Super Metroid

There are many items to find on the way, and each new item usually makes heretofore inaccessible areas available to Samus. The items include both weaponry (such as missiles, super missiles, or upgrades to Samus's standard laser gun), energy tanks that increase Samus' max health, and other gadgets (like a grappling hook that allows Samus to stick to the ceiling).

Super Metroid

All race functions will take place on SpeedRunsLive (SRL) or racetime.gg. If you would like to participate on SRL, join #supermetroid on the SpeedRunsLive IRC so you can be present when future functions are scheduled to occur.

Released in April 1994, Super Metroid was the eagerly anticipated third game in theMetroid series. Samus Aran returns to the planet Zebes to once again fight thespace pirates and Mother Brain who have taken the metroid hatchling.

There are quite a few reasons why real time is the standard now. It's a more fluid run, completing the game without a single pause and generally avoiding lag. This involves different routing such as delaying the collection of the Ice Beam until later in the run and completely skipping a number of items such as Spazer, Ridley's E-tank, and the crab supers in Maridia. Many, many strats such as fast pillars (avoiding two door transitions by short charging to get through the pillars in Lower Norfair) have added excitement and new tech to the run. Also, the fact that the in-game timer only displays minutes means a considerably worse run could be considered a tie with another run. A lot of us on SpeedRunsLive (SRL) like to race this (there is a big weekly Friday night any% race), which obviously makes more sense in real time as well.

Shoutouts to all the SM TASers, the SRL community, Japanese and Swedish SM players, the m2k2 community, and all of the old school players for their contributions. I want to give a special shoutout to the SRL community, because they took me in when I was learning, helped me, and to this day continue to make speedrunning fun for me. Although they didn't do it singlehandedly, they championed the real time speedrun and worked hard to develop it. It really is a nice speedrun. An additional shoutout to Garrison, for helping me with these comments and for pushing this time down many times over. Other runners who deserve a lot of credit for pushing the time down on this run recently are Kottpower and Behemoth. Big thanks to SDA for giving speedgamers a place to host high quality videos and for putting on great marathons. If you want to learn more about this run or the history behind it there are a lot of really good super metroid runners on twitch to watch and talk with.

This category was the first I got an important speedrunning record in! When I was picking it up, most runners did a much different route, farmed to 30 super missiles for the ridley fight, and stopped at the ship before Tourian (since crystal flashing on the big metroid was being used at the time). I started running dessy's racing route, which was similar to hotarubi's route except it got grapple much earlier, and made efforts to cut out all of the pit stops that I could.

Segment 4: Wrecked ship main street to Pre Botwoon - Possibly the hardest segment in the game. Surprising considering it doesn't even contain a boss. It contains some of the games hardest tricks one after the other. Lots and lots of resets I'm sure you can imagine. Took me about 2 1/2 months to complete. As a result I found numerous time savers and helpers which kept me closer to my TAS from which I was using as a benchmark. Very fast Main street climb at the start. Attic room was perfect and uses a great strategy that Forensic found. It can be tricky, but being saved so near made me want to do it and it saves about 3 seconds max. Robot room: Thanks to SnUfFiT86 who found to shoot them slower to speed them up, yep sounds weird but is true. You can pass through them when your invulnerable from taking a hit but only when the're moving at you. Out in the open I do what I like to call a "twist jump" to grab the missiles in the cliff edge instead of a shinespark which is a faster strategy. After getting gravity suit I un equip hi jump boots to make the jump over the lake feasible. I found a visual method for it to work consistently which is jump just a split second after the screen reaches maximum brightness emerging from the door. With a successful jump over and mock ball the next room has a shot oportunity while running that passes under the ki hunter and hits the door to avoid delay. Very smooth play going to the Brinstar elevator. Most of the Brinstar cleanup went superbly apart from one of the worst slip ups in the game at the top of the Etecoons shaft. I failed the mock ball on first attempt. Not a common occurance for me either. I could have kept moving and bomb jumped out but it's too risky. I simply turned around and tried it again. In Maridia escaping the turtle room with the ET I use a jump out instead of a shinespark. It's a risky move but I was quite consistent because I use the forground on the right to time the take off. Later on Made a slip up hitting the spiny fish in the top room. Tried to jump out past it and mock ball to the missile but I jumped too soon. It looks funny seeing me jump and morph for no apparant reason. Coming back from the missile and super placed together I successfully did the difficult mock ball through the small gap. If I failed it I would have reset. Again I have a visual to time the take off and the height requirement comes quite naturally for me on it. Still difficult and it's around 50/50 success rate genrally for me. After that I hit an easy to avoid block on the fall through the metallic double shaft. Just edged too far to the right due to nerves.

Segment 5: Pre Botwoon to Lower Norfair elevator - Easier than the last two segments but not outright easy by any means. I had to make sure I did two important things. Kill botwoon in one round and Draygon in three rounds with a blue suit. Starting off we have Botwoon. I mastered one rounding him on at least 2 of his 4 patterns on round one. So it was 50/50 for me to get good/bad patterns. Luckily him being so close to the start means it wasn't too bad resetting all the time. On this attempt I got his best and easiest pattern. After that I did the Gravity jump to reach the top instead of wall jumping because it eliminates any inconsistencies wall jumping, which I was starting to suffer from at that time . I don't do the full shinespark across the room because it's infeasible on PAL due to the flash timer being too short to run in the room and jump into position. I've never pulled it off, only in a TAS. After the crash I cancel Knock back on the singular spike block by morphing and then un morphing to run and jump from it, saving about a second. I collect The missiles near Draygons lair before fighting him because doing so with blue suit after the fight would be slow since you can't run. Draygon: I could have killed Draygon in two rounds but that uses quite a lot of supers. A three round doesn't use any supers which I can use to speed the Ridley fight up later. The 2 round kill is faster by about 1 second by the time you reach the left hand side of the large Mocktroid room above the lair. But by doing the three round I've saved supers/time in the long run. The rest of the segment was exeptionally smooth thanks to it being more laidback after Draygon is defeated. There's some nice 'TAS' tricks collecting the missile and super in the pre Botwoon save area where I started which utilise the speed echoes, speed ball and spring ball. Not actually as hard as they look. Got a first time ice ceiling glitch to go and collect spring ball thanks to a visual strategy to time my shot to freeze the hopper. Only real mar in this segment was hitting the stalactite while space jumping above Crocomire's lair. I tapped jump too hard.

Segment 6: Lower Norfair elevator to End game - Thanks to Reeve once again for tons of improvements found to this segment which really helped towards my new goal of 0:48. This took a while to be 'good' at this huge segment, very large and difficult terrain makes it hard to be flawless all the way through. Golden Torizo was a very clean battle. Double Kago area was the first of four rooms to go pretty badly. I couldn't quite pass through the top one. It took me three attempts !. Ridley was decent to very good. I could have ended the battle sooner with the power bomb but I didn't want to risk it as Ridley was doing a climb so I waited for him to finish instead. From Ridley all the way to the landing site my play was exellent and nothing really to report on mistakes. Although near and around the X-ray room and green Brinstar Noob Bridge I messed up some things. At the top right room in the landing site I completely messed this room up. Rarely does it happen but I hit a spike while space jumping. Lost about 4 seconds there. The 2nd Metroid room in Tourian was a total failure due to nerves. When I went to shoot my super up at the lower metroid I think my thumb was slipping on the D-pad and made Samus start turning on the spot while aming up, which made me miss not 1, but 2 supers, with the second rather amusingly killing a rinka :P. Probably another 4 or so seconds lost here. Successfully pulled off the Metroid skip. Much easier on PAL because the Metroid is slower. The Zebitite room is the worst room in the segment. Firstly I didn't pass through on first attempt properly, then couldn't spin jump for the 2nd attempt, managed to get through on the 3rd. Very bad !. Then I fell into the gap coming out of another zebitite frame. Lastly while shooting MB with just missiles (damn those stingy Metroids with supers) I just lost my grip on things and fell into the larva. I Did the stand up glitch on MB for a visually pleasing battle instead of Murder beam. After that I did a very good escape. Not the best I can do (made some error wall jumping at one point) but decent nonethless. Got to my ship at 2:12, Should have been 2:13 if I didn't slip up the aforementioned wall jump. There's honestly so much to say about this segment but listing it all would be crazy. All in all I'm pleased with about 90% of it but with the 10% sticking out like a sore thumb. Ouch ! 041b061a72