I really, really enjoyed watching this.
The Super Metroid category that's historically appealed to me the most has been 100%, because I was more of a completionist than a speedrunner when I played games back in the day. But I remember watching the Metroid Prime community slowly chip away at the
minimum percentage and being fascinated by it, much moreso than 100%. It was a mixed feeling in me because I don't enjoy playing Metroid Prime - I found it dark and disorienting and I've since learned that I'm just not very good at playing 3D games and especially first-person 3D games. Watching
someone else play Metroid Prime, though, is very enjoyable to me.
Super Metroid is a game I enjoy playing - perhaps more than any other game (except maaaaybe Blaster Master). The SM community's quest of finding out how to get to 13% has been just as fascinating to me as Metroid Prime's quest to 21% was (of which there is a good summary of its current state
here).
The "feel of speed" of a low% category isn't even the really appealing part of these runs for me - it's seeing these puzzles solved. Watching the goofy shinespark charge in Maridia that happens over two rooms and several jumps and on spikes is like watching someone thread a hundred needles by throwing it across the room and still hitting a bullseye on a dartboard being driven by a hundred drunken bees. It reminds me of the feeling of accomplishment when something complex comes together on TASes I made long ago, like getting that hammer brother in Super Mario 3's desert world to
take a crazy journey and give me a hammer, or Sonic
jumping out of the water in Labyrinth 3 just before drowning, or
flying through this rock for reasons I never did quite understand.
The stuff about optimizing door entry and clearing out the sound register and all that - that's a level of TASing that I find very inspiring (and almost never had the patience for, myself). It's like a third-level type of crap optimization that we shouldn't HAVE to deal with, but doing so shows real dedication. It reminds me of planning a score route in Super Mario World to avoid fadeout lag, or a game like Super Mario Bros. 2 that (I think) shares subpixels of its sprites from one de-loaded sprite to the next one, making sub-pixel planning an entire-TAS puzzle in some aspects.
I'm not really passionate about categories and branches and obsoletion. If a different 13% TAS was created which used a different method to get a faster time, that'd be fun to watch, too. Since I'm watching these mainly for the new techniques that get around having that 14th item, the overall speed is almost secondary. I remember watching lots of videos from
M2K2 on how to skip different items in different rooms, and getting that same sense of "victory" over the game itself. Watching this run gives me the same feeling, and watching another 13% "route" would do that as well!
That being said, fast gameplay is certainly fun. In particular, the shinespark is just such a satisfying thing to do and to watch. I can't believe more games haven't copied it over the years. I'd put it behind only "jumping" and "down + jump = slide" as techniques that just feel completely perfect in their execution across the genre of platform gaming.
And lastly, while I'm suddenly spilling my heart about Super Metroid and apparently every TAS I've ever done or watched - I am so happy to see such a collaborative community around this game nowadays. I think the end result has greatly benefited from such collaboration and unselfishness. I feel that was more of a struggle years ago, which was partially due to my own behavior as a younger person when I was more involved in TASing, and to see that progress now is awesome. Thank you to everyone in that community for their contributions to this run, past runs, and any upcoming in the future!
\o/
