Metroid Prime was released in November 2002 and is the first Metroid game to be 3D, in a first person perspective. Many nicely placed ledges and some glitches allow a vast amount of sequence breaking and speed running opportunities. There are several version differences between the NA and EU (PAL) versions that make the EU version slower and more difficult for speed running. The North American "Player's Choice" version is an even further butchered version.
Runs using the original 0-00 North American version:
Runs using the European [PAL] version:
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1:01 by Paul Evans, done in 15 segments.
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For general knowledge regarding Metroid Prime speedrunning/sequence breaking (including techniques used), check out the SDA Strategy Wiki.
I first wanted to try this run in 2006, but it quickly became apparent that secret worlds were too slow to use in a speed run. Another effort was made in 2008 when they were understood better, and it was determined that a variation of this route, grabbing spider ball, might be as fast as the standard route at the time. Unfortunately, it's not worth it to bother with a much more difficult route that may or may not actually be faster. Between then and summer 2010, I figured out how you can wallcrawl from Central Dynamo to the Phazon Elite pretty quickly, bypassing the need for spider ball in this route. That, along with better strategies when wallcrawling toward the ice beam finally made this route a better option that the old one. All in all, the new route probably saves around 30 seconds.
1:00 is probably possible. You'd have to eliminate essentially every costly mistake, really optimize the the random bits (ie: Warrior fight and Metroid Prime fight), and probably even remove some saves (notably, the one between segments 3 and 4). In short, it would require quite the effort. I don't think under an hour is reasonable with this route. One of the main reasons for this is that, in many rooms, going faster simply means you'll have to wait at the door longer. Luckily, this also means that you can sometimes make mistakes and not lose any time.
Part 1: There's not too much to say here. Everything went reasonably well until i got shot by a pirate at the end and lost a second or so. Fortunately, this game doesn't record seconds in the end time so i'm allowed a reasonably sized buffer of small mistakes throughout the run.
Part 2: Another pretty simple segment. You can actually kill the Parasite Queen in 9 missiles (excluding one time where i actually shot 2 missiles at the same time and killed it in 8). It's also faster if you don't stall while doing rapid missiles. The escape was alright. I've gotten above 4:30 a few times and Zoid's gotten as high as 4:30.65, but again this lost second has no effect on the end time.
Part 3: There's a flashier and quicker way to do Space Jump First, but it's very difficult and probably requires saving afterwards. The normal way without saving loses very little, if any, time, and doesn't require a 12 second segment. Getting the missile in the corner of Main Plaza actually takes about exactly as long as the one in the halfpipe, but I like this one better. It looks like I lose a lot of time in Watery Hall Access when I dash into the bats, but I don't think I lose any time at all. I reach the door just before it finishes loading anyway. I mess up when scanning the first rune in Watery Hall and land on the platform, so it takes longer to turn around. After grabbing the missile I press 'L' too early, so i end up turning for half a second instead of immediately strafing out of the alcove. Incinerator Drone fight is one of the fastest I've ever gotten, at 1:04. Most runners accept anything under 1:10 (I probably would have too), but he was very generous this time. Because of a change in the next segment, I don't have to unlock the door in Energy Core (because I'll never go through it that way).
Part 4: The ghetto to get into the secret world in Gathering Hall is actually pretty difficult. Luckily I get it in one try so it looks like I really know what I'm doing. Wallcrawling over to Reflecting Pool is pretty straightforward as far as secret worlds go. The first few rooms load automatically as you walk across the door. The room past the locked door in Energy Core starts loading when you stand next to it, and you don't have to actually shoot the door at all. Furnace requires a manual trigger in order to not crash the game. This is why I morph and fall into the side of the tunnel. The next tunnel also requires a manual trigger, which is in the wall that I get stuck in to prevent myself from falling. Finally, Hall of the Elders also requires a manual trigger. I accidentally fall on a sticky part in the tunnel, but meanwhile Hall of the Elders is loading and I only lose a second or two at most. Once I jump over to the door, I have to be very careful not to get too close to the door or the Chozo Ghost fight will start and all the doors lock. In Reflecting Pool, I do a door warp to return inside the room.
Returning to the Gathering Hall save is pretty boring. In HOTE, you can actually just dash to the bomb slot. However, by doing this you bypass the trigger to start the Chozo Ghost fight, and it will start once you fall back down. Then you would have to wait several seconds for the ghost to actually appear. The way I do it, though slower, is faster.
Part 5: Having the ice beam puts Arboretum in a different state. Thus, you can't do the quick climb anymore, and there are Chozo Ghosts trying to beat you up. Flaahgra fight is decent except for the final slot, where I accidentally press buttons too fast and end up jumping stupidly. The IBJ in Suntower went well. You can probably do it in 8 (or even 7) bombs if you time them all perfectly, but 9 is the best I've been able to do. The fight for the artifact of warrior is alright. It's actually faster to shoot full charges instead of chaining half-charges (like I do at one point), assuming that the ghosts always appear right when you're ready. In practice this never happens, so I end up with some bastardized hybrid version of both strategies.
Part 6: The first 3/4 of this segment turned out remarkably well. In Triclops Pit, it's possible to carry the dash most of the way to the door by immediately jumping again when you land, but it requires near perfect timing and is easy to mess up. In Phendrana Shorelines, it's faster to use the grating under the platform on the left to scan dash over to the platform in the middle. In order to lock onto the scan point, however, you have to be standing about as far to the right as possible. I usually ended up falling off, and decided to just jump over to the platform. In the tunnel after getting the wave beam, the door automatically opens because I placed that bomb when I entered, and got far enough away before it exploded. Because of the way Prime loads rooms, it stays in a "darkened" state until I go through it, or i get two or more rooms away. Falling into the lava before Geothermal Core doesn't lose any time, because that door is slow.
Magmoor Workstation is the worst room in the run, and I have this dedicated paragraph to describe how poorly it went. I tried to jump to a ledge over on the wall, jump to another ledge, and then dash right to the door. Samus decided to ignore my completely accurate button presses, and missed the second ledge. I paused and briefly considered throwing a temper tantrum, but then just climbed the room another way. Also it's possible to dash directly to the second ledge, but that's very difficult, and suicide at the end of such a long segment (especially when I can't do the easy way). All in all, about 5 seconds lost.
Also, tate from the m2k2 forums discovered a slightly faster route through this part. By getting the wave beam before the boost ball, you can then wallcrawl past the dead door in Ruined Courtyard (discovered by Paraxade), reverse Thardus dash, and head to the plasma beam that way. It doesn't save a huge amount of time, but does save a bit.
Part 7: During this part my Wii was on the fritz and enjoyed randomly freezing. I mess up climbing the thermal visor room, first missing a jump to the catwalk's railing, and then missing a jump to the top of the structure in the middle. Control Tower went really well, though. When actually grabbing the thermal visor, I get shot near the end and lose some time. It's actually possible to start scanning the second point before getting stunned from the fall, but in practice this usually results in the cutscene ending with hundreds of space pirate missiles in your face that knock you back to the wall.
Phendrana's Edge went pretty poorly, but not much time was lost. I accidentally unmorphed before grabbing the power bomb expansion, when it's usually faster not to. Also, killing the pirate before power bombing the wall looks really slow, but that door takes forever to open (sensing a pattern?), so you usually have plenty of time. I do admittedly go a bit slow (as the door immediately opens), but it was less than a second lost.
Part 8: This part is pretty easy, so unfortunately there's nothing too spectacular. I get another power bomb expansion to use in Life Grove later. I also grab the ice spreader, which is more than worth it for the Metroid Prime battle. I do also get screwed several times when the boost ball sticks to the ground.
Part 9: The 51 seconds of play here chronicle the harrowing journey to Reflecting Pool.
Part 10: The first half of the segment is pretty boring. The extra power bomb I got in part 8 makes Life Grove much faster (alternately i'd have to get a refill from the spiky guy at the room entrance). In Phazon Mines, I kill the first Elite Pirate because otherwise that room doesn't load from a secret world state. Also, because I have the plasma beam, I have to fight the second Elite Pirate as well. The ice pirates in that room tend to kill you regardless of how much life you have, so i decided to just freeze one of them. Oliver from the m2k2 forums later found out that you can just use a power bomb to kill the invisible drone, which is much faster. In this case you'd have to get refills from the boxes on the far side of Central Dynamo in the next part, but you'd also get a power bomb to use on Omega Pirate. The power bomb maze was probably the fastest I've ever gotten.
Part 11: Metroid Quarantine A is a cool room with tons of different solutions. I think what I did here is best, because you get the missile expansion and don't waste a power bomb. Up until getting the artifact of newborn is pretty standard. After that, instead of heading toward PPC I head back to Central Dynamo instead. In Fungal Hall A I boost through a little groove in the ground. This is because it prevents the hunter metroids from locking onto you, and ultimately killing you. In Metroid Quarantine A I dash over to the metal beam, and then all the way back to the entrance. Much faster than going the other way.
Part 12: This part took about as much time as the rest of the run combined. The wallcrawling involved here makes segment 4 look like baby steps. However, it's required because I don't have the spider ball. I kill the Elite Pirate to unlock the door, which makes loading Vent Shaft much easier. To get it to load, you have to wedge yourself into the door and bomb jump up. To move into the next room, you morph (and get warped a few feet forward), which triggers the room transition. Climbing up the elevator involves aether jumps (which are described on the sda wiki). Individually, these are not too bad. However, having to do so many in a row is very, very difficult. Naturally, if you mess up one you fall back to the very bottom. The rest of the wallcrawl is mostly just aether jumps, before eventually doing the wrong-room unmorph trick to return inside the room.
I take it a bit slow after killing the Phazon Elite, because it's not a good feeling to mess up here after successfully doing the wallcrawl. At the top of Ore Processing is the most terrifying trick in the entire run. The ghetto jump to the top floor is not particularly tough, but usually it takes me a while to properly line myself up. Of course, if you mess up you tend to fall down or get eaten by a metroid. Amazingly, I don't mess it up. The next 80 seconds or so were equally terrifying, but fortunately turned out alright.
Part 13: Another perilous journey! I'll admit that the door shot in Crash Site looks pretty nifty. This is a good segment to follow the previous one.
Part 14: The Ridley fight is very easy, with one caveat. It's possible to make Ridley skip his double fly-by before he lands on the ground. Nobody knows why exactly this happens (though it probably involves the extra charge shot at the end). This segment mainly just involves doing it over and over until he does. The ground phase isn't much of a problem.
Part 15: Getting the ice spreader allows you to have a very quick Prime fight. Ideally, you would use it to skip the wave phases in the second and third round. Unfortunately, I didn't skip either. I did get some refills to allow for an additional shot in round 4, however. The first form could be much faster if he chose to change colors in a better order. The second form went about as well as I could hope. Luckily, there's no incentive to get a better first form, because 1:01 is 1:01.
Single-segment 1:06 by Besmir Sheqi.
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Finally i have lowered the time by another minute from 1:07 to 1:06. I remember when i started this category i would have never believed that i would ever break the 1:10 mark, and now i even got 1:06, 4 minutes below 1:10 and only 6 minutes off the hour mark. Once the difference between kip's 1:04 and smilingjack13's ss 1:13 was 9 minutes, and now i have finally decimated the time difference between a single-segment any% and a segmented any% run down to 3 minutes which is only one third of the erstwhile time-difference between them.
Finally i got a time that's only ~1 minute slower than kip's segmented 1:04/1:05. I am not sure if it would be enough for 1:05 with avoiding the three minor errors i did in this run. Since my run is already very clean, it is amazingly hard to get 1:05. I would have to do a Single-segment run that's as good as kip's segmented 1:05 in order to get 1:05 and this is something i am not about to try. This single-segment 1:06 is good enough for me so i will just stick with it.
Now to come to the positive points of this run; the 4:27.8 Frigate escape in this run was really very good and it's only 0.28 seconds slower than my personal best Frigate Escape 4:28.08 at archive.org. The chozo ghost battles were good enough, and there were also some quite good boss fights, ridley was good, flaahgra was ok, omega pirate fight was good, and prime's first form and prime's second form was also quite good. I also managed to get a 3-pool second form prime fight again. I think only subchamber four at the first form battle was bad luck. In subchamber 4 Metroid Prime was really annoying me because he kept changing his beam form all time so i also had to change my beam all time and that prevented me from shooting him. It cost me important seconds and after i killed his first form i was really upset and i thought his second form must at least succeed otherwise i would go bananas. Luckily i succeeded in the second form battle. You know with all the random stuff in prime these things will always happen and you can't even prevent it, you must deal with it (at least in a Single-segment run as you can't manipulate luck in it).
I would like to thank sparky, nate, smilingjack and stefan for cheering me on with this category, and thanks to smilingjack13 again for that he did the 1:13 pioneer. I would especially like to give a huge thanks to DjGrenola for keeping SDA alive. I have so much respect for him, he is doing so much for Speeddemosarchive.com and metroid2002.com and archive.org. Without DjGrenola Speeddemosarchive would have died a long time ago when Radix got too busy with his work. I think it's amazing DjGrenola is so busy with sda and archive.org with processing all the stuff etc. but he still even manages to be such a great echoes player and to do those awesome runs in echoes. He's supporting Nate so much all the time, it really looks like he never takes a break in his life ;). And thanks again to DjGrenola, Nate and Radix for processing this run and getting it up.
Enjoy the run!
Hard-mode 1:15 by Besmir Sheqi, done in 18 segments.
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100% 1:24 by Besmir Sheqi, done in 21 segments.
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This is definitely my best Speed Run of my life, it's even better than my 1:03. There is barely any error in this run. It is four minutes faster than the probably most popular 1:28 breakthrough by bartendorsparky and according to my time it has to be a great speedrun. Though sparky did his 1:28 in only three weeks so his 1:28 is definitely very good for doing it in only 3 weeks. Well there is not much to say about this run cause there is no mistake in this run, it's really my most beautiful speedrun and if someone asked me: "which of your own runs is your favourite?" i would say it's definitely this one. I am not sure whether this is the most optimized Metroid Prime speedrun ever but i am sure my 100% 1:24 and pirate109's PAL 100% 1:30 are definitely the two most optimized Metroid Prime speedruns ever. With all the random stuff in Metroid Prime it is impossible to do a perfect speedrun but the job of us speedrunners is to drive the time as close to perfect as possible. I think the perfect time for a TAS (tool-assisted) Metroid Prime Single-segment 100% speedrun would be maybe around 1:20. That's the time a programmed bot could get, but for us humans 1:20 is impossible.
I started this run at the same time when i started my any percent 1:03 and you will notice that the first three parts of my 100% 1:24 run are the same first three parts as in my any% 1:03. I did that to save time and effort. But i finished the 1:03 much sooner because i was mainly working on the 1:03. After i finished the 1:03 i started working more intensely on this 100% run. Well this is almost an up to date-run; as far as i know the only minor speed tricks i missed in this run are the faster Flaahgra method with the dashes and the ghetto jump in Geo core to get to the ice beam door which leads to the plasma beam in plasma processing. At the time i was working on those segments (in the any% and in the 100% run) i didn't know about those two speed tricks yet so i think it's not my fault and nobody can blame me for not doing it. Being a speedrunner means you must always try to stay up to date and this is not so easy because there are probably a million people out there in the internet who visit those sites and theoretically everyone of them could discover something new. And nowadays there are still being discovered plenty of minor speed tricks every month (if not every couple of weeks) in Metroid Prime so there is no chance for me to stay always up to date especially when i don't get online often. And by the way those two speed tricks i missed are minor ones, especially the ghetto jump in geo core is a very minor one. As far as i know the faster flaahgra method saves only about five to seven seconds, and the ghetto jump in geo core even saves only about two or three second, and both together would add up to ten seconds so it doesn't matter unless those 10 seconds would be the difference between 1:24 and 1:23 which (i'm pretty sure) isn't. Unfortunately my 1:24 was just too far away from 1:23:59 (I timed it being at least a 1:24:40) so there is no chance for me to get 1:23.
Thardus was really fast done with five power bombs and i also did the Meta-Ridley's fly-by skip again in this run but Luckily this time i didn't suffer as much as in my 1:03 and i got the ridley's fly-by skip-segment much sooner. I think the best boss fight of all was definitely the metroid prime fight; in a 100% run it would be fastest to fight prime only with the Ice Spreader during the first form fight and that's what pretty much happened in this run. Metroid Prime was cooperative and he always used his ice form so i could always use the Ice spreader as the fastest weapon agains prime's first form, allowing me to save plenty of time and get the optimal five minute final segment. I have estimated the optimal final segment for a 100% run would be around 5:00 (5 minutes) and i timed my final segment as being about 5:02 or 5:03 so it's almost as close to perfect as possible. I would have to get a 4 minute final segment for 1:23 and that's not possible, the current fastest time for the final segment is 5 minutes, and as far as i know this is the first time that the final segment has been done in five minutes.
Now this year is over and when i look back to this year i think the year 2007 was definitely the golden year and the highlight year of metroid prime, with more prime runs than any of the other previous years. For me 2007 was my golden year and my Metroid Prime 100% 1:24 speedrun clearly is one of the best speedruns of 2007. When i started my 100% run i would have never believed that i would break the 1:25 mark. I am very satisfied with my 100% 1:24, i am so happy with my 100% 1:24 and i am very proud of it. Maybe you think i have only done Any% and 100% runs but no low% run yet. Yes i have done a 22% 1:34 run which can be seen at archive.org so with that one i should have done all categories this year.
Without Sparky's famous 100% 1:28 i probably would have never been able to do such a great 100% 1:24 run. His 1:28 was the guideline for this run and so i would first like to give a huge thanks to Bartendorsparky who supported me a lot with his (3-week-rushed) 100% 1:28; sparky is my favourite speedrunner, in my opinion he is the best and most talented metroid prime/3D-Metroid player and speedrunner in the world and he is also a very friendly and modest person and he always helped me and gave me advices for metroid prime and i find it really kind of him :) so thank you so much Sparky. Further i would like to thank pirate109 who also supported me a lot with his awesome pal 100% 1:30 breakthrough, and also thanks to Stefan van Dijke who also helped me a lot and gave me advices for metroid prime and who is also one of my favourite speedrunners. Thanks also to nate who always likes my runs, who always cheers me on and who is also a very friendly person and who received and processed all my runs through all these years. Thanks also to DjGrenola for making it possible and still giving me the space for this record at SDA. Also thanks to Radix who brought me to Metroid Prime and who sympathized especially the 100% category for me with his famous and legendary 100% 1:37 breakthrough, and thanks to all those i forgot to mention.
Finally thanks again to Nate, DjGrenola and Radix for processing my runs, getting it online and for these awesome websites Speeddemosarchive and Metroid 2002. I hope you like and enjoy this run and i hope you see lots of new stuff in it.
Cheers!
MPzoid
Single-segment 100% 1:29 by Besmir Sheqi.
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There are about four errors in this run; the first one was in Research Lab Hydra when i missed a few jumps to get onto that narrow pipe thingy. The second error was in Tallon Overworld in Transport Tunnel B just when i returned from the Phendrana and Magmoor Cleanups; as i was boosting over that little bridge i tried to avoid a crash with those barbed creatures that look like black hedgehogs (forgot their name) and then i sliped or somehow lost control and then fell under the bridge, which cost me a few seconds. The third error was in Fungal Hall A just when i entered the room; as i moved towards the hunter metroid i did a combat dash accidentally and fell in front of the mushroom insead of onto it and then it got even worse and i missed some additional jumps trying to get onto the mushroom. It was really annoying me cause it cost me important seconds. The fourth and last error was near the end of the run in Landing Site just when i made my way up to Ridley and missed a few ghetto jumps towards the ledge in front of the door. There may be some more mistakes which i forgot to mention here but these are the worst mistakes, the rest of the run was quite good enough.
I have noticed in phazon mining tunnel that on ntsc version you lose more energy than on pal version. On ntsc the phazon damages samus faster so in an ntsc Single-segment 100% run the early newborn is harder and riskier than in a pal single-segment 100% run. Some of my Single-segment 100% attempts were ruined near the end in phazon mining tunnel when i died at early newborn. There were even some very good runs that were ruined by early newborn and that was especially painful. But thankfully finally i got a very good run that wasn't ruined by early newborn but was finished. :)
There are some good chozo ghost fights in this run and most of the boss fights were also good, especially prime's first form was very good. Unfortunately i failed trying to kill prime's second form in 3 pools so prime's second form took me 4 pools but it was still quite a fast second form battle since prime wasn't hesistating with the pools but he laid the pools very quick.
With avoiding all the four major errors i did in this run it would be possible to get 1:28 but that would be just too incredibly hard as i would have to do a single-segment 100% run that's as good as sparky's segmented legendary 100% 1:28 run in order to get 1:28 and i don't want to do that. Sure there will always be some fellows who aren't satisfied with this run and i know there are some people out there in the world who dislike me for any reason i don't know so they automatically don't like my speedruns regardless how good my runs are and after all these runs i have done for Metroid Prime and for SDAm2k2 it makes me feel sad to see there are still some people who don't like me. They wouldn't like me even if i get the mythical 0:59 in Metroid Prime, they will never change their mind about me no matter what i do so it doesn't make sense for me to work any more on metroid prime. But i don't care about it cos i know this planet is dark. I would just like to say those who have never really seriously tried speedrunning Metroid Prime on their own can't really appreciate and they can't understand how much work such a speedrun is and how much patience, energy and effort it takes out of you and they will never be able to understand it. So that's the reason why that sort of people disrespects your runs/your work, but those who have never really tried it on their own can't really judge about my work so they better shut up their mouth.
I would like to thank sparky, stefan, pirate109, nate, and all the other ones i forgot to mention for their support and help for this run. I would especially like to thank Nate who kept cheering me on through all these years with this Single-segment 100% category, and probably also thanks to him finally i got such an awesome time. Again thanks to Nate, DjGrenola and Radix for processing the run and for having these awesome web sites.
Enjoy the run!
MPzoid
Hard-mode 100% 1:37 by Besmir Sheqi, done in 22 segments.
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22% 1:18 by Robert Nobles, done in 18 segments.
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I'm sure there's a date on this somewhere, but just in case, it's November '04 (I actually finished October 27th). That's 10 months of my life dedicated to this game (some months more than others; in fact, it took me 2 months to get the Geo Core segment alone). I know some of you are asking, "why put yourself through that?" That's easy; I knew I could do it. I didn't know if I could get a good time, but I knew I could at least finish it (I had done one before, but I wanted to get it on tape). In fact, I joked around with kip that I would get a 1:19. I honestly had no clue I would come even close. As you can see, I beat the guess by a solid minute.
Now, for the beatability (a word? I think not) of this time. While I'm sure my judgement is biased, this is a solid run. It can definitely be beaten, but not a lot has changed route-wise or strat-wise since I started. I see 1:17 as a good possibility, and probably even 1:16. Not sure about anything lower, but feel free to prove me wrong.
If you don't have a lot of experience with 22%, the hardest parts about the game are not the lack of life, as would be expected. The Geothermal Core segment (segment 8) has the nastiest trick in the game, which you will see. The timing has to be so precise. If it's off just a little, the segment is botched and you have to try again. Right behind Geo Core follows Vent Shaft and Life Grove, the other members of the 'big three.' Vent Shaft requires a nasty bomb jump, and Life Grove requires some tricky spinner manipulation. Aside from the three above examples, there are other difficult segments not directly related to tricks. The segment that involves the Artifact of Warrior (Segment 11) is an ass-kicking waiting to happen. There are so many ways to die in that segment it isn't even funny. There are more examples, but why should I ruin it?
It's no coincidence this run was finished near the release of Metroid Prime 2. The original intent wasn't to take this long, but that was an implied goal I've always had; at all costs, finish before then. I realized this run was in jeopardy on August 29, about 2 months before I finished. I had been working on Geo Core for 2 months and going nowhere. I woke up that morning and looked at the calendar; I had to knock out 11 segments in a little under 3 months. I then made a decision: quit complaining because the game is screwing me over (in all fairness, it was). From that point on, I put all emotion beside and let a higher power take over. All I simply had to do was get up each day and try. If I was supposed to finish, I would finish; no worries if I didn't make it. Well, we all know what happened. In fact, I did the rest of the segments so fast, I had time to take breaks and play other games. A little food for thought, you might say.
Now, for the vids you are about to download. There was a problem with a couple segments. Because I recorded to a VHS tape, there was always the possibility of recording over a previous segment. I am obviously not above this, because I did it during the Flaahgra segment (segment 4). Nate and Radix have worked their asses off to fix this, and I want to thank them for it. See, I captured the segment before I recorded over it just so I could show my progress (the capture had no audio to conserve file size). Those two have replaced the corrupted video with a 'patch' of the previously captured video. I'm sure you'll notice this in the run because of the lack of audio, but do not fret, nothing fishy went on during those few seconds. Of little consequence is the fact that I recorded over the save cutscene of segment 10. This was fixed rather seemlessly, again from my capture.
Well, I know I've gone on too long. In fact, I'm pretty sure most of you either didn't read this at all, or stopped after the first paragraph or so. Therefore, I'll stop holding you up with my rambling. I hope you like the run; I worked my ass off for it.
Single-segment 22% 1:41 by Shawn Jones.
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Anyway, a good time became a slightly bigger goal as I was trying more. I am pretty pleased with this time, despite some unnecessary mistakes. The only part of the run that I am really disappointed with is Vent Shaft, which took me an embarassingly long time. I was even more disappointed because I had gotten it on my third, fourth, and first tries on my previous three runs. Oh well. Geo Core was fast enough to make up for it.
I didn't spend very long on this run, so I might try single segment 22% again in the near future. If I did, I would either try to get a really good time on normal, or I would try one on hard... I'm undecided. And I will buy a longer tape and record the next one on SP. Sorry about the poor quality in this run.
Enjoy!
Hard 22% 1:28 by Shawn Jones, done in 17 segments.
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If you're wondering how long this run took me, it took almost 8 months. However, all of that was not solid playing time. I did take some long breaks throughout that period. The average segment took me two days or so to do. A handful of the tougher segments took me about a week. The two segments that took an extremely long time were #5 and #11. Those are definitely the two best in my opinion. Segment 11 was brutal, because surviving a fast wave pirate battle was very difficult. Then, even if I did get past the battle, the segment was just starting. There were still tons of tricks and enemies after that point, and not dying was the biggest challenge. This segment frustrated me so much that I did single segment 22% to cool off. Segment 5 was a huge pain just because of its immense length and all the lucky factors that can repeatedly screw you over. Segment 8, Geo Core, also took a while, so it's worth mentioning. We all know how rare the bomb slot stall is.
When I got to the Ridley segment, I was really hoping for a final time of 1:30 or 1:29, but I wasn't sure if I could go that low. I figured since the last two bosses would be very hard, or impossible, to do perfectly, I just wanted to have solid battles that were good enough to get the time that I wanted. That's why Ridley could definitely be done 10 seconds faster or more; the no-damage glitch wasted some time. However, Ridley is almost pure luck, and it would be quite a challenge to get luckier than I did on this run. After the Ridley segment, I was confident that I could get 1:29. I had a couple of 1:30's where I used ten pools on the last boss, so I figured a solid run with nine pools would be 1:29. Therefore, when I did my final segment and had a nine pool battle, I expected a 1:29. To say the least, I was pleasantly surprised to see 1:28 come up. It's as if the game wanted to give me a parting gift as I finished my run.
To conclude, I am extremely pleased with this run. I worked very hard on it and I will look back on it for a long time to come. I really don't know if I, personally, could do any better than this. Maybe I could get 1:27 if I threw in the handful of little tricks that I missed, and polished out the few mistakes that I accepted. Regardless, it's pretty spiffy, and there are a few new dashes and tricks in here (they were new to me anyway), so hopefully you're willing to watch one more Metroid Prime run.
Enjoy!
Frigate Escape 0:04:30.05 remaining by Paul Evans.
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PAL version 1:09 by Stefan van Dijke, done in 17 segments.
Author's comments:
Most enjoyable segments are in my opinion seg 8, 11, 12 and 15. You need so much luck getting the right refills and getting good boss battles plus there are tons of tricks you need to perform in were you're not allowed to make a single mistake. Seg 11 is my personal favourite, its a pretty long part and I died a lot of times ignoring all the pirates and torrets. They didn't ignore me though and a small mistake was enough to lose a huge amount of health. Besides that I also needed a lot of missiles, I can assure you that it wasn't funny. So even with that one big mistake (you will notice it) the seg is still good enough in my opinion.
I ended up with a 1:10 a week before this run was finished and decided to redo segment 13 up until the end. I picked up an extra item and still managed to save about 20 seconds. The last few segment in the 1:10 were not that well done though, I just got too excited finishing the run.
I'm very pleased with this 1:09. I estimated it being at least 1:09:59 :p. I actually had a one second faster final segment however it turned out to be just over 1:09 for some reason. This run will show a small amount of new speedtricks. Nothing special though, just a few 1-2 second tricks. At least I tryd to add everything I could think of to make the run more enjoyable, I think that I succeeded in that. I won't spoil anything but I can tell you that the boss battles in this run are very well done. I won time in nearly every boss battle compared to pirate109, with an awesome ridley battle at the end of the run :).
I want to thank pirate109 for his 1:11 run. I stole every single thing I could think of and added a few small improvements. Without his run I would've never been capable of doing this 1:09.
Thats it, enjoy the run!!
PAL version Single-segment in 1:16 by Stefan van Dijke.
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Huge thanks to you guys!
PAL version 100% in 1:30 by William Tansley, done in 19 segments.
Author's comments:
One change that I did make to the route (suggested by sparky) was to not fight thardus on the first time I saw him; instead, to bypass him using the 'thardus jump' and come back later once I had another PB from Phen's edge. This is because I ran out of patience waiting for 2 PBs refils from the previous segment (ironically, my impatience probably ended up saving time ;p). Anyway, I ended up having a total of 5 PBs for thardus, enabling me to get a totally badass fight. :)
It was very frustrating when I got to ridley near the end, because I'd tried and tried to get the trick to make him skip his fly-by that kip does in his 100% (discovered by Red Scarlet) happen, to no avail. It was particularly annoying because it looked as if the trick would be the difference between 1:30/31 at the end. After many hours of trying, I was obviously getting more and more impatient, so what I did was copy my save before ridley on to another card and temporarily ditched the trick. This meant that if I found that the trick would be required for 1:30, I could go back to before ridley and keep trying for it. As expected, getting a good enough final segment for 1:30 was TOUGH. After a few days of failed attempts, kip suggested sending a 1:31 finish and to just continue going for 1:30 at my leisure - I thought this was a good idea, so I went ahead and made the copies of the run (I always do this, just in case the originals get lost in the post or something). However, the very day that I was going to mail the 1:31, I got like the luckiest first form ever (3 seconds quicker than Radix's 1:37 one, according to my timing), and a kickass second form to boot (MP finally was obediant and stayed away from the first form's corpse), resulting in 1:30.
Still, I'm pretty certain I only just scraped it - I won't bore you with all the various timings I did to find this out, but i think it's likely to be a very high 1:30 (at least 1:30:50), which is quite pleasing because it kinda proves that even if i'd ruled out any errors in certain parts it wouldn't have affected the final time (including the ridley trick, which saves around 22 seconds). I didn't keep a record of the time lost due to mistakes or anything, but IMO the theoretical limit for PAL 100% would be 1:28, perhaps a very low 1:29.
It may look like i'm saying this just because some of the other runners do ;P, but i'd genuinely like to thank the guys from the m2k2 irc channels (you know who you are) for encouraging me during the run and congratulating me after, especially sparky for the suggestion about slightly changing the route to have more PBs for thardus, Ekard for helping me with where to find the all too elusive PB refills, Miles for giving me the idea to use rapid fire on ridley's flying form and, as always, Nate and Radix for getting it up online. :)
Enjoy the run.
PAL version Single-segment 100% in 1:39 by Besmir Sheqi.
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There are about five errors in this run; one mistake was in hall of the elders when i took four or five attempts to be successful on the 3-bomb jump. Another one was in Metroid Quarantine B when i failed at the plasma trooper dash; i had to choose for one method to pass through mqb and i chose the faster and cooler method, obviously it was the wrong decision which cost me some important seconds. This was the worst error of this run. Another errror was in Metroid Quarantine A when the Metroids were latching onto me. Thardus is always a pain when you do a Single-segment 100% run regardless of the version because the Thardus battle is just so damn random and when you lay your power bombs it is random and you would be very very lucky if all your power bombs would hit him. And sometimes he wastes your power bombs by starting to roll much faster after he got hurt during his regeneration phase. And that's exactly what he did in my run, he started rolling much faster and managed to cost me many important seconds. And since that happens very rarely it hurts me especially a lot that he decided to do it now of all times. Worst is you can't even prevent it. So error number 4 goes to Mr. mischief-maker Thardus. The last (though very minor) one was in Reflecting Pool when i failed twice climbing the right side of the room and then cancelled the attempts to avoid additional time loss by switching over to the other and easier side. Those were the worst parts of this run, the rest was very good.
Everyone who has ever played PAL and especially with 100% knows how hard it is to get power bomb refills on pal version because on PAL version the game always refuses to give enough power bomb refills while on ntsc version the game always tends to give enough power bomb refills. And as anyone knows in a 100% run you need a lot of power bombs so it is conceivable that i had to suffer a lot in my PAL Single-segment 100% run about the Power bomb refills. Some of my PAL Single-segment 100% attempts were ruined near the end (second mines trip) because i had no power bomb when i needed them.
Maybe there are some who say: "there are errors in it, i don't like it.". Hey! This is a Single-segment run! And it's especially a very hard one because it's PAL plus Single-segment plus 100 percent so this is the optimal combination for a very hard category, and if you don't like it then don't watch it. This run was so hard for me to get, this is as good as i can get, it's almost my perfect, and it was very hard and very stressful for me so i don't think i can get 1:38 and i won't bother trying to get 1:38. In my opinion i did very well and it's a beautiful speedrun. Oh and by the way it's only one minute slower than Ding Chavez's NTSC Single-segment 100% 1:38 which was quite a good speedrun. So if there are some who say it's not good they surely prove that they have never really seriously played Metroid Prime otherwise they wouldn't gab bullshit.
Now to get to the bright parts of this run, i had a very good Metroid Prime battle, first form was very good, but especially his second form was very good. I got a 5-pool prime fight which is as much as stefan and pirate had in their segmented runs so it's definitely very good for pal. The Chozo battles were also not bad, the Ridley-battle was really good for a pal single-segment run. And I also had quite a good pal 4:20 frigate escape.
Thanks goes to pirate109 whose segmented PAL 100% 1:30 supported me a lot in my pal single-segment 100% run, while some alternate tricks were found by myself. Also thanks to Nate, DjGrenola and Radix for processing the run and the web sites it belongs to. I hope you enjoy my run and have fun with it because it's not only a pal run but imo it's a very good pal run.
MPzoid
PAL version 22% 1:26 by Stefan Van Dijke, done in 21 segments.
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I will include a list of dates of when the segments were completed. I started this run on 26-08-05 and finished it on 03-03-09.
| Segment | End time / % | Description | Date |
| 1 | 0:02 / 0 | To savestation before parasite queen | 26-08-05 |
| 2 | 0:05 / 0 | Parasite queen and frigate escape | 26-08-05 |
| 3 | 0:05 / 1 | Space Jump | 02-09-05 |
| 4 | 0:10 / 4 | Missles, Morphball, Morphball bombs | 04-09-05 |
| 5 | 0:15 / 6 | Varia suit, artifact of Wild | 08-09-05 |
| 6 | 0:24 / 9 | Artifact of Nature, wave Beam, Artifact of Lifegiver | 15-09-05 |
| 7 | 0:28 / 10 | Ice beam | 04-12-05 |
| 8 | 0:33 / 11 | Power Bombs | 02-07-07 |
| 9 | 0:36 / 11 | Vent Shaft | 06-07-07 |
| 10 | 0:39 / 12 | Plasma Beam | 27-08-07 |
| 11 | 0:40 / 12 | Frigate Crash Site | 27-08-07 |
| 12 | 0:42 / 13 | Artifact of World | 27-08-07 |
| 13 | 0:44 / 15 | X-Ray Visor, Artifact of Chozo | 17-02-09 |
| 14 | 0:48 / 16 | Artifact of Warrior | 18-02-09 |
| 15 | 0:51 / 16 | Metroid Quarintine A, Metroid Quarintine B | 22-02-09 |
| 16 | 0:53 / 16 | Phazon Suit | 23-02-09 |
| 17 | 0:56 / 17 | Artifact of Newborn | 24-02-09 |
| 18 | 1:01 / 19 | Artifact of Elder, Artifact of Spirit | 24-02-09 |
| 19 | 1:06 / 21 | Artifact of Sun, Artifact of Strength | 25-02-09 |
| 20 | 1:14 / 22 | Artifact of Truth | 28-02-09 |
| 21 | 1:27 / 22 | Metroid Prime | 03-03-09 |
edit: Redid segment 18, 19, 20 and 21. To be honest these segments were quite sloppy in the 1:27 run. They now have higher quality in video and gameplay. Enjoy!
PAL version Single-segment 22% 2:00 by Stefan van Dijke.
Author's comments:
I got interested in 22% single segment after seeing smilingjack's run. After I finished my hard mode run I decided to give it a try. Before I started working on the run I had to practise the hard parts. I tried the vent shaft bombjump but noticed it was too difficult, using it in a single segment run would take me forever. I tried the dash method but got to the conclusion that every attempt takes too long cos of reloading rooms. If I hadn't discovered an easier way of getting through vent shaft I would have probably not continued trying this run. Geo Core is random but for some reason my succes rate went up once I got consistand with the first part of the run. It still takes ridiculously long though especially in this run so prepare to skip through the run if you like. Last runkiller is life grove, I messed up here in the run and got unlucky too. Luckily after practising I got consistant with the bombjump out of life grove tunnel, and I needed it. The runs through the mines are tough so I took the easiest way, killing almost all enemies along the way. Ridley was eisier than expected because of his predictable movements. Prime one and two are definitely the toughest.
Hope you enjoy the run, its definitely the most intense run I have done so far.
PAL version Frigate Escape 0:04:25.40 remaining by Besmir Sheqi.
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btw do you think my time could have been faster if i played with 60 Hz mode?
i don't think so because in 60 Hz when i move faster the time will also be displayed faster.