(Link to video)
  • Small miscalculation of time in the youtube video, I counted that 1 second was exactly 60 frames.

Details

  • Emulator used: BizHawk 1.4.1
  • 100% item collection
  • Aims for lowest ingame time
  • Manipulates luck
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Abuses programming errors
This is a new 100% run for Super Metroid that aims for ingame time, in that regard it beats the old one by 4425 frames, and finishes with a new final time of 00:34 as opposed to the last ones 00:36. In realtime it is 697 frames slower, partly due to aiming for ingame time but also in large part because of the more accurate emulation. It should be noted that this run would have beat the old one in realtime as well if made on the obsoleted emulator that was used for the last run. The run has been in the works in planning stages for years, with new tricks and strategies being constantly researched, in particular from about 1.5 years ago and forward. The run itself was started a little more than 3 months ago and has been worked on very intensively throughout that time. The improvements come from tons of minor optimizations, new strategies, a slightly altered route as well as aiming for ingame time.
I chose to aim for ingame time because in my opinion it is a more entertaining goal to watch. In particular optimizing door transitions for realtime often looks very ugly and can break the pace of the run. Seeing as this is a 100% run and therefore mainly exists to be entertaining as opposed to beat the game in the fastest imaginable time, I thought this was a reasonable tradeoff. An effort is still made to optimize realtime by minimizing lag and such wherever it doesn't affect ingame time.
This run employs a slightly altered route compared to the last one, which was originally chosen for being faster ingame but ended up saving enough time that it might be faster in realtime as well despite adding a few door transitions. Chargebeam and Wavebeam are picked up much earlier in the run, which makes possible several time saving tricks throughout the run, as well as enabling a bunch of minor improvements. It also allows many more drops to be collected without delay which is crucial for the Lower Norfair part of the run.
As a small aside/interesting note, this run uses every single item and hidden technique at some point for timesaving purposes, unless you count the individual PB combos, which I think is the first run to do so.

Suggested Screenshots

I tried to choose screenshots that contained situations unique to this particular run. The frame numbers of the screenshots are in order of appearance: 53663, 95700, 95818, 129201, 145618, 148705, 184017, 184240.

Thanks to

Huge thanks to Eye of the Beholder and Hero of the Day for helping me throughout the making of the run with feedback, suggestions and support, as well as discovering countless strategies in the planning stages.
Saturn's RBO, his ingame run and his GT Code run all helped me greatly when making my run, setting a standard of optimizations that I was rarely able to exceed. In particular I should thank him for the wave pattern on Draygon in his ingame run and his manipulation on MB while the baby metroid is attacking her in his RBO, which I ended up basically copying as particularly the latter one didn't have logical way to approach optimization of that I could, and his result appeared pretty much perfect and saved me countless hours of blind testing.
Taco and Kriole originally intended to work on the run with me but backed out for a number of reasons, still they did provide some help during the hell run in norfair, and their runs have also contributed many tricks and discoveries that were useful in the making of this run.
4N6 should also be mentioned as he provided a handful of suggestions for strategies that could be used in the run, and the rest of the Super Metroid community should of course also be thanked.

Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: Great improvement. Accepting as an improvement to the currently published movie.
feos: Grabbing...

Player (88)
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
Congratulations dude. All your hard work has really paid off. This is one masterpiece of a run! Yes vote, plus a star please. Screenshot opinions: 53663 - Really like this one. Love the symmetry here. Lots going on. 95700 - The smoke trail above samus says it all. Love it. 95818 - 3 blue samus', one of which sits inside an explosion. Very nice shot indeed. 129201 - Kinda bland. Not a huge fan even though it shows off one of the tricks I found, lol. 145618 - Same as above. This shot could be from a standard SM speed run. 148705 - This one is really cool. I love the bloodshot draygon eye starring backwards at his impending doom! 184017 - I am not a huge fan of this one. 184240 - Not crazy about this one either.
They're off to find the hero of the day...
Editor, Skilled player (1505)
Joined: 7/9/2010
Posts: 1317
Finally I watched the run. It's really entertaining and well done. Yes vote, of course.
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Patashu
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Great TAS, yes vote. For screenshot I like #2 and #3 for the amount of action they imply.
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mklip2001
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Great job! I think that going for in-game time is the best choice these days, given all the controversy we've had about emulator choice and lag patterns. The menu pauses were a little bothersome, but it's nothing too bad. Extra door scrolling didn't bother me since I was already fast-forwarding through door animations. Out of question, what's so different about the new Draygon strategy? On first glance, it didn't look significantly different to me.
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically. Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.) Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html) Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature! Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
Joined: 5/12/2009
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Location: Brazil
In the second round, instead of a pattern where Draygon spit gunks around, Cpadolf got a pattern where he just swoops on the screen going to the left. By doing this Draygon get's faster to the center of the screen where he is killed. In a second round where Draygon spit gunks he goes very slowly to the spot where he is killed. There's probably a better explanation for it though.
Skilled player (1432)
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mklip2001 wrote:
The menu pauses were a little bothersome, but it's nothing too bad.
It should be noted that the second one probably saved 10-15 seconds in total, so it would have been necessary no matter what kind of time the run aimed for. The first one was solely for ingame time purposes though, even though it saved more time than just the time gained from emptying the R-tank in the menu rather than automatically.
Eye Of The Beholder wrote:
In the second round, instead of a pattern where Draygon spit gunks around, Cpadolf got a pattern where he just swoops on the screen going to the left. By doing this Draygon get's faster to the center of the screen where he is killed. In a second round where Draygon spit gunks he goes very slowly to the spot where he is killed. There's probably a better explanation for it though.
No that's basically it. There's not really anything too special about it, it's just been overlooked for longer than it probably should have. For 100% runs anyway, a run like the ingame any% run is probably too dependent on the extra drops you get with the slower pattern for the faster pattern to be beneficial.
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
Joined: 11/26/2010
Posts: 444
Location: New York, US
Automatic YES Vote!!! Simply incredible CPadolf, I don't know what else to say really except thank you for make this!!! I'm also very grateful you mentioned me in your submission text, I truly appreciate it!!! This deserves a STAR no doubt about it.
My name is 4N6/Forensics.
jaysmad
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GOD, that was amazing! Once again cp, i love you man. YES + STAR
Hoandjzj
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Wow, finally!!! Awesome as usual Cpadolf! :D thank you for making this TAS!!! YES + STAR EDIT: I really love the "Wrapping beam shots around" trick that you used in this run, very nice to see :D The Charging shinespark before X-Ray is really impressive!!! And various tricks that have never seen before!
Site Admin, Skilled player (1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
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It is impossible to have THREE runs of the very same game stared. Either this run, or any%. RBO isn't gonna lose the star I think,
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.
Player (88)
Joined: 11/14/2005
Posts: 1057
Location: United States
Tough call. Personally I think this is superior to the any% run, because it shows off much more of the game and has many more crazy techniques. So I would swap that run's star for this run if it were up to me. On another note, has anyone managed to make a cutsceneless encode of the run yet?
They're off to find the hero of the day...
Site Admin, Skilled player (1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
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As I finished with all regular encodes now, I will start putting things together for the 'gameplay only' encode. BizHawk script: Download SuperMetroid-DoorlessCapture.lua
Language: lua

while true do -- Items, Doors, Elevators istop = memory.readbyte(0x7E0009) dstop = memory.readbyte(0x7E05F5) estop = memory.readbyte(0x7E0E18) if istop+dstop+estop == 0 or istop+dstop+estop == 0x6F then client.unpause_av() else client.pause_av() end emu.frameadvance() end
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.
BigBoct
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If I recall correctly, the version of the script I posted does it like that.
Previous Name: boct1584
Joined: 11/26/2010
Posts: 444
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Yea if your gonna swap stars do it with the Any% run. I don't see why they can't both get a star though Super Metroid really is that good of a game.
My name is 4N6/Forensics.
BigBoct
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His point is that there are already two Super Metroid runs on the Star list: the any% and the RBO. He doesn't think there's room for a third.
Previous Name: boct1584
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Nice to see a new SM tas. Excellent stuff as always!
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feos wrote:
As I finished with all regular encodes now, I will start putting things together for the 'gameplay only' encode.
I'm looking forward to it. Will it be uploaded to Youtube or just a downloadable option?
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All four encodes will have alternate versions.
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.
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. ---- [2436] SNES Super Metroid "100%" by Cpadolf in 1:08:15.74
Skilled player (1432)
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Thanks a million for taking your time to make the encodes without any cutscenes feos! Makes it so much more enjoyable to watch.
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
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The encodes are missing subtitles when touching down on Zebes. http://tasvideos.org/EncoderGuidelines.html#Subtitles
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Skilled player (1432)
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They are placed right after the intro credits at the Ceres elevator.
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
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Cpadolf wrote:
They are only placed right after the intro credits at the Ceres elevator.
Which violates our rules.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Skilled player (1432)
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I don't think there's any currently published run of Super Metroid which follows that rule though.
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
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Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Cpadolf wrote:
I don't think there's any currently published run of Super Metroid which follows that rule though.
Practically all of them do, including your previous run here. Edit: Here's some others: Edit 2: I have a bunch of DVDs, but I don't feel like cracking them out. Here's another of yours, and the currently starred movie:
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.