frames, if any at all.
Iirc this is slower, the setup takes a lot of time =/.
Joined: 5/12/2009
Posts: 748
Location: Brazil
yes vote! The run was very entertaining and it's an improvement anyway. I was wondering about that bomb spread in Maridia as well, but it seems it was just playaround, as it didn't change anything. I was confused thinking it had a purpose due to the pause screen right before the bomb spread, but then i realized it was to disable ice to make the frozen crab to unfreeze and move.
creaothceann
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YES vote! :)
Vykan12 wrote:
See here for the door skipping script.
Unfortunately it produces jumps in the background music. If there was a way to pause it...
Skilled player (1443)
Joined: 7/15/2007
Posts: 1468
Location: Sweden
Eye Of The Beholder wrote:
I was wondering about that bomb spread in Maridia as well, but it seems it was just playaround, as it didn't change anything. I was confused thinking it had a purpose due to the pause screen right before the bomb spread, but then i realized it was to disable ice to make the frozen crab to unfreeze and move.
Ah, yes, that's what it is. Nice catch :)
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
creaothceann wrote:
YES vote! :)
Vykan12 wrote:
See here for the door skipping script.
Unfortunately it produces jumps in the background music. If there was a way to pause it...
Unfortunately, I don't think there's any situation in-game where music playback pauses, so there's probably no equivalent to pauseMusic() and unpauseMusic() that a transition-skipping Lua program could do. I don't count the pause when you grab an item, because the music starts over from the beginning after that. It'd still be possible, but you'd have to figure out how to pause the music playback yourself...and since that would require changing how the ROM behaves, it might lead to desyncs.
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I liked the improvements made to getting around in Maridia without the Grapple Beam in addition to being without the Gravity Suit, and since this is an in-game time run, it uses pauses for restoring energy from reserves and other things that require the game be paused (like different charge combos and stuff), saving in-game time in little ways throughout. It is clear to me that much effort went into this run, and it is interesting in ways different than the RBO run by Taco & Kriole that it will obsolete when approved. This is a no-brainer: my vote is Yes.
1/60 of a second is important; every frame matters.
creaothceann
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Ace Of Hearts wrote:
it uses pauses for restoring energy from reserves
This happens automatically though. (don't know if it's faster/slower)
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Joined: 2/18/2005
Posts: 1451
Cpadolf: As Reeve said, the bomb spread was purely a show off demonstrating it's extreme rise underwater when being suitless. Hero: 1. The walljump loses around 5 frames here, which I highly doubt would be slower than a morph-demorph delay along with it's greater speed requirement for the jump. 2. The problem is that in LN it will be very hard to gain energy from refills due to any refilling delay resulting in energy loss from the heat, so you will be forced to repeat a room multiple times quickly killing enemies on the way (respawning enemies won't give you any gains AFAIK). You'd have to gain 2 tanks that way (saving the Rtank until after the hidden LN Etank seems impossible due to not having any killable in time enemies before it), so the delay would be serious either way. Then you'd have to count in considerable delays at Ridley and especially Draygon from not having the additional Super Missiles, which together would probably end up close to the time it takes to clear the green brinstar hideout ingame time wise.
See my perfect 100% movie-walkthroughs of the best RPG games on http://www.freewebs.com/saturnsmovies/index.htm Current TAS project (with new videos): Super Metroid Redesign, any% speedrun
BigBoct
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creaothceann wrote:
Ace Of Hearts wrote:
it uses pauses for restoring energy from reserves
This happens automatically though. (don't know if it's faster/slower)
Considering when the R-Tank was being manually used, it was probably faster. You can't Crystal Flash if there's any energy in reserve, and if your R-Tank auto-fills during gameplay, and you're in a heated area, your health will still be being drained while the R-Tank is refilling you. On the run: Holy mother, this was AWESOME. How exactly did you manage to kill Draygon and get to the door with only one spark? It looked to me like you did it by grazing him.
Previous Name: boct1584
Rolanmen1
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Loved this run absolutely. Yes vote.
Skilled player (1443)
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boct1584 wrote:
On the run: Holy mother, this was AWESOME. How exactly did you manage to kill Draygon and get to the door with only one spark? It looked to me like you did it by grazing him.
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).
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
Joined: 2/28/2012
Posts: 160
Location: Philadelphia
Very good improvement to a very good run. Yes vote.
Joined: 5/27/2012
Posts: 70
Location: Wisconsin
yes vote very nice improvement and only since i just started to play this game its impressive that there is life in this game almost 20 years later good job
Former player
Joined: 5/4/2005
Posts: 502
Location: Onett, Eagleland
Enjoyed this, yes vote.
I think.....therefore I am not Barry Burton
Joined: 11/26/2010
Posts: 454
Location: New York, US
Wow, so this is what you've been working on this whole time. I was wondering what you had up your sleeve. Easy Yes Vote!!! The run was just incredible and with no help or input from anyone made it even more amazing. This will without a doubt get published, congratulations!!! There is only one question that comes to mind Saturn, whats next!?
My name is Forensics.
Spikestuff
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almost 2 minutes faster (almost not doing the math) than the last one. Easy YES vote from me :D.
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creaothceann wrote:
Ace Of Hearts wrote:
it uses pauses for restoring energy from reserves
This happens automatically though. (don't know if it's faster/slower)
Yes, the Reserve Tank(s) will activate automatically upon Samus's hitting 0 Energy. However, (and correct me if I'm wrong), since auto-reserve-fill takes place during play (not while the game is paused), the in-game timer still runs while it happens, as I recall. So pausing the game to do it manually saves in-game time, even if it would otherwise be slower in realtime.
1/60 of a second is important; every frame matters.
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Ace Of Hearts wrote:
creaothceann wrote:
Ace Of Hearts wrote:
it uses pauses for restoring energy from reserves
This happens automatically though. (don't know if it's faster/slower)
Yes, the Reserve Tank(s) will activate automatically upon Samus's hitting 0 Energy. However, (and correct me if I'm wrong), since auto-reserve-fill takes place during play (not while the game is paused), the in-game timer still runs while it happens, as I recall. So pausing the game to do it manually saves in-game time, even if it would otherwise be slower in realtime.
Yes that is correct!!!
My name is Forensics.
creaothceann
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*headslap* Right, ingame TAS...