Metroid Prime 2: Echoes was released in mid-November 2004. Samus lands on the planet Aether to investigate missing Federation troops and finds a world with a split-personality. In the dark version of the world, she takes damage just from the air and faces an evil black goo called the Ing that can possess all sorts of creatures.
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Single-segment 1:27 by Charles Griffin.
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Author's comments:
Thanks to:
- The entire SDA staff (mikwuyma/nate/Breakdown/Flip/dex), without whom you wouldn't be watching this run.
- Paraxade, who was the first person to complete a 14% run; this led me to try out 14% myself, and I pretty much haven't stopped playing the game since.
- All previous runners for their runs, for initially getting me interested in Echoes speedrunning. This run certainly wouldn't be the same without them.
- Everyone at M2K2 and my stream chat for their support and encouragement. But no, you can't roll jump there.
After completing 14%, I recorded an example 14% playthrough, in order to get it on video. Because this was just an example run, there were a lot of areas that could've been executed far faster, and I became interested in doing an all-out low% speedrun. I didn't feel that I was skilled enough at the time, so I decided to do 100% and any% single-segment runs for practice. I ended up getting far better times than I expected to get, and pretty soon I started focusing solely on any%... Basically, that ended up spiraling into this. It's weird how quickly this came about; six months ago, I never would have imagined myself speedrunning a Metroid game.
However, most of the run is spent rolling around as a ball, so I guess I should have expected it at some point. :P
Unfortunately for this run (but very very fortunate for Echoes running in general), about a month and a half after this run was completed, doninss found a way around losing your items at the beginning of the game. This means you get to start with Missiles, Bombs, Space Jump, Boost, and Spider. This is absolutely massive; it'll save a ton of time in future any% runs, and it cuts the lowest percent from 14% to 7%. Oh, well, I hope you still enjoy this run in the meantime; just expect a completely broken run to come along later in the future.
Low % 1:55 by Alastair Campbell, done in 21 segments.
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Author's comments:
This was my first true speed run, played and recorded in summer 2006. It is now eligible for submission to SDA following a rule change that legalises runs utilising out-of-bounds glitches, assigning them their own category. Of course, between the completion of the run in 2006 and its submission in 2009, I spent fourteen months administering the very site on which my runs were not legitimate. Bizarrely, in my role as SDA updater, I frequently found myself defending Radix's "in-bounds runs only" policy, and it was not until the site's current administrators softened SDA's stance towards this sort of beyond-the-walls chicanery that my 17% became compatible with the site — or rather, the site became such with my 17%.
I have always thought "Secret World" to be a wholly inappropriate name for what is in reality a hole in the game's scenic collision detection, but these unintentional portals that Retro had left lying around had been allowing players to view rooms from the outside in the Metroid Prime games for some time. Methods to use them to enhance sequence breaking and reduce completion times on the original Metroid Prime had been discussed and developed to some degree, mainly by Andrew Mills and Jonathan Wilson at the now-defunct samus.co.uk. The sequence breakers had left little still to be done, though, and so MP1's pickings were slim. For Prime 2, the developers fixed some bugs and introduced others, which inevitably meant that alternative approaches would need to be found to make serious inroads into the game's completion percentage or time; the secret world dabblers found themselves well poised to take advantage of this opportunity, having a well-established set of techniques to hand already. So, to long-entrenched vocabulary such as "ghetto jump" in the sequence breaking vernacular was added strange new terms like "wallcrawl", "skywalk", "door-warp", "room dump", "aether jump", and so forth.
This run brought together a lot of low percent theories which had existed to that point only as short, inexpertly deinterlaced video clips in diverse locations. I wanted to assemble from them a coherent presentation performed at breakneck speed, with the sort of respect for fractions of seconds that characterised the original Metroid Prime sequence breakers who had inspired me so much, and to shatter the myth that secret world techniques were too slow to be used in speed runs. Inevitably, my playthrough became one of the primary exhibits brought out by both factions in the resulting forum-borne wars over the eligibility of out-of-bounds techniques.
This run was also somewhat experimental in at least one other regard: It was one of the first to feature commentary, as an optional second audio track. Although sternn's Devil May Cry contributions carried audio commentary some time before this run arrived, my videos were important in continuing to popularise speed run monologues, and continuing to prove their workability both compositionally and technologically.
SDA did not officially allow multitrack audio productions in 2006, but this was no problem for me since my run was already ineligible for submission. This freed me from the compatibility problems that plagued the AVI and MP4 containers preferred by SDA at the time, and allowed me to release the run as a set of Matroska DivX files, which you should still be able to find at archive.org. For this re-release, I have of course made the now standard two-audio-track H.264 MPEG-4 — the videos are probably most easily played using VLC. So, if you missed it the first time, you too can now listen to what some have assured me is the quintessential speed run commentary (although to me it still sounds more like some English guy droning insufferably on about the unpredictability of the camera), and get higher quality H.264 visuals while you are at it. (This speed run was digitally remastered ... on my laptop.)
The run was played on a GameCube, and the PAL version of the game was used. Since my DVD recorder was incapable of capturing a PAL-60 signal, I played the game on an NTSC console, and booted it using a Datel Freeloader disc. This does not affect gameplay in any way.
I was already most of the way through this run before I learned of a glitch that I later came to use extensively in my 1:38 any%. Nobody had named it, so I called it the "rollshot". By hitting X and A at at the same instant, the player can unmorph and shoot simultaneously, without having to wait for the unmorph animation to complete. This is useful towards the start of the game for opening doors and activating portals quickly, although its usefulness decreases once the player collects the Boost Ball. This bug could have been used to optimise further the earlier stages of the run, but nobody had told me about it, so unfortunately it does not appear in this contribution.
I do not intend to write detailed segment-by-segment textual comments this time, since the audio commentary provides most of the relevant data. Of course, since the run was completed in 2006, some of this information is now out of date. Therefore, I will provide notes on each of the segments, in which I will correct any anachronisms in the commentary, and clear up a few other issues.
And so, to the segments. Times labelled with [c] denote errors in the commentary. Times without this annotation refer to events in the run.
Nothing much to be said here — I think all the commentary is still relevant. Segment 1 in my 1:38 any% was quicker than this effort by about half a second if my memory serves me correctly, mainly due to a better executed Sacred Path. Still, this was a solid performance to kick off the run.
Dash jumping through Sacred Path saves closer to ten seconds than the five seconds I suggested in the commentary.
Decent Splinter fight, and an uneventful trip to Agon.
The remark in the commentary about the Great Temple save being "free" is not quite correct — my later investigations indicated that it costs 1 - 1.5 seconds.
"Neither ... or" should of course have been "Neither ... nor".
I roll into the room with the violet translator gate before unmorphing to scan it. When planning the 1:38, I realised that the cutscene places Samus right in front of the gate, so it is faster to enter the room unmorphed and get the scan visor on the gate as soon as possible.
Generally not quite as well executed as the one in the 1:38, but the Agon segment in that run went especially well.
The comment about nobody attempting the three ghetto jumps is no longer accurate — tjp gave it a shot in his no Space Jump run.
You can fire the missile to open the hatch earlier than I did here. See the 1:38.
You can also watch the 1:38 for an example of this room done more quickly.
The quoted cost of a minute to activate the machine in the manner intended by the developers is probably wildly inaccurate: I made that figure up on the spot. I have not timed the difference between the quickest method and the slowest method myself, but sparky seemed to think that destroying only the final block saved about 20 seconds.
The erstwhile Mr Potter of course now goes by the name of Paraxade.
I use a 3BJ to reach the back Jump Guardian entrance. In the 1:38, I elected to use a DBJ instead. With good timing, I found the DBJ more reliable.
I should have used my remaining missiles against the spectral Jump Guardian form; it saves a little time, and I was almost guaranteed to get them refilled after the fight.
I should have rolled over to the boxes and then unmorphed before standing on them, but instead I nearly blew them all up. I was most likely distracted by the thought of the flying pirate fight that was coming up — with only five missiles, it goes wrong a lot. This room was better in the 1:38 — not only did I roll to the boxes, but a new combat dash jump off the pirates on the upper level saved some time too.
Watch for a case of UIUS (that's Unexpected Instant Unmorph Syndrome) immediately before the door that leads to the flying pirates.
I do a terrible job of explaining the speed trick with the columns. You have to move the left-hand column twice and the middle column once, and then aim your jump for the right edge of the ledge by the door. This is considerably faster than the six repositions intended by the developers.
The mistake I make in the morph ball puzzle also has its origins in this room. I destroy three boxes at the top of the room, hoping to get an energy refill. The lasers in the puzzle do quite a bit of damage, and the player must have somewhere close to full health to survive. I get no refills of any sort, and quickly become panicky about my 86 energy, as I had died in the puzzle at least once before. The mistake at 14:58, in the puzzle itself, was caused by my being more worried about energy than about when I should lay my bombs.
Solid Dark Samus 1 fight, uneventful trip to the save station.
A cleanup segment that takes me to the save station before Amorbis.
Crap jokes about Sony's now-legendary botched E3 presentation were all the rage in 2006.
Slightly flawed execution of sparky's low% Amorbis strategy.
I back away from the door here, costing time. This occurs because I am concerned about the dark world energy drain, and decide to return to the safe zone just as the door opens.
The first of the out-of-bounds, "secret world"-assisted segments, in which an early power bomb expansion is collected. Plenty of fun stuff in this part, including the Abandoned Base ghetto jump, and the Path of Eyes shortcuts.
My remarks here about the use of out-of-bounds techniques are anachronistic — Radix is not the sole proprietor of SDA any more, and out-of-bounds runs are no longer illegal. Some day we may see a secret world assisted any% run, but do not hold your breath.
Gosh, 10% already? I need to slow down. This is another fun segment in which I perform a fiendishly difficult BSJ before immolating Boost Guardian with my smuggled power bomb.
Is this detour to open the gate necessary? If not, is it worth the cost?
Although activating the portal on the first try would have allowed me to start rolling sooner, my estimate of the cost of the miss here is probably exaggerated.
My remark regarding "floating" over the fence bears clarification. Kip's single-bomb BSJ over the DFB grating provides enough height to reach the unsealed, glitchy part of the fence at the top, but not quite enough to clear it completely. Pushing Samus into the glitched section of the fence while holding R causes her to get stuck, during which time she can be made to float slowly upwards by tapping L. Eventually she will float over the fence, but this can take many seconds. The two-bombs-simultaneously BSJ variant I used instead I have since named the "BSJ+", or "BSJ plus".
I allow the "Hi, I'm the Boost Guardian" cutscene to play, thereby gaining a few energy points from the light beacon.
You can simply charge into the room and lay the power bomb immediately, but sometimes this doesn't achieve a clean kill. Rolling around the back of Boost Guardian to place the power bomb is slower but seems more reliable. Some research would probably be useful here.
This is another good segment to watch if you like a lot of tricks. Who doesn't like a lot of tricks? I save in Hydrodynamo at the end of this. In the 1:38, I did not save here, because it is costly. However, the difficulty of segments 9 and 10 in this run is such that I felt I had little choice.
I power bomb the light creatures because they hassle you while you are trying to set up the BSJ.
In the 1:38, I used the dark beam on the airborne pirates, and killed them much faster. However, in that run, I failed comprehensively against the subsequent foot soldiers. They are killed far more efficiently here.
Thanks to my early power bomb, I can collect the second Chykka key via the dark world rather than the light world. This, in turn, obliviates the need for the Gravity Boost: I can escape lower Torvus without it.
I clip the very edge of the step that leads to the sunken section in the centre of the room. As a result, I lay my power bomb in the wrong place, and time is wasted while its effect spreads as far as the yellow hatch.
I pass six sets of vines. Some careful footwork and a ghetto jump after the key enable me to clear this room while only shooting one set of them.
Samus falls too far here and is stunned for a second. I should have broken her fall with my space jump.
When sparky first saw this run, he remarked that my adult Chykka fight was "phenomenal" (it isn't), but that he wasn't sure that the larva stage was as good. When I came to do the 1:38 run, I understood what he meant. The fastest Chykka fights require as much ammunition of all types as you can find; compromise is required under low% conditions. By saving all my light beam ammunition for the adult stage, I make the first round drag on for a long time. There may well be a better overall low% strategy for this boss, and if it could be made to work in any% too, you could possibly skip the beam ammo expansion I collected in the 1:38.
The start of the second stage is very slow. If the adult Chykka is moving, obtaining a stun is quite difficult, and in the interests of saving Dark Beam ammunition, I get the first stun on Chykka's adult form by using uncharged Power Beam shots. In the 1:38, though, I learned to predict the foe's initial movements, so I was able to achieve a charged Dark stun straight away. This strategy could be applied here with either the Power or Dark Beam to achieve a much faster initial stun.
Dashing between all platforms (as in the 1:38) is faster than jumping.
Charged Dark shots are probably better than uncharged ones at re-stunning the adult form quickly. See the 1:38.
The dance Samus performs while I wait for Chykka to surface is out of time with the music. This was caused by the fact that I ran this game with the audio passing through my DVD recorder, which lags. Similarly bad choreography may be viewed in the 1:38 Chykka fight.
The first movement after dismissing the "Dark Visor acquired!" message should have been to the right, towards the floating platforms. See the 1:38.
I should not have unmorphed on the way down — Samus is stunned by the fall. I stayed in ball form in the 1:38.
Cleanup and travel. I visit all four areas of the game in this segment (Torvus, Temple Grounds, Agon, Sanctuary). I was never convinced I made the right choice regarding the Sanctuary route, but XtraX was adamant that the Agon entrance was the correct one.
I get hit, and end up unmorphing facing the wall instead of the door.
An alternative to the "bow-tie" seeker puzzle solution was suggested by SkippyJr, but I don't use it here. Also, the seekers give you five extra missiles, in case you wonder why I suddenly have ten.
It may be possible to enter a secret world here, then go over the fence into the other half of the room and fight the Spider Guardian now. Sparky recorded a video of some of the steps necessary to do this, but I am not sure it was made public. Collecting Spider Ball here would be applicable in an out-of-bounds any% as well. In this run, it would have made segment 14 obsolete.
At the time I don't think I realised that the gyro ring takes an unpredictable amount of time to settle. This segment could therefore be improved by bruteforcing a faster gyro ring. Alternatively, a runner could save without solving the puzzle, and then bruteforce the gyro ring at the start of the next segment instead.
You do get better at tricks that initially seem impossible. When I first tried to use the dash to cross Watch Station Access, it took a good hundred tries to make it even once. However, next to the difficulty of scan dashing onto the robot in Grand Abyss to skip the Grapple beam (this was the first time a dash had been used for this), and the dashes and the Rezbits in Vault, the "Kip Dash" now seems very tame.
In the 1:38, to the above list of tricks, I added the collection of an early power bomb expansion, a second dash in Grand Abyss, the opening of the portal in Watch Station, and a very tricky mid-air instant morph. Suddenly, this segment in the 1:55 looks pretty tame as well.
Roll jumping across Watch Station Access would have been faster than dashing.
The type of dash required to reach the robot is the "floaty" type, in which you just get a very good dash with more sideways velocity than normal. According to tjp, this type of dash requires you to be standing on the very edge of a platform for it to work, so if you are trying to clear GA and failing, you might try getting closer to the tip of the barrier.
In the 1:38, I added a second dash jump from the robot to the far ledge, which would have saved time if I had done it here.
If that idiot Rezbit in Watch Station in the 1:38 had given me a missile refill, I would have killed his brother in Vault this competently in that run, too. Rezbits are a bloody nuisance.
I maintain that the best place to practice the Grand Abyss dash is actually here, in Vault. If you can dash to this spinner, you should be able to dash to the robot, too. Watch for the "kick" I get as the dash begins.
The spinner 2 -> 3 journey can be completed faster by staying in ball form when leaving the spinner, then boost-unmorphing off the spinner platform. Sparky pointed this out after watching this segment, and I went on to use his suggestion in the 1:38.
Had I done this dash differently, I could have persuaded the game to respawn Samus much closer to the bomb slot than I did. See the 1:38.
I go out-of-bounds to bypass the cobalt gate without collecting the corresponding Translator, beat the Spider Guardian incompetently, collect the Spider Ball and the first Sky Temple key, then use secret worlds once more to get out.
I am sure the boss fight could have been a lot faster. The fiddly secret world shenanigans coupled with the general lack of energy tanks impelled me to play very conservatively.
I enter ball form because the third person view makes it easier to find my position against the pattern on the floor.
You need to be very careful not to go too far beyond the wall, or Samus will fall into an invisible pit and never get out.
Using the Dark Beam to destroy the caches is wasteful. I used the Power Beam in the 1:38.
The last genuinely gruelling segment in the run. I use secret worlds to "wallcrawl" past Quadraxis, collect the Temple energy, and wallcrawl out again, all without collecting the Annihilator Beam. In doing this, I also circumnavigate the sole "mandatory" Echo Visor gate, and therefore skip the Echo Visor as a bonus. Because of the dark world drain, energy is very tight, and a runner is constantly under pressure.
While it seemed so at the time, this is not the worst mistake in the run. The worst mistake in the run is probably the route error getting to the Dungeon key in segment 18. Also, I don't fail to enter the secret world three times: I attempt to enter it three times, and fail twice.
I had 3 energy left when I picked up the gold refill, not 5. Close.
Of course, in the 1:38, I actually did open the Watch Station portal, making things after Quadraxis very speedy.
So begins the Sky Temple Key route. After returning the Hive energy to the light world, the next stop is Great Temple to pick up the Light Suit.
It is cool to hit the door and morph before the text box appears.
I do a much better job of getting into this portal quickly in the 1:38.
The comment about all runners screw attacking into the key cache is now wrong, since I dash jumped over to it in the 1:38.
Something always goes wrong in the Torvus Energy Controller. This time I steered blindly into the scenery, but this effort still got me out of the door exactly one second faster than the elaborate dash jump I attempted in the 1:38.
As I mention in the commentary, the main Power Bombs are necessary to make the Dark Oasis Sky Temple Key appear.
As well as the Power Bomb Guardian fight, this segment demonstrates what may be the only ever occurrence in a run of the Screw Attack Underwater glitch. I exploit this bug to minimise the cost of neglecting to open up Hydrodynamo last time I was in Torvus. This was a costly mistake. It forced me to waste time in this segment, but that is not all. Because of the difficulty of activating the Screw Attack Underwater glitch, it was a mistake that also forced me to save in Hydrodynamo, at a cost of over ten seconds. Heading straight to Power Bomb Guardian after warping into Torvus would have been preferable. This error does have an upside, though, namely that this rather obscure glitch got used in a speed run.
Screw Attack Underwater is performed by jumping and morphing just as Samus crosses the water line.
Strange how I still need to do a load of cleanup when I have already achieved my final percentage, but that is the mystery of the Keys-That-Don't-Count. I collect the lower Torvus key, the remaining Sanctuary key, and both the Agon keys in this segment.
Once I had finished the run, Master ZED pointed out that I had made a howler of a route error in getting to Dungeon to pick up the Sky Temple key. It is of course much faster to go via Grapple Guardian's room, but I did not realise that the grate in that room could be powerbombed and rolled through (GG's lair goes a bit weird if you skip Grapple). Oops. I estimated a 30 second loss here, and even that may be conservative.
A few people have pointed out that it would be fastest to shoot the nearest (right-hand) beacon first, then the one through the fence, then morph. I actually appreciated this at the time, but you need a good aim to hit both targets accurately, and I found this segment difficult enough without further complications. Also, I had been playing this game solidly for two and a half months, and was starting not to care.
Screw attacking to the moving platform here is harder than it looks.
As in the 1:38, I roll back into the room here in search of Power Bomb refills. As in the 1:38, I get none.
I go back to Torvus for the key that remains there, and then take the Torvus exit to the Temple Grounds to collect the two final keys. The segment is a continuous scrabble for missiles to open Seeker and Super doors, and Power Bombs to open yellow doors. Ammunition shortages are not ideal at the best of times, but they are especially unwelcome with a final boss fight just around the corner.
The idea was right, but I caught the archway. I should have used my second jump later, or not at all.
I got lazy; this beam change costs time.
In this run, I followed established procedure in using the checkpoint after Emperor Ing to keep on fighting Dark Samus 3/4 until I got something acceptably fast. In the original release of this video, I spliced the two fights together to make them appear seamless. While I made no secret of the fact that I had done so (other runners had done the same thing previously), the implication from watching the video is that I beat both bosses in one go, which I did not. I have come to dislike this implicit deceit, so in the 1:38 and now in the re-encoded version of this run I presented these fights in their original context as separate segments.
Shall we? Let's.
Emperor Ing 3 could have been killed much faster than this. Two good strikes should be enough, but you have to beat the first two forms before you get a shot at the daddy, whose movements are hard to predict.
The abrupt end to the commentary is a consequence of my decision to split the two fights.
Other than "I kill Dark Samus 3 and 4 and then, on track 2, I talk over the credits", I don't have much to say.
Using the Dark Beam for this fight is actually pretty pointless. I went back to the amber one in the 1:38.
Predictably, my wish for a special low% ending in Prime 3 did not come true.
Smoking is stupid.
Nate occasionally does things other than encoding video.
There is much irony in this comment about our beloved Radix, mainly because much of what I say is now wrong. (No, the original release never even made it into archive's speed_runs collection, because I refused to give Radix my real name ...)
I received no complaints from doninss about my pronunciation.
Silent Echo's help with the route is still very much appreciated, and without his 1:43 there would be no 1:38, but he is no longer the segmented any% world record holder.
I apologise to Scarlet, because I think my comments may have embarrassed her.
Having watched this run again, it is strange how dated it now looks to me; that is the effect of the 1:38 I did afterwards. Originally I felt 17% could have been done a couple of minutes faster, but I think that now I would say this run could have been up to three or four minutes faster. If someone produced a 17% with broadly the same route as this one, and managed it in 1:50, it would be one hell of a watch.
Of course, I think everyone would much rather see a genuine speed run of a 16% game, which has been plausible for a while. I think the theoretical minimum out-of-bounds percentage is now 14, but it is unlikely that the lowest possible percentages would be compatible with speed running.
I would like to thank everyone who made this run possible, and all SDA administrators past, present and future — they work very hard. I have probably retired from speed running — I do very little gaming of any sort at the moment — but you never know.
Single-segment hard mode 2:24 by Kim Siafa.
Author's comments:
This a hard mode any% run completed in one go, without loading and without dying. The route I used in this run isn't the same as the one I used in the normal mode SS any% run. I defeat Amorbis and I grab dark suit in this run. It is possible to complete a hard SS any% run without the dark suit but you need too many energy tanks to survive against the bosses, especially the boost guardian and Quadraxis. 4 energy tanks are on your way before the boost guardian battle, you can grab these e-tanks without losing too much time. The problem is that 4 isn't enough to defeat the boost guardian in hard mode without dark suit. The "real" maximum you can get before fighting the boost guardian is 8 but you would have to grab e-tanks which are very far away from your way : one in temple grounds near windchamber, one in underwater Torvus near catacombs, one in Agon wastes near the temple and the last one in Chykka's room. Getting these 4 e-tanks is very long and they make you do backtracks. You can grab 6 or 7 e-tanks before fighting Quadraxis without really losing time, it's obviously not enough to defeat Quadraxis in hard mode w/o dark suit or at least in a SS run. It's possible to get 10 before fighting him but it would still be difficult to beat time. Between doing countless and endless backtracks to get additionnal energy tanks and grab the dark suit I did my choice : grab the dark suit.
The biggest problem with a SS any% hard mode is the last boss, the emperor ing. DS3/DS4 is a piece of cake in hard mode. The emperor ing was killing me about 85% of the time and it was very frusterating because it is at the end of the run, after playing during 3 hours. He killed about 5 SS runs. I took the first run I killed him succesfully in but it is full of mistakes. The biggest mess up was in transit station where I have to get the early power bomb expansion, I think that I lost 1min 40. There are often other mistakes in the run costing between 5 and 15 seconds. I had luck in this run with the power-ups and the invisible pirates, they didn't appear too often. Though, I didn't have luck with seekers door. I think that I was also lucky to beat the emperor ing and to complete a hard any% in one-go without dying.
Single-segment 100% 1:56 by Charles Griffin
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Author's comments:
Thanks to:
- bartendorsparky for his previous 100% run.
- The SDA staff, for maintaining this awesome site.
- nate for encoding the run.
- Everyone who watched my stream and gave encouragement; sorry I finished this run during the morning. <_<
- Paraxade, since it's mainly his fault I'm now playing the game constantly.
I was planning on writing detailed comments for this run, but experience has shown that I completely fail at doing so. >_> There's a few important things I want to mention, though:
- There's a glitch in GFMC Compound that lets you collect the Missile Launcher twice. You can avoid triggering a cutscene by the ship, collect the Missile Launcher, and then trigger the cutscene afterward; the cutscene reloads the room and replaces the Launcher allowing you to collect it a second time. Both times add to the percent, so the run finishes with 101%. Technically this means you can skip a single item and still finish with "100%", however, this is against the rules; a 100% run requires collecting every upgrade, not glitching some number to say 100. I do this glitch in the run simply for the extra 5 missiles, which are helpful early on.
- This run cannot use the Item Loss Skip. There's a missile expansion in Hive Chamber B (where the item loss occurs) that just plain doesn't exist until after you trigger the item loss (so no collecting it from out of bounds or anything). Technically, with the Missile Launcher glitch mentioned above you could get "100%", but like I also mentioned it's against the rules.
- Grapple Pirates are the worst things ever.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the run. For those that want to see a run using the Item Loss Skip, I'm currently working on an Any% Segmented run; you can check out my current progress on my YouTube channel.
Hard-mode 22% 3:37 by 'kip', done in 30 segments.
Author's comments:
Yes, this is another "who cares" run, a lot like my other hard 22% run in the original Metroid Prime. I put minimal effort into optimizing it and used many more saves than I normally would (some that were very out of the way). I didn't do this out of laziness. I just feel that since the game has just been released, and things are being found every day, I don't think it would be a good idea to put everything I have into a run only for it to become outdated before I'm halfway through it. That's what happened to this run; over maybe 10 minutes worth of time savers were discovered by the time I was done. I'm not annoyed by that, because I knew it would happen, and I was half expecting an item to be skipped before I was done, which would have meant restarting.
As far as I know, 22% is the lowest percentage in the game right now. It's the default percentage, like the original MP's 29% (collecting no expansions but getting all the main items). If a lower percent were possible, this run would have reflected whatever that was instead of being 22%. Here's a list of what counts for the 22%, going by the game's item order, as some things can already be gotten out of order:
missile launcher
violet translator
morph ball bomb
amber translator
space jump boots
dark beam
light beam
dark suit
super missile
emerald translator
boost ball
seeker launcher
gravity boost
grapple beam
dark visor
cobalt translator
spider ball
power bomb
echo visor
screw attack
annihilator beam
light suit
There's also the energy transfer module and 18 temple keys, but those don't add to the percentage for some reason. It's possible to skip the dark suit, but that requires several energy tanks, as there is currently no way to survive against Boost Guardian and Quadraxis with no tanks and an unavoidable life drain of 6 energy per second (if reaching Torvus is even possible in the first place). It's not about just never getting hit, because Dark Aether's life drain will gladly kill you; it doesn't stop at 1 energy or anything like that. So, skipping the dark suit means ending up with a higher percentage, much like skipping the varia suit in the original MP.
If the percent ever drops, I'll probably try to record another run on hard unless someone else wants to instead (but even in that case, I might anyway just for proof). I felt recording this would be better than not just because it doesn't look like 1:04 or something. That said, I'll definitely try harder if/when I do another run.
I died once against Dark Samus at the end, because I forgot about this one attack she has and didn't know how to dodge it yet. The game lets you start back at the escape sequence if you choose to continue from your last save, and it doesn't even count against the final time... so I guess expect to see people killing themselves here until they get a good enough fight.
If anyone's only interested in a certain part, here are most of the bosses: Amorbis (part 5), Boost Guardian (part 8), Chykka (part 13), Dark Samus 2 (part 20), Quadraxis (part 23).