Metroid II, Prime Get New Speed Run Records

PrinceBrightstar writes "Both the Metroid Prime pure speed run and the Metroid II 100% completion speed record have been shattered by Zoidi and Brightstar (myself) respectively. The Metroid Prime (GameCube) pure speed record is now 1hr 17mins, and the Metroid II (GameBoy) 100% is now set at 1hr 12mins, with further decreases planned - these records were recorded into video form and no emulators were used." We've previously covered Metroid Prime 'speed runs', which are an extension of classic Quake speed runs.

Comments

Re:Idiot

[feidaykin]

Indeed, it is for the GB, not the NES. Here's proof.

Perhaps this record breaker guy was far too busy actually playing the game to notice it was on the GB, heh.

Re:Idiot

[simoniker]

No, actually it was the editor trying to explain what platforms the games were on who goofed. Doh. My apologies to the submitter, it's fixed now.

Funny Suprnova just put a bunch these up

[Stubtify]

Super Mario Bros (NES) completed in 5:08

Metroid (NES) completed in 17:18 by ...

Zelda (NES) completed in 31:29 by Mi...

Castlevania (NES) completed in 12:23...

Rockman (NES) completed in 21:53 by ...

Silly Question

[Guppy06]

"the Metroid II (NES) 100% is now set at 1hr 12mins,"

Aside from "Medroid II is a GB game," how do you know you have 100%? Super Metroid was the first game to bother keeping track of your completion rate and I have yet to find complete maps of the game anywhere (even the ones published in Nintendo Power left stuff out). You can't even go by the number of e-tanks you have since there are more in the game than you can use.

Also, while on the subject, am I the only person who has trouble believing people who claim to get a 100% completion rate in Super Metroid in less than 1:30?

Re:Silly Question

[Radix37]

how do you know you have 100%? Super Metroid was the first game to bother keeping track of your completion rate and I have yet to find complete maps of the game anywhere

100% is just getting every item... pretty simple :-) Since the weapons respawn and are in different places, we just decided that you have to get each one once.

As for a complete map, check GameFAQs, I just submitted once recently.

Re:Silly Question

[PrinceBrightstar]

http://planetquake.com/sda/other/supermetroid.html 100% at one hour exactly. watch and weep.

Re:Silly Question

[MMaestro]

am I the only person who has trouble believing people who claim to get a 100% completion rate in Super Metroid in less than 1:30?

Considering I personally have beaten Super Metroid in less than 1 hour with roughly 60% completion, its not hard to imagine some hardcore gamer out there getting 100%, with an extra half hour. (Unless you do a bare minimum run through, you will get at LEAST 30% completion rate. As it stands the lowest is 15% so 30% isn't that much more.)

Not only that, there are reports and entire FAQs dedicated to bare MINIMUM runs (theres even a report for a 1% run through in Metroid Fusion!) Naturally this were made on the emulator so they wouldn't count, but the fact that they CAN BE DONE remains.

Re:Silly Question

[fredrikj]

Well, the record for 100% in Super Metroid in 0:58. Straight speed is 0:38. Check my post history, I recently posted links.

Re:Silly Question

[metroid composite]

100% with 1:30 is a bit of a joke I seem to remember. I may be wrong, but I believe getting below an hour with any percentage is more difficult (and I got 0:43 a couple years ago before newer tricks were found; though yes, getting below 1:00 seems impossible for a while).

And Metroid Fusion 1% run is doable and really not that bad compared to Super Metroid 15%. The reason: all the normal upgrades (Varia, Gravity, etc) do NOT count towards your percentage. You'd be able to do 0% except one missile pod is sitting in your way and you have to roll through it.

By converse, Metroid Prime low percentage runs realistically get padded by 12 items or so (because you have to collect the Chozo Artifacts which really shouldn't add to your percentage).

Oh, and just for the fun of it, you can get to the very last save in Metroid II picking up only the bombs (so 1%...well you start with 30 missiles and the morph ball, thus 5 might be a more accurate description). I haven't managed to bomb jump up through the goo into the next room yet, but in theory I think it can be done. You'll need the Ice Beam to kill the metroids in the next section, of course (2%). Now, for the Queen, the trick is to bomb her stomach, but you lose energy when you do that, and you only have the 30 starting missiles. It's possible that you literally don't have the resources to kill her; I don't know her HP I'm afraid.

Re:Silly Question

[fredrikj]

Why would a video recording be more reliable as evidence? Really, what would prevent a cheater from recording on an emulator and then creating a video from that (through his TV or whatever)?

Your chances of catching a cheater are in fact greater when dealing with emulator input recordings, since you can analyze the exact input and, judging from reaction times and various oddities, to some degree determine the likelihood of slowmotion being used. Then there's visual analysis, of course. A skilled player can often tell when there's something superhuman going on. I know that a few cheaters on the Doom speedrunning scene have been caught this way.

In the end, the safest way is knowing the person. And trust me, there's no reason the guy who set these records would have cheated. He's made tons of recordings, each containing mistakes and occasionally improving his time slightly. I doubt a cheater would go through that.

On the other hand, if I saw a flawless run...

Question?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that the run was broken into segments which were based on save points.

Did the person actually run through the game in the time he said he did? Or did he just repeat each segment for the best time possible and then add all the shortest segments up for the time stated?

-J

Re:Question?

[metroid composite]

Repeat each segment of course. This is how it works in-game too. There's a constant raging debate over which save points to visit, and which to skip. The more you visit the more you break up the run into more perfectable pieces. However visiting a save point takes time as well, so you really shouldn't do it too often.

Those are cheated!

[Radix37]

Recorded with emulators using thousands of save states and slow motion too.

Everything at SDA is on the real game.

Re:Those are cheated!

[Radix37]

Are they actually faked, or are you just talking out of your ass?

Proof: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/jutut/nesvideos.html

Re:Those are cheated!

[Anonymous Coward]

> in the Zelda one for example, the player accidently exits a dungeon just to return... unless that's some secret I don't know about

If you look really closely, leaving and reentering the dungeon causes one of the locked doors in the entrance to dissapear. This saves a minute or so of running around to get the key.

Re:Submitter is a loser

[PrinceBrightstar]

I was expecting this. Actually I was looking for some way to overcome a depression that i'm in, and this has helped to boost my spirit a bit so I'm not thinking about doing the wrong stuff anymore.

Re:Submitter is a loser

[GigsVT]

but why did you, Mr McCool, waste your time posting that flame?

I bet Rob McCool, the httpd guy, takes offense at that. :)

Minimum percentage runs

[MMaestro]

Will there ever be a speed run record for people who play through getting the bare minimum items? At least in the Metroid games, you don't need to get all the items especially considering with 100% you'd end up with over 100 missles and 1000 energy..

Re:Minimum percentage runs

[fredrikj]

Super Metroid has been done with 14% items.

Re:SMB3 speedruns fake?

[PrinceBrightstar]

The one by the japanese player who did the 11 minute run admitted that they were faked by going frame by frame through an emulator.

14%? Alright; spill the beans

[metroid composite]

I know that either 3Missiles/2Supers or 2Missiles/3Supers are needed to beat the Mother Brain and the zebetites, then let's look at the rest:

6% -- Morph Ball (can't get out of the area without it)
7% -- Bombs (needed to leave Crateria) that area of Brinstar)
8% -- Power Bombs (needed to enter the Wrecked Ship, and to beat Metroids without the Ice Beam)
9% -- Gravity Suit (needed to activate the Speed Booster underwater)
10% -- Speed Booster (needed to access Draygon)
11% -- Charge Beam (needed to kill Ridley/Mother Brain unless you stock up on more missiles/Supers)
14% -- Three Energy Tanks (needed to survive Mother Brain's ultimate attack)
15% -- Varia Suit (cuts Mother Brain's ultimate attack in half while Gravity does nothing, unlike all other damage in the game. This is easy to fake in a video mind you, since Gravity and Varia/Gravity look identical)

This is the knowledge of 2001. Has anything changed? If there was a way to bypass the zebetite columns presumably this would cut down the percentage by more than 1%. If you could survive Mother Brain's ultimate attack by crystal flashing maybe...? That'd take out the Varia and three energy tanks, but add in two Power Bombs and at least two Super Missiles. I can't honestly see leaving out the Charge Beam, and all other items lock you completely out of an area before you can progress.

So...spill the beans. What new crack in the game has been found and exploited?

What's the non-100% record?

[metroid composite]

Personally, I found 100% runs to be kind of pointless, especially on Metroid 2 where they don't even tell you the percentage, and glitches allow you to get more items that theoretically weren't supposed to be in the game. Even in Super Metroid, though, you basically avoid getting items for most of the game, then sweep back through at the very end when you can reach all the spots and subsequently crush the Mother Brain like a bug. Why do the final sweep at the end? It just serves to make the last few bosses pathetic and thus boring, and merely reduces your choices of route (since you have to go this direction anyway to get the missile, the other shortcut is useless).

So...I'm wondering what the non-100% run for Metroid 2 is. Have they gotten it below an hour yet? I don't remember hearing about it, but I wouldn't be surprised....

Re:14%? Alright; spill the beans

[fredrikj]

The removed item is the Speed Booster, which you in fact don't need to access Draygon. By freezing a Mochtroid and jumping on it in the right moment, it is possible to pass through the block above it. Another glitch in the collision detection has been found that makes it possible to skip the Zebetites (but it doesn't change the amount of missiles needed, since you could always reload, and the amount required to beat Mother Brain is the same).

This is easy to fake in a video mind you, since Gravity and Varia/Gravity look identical)

Well, you'd record picking it up, wouldn't you?

Re:14%? Alright; spill the beans

[edwdig]

The previous poster listed 15% items without the ice beam. Your method would require getting the ice beam in order to skip the speed booster.

Quake came out before Metroid?

[dancingmad]

which are an extension of classic Quake speed runs.

Uh...no, Quake came out in 1996, Super Metroid in 1994 and the original Metroid long before that - and people were doing speed runs back then (I know my friends did). The internet has made it easier to show off good runs, but it started long before Quake, so they're not an extension.

I don't see why everything has to be tied back to crappy PC games (especially cool console stuff).

Re:Quake came out before Metroid?

[Radix37]

He means that it's an extension of SDA... used to be all about Quake but now it's expanding. Of course Quake wasn't the first speed run game ... even on the internet, I think that would have to be Doom.

Re:Metroid Prime Differences?

[edwdig]

Metroid Prime wasn't designed for you to be able to get major items out of order. The only way to do it is by taking advantage of glitches in the game.

One example is bomb jumping - you can't just keep dropping bombs. After setting 3 off, you have to wait for the 3 bombs to regen before you can set more. But there's a glitch along the lines of pausing after setting off the first one, which lets you get 5 off in a short time. It lets you bomb jump slightly higher, and lets you reach the areas that were supposed to be just out of reach of bomb jumping. In the PAL version, some of those ledges were made slightly higher so that this trick wouldn't work.

The other major glitch is in wall design. Most of the walls have rocky surfaces. A lot of them unintentionally had polygons meet in such a way that if you jumped perfectly onto a certain part, you could stand there and then jump again to reach things you shouldn't be able to. A few of those polygons may have been altered in the PAL version to prevent those jumps.

Re:14%? Alright; spill the beans

[fredrikj]

Sorry. I checked the recording again, the other difference is that he only uses 10/10 missiles/super missiles.

Re:Metroid Prime Differences?

[edwdig]

Because the effects of changing a few polygons is much easier to run thru QA than the effects of changing the properties of one of the most important player abilities.

GoldenEye and Perfect Dark...

[SamSim]

The fastest GoldenEye 007 videos add up to around 1 hour 18 minutes.
For Perfect Dark they add to something less than 1:40.
Of course, these are the collaborative work of many, many different gamers... but we've been working on those times for six years, and we use WAY more tricks. Enjoy.