Details

  • Visual Boy Advance vba-v24m-svn-r422
  • Lowest item collection
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Manipulates luck

About the run

This is a low% run of Metroid Zero Mission, which finishes the game in 23:48 with only 9% of the items collected. The run was inspired by an old WIP from P.JBoy that went through a little more than half of the game. The reason a 9% run of this game is interesting, besides low% being a classic goal for almost every game in the Metroid series, is that it puts a tremendous strain on ammo, which makes for very interesting boss battles, and powerups, which makes some rooms much more difficult to traverse. Furthermore it streamlines the route, as no detours are ever taken for extra items. This run was recorded on a newer emulator than the currently published runs, and due to emulation differences I lost about 1 frame every door transition and a few more on every item pickup, but it doesn't add up to too much, a couple of 100 frames or so I think.

Notes on points of interest

Spore Spawn
This battle went wonderfully. It's essentially on a countdown to when the second set of spores explode, as before then I can't get enough ammo to finish it. My goal was therefore to get the maximum amount of refills from the first set of spores to reduce the amount of missiles needed to kill it after the second set of spores, and fire as many of them as possible before the second set of spores went of. I managed to fire all of them, and still refill from the second set of spores on the first frame possible (this was with a margin of just 1-2 frames).
Ridley
The eye door leading to the fight takes 3 missiles to destroy, and unfortunately it doesn't seem to be possible to get more than 2 missiles to hit on the same frame, so it has to be done in two rounds. The third missile is fired while standing extremely close to the door, which makes it possible to fire through the laser barrier it fires. Ridley was very tough to optimize. Getting him to switch patterns is much harder than in Super Metroid, where he reacts more continuously to your position. Here it seems like he only reacts at your position at very specific (non obvious) points, and also sometimes when you take damage from him. After much work I got him to spit fireballs pretty frequently, and the last set is fired in such a way that I can pick up all the refills and shoot him without wasting any time. Both times I take damage from him are to lure him into shooting fireballs, as he would have flown around for hundreds of extra frames otherwise.
Kraid
The missile refill on the sidehopper just before Kraid took longer than I wanted, but all of the enemies in this room refused to drop missiles quickly, so it had to do as having 3 missiles at the eye door saves a lot of time. It turned out to not be that bad anyway, as I would have had to wait for a bunch of frames to get the eye door to open as fast as possible if I didn't have to wait for the missile. Baring any randomness in how frequently he throws his claws, Kraid himself should be perfect. I broke one of the claws in the last set on the first frame possible, where it luckily dropped a missile, and I managed to pick up that refill and shoot him on the first frame possible after doing that (after which the rest of the missiles could be fired at him without any trouble).
Rio room
This room was incredibly annoying because it seems to be entirely random if a Rio will freeze or not, and the chances seem to be quite low as well. On top of that I have to try and get them to move in a fitting manner to freeze them at benificial points. The bombjumping part was not hard once the pattern for the "double horizontal bombjump" was down. The last part of the room where the frozen Rio's come back worked out reasonably well as I got a bit lucky with the freezing, and I managed to get the last of them to come in at a low enough angle to be able to jump straight to the block that took me over the lake.
Metroids
Metroids take 5 missiles to kill, and only drop 4, so for each Metroid I had to kill one Rinka as well with a missile to refill back to 5 missiles. At a few points it was beneficial to kill a Rinka with my beam instead, as that meant I could kill 2 metroids and still get back to 5 missiles without killing an extra Rinka. The last of the Metroid rooms is definitely one of the hardest in the game, but I managed to find a strategy that was reasonably fast. It's worth to note that it's random how fast the metroid go from the background to the foreground, and how fast it'll take is decided on the frame they appear on screen, so I have to wait some frames here and there to manipulate this.
Mother Brain
The Zeebites are the real boss here to be honest. It's incredibly hard to continuously refill and advance to be able to destroy the barriers. Due to the Rinkas being so slow and there not being enough of them spawning in the second half of the room (not spawning fast enough anyway) I had to backtrack twice to get all the missiles I needed to destroy the last barriers. Motherbrain takes a long time but wasn't too hard as there are only two points to refill from, so I just travel between the two as fast as I can to kill the Rinkas as soon as they spawn. The power grip doesn't work on the turrets though, so I have to bomb jump to get to the high one.
Meta Ridley
Just like the normal Ridley, Meta Ridley was very hard to manipulate. To get him to fire missiles as quickly as possible I basically just jumped around in the room over and over again hundreds of times until I eventually managed to get him to change to a pattern where he shot missiles quicker. The position needed to do this always seemed to be very specific (both in time and space), but in the end I managed to get him to choose a faster pattern each round compared to what he would have chosen if I just stood still.

Thanks to

P.JBoy and Dragonfangs. P.J's WIP helped me a lot with ideas for some of the difficult parts of the run, and Dragonfangs any% was a very good comparison in a lot of cases.

feos: Added HD encode.

Nach: Excellent run, accepting.

natt: processing


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #3511: Cpadolf's GBA Metroid: Zero Mission "Low%" in 34:42.27
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syncs on "VBA-RR v24 svn422"
  File: Metroid - Zero Mission.GBA
CRC-32: 5c61a844
   MD4: efc1f8fcd3afd9d17d2cd7d991ecba26
   MD5: ebbce58109988b6da61ebb06c7a432d5
 SHA-1: 5de8536afe1f0078ee6fe1089f890e8c7aa0a6e8
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Good shit, man. The bosses were clearly the highlight of the run, but Tourian came out great too, easy yes vote.
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Active player (459)
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A minor issue, but the encode says 23:48 when it's actually 34:42.27 long.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential. Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
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23:48 is the ingame clock time that is shown at the end, which is usually the time Metroid runs are measured by.
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
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The Ridley fight is probably the best boss fight I've ever seen in a TAS. Everything else was solid, but Ridley was definitely the highlight of the run. Great work, cpadolf! Thanks for making the run!
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I'm not a fan of low%, but was looking forward to this for the Ridley fight, and you didn't disappoint. That fight alone secures my Yes vote.
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Cpadolf wrote:
23:48 is the ingame clock time that is shown at the end, which is usually the time Metroid runs are measured by.
Ah ok, thought you timed the encodes in real-time unless mentioned otherwise.
"An artist who can’t take constructive critique on their work is only hurting themselves and their potential. Conversely, and artist that can’t communicate a critique in a constructive way isn’t helping anybody."
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That's probably true, but mine is not an official site encode.
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
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Oh wow, that run was beautiful. I'm impressed by how quickly you were able to whip this together too. What I loved about the run was how efficient Samus moves. Jumps are kept as small as possible, and shots are precise, yet you still managed to play around unbelievably much during downtimes, great and small, which I loved. The bosses were a definite highlight of the run, especially Kraid and you staying in midair for nearly the entire fight. Missile management during those, and especially in Tourian must've been insane. It's just a shame you had to take damage a couple of times, but overall, this run was masterful. Definite yes vote right here.
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Wow, all of you who like this are so queer. ... ... AND SO AM I!!! (end of Family Guy-reference) I absolutely loved this. Couldn't look away for a single frame, I dared not even blink, knowing that I might miss something awesome! Excellent job!
Warp wrote:
omg lol this is so fake!!!1 the nes cant produce music like this!
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That Ridley fight... Yes vote.
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Excellent run, Tourian and Ridley went beautifully.
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This run is great, but given that everything cpadolf does is excellent, that's no surprise. Yes vote.
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I'd like to make an HD encode of that, but I'm curious where to put it. I was told that the author's encode embedded into the submission shall NEVER EVER be replaced, even with the better quality one. Processing and waiting for advice...
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You can replace my one in the main post with it, that's completely fine by me.
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Rolanmen1
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Loved this, all the boss battles look great.
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Very nice run! Yes vote from me!
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Nice hops while waiting for the robot to move. Yes vote.
XYZ
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Thank you for making this nice 9(8)% movie. It's interesting by the concept: we can concentrate on Samus and beauty of her calmness and foes' behaviour in duels, instead of speed of achievement of a victory. I like Ridley longshort fight. I like your abilities to construction of ice bridges. I like image of Samus after credits. Yes vote. Btw, Cpadolf, it's yours 9 (symbolical) submission in Metroid games.
Post subject: Re: #3511: cpadolf's GBA Metroid Zero Mission "Low%" in 34:42.27
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<Joke>
TASVideoAgent wrote:
#3511: cpadolf's blah Metroid blah blah blah blah blah
YES VOTE! </Joke> In all seriousness though, I loved the run. I found the boss fights extremely entertaining, although it makes me wonder what Samus has against standing on the ground. As for the category, I've never watched a low% of Metroid Zero Mission before, so it was a nice change of pace from the any% and 100% runs. Yes vote!
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Holy crap was that fast work, can barely wait to watch! (tomorrow)
P.JBoy
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Loved every moment on this run; particularly of course, the boss fights, in both a stylistic way as well as an optimisational way. There were many screenshot moments in this, I'll go back and make some, for now, here's this: I'm glad my old poorly optimised run of this game helped you, and I'd love to know what you actually found useful :>
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In particular the strategy you used for Kraid was very helpful. Also, without your Ridley fight to compare with, mine would have almost certainly ended up a lot slower due to not knowing how frequently you could get him to shoot fireballs.
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mklip2001
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I surprisingly preferred the Kraid fight to the Ridley fight. This was more enjoyable than I feared it would be. The Chozodia and Space Pirate portions were more boring (largely due to the stupid little guard robot), but everything up to Tourian was really cool. Yes vote. Nice job!
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.