Merry Christmas!
  • Emulator used: Snes9x 1.43 v13/v17
  • Aims for ingame time
  • Takes damage to save time
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.

Crateria and Blue Brinstar

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.

Green / Pink Brinstar

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.

Norfair

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).

Lower Norfair

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.

Norfair

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.

Maridia

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.

Wrecked Ship

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's Lair

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.

Tourian

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...

Joined: 8/23/2008
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Tub wrote:
One point that some people missed: RBO *has* been done on console, for example here: http://www.archive.org/details/Hotarubi_SuperMetroid_RBO_54 He's picking up a lot more items (46% instead of 33%) and taking twice the time (0:54 instead of 0:27) though, but he is doing the bosses in reverse order and he skips all the suits.
Thanks for pointing that out. RBO is a great category to publish for this exact reason. The only way to complete it on console is to be extremely good at the game, and then still you need to change the route substantially to pick up all the upgrades needed to pull it off.
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moozooh wrote:
This will be somewhat harsh; bear with me. (Long post)
Moozooh wins. Fatality.
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I must join the crowd that says this is one of the best TASes in a long time. Also, the frozen bridge trick was awesome. One of the good things about this run is that it's pretty clear even to the casual viewer who has never played the game why it's challenging.
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BTW thanks for the submission text it was very informative!!! I was wondering what happened to Kraid. LOL. Also thanks for posting that video Saturn!!! It was really good especially not being as up to date to what we have now. If you can post an .smv of it so I can add it to my collection , I'd really appreciate it!!!!!
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There's nothing else I believe I can add that hasn't already been said, or provide praise that hasn't already been given, so I'll just ask... any plans on adding a "possible improvements" section to the description or providing any of your own thoughts on the matter? I'd just love to hear them out of curiosity.
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Looks like SM really deserves 5 branches. Or did I miss something?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Congratulations on getting accepted guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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creaothceann
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lxx4xNx6xxl wrote:
Congratulations on getting accepted guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!
?????????????
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creaothceann wrote:
lxx4xNx6xxl wrote:
Congratulations on getting accepted guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!
?????????????
?????????????
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Yeah, let me ask you both, what makes you wonder beyond any words?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I think Reeve(Eye of the Beholder) was asking why he was questioning my post.
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feos wrote:
Looks like SM really deserves 5 branches. Or did I miss something?
I don't see a problem with that either. And even if for some reason the number of branches is kept to four, it would probably be better to replace one of the existing branches with this one. Some of the existing branches look extremely similar. If any of the branches don't deserve to exist, IMO, it would be separate in-game-time and real-time branches.
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lxx4xNx6xxl wrote:
[...]
Sorry, I missed the updates in the first post, so "accepted" was confusing because the thread is still in Workbench.
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I think a good judging decision was made here. Also, very impressive run of course. Good job guys.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
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Apparently there is a 2~second improvement on Mother Brain, so if we can delay the publication until we've sorted this out, that would be great.
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Kriole wrote:
Apparently there is a 2~second improvement on Mother Brain, so if we can delay the publication until we've sorted this out, that would be great.
Wow that's awesome!!!!!!! Which form 1st, 2nd or 3rd? Also is it a Real Time or In-Game Time or a little bit of both?
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lxx4xNx6xxl wrote:
Wow that's awesome!!!!!!! Which form 1st, 2nd or 3rd? Also is it a Real Time or In-Game Time or a little bit of both?
It's when the Big Metroid is about to die. Apparently it's faster to bring him to the right side of the room so that he swoops in much earlier (Saturn did this in his GT any%). The new smv is here. I asked DarkKobold to replace the movie file, so it should probably be up sometime soon.
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Turska, are you still doing the primary and 10bit444 for this? Err, I guess we are waiting on a slight improvement anyway, nevermind.
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I'd rather have 10 Super Metroid branches as having 2 Combatribes' But anyway, congratulations!
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ノಥ益ಥ)ノ
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Can someone with privileges please replace the movie file with the one 3 posts above? I'm working on the encodes for this and will publish soon.
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feos wrote:
Dear God. How in the world were they able to play with death like that? And that situation occured several times in a row! I think the whole sense of HP management is packed in this screenshot.
And I think that could also be the screenshot for the video. Anyway, I was thinking about the 4-branches thing, and this was what I came up with as the possible five categories: (Yes, I am thinking of a fifth category, but mainly because that that category would serve as a sort of a 'Hard' mode for Super Metroid) Any%, Minimum Realtime or Gametime Run, Non-Glitched Any% Glitched Run 100% Run Any% RBO Run Low% Run - For this sort of run, it would be somewhat like Other M's Hard mode. That is, all upgrades are allowed to be collected, but with both Missiles, Super Missiles and Power Bombs, you can only collect 1 of each. And as for the E-Tanks? Well, you shouldn't collect any of them. The same would possibly go for the Reserve Tanks. It would provide an interesting challenge for players, yet not be as restrictive as the low% "speed booster" & "ice beam" runs with regards to what beams can be used. In fact, it would cause players to use the beams more often than a normal speedrun. But this is only just an idea. As for this submission, it deserves to be included as another Super Metroid run.
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As Cpadolf's run features the same situation, I doubt it would be a good screenshot. But it shows everything anyway.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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ah2190 wrote:
Low% Run - For this sort of run, it would be somewhat like Other M's Hard mode. That is, all upgrades are allowed to be collected, but with both Missiles, Super Missiles and Power Bombs, you can only collect 1 of each. And as for the E-Tanks? Well, you shouldn't collect any of them. The same would possibly go for the Reserve Tanks. It would provide an interesting challenge for players, yet not be as restrictive as the low% "speed booster" & "ice beam" runs with regards to what beams can be used. In fact, it would cause players to use the beams more often than a normal speedrun. But this is only just an idea.
You have to have at bare minimum 3 E-tanks and the Gravity suit to survive one hit from Mother Brain's rainbow beam. The game is otherwise uncompletable unless you use X-Ray scope glitching to skip Mother Brain. Otherwise, all your run does, really, is let the player also get the beams and speedbooster, as well as some upgrades that the existing any% run doesn't bother with (c.f. space jump, screw attack, spring ball, X-ray scope). And why would we want a low% run that isn't actually low%? If you're going to do a challenge mode, it should be as challenging as possible. The reason why Metroid Fusion / Other-M low% runs work the way they do is that the developers did their best to ensure that every non-ammo-expansion upgrade is required at least once (and that if you get an upgrade that isn't required to continue, like the Spazer beam, then at least the act of getting is is unavoidable). That's far from the case for Super Metroid, while Super Metroid simultaneously has some "ammo" requirements that necessitate picking up expansions -- in addition to the rainbow beam problem, normally you need 15 ballistic ammo (missiles/super missiles) to destroy the Zebetites, though you can also glitch past them with the ice beam.
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Well, it was just an idea. And you shot it down faster than a Metroid on ice.
Post subject: Movie published
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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. ---- [1950] SNES Super Metroid "reverse boss order" by Taco, Kriole, hero of the day in 48:06.65