The Speedrunning Thread

[Dynam0]

Originally Posted by igotrhythm

I don't see why not, Dynamo. The pipe jump in 8-4 is frame-perfect.

Eh? Did you mean Wafles?

Originally Posted by MrPopadopalis25

Spazer I've always gotten on my way to Kraid without knowing it was technically a sequence break. Ice I used to grab kinda early because I would wall jump up the vertical shaft with the four zoomers (?) and respawning shootable block to get the power bombs early, then I could get the wave/speed boost/ice and not have to go back up to power bomb my way to crocomire. Now I grab the ice beam before leaving to the wrecked ship so I can beat phantoon a bit easier. By early do you mean mockballing to it right after kraid but before the hi-jump boots? And yeah, Draygon I've always grappled, Phantoon I do two charged Spazer+Wave shots before a final spazer+wave+ice with a final super missile to seal the deal, and botwoon I pound super missiles into like there's no tomorrow.

But yeah, I got to a point where I refined my own route more and more until I couldn't think of much else and decided to start seeing what other people did. Stuff like walljumping to skip the bottom approach to the wave beam/speed booster or doing kraid without hi-jump or waiting to grab the x-ray visor and old tourian/brinstar items until the end I figured out on my own, but the mother brain standup glitch or skipping spore spawn I wouldn't have ever figured out. Zebetite I will learn though.

Here's a route to try working towards (this is what I do currently)

-I'm guessing you do the mockball to get early supers, that is a must.
-After getting Charge Beam, go straight to Kraid without Spazer or Hi-Jump Boots. It's not too hard to get up into Kraid's Lair using a well-timed spin jump and a wall-jump in that blue room. Also after I did one attempt without spazer I realized it doesn't make the run any harder so you should give it a shot
-Wreck Kraid, grab the Energy Tank and then head down to get Hi-Jump Boots.
-Pick up Speed Booster and Wave Beam, then grab the Ice Beam on the way out of Norfair.
-Go up the Red Tower to get Power Bombs.
-Enter the Wrecked Ship: For this part, it might take a bit of practice.
1) In the room with the two ki-hunters (flying dudes) before the moat you're going to start a shine spark by first walking for about a half second and then hold dash down. This will allow you to get a charge a bit faster.

2) Activate your spark, spin jump over to where the door is and spark to the right to fly over the moat.

3) For the next spark, go to the edge of the platform in the moat and repeat the same procedure for the spark in the previous room.

You should be able to get into Wrecked Ship this way without much difficulty after a bit of practice. The only issue now is you'll have less health when fighting Phantoon and it might be hard to keep runs alive at this point (I still die to him a lot).

-The rest of the run isn't too much different than what you'd normally do. The room where full-halfie is done will be a little more annoying without grapple beam and Draygon will take a few minutes longer to kill but it's well worth it to skip Grapple Beam.

[igotrhythm]

...actually, I meant Etienne. WELP

[Dynam0]

Well that was just about as bad a Tourian as it gets, rip sub-1 hour

[Wafles]

Sub 1 hour in super metroid is pretty good isn't it? What a heartbreaker run dynamo :/

[rushyrulz]

got this a couple weeks ago and never posted it
http://www.twitch.tv/rushyrulz/c/4471015

[shenjoku]

Originally Posted by Dynam0

Well that was just about as bad a Tourian as it gets, rip sub-1 hour

Damn man, so close! My best is only a couple seconds off from that haha. We should race sometime :P

[One Winged Angel]

fuck that mummy

[rushyrulz]

Not really used for speedrunning, but I just invented a new strat for getting to the castle roof in SM64 without having 120 stars. I think there are similar TAS-tier strats that exist using the waterfall side, but this one is easier, faster, and more practical.

[Reach]

I love super metroid and am always so ridiculously impressed when I see people like Zoast play.

So incredible.

I've been practicing a little bit lately as I've had experience speed running other games in the past (MMX1/2, Mario 64 and Final fantasy games) and man is SM a hard ass game to speed run. The tricks are so damn hard.

I've been training on emulator so I can use save states but even landing stuff like the mock ball to get the early super missiles is really hard to hit consistently lmao

If I ever get a time that's actually race worthy I'll race I'll join the friday races 8)


Also kinda want to learn to run LTTP, as I'm actually half decent at that game already and it's a pretty fun run.

[igotrhythm]

Spine-sharking? Is that what they're calling it now?

(I assume you mean shine-sparking.)

[shenjoku]

Originally Posted by Reach

I love super metroid and am always so ridiculously impressed when I see people like Zoast play.

So incredible.

I've been practicing a little bit lately as I've had experience speed running other games in the past (MMX1/2, Mario 64 and Final fantasy games) and man is SM a hard ass game to speed run. The tricks are so damn hard.

I've been training on emulator so I can use save states but even landing stuff like the mock ball to get the early super missiles is really hard to hit consistently lmao

If I ever get a time that's actually race worthy I'll race I'll join the friday races 8)


Also kinda want to learn to run LTTP, as I'm actually half decent at that game already and it's a pretty fun run.

Woo more Super Metroid runners! Good luck with LTTP. I gave up trying to run that game because all the pixel-perfect tricks were just so frustrating to pull off. I actually find Super Metroid to be much easier than LTTP.

[Dynam0]

Originally Posted by MrPopadopalis25

Would this be for an any% run? I've been doing 100% runs, so I'd have to go back for the grapple beam and the couple of missile tanks on the way to it anyways.

But this sounds interesting, especially for when I start to do any%'s. Kraid I usually do without the boots, but skipping spazer I never thought of. I suppose it would be a little bit faster to come back to it on the way to the wrecked ship. I'll also have to learn how to do the quick charge stuff to get into the wrecked ship, sounds like even if I do go for the grapple that spinesharking into it would be faster.

Oh lol...it's highly recommended that you learn the Any% route first so I kinda just assumed you were running it oops . In that case yeah you might as well grab the Grapple Beam for Draygon
Spazer helps to kill Phantoon faster overall without xfactoring? If so I might consider taking the ~20 secs to grab it on the way.

[Reincarnate]

Whenever I see Metroid/SM64 speedruns it just totally kills any motivation I have to speedrun them myself, haha

[Reach]

Originally Posted by shenjoku

Woo more Super Metroid runners! Good luck with LTTP. I gave up trying to run that game because all the pixel-perfect tricks were just so frustrating to pull off. I actually find Super Metroid to be much easier than LTTP.

Metroid is so hard D:

Though I only started actually speed running it this week. I've ran it 'fast' in the past to get the better ending, but it was casual without any route or major tricks.


I was practicing Metroid quite a bit today and completed an any % run using WR route, though I grabbed extra E tanks that were on the way and some extra easy to get missiles.

But I must have used a million save states XD


Things that gave me the biggest problems:

Kraid fast kill (I'm like 1 in 100 for this trick right now. Is there a consistent way to do it? Sometimes the second missile doesn't hit OR I hit him with two supers and he just randomly closes up).

Quick shine sparks. How the hell do you do this? Couldn't get the one in norfair...not even CLOSE. Same with Draygon.

Maridia shine spark before boss...how is this possible? Lmao

Draygon and Ridley...man. I know Phantoon is considered the worst because of RNG but technically speaking he wasn't bad. Even I killed him pretty fast and I SUCK. Those bosses though. Save states galore. Shine sparking Draygon and manipulating Ridley are 100x harder than they look in runs.



Rest was OK. Mostly me botching shit that doesn't look that hard in runs (omg the wall jump up into ball after you get bombs...100+ tries for sure). Everything is literally 1000x harder than people like Zoast make it look. I couldn't even figure out how to do the damage boost thing where you take a hit to get a speed boost in the air.

[shenjoku]

Originally Posted by Reach

Kraid fast kill (I'm like 1 in 100 for this trick right now. Is there a consistent way to do it? Sometimes the second missile doesn't hit OR I hit him with two supers and he just randomly closes up).

There's a specific timing to it. You just have to practice a bit and figure it out. This video shows it off pretty well and is what I used to figure it out.

Originally Posted by Reach

Stutter shine sparks. How the hell do you do this? I can't get the spark across to the wrecked ship, so I just jumped across. Also couldn't get the one in norfair...not even CLOSE. Bombed my way through.

I wouldn't bother trying to get the stutter yet. Just try to figure out the double/triple tap versions first. Dbx has a really good tutorial video for this that I used to figure out the last parts that were screwing me up. I think that's the right one. Twitch isn't working for me right now so I can't confirm. I think that video is mainly for learning the stutter step but it also goes into detail on how to double/triple tap first so that's the important part.

Originally Posted by Reach

Maridia shine spark before boss...how is this possible? Lmao

Full-halfie is hard as balls, don't bother with it for a long time :P

Originally Posted by Reach

Draygon and Ridley...man. I know Phantoon is considered the worst because of RNG but technically speaking he wasn't bad. Even I killed him pretty fast and I SUCK. Those bosses though. Save states galore. Shine sparking Draygon and manipulating Ridley are 100x harder than they look in runs.

Just takes lots of practice like anything else I wouldn't bother trying to shinespark Draygon yet though. Just missile him like crazy until you get more practice getting the short charge more consistently.

Originally Posted by Reach

Rest was OK. Mostly me botching shit that doesn't look that hard in runs (omg the wall jump up into ball after you get bombs...100+ tries for sure). Everything is literally 1000x harder than people like Zoast make it look.

Good 'ol alcatraz :P (no idea why it's called that...). There are days when I can't do it at all and others where I nail it every time lol. Zoast's any% tutorial has a nice chunk of time explaining the details of how it works. Starts around 1:31:50. It's just a matter of jumping off the lowest part of each wall to setup a good position.

Hope that helps!

[Dynam0]

Alcatraz gets a shit-ton easier over time imo and I was the same with that trick, took about 30 mins of messing around before I got it the first time...I play with a keyboard though so fast/precise wall-jumping might be a lot easier than with a SNES controller (I can execute The Climb relatively well and my best bomb time is about 5 mins flat).

Do you stun Kraid while his claws are down with a charge shot before doing the quick kill? I find it easier than the uber-fast kill but I'm still only at about a 1-in-5 success rate with it.

Damage-boosting is another thing that seems really hard at first but gets a lot easier with a bit of practice. Basically you have a 4-frame window after taking damage to hold jump and the opposite direction on the d-pad from which you're facing to get the boost. The room where you get Power Bombs is a good room for using it because that room can be a bitch just trying to platform through it even with Ice Beam imo, not to mention it's a lot slower.

[shenjoku]

Originally Posted by Dynam0

I play with a keyboard though so fast/precise wall-jumping might be a lot easier than with a SNES controller (I can execute The Climb relatively well and my best bomb time is about 5 mins flat).

Wow, you play on keyboard? What's your setup?

[Dynam0]

Arrow Keys for D-Pad, then my left hand does everything else rofl..

c - run
d - jump
s - shoot
x - item cancel (never use this)
a/z - angle down/up
space bar - item switch/select
enter - start

Pretty much impossible to do arm pumping or any sort of angle shots comfortably, I do an angle shot down to do the room right before the first missile expansion and an angle up for the diagonal shine spark in Maridia. Ridley, Draygon and Mother Brain 3 suck to do without stationary angling rip

[shenjoku]

Ah, I was wondering how you dealt with angled shots. Why not get a controller and adapter?

[JurseyRider734]

im laughin at how many people on ffr are trying to speedrun super metroid. not in a bad way. its cool.
have my metroid gifs