What's your best Metroid time?

[Deepfake]

I was running Super Metroid last night, and nailed an hour and thirty minutes exactly. I normally don't play the game to speedrun since I love the environments and ambience enough to linger, but I have tapped a lot of that out and it felt right.

Feel free to share your finishing time for any other games, discuss routes, etc!

[Valigarmander]

My best recorded time in Super Metroid was 1:26 about four years ago.

Maybe I should dust off my Wii U sometime and try again. I could probably cut that time down further if I routed better.

[Deepfake]

My best recorded time in Super Metroid was 1:26 about four years ago.

Maybe I should dust off my Wii U sometime and try again. I could probably cut that time down further if I routed better.

I could definitely do the game with less, although Draygon is hardly easy to do without grapple beam or taking damage. I can mockball pretty much at will now, but only have used it for the early super missiles and early ice beam. Getting power bombs early would be nice to save a trip but that narrow brinstar shaft with all the rippers is such a pain to get through, I am basically guaranteed to lose time trying.

[Marilink]

Haven’t ever given it a real shot, honestly. I should sometime, just for fun.

[Deepfake]

I should probably specify I meant I could do less than the previous time I'd gotten, not that I was trying to one-up you @Valigarmander. Sorry if that was unclear!

Haven’t ever given it a real shot, honestly. I should sometime, just for fun.

Yeah man, go for it!

I did another run tonight but had quite a few fumbles trying to pull off the mockball, etc, and that resulted in a much worse time than I expected. Proud to say that Draygon is now a boss I take very little damage from, at least, and I think I can shave a few more energy tanks off my run so that will help me save time quite a bit. I wish I could do the super-missile gate glitch but I can't seem to get the timing right, I've done it once in the past but I think that was using my NTSC copy on the PAL SNES. Anyway, my last time was 1:21, which is nothing to sneeze at. I look forward to shaving that down.

[Deepfake]

Have gotten my time down to 1:09 now. I probably need another route if I want to make any more real improvements aside from some basic terrain navigation and whatnot. I can do the game without the grapple hook but it usually means losing time on multiple tries to get into the wrecked ship and then Draygon takes much longer to kill as well.

[Marilink]

Have you looked much into guides and strategies assembled by the speedrun community, AI, or are you pretty much just forging your own way?

[X-3]

I think my SM PB was 01:23. (01:54 real-time) That was after practicing Kraid quick-kill and a faster Phantoon fight IIRC. Never really got the hang of Draygon though.

[Deepfake]

Have you looked much into guides and strategies assembled by the speedrun community, AI, or are you pretty much just forging your own way?

I haven't really looked into any community strats etc, I'm mostly just doing what I do and trimming out the fat wherever possible. I ended up with tons of extra health for post-Phantoon bosses so I am thinking I can shave out another energy tank or two at the least before I consider any alternate paths, etc.

Right now the way I'm playing is get the morphball, first missile, head directly to bombs, then head directly to mockball for early super missile, skip Spore Spawn, head directly to Kraid without high jump while grabbing Spazer on the way, early ice beam, high jump, direct to speedbooster, early wave beam, and then where the grapple beam comes in I can either skip that section entirely and risk a protracted fight with Draygon and some shinesparks+timed jumps to get into wrecked ship. Obviously the grapple skip shares massive potential for time saving except Dragon takes a ton of damage and the fight is much longer as a result as well as failing the water platform jumps into wrecked ship is a huge time sink. Ridley's lair is by and large decided, I always get the screw attack for my own sanity, since it saves a lot of damage management.

[Deepfake]

Down to 1:06 now, gonna try cutting out the grapple fully, I'm mostly use to the stuff I have to do at this point.

[Marilink]

when's the stream

[Deepfake]

when's the stream

I'll try setting something up tomorrow probably, I gotta move some stuff around to get my NTSC SNES setup. I've been using the SNES mini til now.

[Deepfake]

Okay, so I setup the SNES but unfortunately all of my proper SNES controllers aren't working quite right and so I actually play a lot worse than on the mini. I'm trying different emulators to see if I can get the input lag down on my desktop, otherwise I might be out of luck.

[Marilink]

Ah, shoot. Hopefully you can get the emulation sorted out.

[Deepfake]

Okay yeah, I got Retroarch with a bsnes core running without input lag, really surprised how bad the lag has gotten over the years but that's what you get for running emulators on a bloated modern OS through a LCD screen instead of direct on hardware like DOS with a CRT. It's not averaging perfect framerate but it feels accurate enough to work with. Just have to try to get the sound to stop upsampling at a lower pitch because that's weird.

[Deepfake]

Currently setting up, here's my twitch:

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

This seems fun, but first I should probably try to actually complete a Metroid game for once. I think I'll give Super Metroid a fair chance soon.