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Essentials

  • Emulator used: SNES9x 1.43 v9
Note: Due to an input display bug in SNES9x v9, it is recommended, but not required, to view the run with this bug-fixed SNES9x located here. However, the run will sync correctly on the standard SNES9x v9, and v7 as well.
  • Genre: Platform
  • Items: 100%
  • Aims for fastest time
    • Takes damage to save time
    • Abuses programming errors
    • Manipulates luck
  • Suggested screenshot:
This is an improvement of 2 minutes and 25 seconds to my previous run. I never expected to get anywhere close to this much improvement.
I aimed for real time instead of game time - this means that I took efforts to reduce lag, pause screens, and door transitions, even at the cost of in-game time.
The in-game timer for this run ended at 37 minutes, 54 seconds, an improvement of 2 minutes and 1 second over my previous version.

Breakdown of improvement (rough estimates)

Ceres & Crateria (Introduction and Bomb Torizo)
  • 2 seconds saved, mostly from tiny optimizations.
Brinstar (Kraid)
  • 2 seconds saved, again just little improvements here and there throughout.
Norfair (Crocomire and item collection)
  • 2 seconds saved by optimizations in earlier item collection.
  • 6 seconds saved on Crocomire.
  • 3 seconds saved in Crocomire's area.
Wrecked Ship & Crateria (Phantoon and item collection)
  • 3 seconds saved on the way to the ship.
  • 1 second saved not getting Phantoon's refills.
  • 7 seconds saved during item collection by better strategies and better robot manipulation.
  • Changing the route to do the Gauntlet area (to the upper-left of Samus's ship) at this point to save time later.
Brinstar (item collection)
  • 19 seconds saved directly and indirectly by removal of the crystal flash.
  • 6 seconds gained by better strategies during item collection.
  • The missile in the green tube is obtained now to save time later.
Maridia (Botwoon, Draygon, and item collection)
  • 6 seconds saved on item collection before Botwoon by better strategy and more optimized play.
  • 5 seconds saved from Botwoon to Draygon from better technique and not collecting refills.
  • 11 seconds saved on item collection after Draygon by better strategy and speed management.
Norfair (Gold Torizo, Ridley, and item collection)
  • 5 seconds saved from better speed management on the way to Gold Torizo.
  • 6 seconds saved on Gold Torizo from less strict manipulation and better shooting.
  • 3 seconds saved on the route to Ridley from better strategy.
  • 1 second saved on Ridley from better manipulation and avoiding refills.
  • 10 seconds saved on remaining item collection in Norfair.
Brinstar & Crateria (Item collection)
  • 6 seconds gained from better strategies up to and skipping the green tube missile.
  • 3 seconds gained in old Brinstar from better speed management.
  • 16 seconds gained due to changing the route for the Gauntlet.
Tourian & Crateria (Mother Brain and escape)
  • 21 seconds gained from skipping the baby Metroid.
  • 2 seconds gained from various other small optimizations.

Additional Information

The basis for techniques used in this run are explained on the Super Metroid Tricks page.
Controller input animation was added with an Input Animator utility I wrote. (This utility can also be used to remove the player 2-5 input, if desired.)
As mentioned above: Due to an input display bug in SNES9x v9, it is recommended, but not required, to view the run with the bugfixed SNES9x located here. The run will sync correctly on the standard SNES9x v9, and v7 as well.
For those interested in a more detailed breakdown of the time saved, you can check the spreadsheet (HTML) I used for comparisons during the making of the run. This spreadsheet will probably answer many specific questions, so I recommend taking a look at it if you are wondering about part of the run.
If anyone is interested in improving this run, contact me if you would like either (1) a 1-player SMV with no extraneous input, or (2) a spreadsheet similar in style to this one, set up to compare a new version.

Thank You

I would like to give thanks to those involved in helping Super Metroid TASing become what it is today. This includes:
  • Michael Flatley
  • Terimakasih
  • Saturn
  • catnap
  • hero of the day
  • moozooh
  • Kejardon
  • Graveworm
  • Frenom
Though I don't know them by name, thanks also to the many people who have done and researched console speedruns for the game, as they have found many strategies which were the basis for a tool-assisted speedrun.
Thanks to Gocha for his memory watcher utility for SNES9x which saved me a lot of time.
Thanks to Upthorn, nitsuja, and Fabianx for their help in removing the input display bug from SNES9x.
Thanks to Fabian for help with ideas for controller input.
Thanks to Bisqwit for a very handy HTML conversion of the spreadsheet.
Thanks to you for watching this run!
DeHackEd: Wow, that's a lot of votes.

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Posted: 3/25/2007 9:10 PM
Post subject: Input display AVI added
Quote
Bisqwit
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
Here is the AVI that shows the input along with the movie. It is slightly customized from the way snes9x displays it by default. http://tracker.tasvideos.org/supermetroid-tasv2-items100p-jxq-keydisplay.avi.torrent
Posted: 3/26/2007 3:59 AM
Post subject: ROMG
Quote
skuzz
Joined: 9/2/2005
Posts: 26
JXQ YOU OWN MY SOUL JK LOL ROFFLE ELL EM AH OHH! I was all like "oh great, your goofy hobby strikes again, should I really take time out of my busy schedule to watch some video of a video I've already watched?" So I begrudgingly downloaded the torrent, loaded it in a PROPER media player (VLC thank you) and WOWW I just started laughing my ass off when I saw what your VB program actually let you do! Mad props for one-upping yourself once more and again making a non-TASser pay attention to your bag of magic frame advance! --Agent Smith / Skuzz / Awesome
I rule.
Posted: 4/20/2007 6:50 PM
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nremorse
Joined: 4/20/2007
Posts: 1
Nice run. LOL @ the DDR part at ~27:30-28:30.
Posted: 6/1/2007 4:51 PM
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Ren
Joined: 12/20/2005
Posts: 46
Awesome. Absolutely incredible. You, sir, have reached a pinnacle of TASing that will not be overcome for a long time to come. I am in awe.
Posted: 6/4/2007 11:45 AM
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Yrr
Joined: 8/10/2006
Posts: 289
Location: Germany, Bayern
My highlight: at about frame 180.000 (49:40-50:00). 7 Hit x 50 Yea! Yes vote.
Posted: 7/20/2007 1:11 AM
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JXQ
Experienced player (761)
Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132
NES TAS of 2008 Speedy TAS of 2008 SNES TASer of 2007 TAS of 2007 SNES TAS of 2007 Funny TAS of 2007
Homer: Well basically, I just copied the plant we have now. Burns: Hmmm. Homer: Then, I added some fins to lower wind resistance. And this racing stripe here I feel is pretty sharp. Burns: Agreed. First prize. Hello! I've finished work on an AVI which takes this TAS, and removes the more boring parts, such as door transitions, item acquired boxes, a good part of the elevator rides, the intro, the credits, and the cutscene between Ceres and Zebes. Normally, hacking apart this run would throw the sound out of sync, but I remixed the sound partly by use of the sound channel toggle that Upthorn added to SNES9x 1.43, and partly by manual reconstruction of the individual sounds. I also took advantage of this position by turning down some of the louder sounds and playing the music tracks for longer instead of always following the environment. Anyway, I'm really happy with the result. You can download this from the Internet Archive.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Posted: 7/20/2007 10:58 AM
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Warp
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
This has already been discussed in the past. Doing this is controversial. The TAS scene had to fight for years against all the badmouthing and lies about TAS videos before it got widespread acceptance. One such widespread lie was that TAS videos were edited to achieve shorter times and impossible feats. One of the main points in the FAQ is precisely that these videos are *not* edited in any way, but are 1-to-1 video captures of the emulator playing the game using the stored input key sequences. Publishing edited TAS videos kind of nullifies all the effort put into convincing the public that the videos are indeed legit emulator captures, not edited ones. There's always the danger that some moron will post in some popular forum a link to the edited video and start badmouthing TASing using that video which "has clearly been edited to achieve an impossibly short time" as proof. And besides, the intro is a *relevant* part of the storyline going on. It's not "boring". It's part of the viewing experience. Removing it is incomprehensible.
Posted: 7/20/2007 11:01 AM
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moozooh
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
Warp wrote:
Publishing edited TAS videos kind of nullifies all the effort put into convincing the public that the videos are indeed legit emulator captures, not edited ones. There's always the danger that some moron will post in some popular forum a link to the edited video and start badmouthing TASing using that video which "has clearly been edited to achieve an impossibly short time" as proof.
I guess he'll be still regarded as a moron in that case, since all those who know how the ingame timer works know that none of the frames where it runs have been cut out. :) It's not an "official" publication, and link to the official one has been provided. No reasons for panic here, I believe.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/20/2007 11:04 AM
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Warp
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
moozooh wrote:
It's not an "official" publication, and link to the official one has been provided. No reasons for panic here, I believe.
It wouldn't be the first time that a TAS video has been ripped and posted out of context into youtube, with no mention about its true source.
Posted: 7/20/2007 1:37 PM
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JXQ
Experienced player (761)
Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132
NES TAS of 2008 Speedy TAS of 2008 SNES TASer of 2007 TAS of 2007 SNES TAS of 2007 Funny TAS of 2007
I think that attitude is too concerned with what other people think. There will always be people who don't get it, and others who take it upon themselves to try and inform those people can end up censoring themselves. It reminds me of the "God's Hand" fiasco - getting worried because someone else might make an incorrect assumption and think badly of the product or its producer as a result, and censoring the whole situation to avoid this scenario, even though at the core, there was nothing malevolent there in the first place. My response is: So what? Since when is it my job to make sure that no one misunderstands anything I do? I just made this video because I think it's entertaining to watch. I don't care about the "reputation" of TASing. This won't be replacing any official publication at the site, so those who are hopelessly lost trying to watch a Super Metroid TAS without first reading the plot can refer to the original encoding.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Posted: 7/20/2007 1:44 PM
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Tompa
Any
Editor, Expert player (2215)
Joined: 8/15/2005
Posts: 1942
Location: Mullsjö, Sweden
NES TAS of 2018 SNES TASer of 2017 SNES TAS of 2017 NES TAS of 2014 GBA TASer of 2011 GBA TAS of 2011 SNES TASer of 2010
REally nice work with that avi JXQ. It sure is awesome! :D Before I always fast forwarded through all those pauses, now there's no need for it :).
Posted: 7/20/2007 2:21 PM
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Tub
Joined: 6/25/2005
Posts: 1377
unfortunately, this movie lacks two important things: - good image quality. That's what happens when you re-encode an already lossy video :/ - an effort to explain what's going on. The TAS-Disclaimer is shortened to almost nothing, and there's no explanation like "intro and door transitions have been removed from the video because they're boring" anywhere. I's not your job to make sure nobody misunderstands anything you do (that'd be impossible), but making sure that a reasonable person has a chance to understand what's going on without guessing would be helpful. If someone who doesn't know about TAS finds a copy of the video on youtube, how would he have any chance of figuring it out?
m00
Posted: 7/20/2007 4:13 PM
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JXQ
Experienced player (761)
Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132
NES TAS of 2008 Speedy TAS of 2008 SNES TASer of 2007 TAS of 2007 SNES TAS of 2007 Funny TAS of 2007
Thanks Tompa. Yay someone else found value in it :) This is my first real experience at encoding things, and I do agree that the video quality is sub-par when compared to the official tasvideos encodes, though it's not by any means unwatchable for me. I've been given some tips that can hopefully improve my future projects. However, I didn't want any kind of introduction; I wanted the action to start from the beginning and never let up until the end. That was the whole point of the video. I don't think that saying "door transitions and such were removed" is necessary at all. Watch the video for a few minutes and it becomes obvious that there aren't any door transitions. I also believe that someone who watches it, and is interested in figuring out the origins of the video, could educate himself.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Posted: 7/20/2007 4:25 PM
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Kyrsimys
Former player
Joined: 4/16/2004
Posts: 1286
Location: Finland
I can't watch it because of the quality. To me it's way below enjoyable. I'm with Tompa though, I always fast forward through door transitions and such and consequently sometimes miss something because of too much fast forwarding, so it would be nice to watch a video with the pauses cut out.
Posted: 7/20/2007 4:43 PM
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laughing_gas
Former player
Joined: 10/1/2006
Posts: 1102
Location: boot_camp
JXQ wrote:
This is my first real experience at encoding things, and I do agree that the video quality is sub-par when compared to the official tasvideos encodes, though it's not by any means unwatchable for me. I've been given some tips that can hopefully improve my future projects.
Why not just direct stream copy the edited parts in vdub(mod)? Eliminates the quality loss of re-encoding and is faster too.
Borg Collective wrote:
Negotiation is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant. You will be assimilated.
Posted: 7/20/2007 6:42 PM
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Warp
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
laughing_gas wrote:
Why not just direct stream copy the edited parts in vdub(mod)? Eliminates the quality loss of re-encoding and is faster too.
Direct stream copying can only be done from keyframes forward. There would need to be keyframes at each point where a wanted section starts. Perhaps I'm a bit weird, but I have watched every single Super Metroid video published here and I have never skipped anything.
Posted: 7/20/2007 6:44 PM
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Saturn
Player (206)
Joined: 2/18/2005
Posts: 1451
Ok, I just watched the AVI and it was great! The quality is sure not the best, but absolutely acceptable since you can see everything you need without problems. Only the file size is a bit large for this quality, but fine encoding isn't that easy without having the knowledge with the optimal settings. I very much liked how you managed the tracks order, picking suitable music to almost any places without many changes. I liked the hidden soundtrack at Draygons that you can only hear when going to the menu before Torizo appears for a longer time. Spores music at Phantoon was also a nice idea. The only thing that I didn't like was that you skipped the door animations as extremely as possible. That way the run is fully in the flow of course, but when exiting a room and going to the next, you often miss a slight part of the beginning of it, since the switch is so quickly that human reaction isn't able to see every detail that fast. I would skip everything like you did, but add at least a ~0,2 sec delay between each door transition to ease the watcher getting every detail between them. Pretty much like I did with the RBO demos, where the skip is there, but you still are able to fully follow each room because of slight delays between door transitions. But whatever, it was great to see and I fully enjoyed this 37 min. Good job!
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
Posted: 7/20/2007 6:51 PM
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Fabian
Former player
Joined: 6/15/2005
Posts: 1711
I'm pissed you cut out the intro. That's just incomprehensible.
Zoey Ridin' High <Fabian_> I prett much never drunk
Posted: 7/20/2007 10:06 PM
Quote
hero_of_the_day
Player (89)
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1058
Location: United States
Damn good job JXQ. I agree with Saturn that the door transitions could have been slightly longer, but overall this was really fun to watch.
They're off to find the hero of the day...
Posted: 7/21/2007 3:00 AM
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VANDAL
Experienced player (614)
Joined: 4/24/2005
Posts: 612
That was a great idea JXQ. It's much more alive feeling without all the transitions. Enjoyable, I'd vote yes for it :).
Posted: 7/21/2007 1:05 PM
Quote
JXQ
Experienced player (761)
Joined: 5/6/2005
Posts: 3132
NES TAS of 2008 Speedy TAS of 2008 SNES TASer of 2007 TAS of 2007 SNES TAS of 2007 Funny TAS of 2007
Thanks, guys! I may retry this with more video knowledge, just not anytime soon. And if others who submit their Super Metroid runs are interested in this, I could try it again then, too.
<Swordless> Go hug a tree, you vegetarian (I bet you really are one)
Posted: 7/21/2007 1:24 PM
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upthorn
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Active player (392)
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
Sega TAS of 2011 Sega TAS of 2010 Sega TAS of 2008 Sega TASer of 2007
Warp wrote:
It wouldn't be the first time that a TAS video has been ripped and posted out of context into youtube, with no mention about its true source.
JXQ is its true source.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Posted: 5/23/2008 3:48 PM
Post subject: Re: Input display AVI added
Quote
OME9A
Joined: 5/23/2008
Posts: 4
Bisqwit wrote:
Here is the AVI that shows the input along with the movie. It is slightly customized from the way snes9x displays it by default. http://tracker.tasvideos.org/supermetroid-tasv2-items100p-jxq-keydisplay.avi.torrent
ahh :( I really want to see the input, but the link provided doesn't work! I tried downloading snes9x 1.43 improvement 12 beta 12 and playing it with the ROM, but I still couldn't get the inputs on screen (I've never used snes9x in my life so it was hard enough getting the movie to play in the first place). If possible I would rather the AVI, but otherwise, could someone briefly explain how to get the inputs to show in 1.43 improv 12 beta 12? The movie plays properly, but there's no inputs... Thanks!
Posted: 5/23/2008 4:10 PM
Quote
Cpadolf
Skilled player (1444)
Joined: 7/15/2007
Posts: 1468
Location: Sweden
SNES TASer of 2009 Rookie of 2008 SNES TASer of 2008
I think the original button for it is Comma (","). If not you go from the menu, Input --> Customize Hotkeys --> Show pressed keys and check what button it is mapped to.
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
Posted: 5/23/2008 4:32 PM
Post subject: Re: Input display AVI added
Quote
moozooh
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
OME9A wrote:
I really want to see the input, but the link provided doesn't work!
How exactly does it not work? It works quite well here.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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