Since the Super Metroid Tricks page is asking for discussions on various routes, I will post a route that I developed and believe to be the fastest route for an any% run aiming for
real time. I have done quite a bit of testing and have some good experience TASing this game. My route idea can be found here
http://img441.imageshack.us/my.php?image=herootdmetroidroutewv0.jpg.
The image shows my intended route and the damage data for all the bosses as well.
Some notes on my route:
Since this aims for real time, there are some less obvious choices that I made. For example phantoon will be 2 rounded not 1 because collecting an extra missle pack would eat up more time on the overall frame length of the movie. Only 3 packs are required to kill the glass mother brain form.
I get the 3 packs which are right in Samus' path anyway.
I have done some painful tests and determined that Kraid must be done before ridley, which means no speed boosting in kraid's lair. Having only 1 energy tank is not enough to survive lower norfair. The acid lake requires a 50 hp damage boost + 40 hp hit from the gravity jump. On top of that the shinespark eats up over 70 hp thought the breakable pillars. Doing kraid first will give me an extra energy tank and make lower norfair possible.
I am not exactly sure when the Ice beam should be collected, but getting it before the speed booster would require one less visit to the pause menu to turn it off. Getting the Ice beam after killing ridley would require that I go to the pause menu and deactivate it so I can perform the powerbomb/wave combo.
High jump boots are en easy item to forget about, they save very little time in the long run and require quite a bit of time to collect. The space jump is also skipped. I requires 20 seconds in real time to get the space jump, but since I am doing draygon last, it would only save a couple seconds in the rest of the run. I intend to shinespark out of the top of maridia and make my way to tourian that way.
Plasma beam is also skipped. This item would be collected if I was to fight both ridley and mother brain with it, but since ridley is already dead this item is way less useful. The mother brain fight will be 60 seconds long using charged/wave/spazer/ice which is exactly 40 seconds longer than charged/plasma/wave/ice. The plasma beam requires over 1 minute to collect in real time. The net gain is 20 seconds or so by skipping it.
A second power bomb pack must be collected to decrease the length of the ridley fight. I have seen Saturn's teaser avi where he uses the wave/power bomb on ridley, and it seems like a very fast way to take him down. 10 super missles inflicts 6,000 damage to ridley and 10 power/wave combo's does 12,000 damage which is exactly 18,000. Luckily there is a power bomb pack en route to ridley which only requires 10 seconds in real time to collect.
This route requires virtually no back tracking at all, which in itself is a gigantic time saver. I have timed the wrecked ship and without the spazer/wave/highjump/speed booster, the net loss is less than 25 seconds.
I do have some uncertainty's still. I am torn between collecting ridley's energy tank, or the on that lies in the middle of maridia. The one in maridia does not require any door transitions, but slows down Samus' momentum considerably. On the other hand, the energy tank from ridley would be very useful in having for all the shinesparks that occur between the accent from lower norfair to the fight with draygon.
After collecting the wave beam, there is a great little route that leads straight to the lower norfair elevator, by going down after exiting the room leading to the wave beam. May save a few seconds compared to the traditional descent using the ice beam route to lower norfair.
Any comment or questions are welcomed. I know Saturn is working on an any% improvement currently, and it will surley be one of the finest runs ever made, but I know his goal is to get the in game timer as low as possible. I would like to see how low the real time can get, which is why I made this route.
