Sorry I haven't gotten around to posting here as of late. Between work and moving into a new house things have been kind of hectic. Although, I am still finding time to play some games. As of right now Super Metroid has taken over all my free time it seems. I decided to do a 100% completion/best ending run at first because at the time I had never gotten all 100 items or the best ending. In order to achieve the best ending the player must beat the game in under 3 hours I do believe. My first 100% playthrough was roughly a little over 2 and 1/2 hours. Since then due to some serious practice and a wonderful speed running community that is more than willing to help out I have shaved off almost 50 minutes from my first playthrough. My PB is now 1:48 and some change and I have a feeling that I will be able to greatly improve that soon. I have been working on a ton of new strats and maneuvers that should shave off at least 10 more minutes if executed properly. I have also went ahead and ordered a game saver for my SNES so I will be able to practice using save states with actual hardware. I have a feeling that in order to be a top tier player eventually this is a must. My ultimate goal is to at least be in the top 20 in this title which is going to take some serious work due to the fact that this game is ultra competitive. Currently in order to get into the top 20 I must achieve a time quicker than 1:28:07 which is 20 minutes faster than my current PB. There is so much to learn and so much work to do in order to achieve that, but I am willing to put forth the effort. This game is so deep that Sweetnumb and Oats put together a 8 hour tutorial and that was just for an any% run which the current route is 24 outta 100 items you collect.
Things I need to improve:
First and foremost is wall jumping. I have gotten pretty decent at it, but nowhere near where I want to be. I need to work mostly on doing wall jumps for an extended period of time. I get to around 5 in a row and usually will miss the 6th. This is doing wall jumps as quick as possible too.
Second.... Machballs.... There is only one room that forces you to do this technique when speed running, but there is also a ton of rooms that you can optimize by doing this as well. I have gotten it down slightly... Meaning I can do it where it needs to be done in that one room consistently but am 50/50 on the other rooms. I don't believe this skill is as important as wall jumping because there is no major uses for it besides that one room.
Third is short charging and super short charging. I can do pretty well as of now without this technique, but if I am planning on getting a sub 1:30 eventually I WILL have to be able to pull this off. I believe it will shave minutes off of my current run since I am having to take time to set up my shinesparks. Also, it will help beating Draygon as quickly as possible and be able to get the "blue suit" at the end which will allow me to pretty much skip a tedious room afterwards.
Fourth is being able to pull off the Kraid Quick Kill and be able to pull off X-Factors for the Phantoon fight. Today I nailed my first Kraid Quick Kill, but I for sure need to practice this one a lot. Probably even more than that I am going to have to practice the Phantoon fight over and over hundreds of times so I get the patterns and timing down. This single boss fight and the rooms afterwards are probably the most annoying and dangerous part in the game.
So I am excited and eager to see what I can eventually do on this game. I have been trying to stream a run almost everyday so you can check that out at
www.twitch.tv/ninglendo I usually stream around 11am CT and around 10PM CT. Next goal is sub 1:45 then I will have to drastically alter my play style and routes. Looking forward to it
