No emulator settings were modified. The emulation core used was BSNES but also syncs on BSNESv115+
Rom checksum: 6382873F943C0CD1F4FA301139DFB29978E8B934
Super Metroid Impossible is a romhack made by Saturn in 2006 that makes the game, especially bosses much more difficult. Bosses have more aggressive AIs and more health. Enemies and hazards do more damage and the world and items have been moved to withhold useful upgrades from the player.
Strategies used
The TAS aims to complete the game by beating all four major bosses and then mother brain as quickly as possible by taking damage and abusing minor glitches that RTA runners use such as moonfall and grapple jumps.
The route is mostly identical to the optimal RTA route, I based this off Zoast's record. The major differences are skipping the energy tanks in the X-Ray Scope room and Watering hole, as well as the reserve tank in Norfair Reserve Tank room. Skipping the second reserve tank made the double damage boost off the crab to grab plasma and skip spring ball more difficult. Since each hit deals 120 damage, one tank isn't enough to survive another hit so bomb spread is used to kill the crab and get a health drop after the second hit using pause buffering to stay alive at 0 health. Thanks to Sniq for helping me with that trick. Skipping the energy tanks really only affects the hell runs. TAS movement is enough to make it through with significantly less health than a human could.
This run obsoletes a TAS by Cpadolf from 2008. Its time was 1:21:40. A lot of the improvement comes from the moonfall in Green Brinstar Main Shaft to collect power bombs early. This skips a long trip through the Wrecked Ship and Maridia, allows for getting super missiles before Kraid and allows delaying Phantoon until Samus has more upgrades.
nymx: First off, well to TASVideos! Your submission really got my heart pumping, since this is the game that I started my TASing carreer with, back in 2014. SMI was also on my list to work with. In fact, I had TASed this hack, until Moon Fall was discovered. At that point, I stopped altogether.
So...let's get started.
Wow!...I have been through the works with this entry. On one hand, my past life with the Super Metroid community has shown me the deepest TASing techniques possible. My time with sniq and EternisedDragon was very fruitful and helped me see tons of optimization over the years. Because I TASed this game constantly for about 4 years, I do see major issues from not using commonly known strategies that were developed "Pre Moon Fall" days. On the hand, I needed to take a step back so that I don't look too deeply into this movie and allow it to be showcased for what it is. Yes...I and my trusted SM advisers all agree that this run could be faster; however, it is the first run since CPAdolf's version. CP's movie was never published, but we'll use it as a gauge here. Your movie is faster, but places are not as optimal as they could be.
I am disappointed though in the response that this hack received. It is my favorite among them all. Now that I'm finally getting to see this...I am happy to see how much Moon Fall changed the routing for this run. It certainly made for an interesting watch!
I am accepting this run for publication to "Standard".
It is a good attempt but the optimization is not good enough to gain a yes vote from me.
Where are you seeing optimization issues? I'm a layperson at Super Metroid, and to me it looked fine throughout.
This is a perfectly reasonable critique. TASes really should be as perfect as a human can devise. Its mostly tiny things adding up over the hour+. A few examples are I forgot to shoot the door before the damage boost the second time through the bat room. I also forgot that it's possible to jump directly into the morph ball hole in the high jump E-tank room. I did a wall jump both times through that room. I also didn't do optimal MB manipulation. It's hard to keep all of this in mind as a relative newcomer. I'm not aware of the level of optimization required for tasvideos so I thought I would throw my hat in the ring especially since it is a big improvement.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2793
Location: Northern California
3x3supercuber wrote:
I'm not aware of the level of optimization required for tasvideos so I thought I would throw my hat in the ring especially since it is a big improvement.
It's definitely not as high as Sniq implied with that comment. Perfection is nice, but it's unreasonable for us to outright require it in any submission we get, so we aim for optimization within reason. Basically, as long as you're not making mistakes that are obvious to casual/unfamiliar viewers, you're golden.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Well, this is Super Metroid Impossible. I have to say, being this early, the hack honestly doesn't hold up very well to me. Most of the rooms are almost completey unchanged, save for the extra spikes, so the TAS can go through many areas just the same way as in the base game. That means that there is not really that much novelty left. Sure, you have to hellrun, but other routes through the main game have that too.
The gameplay and optimization looked mostly fine to my layman's eyes. I was especially surprised to see how smooth most of suitless Maridia went. There were some parts that were questionable, but there's probably a good reason I'm not aware of.
For example:
- Why position yourself so far to the right when picking up the Charge Beam in Upper Red Brinstar?
- Why did you position yourself so far to the right when the Golden Torizo fight ends?
- Is it really necessary to pick up the screw attack?
- Is there really no way to pick up the Wave Beam earlier?
Overall, I liked the movement and gameplay enough to vote yes for Entertainment. Staying on 0 HP for so long an especially cool and unexpected part. Keep it up!
- Is it really necessary to pick up the screw attack?
Is there really no way to pick up the Wave Beam earlier?
1. The Metroids are immune to Power Bombs in this hack, so you need the Ice Beam, which is at Mama Turtle, which is gated by a metal door linked to the Red Space Pirates in the room below Mt. Everest, which can only be destroyed by the Screw Attack.
2. No, there's not. Ridley's death unlocks that metal door.
1. The Metroids are immune to Power Bombs in this hack, so you need the Ice Beam, which is at Mama Turtle, which is gated by a metal door linked to the Red Space Pirates in the room below Mt. Everest, which can only be destroyed by the Screw Attack.
2. No, there's not. Ridley's death unlocks that metal door.
It is a good attempt but the optimization is not good enough to gain a yes vote from me.
This explanation comes a bit late but I'll list some of the obvious stuff
https://youtu.be/61OD3UB3oIg?t=332 Picked the missile up with turnaround instead of a walljump check loses multiple frames and has been the meta since 15 years, also missed the mockball by bonking the wall
https://youtu.be/61OD3UB3oIg?t=378 You decided to opt for the left side when finishing this room and in the next room to save health, which *probably* costs way more time than doing a slightly slower strat in old mother brain room to maintain 99 health.
https://youtu.be/61OD3UB3oIg?t=399 Bomb torizo can be skipped with i-frames and doing the usual skip. Also you could have jumped much further in BT's room without losing the running speed.
strict territory ends here (beginning -> bomb torizo), I will list only some of the stuff after this
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://youtu.be/61OD3UB3oIg?t=749 Copy de sniq pasta has failed here, useless midair morph unmorph costed at least 12 frames because you're doing it during a moonfall. The reason why I morph in my tases is because I'm heading to the left towards x-ray so PB must be used.
https://youtu.be/61OD3UB3oIg?t=981 You *probably* could've moonfallen through the bottom doorshell by maintaining it all the way down.
https://youtu.be/61OD3UB3oIg?t=1049 Midair spike-unmorph-jumps would've saved more than 5 seconds here.
https://youtu.be/61OD3UB3oIg?t=1421 Laying the PB top left corner makes the tube break much faster.
https://youtu.be/61OD3UB3oIg?t=2035 It seems to be unnecessary to go that far down to execute that crystal flash. Previous room's red orb and flame enemies have a 2% chance to drop power bombs.
https://youtu.be/61OD3UB3oIg?t=2112 You didn't maintain vertical speed with a pixel perfect unmorph to prevent slopes from slowing down samus (known as slopekiller).
https://youtu.be/61OD3UB3oIg?t=2722 Falling down after laying the bomb is not necessary, it is possible to stay up with bombs, or with a powerbomb. Even humanly, as this example shows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URgrgyh_IKU
That's a few. I hope you didn't take my earlier comment negatively but as a constructive criticism.
