I finally got 0:46! It's finally happened, and I'm very happy with it!

This isn't a completely new milestone by any means. Biospark has had 0:46 for roughly 1-2 years by now; unfortunately, he was unable to record at the time, so he doesn't have any recorded runs. The run you see is the 0:46 by probably the second person who has ever obtained this time.

Now, despite not having recorded them, Biospark has better times than me. The run here is roughly a 0:46:50ish, whereas Biospark's personal best is probably around a 0:46:20ish. Unfortunately, Metroid Fusion does not display the seconds counter at the endgame screen, so by in-game standards, our times are tied (which is an issue that I do NOT want to get into in this comments section :P). At the same time, I thought it would be a good idea to submit this run regardless. The first reason being, the current run is a 0:48 and is several years old. There have been many, many new strategies and techniques discovered that shave off from either a few frames to a couple of seconds; all of these minor time savers add up to minutes. The other main reason is that Biospark is capable of getting a 0:45, but it will almost definitely take him a VERY LONG TIME, particularly because there are many periods of time that he can't record. A 0:45 is basically the ideal run of Metroid Fusion Any% with the current knowledge and strategies. In a sense, this submission serves as more motivation for biospark to get to work on that 0:45 :P

I'll just be going over some of the general mechanics and then more specific things in each segment about what's good and bad about this run. Be prepared for a ton of commentary, since I like explaining a lot of things :P

Damage:

Generally speaking, the beam in Metroid Fusion is very powerful upon obtaining charge beam. Something important to note is that each time Samus shoots her charge beam, there's a circular flare around her arm cannon. This deals a little bit of extra damage, which makes a huge difference in early game. This allows you to kill Serris and Mega-X in 2 and 4 hits respectively, and destroy every eyedoor in one hit before super missiles. The flare has a few other minor uses for generic enemies, but becomes somewhat useless/outclassed in the second half of the game.

Once Samus gets the plasma beam upgrade, the beam deals damage for every frame it's inside an enemy. This is important for understanding how I kill Ridley, SA-X, and Omega Metroid quickly, because by firing diagonal shots that stay in those bosses longer, they die much more quickly. This is also why you use ice missiles on Nightmare Phase 3 and X-box, because it's basically impossible to get the beam to stay inside them much, so spamming ice missiles deals more damage. For more information about damage values, you can check out the Metroid Fusion damage chart here - https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Metroid_Fusion/Game_Mechanics_and_Tricks#Weapon_Information_.5B1.5D

Double Missiles and Core-X's:

This technique is so important and prominent that it deserves an entire few paragraphs on its own to explain the mechanics behind it, since it generally happens so quickly.

Each time you damage a core-x (almost every boss has a last phase where you fight the infectin X with missiles), it has a few seconds of invincibility before you can damage it again. However, if you hit the core-x with two missiles on the same frame, you can skip one round of invincibility and shave a few seconds per double missile. The key idea is to remember that the core-x's hitbox is a square, so while the timing of the double missile is very important, the positioning and manipulation of the core-x is just as important. Generally, you want to make it come high and from the side, so you can fire a missile up, jump with it, then fire a second missile high up near the first missile, thus creating a "wall" of two missiles for the core-x's side to fly into. They're deceptively difficult, since each time Samus upgrades her missiles (from normal to super to ice to diffusion), the cooldown of the missiles increases and the speed of the missile itself increases as well (meaning it's harder to keep the two missiles close enough together). Top-tier fusion runners have to learn the subtly different timing for all four types of missiles as well as the varying positioning strats for each fight (especially Serris and Mega-X). Since the old 0:48, there have been new set-ups and more consistent strategies to land them on standard core-x fights; it was originally thought to be way too difficult to consistently land double missiles on Ridley's core-x, for example (because diffusion missiles suck), but this run lands two doubles on that, which is awesome!

The more significant new strategy in this run, however, is double missiling the beam core-x's (those where you have to wait for its eye to open, and they shoot beams), which is much harder because not only do the two missiles have to hit at the same frame (or 1 frame apart as well) like usual, but the spot (the opened eye) they have to hit is much, much smaller. This has been known for a long time on TAS's, but thought to be impossible or too inconsistent on console. However, recent set-ups have been found for almost every beam core-x. Double missiling the charge beam core-x has been known for a chunk of time, but the console set-up for double missiling the plasma beam core-x on console was found by kahdoom pretty recently (you can watch it here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6T5f73z1f0 ). Following that, I decided to go find a set-up for double missiling the wide beam core-x, and was successful! (my video is here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKCRX6TI5EQ )It is also possible to double missile the ice beam core-x, but it's very difficult. As for the wave beam core-x... That's never going to happen on console, because there's way too little space (even the TAS has a ton of trouble with it). If you land every double missile possible on console in the game, you skip a whole 26 rounds of core-x invulnerability, which is over an entire minute!

One last thing to mention. Whenever a core-x is destroyed, it will release its ability and the ability will float to the center of the room. I always try to deal the last blow at this perfect spot, so the ability will spawn instantly. This is called a sweetspot. It's also good if you finish the core-x directly horizontally or vertically from the spawning point, so it'll simply fly straight to that point and become obtainable. Occasionally, being a few pixels off means it'll float around the sweetspot, unobtainable for a few seconds, which is rather annoying.

Missile Tank Route:

A bit of research was done in deciding which missile tanks were faster to get. The following missile tanks are collected:

1+2: Before Arachnus
3: BOB (the unskippable missile tank in sector 3)
4: The missile tank by the entrance of sector 6
5+6: Two missile tanks after saving the animals

All of these are the same as the past runs, except missile tank #4. This missile tank saves one second over getting the third main deck missile tank at the start of the game, after arachnus. And with good missile management in early game, I don't lose time from having 5 fewer missiles before reaching Sector 6.

Eyedoors:

Metroid Fusion is notorious for the eyedoors, as they are a major pain in the neck. For each time it can get damaged, an eyedoor can shoot between 0-4 beams, each costing 2-3 seconds (yes, the amount of time it takes to open is also random). The first two eyedoors must be damaged three times; the 8 eyedoors after that can be destroyed in one hit. This means that there are, in essence, 14 eyedoors in the game, with almost half of that RNG in the first 10 minutes of the run. Generally speaking, having around 15 beams total is roughly average. At least 20 is bad. Below 10 is really freaking good and lucky. This run had FOUR BEAM SHOTS TOTAL. FOUR. TOTAL. IN THE ENTIRE GAME. That is absolutely amazing, and is easily one of, if not the biggest, factor in this run getting a 0:46.

Now, on the actual run itself:

Main Deck - Beginning:

Very solid start. Assuming ideal missile spamming, Arachnus can roll between 0-2 times (2 being very rare and terrible), and he didn't roll even once, which is very nice. I also skip the energy tank before Arachnus, to save a few seconds (I do the entire run with only one energy tank). This was admittedly the first full run I ever did with that e-tank skip, and it paid off!

Sector 1 - Charge Beam:

Missile management is very important here, as your beam is basically worthless. Generally, you're guaranteed a green-x missile drop if you're at full health (and vice versa, guaranteed a yellow-x health drop if you're full on missiles, but that's not applicable to this run). Thus, it's very important to stay at, or close to, full health for the entire sector, to guarantee missile drops. This is the one early-game section where skipping the third main deck missile tank can really hurt you if you get bad luck. If the pirates decide to give you bad RNG and hit you, you lose a ton of health, meaning many chances of no missile drops. For me at least, that bad luck is uncommon enough for me to consider the one second saved with the new missile route to be worth it (probably not a good idea in races though).

Also, I get two double missiles on the charge beam core-x, which is perfect :D It would be a little faster if I stood on the right edge of the platform for my set-up instead of the left, but I'm too used to using the left side and I have a visual cue there anyways.

Sector 2 - Bombs + Hi Jump:

The first and third rooms after the recharge room have a red zoro on a wall that have two possible movement patterns each. If the red zoro in the respective room is going down, then I can ignore it and walljump over it; if it's going up, it'll be in the way, so I have to kill it. Unfortunately, both were going up... Their placement doesn't matter after unlocking Level 1 doors.

There's a hopping enemy in the hall before zazabi. I typically use a charge beam + 2 missiles to guarantee killing it; only 1 missile is needed but the 2nd missile guarantees its death since it can jump over the first one sometimes. I went with firing 1 missile in this run since I wanted to conserve missiles and stick to having exactly 10 missiles by the eyedoor (the reason is, 10 is the minimum to reliably kill Zazabi, so I can skip the red-x refill from the eyedoor). That kind of backfired on me...

Zazabi himself is more RNG. Essentially, he can "waste" between 3 to 12 jumps; a wasted jump is where he jumps without opening his mouth. I got 6 wasted jumps, which is decent (7-8 is average). I got both double missiles on its core-x, though it's the easiest set of doubles in the game so that shouldn't be surprising.

Sector 4 - Speed Booster:

There's only two significant things to mention in this sector: Serris and the low-height shinespark.

Serris has 50 hp. The initial charge beam has two beam parts, each dealing 10 damage charged. Including the flare, hitting Serris with the full charge beam and the flare does 26 damage, which is what allows me to kill him in two hits. His patterns are RNG, although he has some "pairs" of patterns, which I have memorized and have a setup for each one (for example, if he zigzags left to right, then he'll do a high dive from right to left). Unfortunately, he gave me two partial dives, which is bad RNG, and it's not really worth risking hitting him when he does that, so I lost several seconds.

Right after beating Serris, I do a technique called a low-height shinespark. When shinesparking from the ground normally, Samus does a small hop, so she's actually a few pixels above ground. This means she'll bonk on anything that's 3 blocks from the ground, even though she's 2 blocks high. In the case of the hall after Serris, however, I can get Samus "stuck" in the two-block high tunnel, jump, then do an aerial shinespark within the two-block tunnel. This can be done by either mashing A really quickly while holding left, or hold left then press A, B, A really quickly (I do the latter).

Right after lowering the water level, I came up with a strat to do a diagonal spark, so I can start running for a speedboost pretty early (the old strat is to shinespark immediately right). This sets me up perfectly to pull off a low-height shinespark two rooms later; however, there isn't a convenient two-block space for me to do the same thing as before, so I actually have to time the shinespark before hitting the ground. Biospark came up with a pretty consistent strat for the low-height shinespark, which is to unmorph after bouncing on the floor and immediately spark. This low-height spark saves 1 second over just not doing it at all.

Sector 3 - Super Missiles:

This segment has a ton of speedboost tricks, and I'm glad to have pulled most of them off. When Samus runs off a ledge with speedboost, if you press down the frame she lands, you can shine charge. This is why I pause buffer in the first room, since it's a frame-perfect trick. Even if I weren't going for in-game time, I'd still pause buffer, because pressing down anytime before that frame means you don't destroy all the speedboost blocks, so you have to go all the way around, losing a ton of time.

Now, at the data room where you get super missiles, I pause buffer here a few times to go for a trick called the Data Room Spark. Normally, if you shine charge on the switch, you basically have no time at all to shinespark after the "You got super missiles!" cutscene. To increase this time window to something more viable, I ideally want to start skidding the frame I touch the switch, then crouch the frame before I run off the switch. This basically means the switch is held down for as long as possible before I shine charge, and I shine charge as late as possible, giving me a few more frames to shinespark after the cutscene. Unfortunately I mess it up. The room after, you want to do a speedboost jump (this is faster than shinesparking left), but I jumped a bit too high and clipped on the ceiling as well...

The BOX fight was good. The key is to make sure you damage him at the very start, so he immediately starts jumping (otherwise he walks and it's hard to get a fast fight since he moves more). I shoot the charge beam then missile at the start; the charge beam is mainly insurance that I damage BOX (it doesn't really add significant damage to cut out the number of missiles I need), since I could miss the following missile. Fortunately I hit the first missile.

Sector 6 - Varia Suit:

The start of this segment, I plant a bomb by the left wall as a set-up so on my way out of Sector 6, I can pick up a very fast missile tank. This is the missile tank that saves one second over the third one on Main Deck.

I also get my one and only energy tank in the game. It literally takes only about a half-second to get, because during the cutscene, bombs go off, so I grab it while waiting for the bomb to go off. This is the fastest e-tank in the game.

Destroying Mega-X quickly is similar to killing Serris quickly. You have to make sure the entire charge beam and the flare hits, which is why I take damage before each shot, so I can get inside of it during Samus's invincibility frames, and deal 26 damage. Mega-X has 100 hp, so again, the flare makes the difference between a 5HKO and a 4HKO. It's also important to not accidentally pseudo-screw attack mega-x, which is why I straight jump every time. I land all 3 double missiles on its respective core-x, which is amazing. Double missiling this core-x is difficult primarily because the boss room is very inconvenient for setting it up for the right positions.

The path out of sector 6 is rather annoying since puffers (technically they're called bulls, but I don't care, I hate them) are complete RNG. Each puffer has FOUR different patterns they can go in once you enter the room. You also want to avoid killing them, as they puff smog each time you damage them, which damages you back! I grinded out the two specific rooms with two puffers each, so I can react to every possible pattern. The first room with puffers was sloppy; second one was perfect.

If you notice, I also fire a missile up at the ceiling in the first room with two puffers. This is because there is an owtch where half the time, it goes right (and thus, in the way of my jump); that missile is to cover that option. In this run, it went left, so it looks like I shot a missile for no reason.

Sector 5 - Ice Missiles:

Missile conservation is especially important here, as I want as many missiles possible for the meltdown segment. Thus I use charge beam and pseudo-screw attack as much as possible. There's a strategy after unlocking level 3 doors to do a frame-perfect shine charge and get ice missiles backwards (named "Reverse Ice Missiles") and it saves one in-game second, but missing it basically costs the run. I'm not JaggerG, so I don't go for it :P

Sector 3 - Meltdown:

This segment mostly explains itself, and has practically no mistakes. For the wide beam core-x, taking damage at the start is intentional for a double missile set-up I came up with, but I missed it... I got the second double missile though.

Main Deck and Sector 5 - Save The Animals and Power Bombs!

Again, self-explanatory segment. One thing to note is that the animals take a random amount of time to come out and leave, which can waste several seconds. I got kind of mediocre luck by my standards; maybe we should kill them in Super Metroid after all...

Main Deck - Power Outage

There's a hall in the dark where you have to get speed booster, right after seeing frozen Ridley crumble. This room is complete RNG, as there's a chance that one of the ceiling enemies can spit drool on you and make you lose your speed boost, so we call it the Spitter Room. It didn't happen here, but if it did, I would keep going without the speedboost, then in the next room, use a power bomb and get the missile tank in the path. This is obviously slower, but it's a good backup, and the extra missile tank helps with nettori and nightmare.

This segment is home to probably the most RNG-heavy and also most execution-heavy boss in the entire game: Yakuza. This fight is ridiculously complex and filled with tech, so I apologize in advance for the huge explanation coming up.

The moment you fall down in the room, Yakuza has his mouth open at the ceiling, about to shoot fire. As long as the screen is scrolled up, you can damage him, which is why I fire ice missiles up while jumping. During first phase, this guy can crawl around between 1 to 4 times. Worst case scenario, he can waste over 15 seconds. I got a 2-round Yakuza, which I'll gladly take. Each round he crawls, I get grabbed intentionally, then break out (mash left and right really fast), since it skips him going all the way to the ground, and instead, he'll crawl straight back up, saving roughly a second or two if done correctly. You don't want to get grabbed if he's already near the ground though. One final thing to note is that Yakuza starts with 1000 hp; phase 1 ends after he goes below 500 hp, but his health RESETS to 500 at the start of phase 2. Thus, any extra damage you do after dealing 500 damage doesn't really do anything. It is possible to completely reduce him to 0 before second phase starts, which kills him instantly, but that is basically TAS only.

In the past, for Yakuza's space jumping phase, it was originally thought that using charged wide beam shots was faster than using ice missiles because it does slightly more damage (charged wide beam does 45 damage total, and an ice missile does 40). With a much more risky, in-your-face strategy, using missiles is ultimately a few seconds faster, since you can fire them more quickly. This is incredibly difficult to do, as it requires you to basically jump up while Yakuza is jumping, predict where he'll jump to, then fire a missile at where he's GOING to be done jumping. Immediately after you land, you have to get ready to jump again, and repeat. This is ultimately a ridiculously fast-paced game of prediction, and building an instinct of where he's going to go after glancing at his trajectory for a fraction of a second. This space jumping phase was above average; I've had better fights, but I've had much worse as well. I then score two double missiles on his core-x, which is standard for me.

Nettori, the plant boss with plasma beam, is the main reason for getting 40 missiles (though they help for Yakuza and Nightmare too). I plant power bombs at every opportunity I can get, since each one does 50 damage, essentially replacing a charge wide beam shot. The Nettori fight itself was pretty decent (I was being a bit conservative with my missiles). However, the start of the plasma beam core-x was absolutely atrocious, and is easily one of the biggest mistakes I made in this run. There's a double missile strat for it (thanks to kahdoom) that I would normally go for, but I took so much damage from my fail that I decided to not risk it.

Sector 5 - Gravity Suit

Enjoy the epic shinespark at the start!

The second room underwater is a lot trickier than it looks. There are two pirates on the same floor as you underwater. The first one will always die to the initial plasma shot. However, the second one's pattern varies, a LOT. There's a strategy to fire a second and third charged plasma shot at basically pixel-perfect locations that guarantee that you'll kill the pirate before he shoots you, and I nail it. (Too early, you won't kill him; too late, he'll snipe you).

The nightmare fight had a fantastic first two rounds. However, I failed to manipulate him to stop after one round around the room, and he stopped after two, which wasted a few seconds... On the plus side, I finished him relatively close to the right side of the room. It's important to kill him near the right side, since after the final blow, Nightmare always floats to the same spot, then the core-x appears. The farther away, the longer it takes for him to float there.

Sector 4 - Underwater

This area is very dangerous, as many enemies deal a ton of damage to you. There's one important shinespark trick that I almost screwed up, but I fortunately improvised and lost minimal time. My execution following that was a bit sloppy since I was still rather flustered from that mistake.

Sector 6 - XBOX

The puffer RNG returns... But Samus is now armed with diffusion missiles! So again, killing them is a bad idea, so freezing them is the best option I have. Unfortunately, the puffers decided to completely hate me near the XBOX fighting arena, being in the worst spots possible where I can't really do much about. The XBOX fight itself was very, very good.

Sector 1 - Screw Attack

You're intended to damage the golden pirates by shooting their back. However, dragonfangs discovered a long time ago while TASing this game that the game only checks if both Samus and the pirates are facing the same direction. Thus, you can face a gold pirate, fire a charged wave beam shot, turn around, and it'll damage it, and usually kill it. My golden pirate room was absolutely atrocious.

The Ridley fight was surprisingly very good. Again, I carefully fire my wave beam shots so it stays inside Ridley for as long as possible to deal maximum damage. I had one bad/missed wave beam shot, but I got two double diffusion missiles, which more than makes up for it! Double diffusion missiles are really freaking difficult because they travel faster and have an extra frame of cooldown compared to ice missiles.

Before the heated room in Sector 1, I jump left and right in a zig-zag fashion in a pirate shaft. This is to avoid the dip of height loss between each space jump. (Biospark came up with it, though he jumps left repeatedly; I took JaggerG's similar strat for "zigzagging" around). I have to make sure I unspin before landing on a platform (so to not screw attack them on accident) then jump immediately again, so it's not as easy at it looks.

Main Deck - Endgame

Like Ridley, the SA-X takes a ton of damage if the wave beam shot goes diagonally through it. Thing is, it needs to be frozen for every frame to count as well. Typically, I destroy the SA-X with five wave beam shots. I destroyed it with 4, which is very rare and a very pleasant surprise (5 is standard).

The monster form is trivial. One diagonal shot, then an upward shot while it jumps up means it's basically jumping up with the wave beam, making it die instantly.

As for the ice beam core-x, I tried to go for double missiles. That kind of failed miserably, and I choked, taking damage and almost dying...

The strategy for the Omega Metroid fight is to lure it to swipe once, get in a perfect spot such that the center of the ice beam travels diagonally through its body, and spam it. Omega Metroid staggers each time it takes a lot of damage, and by dealing damage every frame with this strategy, it'll constantly stagger. This is probably one of the very rare moments where I mess up my positioning (seriously, I don't remember the last time I messed this up), so the run almost ended here. I decided to go all out and go for the spot again, and succeeded!

Also, please ignore the pauses. I was very, very nervous at this point, and wanted to check the in-game time.

Anyways, kudos to anyone who read all the comments! I hope they were very informative and gave you a much deeper understanding of this run! If not, regardless, I hope you enjoyed this run anyways! This was a very fun game to run, and I'm glad to have this as my first SDA submission. I'm also glad to be completely done with Metroid Fusion Any%, since there's no way I'm going to go for 0:45.

I wish to give thanks to:
-Biospark: His 0:48 run was a very good reference, and I was able to race him many times the past year. He's given me a ton of advice on how to improve all around in this game. If it weren't for him, I would not have been able to complete a run like this.
-The GBA Metroid Speedrunning Community: In particular, JaggerG and Dragonfangs have been very encouraging old-school runners who have offered many new strategies and helped me improve. Also, just the community as a whole for all the support I've received. I don't really want to list names since I know I'll forget at least one of you, but I truly wish to thank each and every one of you for your support, whether on the game itself, just racing, or just encouragement in various forms
-SDA Staff: For hosting this awesome website in the first place, and making the submission process go very smoothly!

When I started this run, I wasn't sure how good it would be. I hadn't finished a 100% run since early February of this year. Luckily, I still remembered where all the items where. But I just forgot techniques, such as perfect timing, to get the items.

The first time, I finished in 1:17. I looked back at my run and it looked horrible. So I decided to redo it. The second time resulted in this.

This time is, in fact, faster than my last 100% run and it was segmented also. I was surprised at the final time when I saw it. There are a lot of small mistakes, but with no saves, I have to give myself a little leeway, right?

The lowest point in my run is me trying to grab one of the power bombs. I wasted about 1 1/2 minutes trying to grab it. So if I had grabbed it on my first try, I could've gotten 1:12 or even 1:11 (depending on how many seconds over 1:13 my final time was).

I also have a few pauses in the game. One was for a split second, which is a trick that I used to keep from slowing down. The other one is during the meltdown segment. I pause for nearly a minute. Just excuse that part. I was yelled at by my parents, but I quickly resolved the matter.

I'll do a segmented one in the future, but probably not too soon. The GameBoy Player I used is just a loaner, and it must be sent off.

Hello again. This is the run I have been promising for about four years. However, I'm glad it got put off this long. My time slowly dropped thanks to practicing it for so long. My original goal was 0:53, so it's nice to have a 0:49. This was my 15th attempt this summer, and also the best one in terms of speed. All of the rest ended with deaths, except for one with a time of 0:50. Strangly enough, I found the bosses to be the easiest part of the run. Only two of my attempts ended during boss fights. Anyway, let's get to the run:

- Main Deck

I was supposed to walljump off of the wall at the beginning of the vertical shaft. I think my A button spazzed out or something. It really didn't matter because I got a perfect eyedoor.

Arachnus kinda sucked. I took way more damamge than I was supposed to. I did kill him one round earlier than usual, but the core-x slowed me down a bit.

- Sector 1

Sector 1 was perfect up until the pirate shaft. I missed the first pirate, so I had to slow down to pick up some health and missile refills. There were no mistakes after that, though. Sector 1 can actually be really tough, especially because I have to keep as many missiles as possible.

- Sector 2

Zazabi only wasted four jumps. The least it can waste is three. I was happy. Overall, Sector 2 didn't have any issues.

- Sector 4

Unfortunately, Serris took three rounds. Usually it takes two. I guess I just suck.

Other than that, there weren't any mistakes in this sector, aside from some minor stuff.

- Sector 3

What you see at the beginning of Sector 3 is a failed shinespark trick that requires frame-perfect precision. I abuse pause to do this trick, but unfortunately I missed it. It doesn't waste much time though.

I also miss the shinespark up the vertical shaft soon after. This doesn't waste much time either.

The BOX fight was perfect. My departure from that room was much cleaner this time ...

- Sector 6

There was a dumb mistake where I charged the shine too early. I quickly improvised.

I was a bit slower than I would've liked to be exiting this sector. There was a lot of stuff in my way. At least I left with full health.

- Sector 5/Meltdown

In the shaft after the data room, I always pause just in case the ripper gets in my way. It almost never does, but strangely enough, it got in my way both times and I had to avoid it. It hardly wastes time; I just don't want to take damage.

Meltdown was nearly perfect. That's good, because it's pretty easy to screw up there.

- Main Deck/Sector 5

The Habitation Deck went as planned. The time it took for the animals to get out was average. Good enough.

Sector 5 also went as planned. Nothing to say there.

- Yakuza/Nettori

Depending on how observant you are, you might notice that while I'm in the tunnel after the elevator stops, I'm pressing right, B, and start. After the first pause, I moved my right hand so that my index finger was on the B button and my thumb on start. Sort of like a claw. It's kind of complicated, but it helps me avoid the goo from the ceiling.

I ducked a bit early for the pirate. Oh well ...

Yakuza went well. The second phase could've been a little bit faster, but I was pleased with the fight.

The Nettori fight was literally perfect. Way better than my any% fight at least ...

- Nightmare/BOX II

It's possible to get to the low-gravity phase with just one hit on Nightmare, but two is okay. The rest was great.

I hesitated a bit in the underwater section because I knew that getting hit could do a lot of damage, and I had already been hit once. Better than dying!

I messed up the shinespark, but it hardly wastes any time.

I'm not sure what I was doing with the puffers there ... I should have just jumped over them or something.

BOX II fight was good. Nothing more to say.

- Final Bosses

The pausing on the golden pirates makes it easier to fire the charge beam while changing directions right away.

The Ridley fight is nice. I finally get to show off my strategy.

By the time I got back to the Main Deck, I was pretty nervous, because this was my best attempt yet. Thankfully I straightened myself out before the SA-X fight. No problems there.

I really didn't want to die on the Omega Metroid, so I paused just to make sure I was lined up correctly.

All of the boss fights were great, with the exception of Serris and maybe Arachnus. There were no big mistakes, except for some minor things here and there. Also, I took way less damage than I did in my previous attempts, and after Arachnus my health never went below 30. I'm really glad that I finished it and that it went so well. I hope you enjoy the run. Thanks to all the people who waited patiently for it. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to contact me. See ya next time.