This was not a run I spent a lot of time on. It's a fairly boring game to run because it's so god damn straightforward and there really aren't that many tricks to learn. The only really big mistakes I made during this run were during the Neon Tiger miniboss fight and in Doppler stage 2 when I was penetrated with a certain degree of multiplicity. Like I got fucked in the ass, then grew two more assholes and got those plugged too. Anyway, here are some level comments:

Intro: I thought Mac was my friend. He wasn't, so he slowed me down a lot. Why the fuck does he take so long to trap X? At least he doesn't talk to Zero.

Buffalo: I took a hit at the beginning like a class C dumbass. Buffalo goes down like a "girl getting raped with no arms," I guess. Easy stuff.

Seahorse: For some reason, I can't always get the climb down how I want to, but it's not that big of a deal. I could probably kill the boss faster, but this way looks a lot cooler.

Rhino: Stage goes very well. Tunnel Rhino is an extremely challenging boss and I applaud his designer. Artificial intelligence, more like REEL INTELLIGENTS

Tiger: Shit.

Catfish: Not at all shit. I got unlucky on the boss, though, and ended up using too many drills. Standard is like four or five.

Crawfish:

SIKE!

Vile: I suck so hard at climbing the wall in the beginning. The first part of Vile went down like a girl getting raped, but she DOES have arms... and I guess she lost her arms during the second part. (Sorry if this is offensive to anyone, especially females; I am a nice, loving, and caring guy, I swear.)

Crawfish: Stage goes okay, I take a hit during the conveyor belt part, but the rest is smooth.

Beetle: The boss slows me down by blowing up all over the place after he dies.

Hornet: I just acted a little stupid in the segment after the wireframe wheel, but it's okay overall.

Doppler 1: One time I used Triad Thunder while climbing a wall, but then it was all like, LOL JK!!! And decided not to work. It was weird. Other than that the stage goes pretty skipperly.

Doppler 2: A little weapon filler dropped and fucked my life. I lost probably a total of 8 seconds in this level because I had to find health, but it could've gone a lot worse.

Doppler 3: EVERYTHING DIES!

Doppler 4: Nearly choked on Kaiser Sigma, but I managed to win.

I'm pretty happy with this run.

Thanks go to:
Mike, for putting up with my shit
Nate, for putting up with even more of my shit
Flip/Breakdown/Dex, for putting up with lots of shit in general (not that Mike and Nate don't, but the updaters don't have to deal directly with me or my shit)
Raijin, for giving me lots of new strategies and motivation for this run
Mike again, for making a pretty decent run of this game (and taking lots of my shit during the marathon)
Daniel Chamness, for also making a pretty decent run

This is a category I've really spent a ton of time on. However there is only 1 trick in this run that can possible save a significant amount of time
and that's Doppler 2 Boss Explosion Skip. It saves 15 seconds but it's still unknown to the X Community outside of Japan how it's even done.

Overall this is a pretty solid run and once this skip is figured out I'll submit a much better run.

Quick run notes:

This is most optimal route out there. It's been optimal since Uyama's 2005 SDA run.

Buffalo e tank is possible without dash boots BUT it's a trick slightly less pixel precise than X1's Kuwanger heart

Charged ice is only useful on Tiger only if he dashes (which is slower overall)

I get hit on purpose at very end of beetle to cancel charged ice so I can speed up beetle (though I didn't damage to the left >> )

Seahorse fight was quick

Pausing the instant Hornet gets affected by charged well and switching will let you do another shot faster (still does same damage)

This run utilized charged shot jumps to skip animations like charged gravity well

I have to beat Vile with ray splasher otherwise I don't get z-saber

Crawfish gets bodied

I skip that elevator in style

I hate sigma

Shoutouts to Nero for giving me competition otherwise I'd probably not cut the 47 in a much longer time.

Hello. This is my Mega Man X3 low % speedrun, in case you got to this page with your eyes closed.

I first encountered speedrunning (ran into speedrunning, lol) around 2008, way back in 8^th grade. All I could think to say at the time was "Holy cow these people are amazing I wanna do this someday...," but I never really put much thought into it other than that. I mean, I could never be that good, right?

Fast forward to 2010. I was sitting at my grandma's house, bored out of my mind; I had already beaten all the N64 games I had brought, and my DS was dead as a doornail. So I went down on my computer and browsed around, looking for some ROMs that I could download. I had always enjoyed watching Mega Man speedruns, so a rom called Mega Man X caught my eye rather quickly. I downloaded the game (shut up – and I own the 3 SNES games now, so it's a moot point anyway) and ran it on zsnes. I messed around with it a little bit, and found out that it was really fun to play. Upon learning that it had two sequels on the same system, I promptly downloaded both of them as well. X2 was cool and all, but X3...

If "love at first sight" had a video game equivalent, I had just found it.

I played it constantly over the next few months, and along the way I observed the currently existing speedruns for the game. I learned where to jump, what to equip, which levels were fun and which ones... weren't (we'll get to that later), and I found out some new stuff by my own experimentation, but I had two persistent problems: I only had the games on an emulator, and I didn't have a DVD recorder. Unless I wanted to do a TAS (and I didn't), I couldn't record a speedrun.

Fast forward again, to May 2011. I had obtained an SNES in September 2010 along with a few games, but it wasn't until an unexpected birthday present came along that I had the 3 X games in my possession. So I practiced.

And practiced.

And practiced some more. There wasn't a whole lot else I could do with the game until...

April 2012, I finally got a DVD recorder for my birthday. After some fun configuring my recording setup, I was all ready to record a run. So I hooked up the SNES, turned on the TV, started the game, and...

"Wait, why is there so much lag?"

In the end, I had to dredge up enough money for a powered splitter (SO WORTH IT), and after reconfiguring all my stuff AGAIN, I spent the next two weeks relearning my timing... for EVERYTHING.

And after all this hassle and wait, I finally got this product, my very first speedrun, completed... pretty quickly, actually. I guess that can happen if you practice a game for a year (sometimes, anyway).

Anyway, I'm sure nobody really cares about my life, so before we get to what you actually want to read, I need to throw out some thank yous:

-The SDA admins, for providing a place for people to pursue this obscure hobby
-All the other speedrunners on this site, for making this community what it is
-My parents, for being awesome. Especially my mom, who bought me a Super Mario 64/N64 bundle pak against my dad's wishes (while he was on deployment, of course) and thus got me addicted to video games for the rest of forever
-My friends from school and church, for being cool people in general
-My SNES and MMX3 game pak, for not freezing on me in the middle of the run
-Myself, for doing the run. Duh!

So anyways, on to the run itself!

INTRO:

-First part goes great, hooray!

-I decided to try and be awesome and button-mash that red missile dude to death, and it blew up in my face, lol. Zero part goes fine other than that

-The boss... is the boss. I use the slower strat because I fail horribly EVERY SINGLE TIME I try the TAS tactic (and it doesn't take significantly longer, so whatever)

 

BLIZZARD BUFFALO:

-Goes really well, overall

-The only thing of note on the level is that I don't get aggressive on the purple dude guarding the ladder because the past 20 or so times I tried it, I got owned. I'll try to get it in future runs...

-I hit BB with a partially charged shot during the fight because I'm dumb

 

TOXIC SEAHORSE:

-The beginning goes really well, yay

-How did I get hit by that turtle? That NEVER happened before, ever

-Mini-boss gets annihilated

-Awesome wall jumping, and then TS gets pwned like a n00b

 

TUNNEL RHINO:

-This is by far my worst level – not in this run (not even close), but I consistently fail at this stage. A combination of OP rock spheres, tanks that have two attacks that require godlike reflexes to see and dodge (and lag DOES NOT HELP) and stupid Bar Wayings (green things) that block me phenomenally works to ensure that I get owned mercilessly.

-The beginning goes really well, actually

-Bit shows up, I miss one shot but it doesn't matter much, yadda blah blah blah blah

-I get hit by one of the first two tanks; I fully expect to get tagged by both (my luck stat is a negative number), so that was nice

-You can stand inside the mini-boss to kill him, but I just can't button-mash that well (evidence: intro stage...)

-TR himself goes down nicely, but I'm a little extra cautious because one hit would've killed me. Also, he only does 1 or 2 rainbow charges; the standard is 3, so go me

 

VOLT CATFISH:

-This level goes really, really well

-The only complaint occurs when I jump way too late to dodge a laser, and then get hit by the very next enemy too. Probably a second or a little more lost...

-I get a 6 drill VC fight, which is ok

 

CRUSH CRAWFISH:

-Nothing to complain about, except that the final Walk Blaster is a meanie and shoots me in the foot

-CC himself is a joke. Just do what I do, and it'll work every time

 

NEON TIGER:

-I use a new strat at the beginning so I don't have to wait on the bugs. Saves a few seconds, and looks cool

-I also use a new strat on the centipede boss that saves about 1-1.5 seconds...

-Byte decided to be mean and show up here. You can save a completely insignificant amount of time if you have Ray Splasher for the fight, but it doesn't really matter either way

-The rest of the level is bog standard. Tornado Fang clipping FTW.

-The only danger in the NT fight is falling asleep mid-battle.

 

GRAVITY BEETLE:

-At the beginning X is retarded and fails to understand the difference between a wall and a ceiling, lol

-The elevator skip is so beautiful it's ridiculous

-That part right before the boss gate with the 2 purple dudes and the wall crab... is extremely annoying. I lose a second or so here (being careful) because I didn't want to get smacked by a bomb and lose double/triple that, especially after the elevator skip

-GB himself is a joke... and not even a funny one, at that

 

BLAST HORNET

-So I decided pre-run that I wouldn't accept a run unless I nailed both elevator skips, and I was all nervous here, like "Oh man that GB skip was too good I'm gonna screw this up...," and then I dominated it. I will probably never do the skips this well in an SS again...

-I get smacked around fairly hard by the wheel boss (which is much easier with the arm upgrade)

-I seriously need to find a consistent strat for the outside section... winging it yields results similar to what you see here

-So the game decides I need a large energy capsule after the Byte room gates... At the time I was annoyed, but as it turns out I would've died in the BH fight if I hadn't got it

-The aforementioned BH fight, BTW, is horrible. My 7^th shot hit him like a frame too late, and I had to sit through his laggy routine again

 

DOPPLER 1:

...

...

...

-I could say a lot of things here, and I considered everything from quiet resignation to full-on RAGE, but in the end I'm just gonna shut up and let you see for yourself the pure stupidity that goes down here

-The end boss is probably the only respectable part of the whole thing, ugh

 

DOPPLER 2:

-I remember how to play the game here, thankfully

-The beginning goes more or less perfectly

-I save a cool 10 seconds by utilizing a sweet jump sequence that I found myself to skip an elevator

-Anyone who wants to skip the whole elevator in low%, be my guest. I'm sure not doing it

-Vile 1 goes decently; he spams his invincibility beam attack of sadness a couple times but whatevs

-Vile 2, on the other hand, doesn't. I am WAY too cautious in this fight, and I lose a few seconds from it.

-The photo finish was pure luck; when I got grabbed, I thought I was dead, and so I accidentally hit left, and then right and Y before chucking my controller to the ground. Funny thing was, right + Y killed him for me!

 

DOPPLER 3:

-If you want to not waste a few minutes of your life, skip to the Doppler fight. You've seen this all before

-BH: I use Gravity Well and then Spinning Blade. Saves time over the previous run

-BB: Easy, but I hit him with a partially charged shot again like an idiot

-TS: I miss 1 shot, but it only wastes a second or so

-TR: This one's always the troll who sucks away half my life, but I do well here

-CC: I lose a second because I fail at weapon switching

-NT: I'm retarded and forgot where I was going, so I fought him early. Nothing special

-GB: *yawn*

-VC: Another 6 drill. It could be better, but then it could certainly be worse.

-I grab the energy capsule because I would've shot myself if Doppler killed me. Costs a few seconds, but SSs need some consistency, ya know? (And then I don't even get hit in the fight, sigh...)

-Doppler himself is a pushover. I shoot away from him to increase his vulnerability period before his flaming charge. It might slow things down a tiny little bit each time, but it makes getting a perfect fight MUCH easier

 

DOPPLER 4 SIGMA:

-I lose a couple of seconds pre-boss gate because I was so utterly nervous that I bombed the wall jumping

-Sigma goes perfectly, hooray!

-Personal aside: I tried to lick my lips before the Kaiser Sigma fight, but my mouth was so bone-dry that my tongue got stuck, lol

-Kaiser Sigma goes beautifully, I miss 3 shots or something. Also, I dodged that last missile by like a pixel or so, I nearly hit the roof

-Shooting out a fancy variation of the music, showing off by jumping on walls before they become visible, and on to the ending cutscene we go!

 

I might come back and try to improve this run someday, but for now I'm not too worried about it. I want to move on to 100%, maybe any%, and then there are a couple of other games that I want to try my hand at (which ones? That's for me to know and you to find out...).

Wow, this dragged on way longer than I wanted it to. Kudos if you actually read through all that (or even just the actual run comments).

I hope you enjoy the run as much as I enjoyed making it.