World Record Progression: Metroid

metroid it's one of nintendo's most iconic franchises it all started back on the original nintendo entertainment system back in the 1980s as the player blasts through aliens and explores the world they're dropped into they're left with the feeling of awe most players want this feeling to last as long as possible and explore every last inch of every room in the game but some people play metroid a little bit differently [Music] so the history of the nes metroid world record can be traced back to 2004. the player was a guy i've talked about a lot and a guy who should probably be known as one of the greatest video game players of all time scott kessler and the time of the run was 22 minutes and 19 seconds [Music] for those unfamiliar with metroid the eventual goal is to beat mother brain before you can do that of course there's so much more that most players have to do get items that let you deal more damage pick up more health other attributes and beat too many bosses create and ridley that allow you to get to mother brain in the first place so kessler started off his run by stocking up on missiles and getting other items in health he traveled through brinstar to pick up his first five missiles an e-tank to boost his health to 199 bombs the ice beam and another e-tank in all he spent around 8 minutes and 45 seconds in brinstar before heading down the elevator into craig's lair to get ready to fight crade [Music] once he was in craig's lair he navigated to the room before creates room and began to farm for missiles see when you kill an enemy in metroid it can have the chance of dropping a random item and one of those items it can drop is a missile kessler needed five missiles to break open the red door to get to the grade fight so he spent about a half minute shooting giga to get the 5 missiles needed to randomly drop then it was on to the crade fight kessler's strategy here was to simply roll into a ball and lay bombs everywhere hoping that they would explode on crade and damage him this strategy was slow but safe and effective the fight itself took about a minute and then he picked up a hidden e tank and got out kessler then had to climb at a crate's lair in a section that would be known as the climb his method was to simply shoot the blocks above him then jump and let the blocks that respawn below him push him farther up once again this was pretty slow and it took him about two and a half minutes to get back up to the elevator he then went into the infamous statue room this room is more or less the gateway between the rest of the game and mother brain normally once you've defeated both creed and ridley you shoot both of their statues in this room and a bridge appears allowing you to travel across and enter a turian to fight mother brain the developer is intended for you to have defeat both bosses before making it across if you try to go down into the lava pit there's no way of making it through the one tile wide opening on the left thankfully there's a way around having to defeat both crate and ridley bridge skip this trick is one of the oldest i've ever documented in the series there's reference to it from a nintendo fun club magazine from 1987. if you lure a rio into the statue room you can freeze them with your ice beam in just the right position then you roll into a ball use a bomb to propel samus up and roll through the small opening so kessler could get to taurian without needing to fight ridley he still fought create however to get the 75 missiles you receive for killing him these would come in handy later after getting through the statue room kessler took the elevator down into taurian he farmed a bunch of the metroids for more health and missiles and then very carefully navigated through the mother brain room his playstyle here was pretty safe traveling under the platforms and freezing any rings that came near him he used the missiles he gained from the crate fight and from farming to blast through the eight pillars before finally reaching mother brain and firing the 33 missiles necessary to defeat her mother brain was dead but anyone who's played metroid knows there's one final part left the escape you've gotta jump up from tiny platform to tiny platform to escape from the planet and beat the game it may not seem too hard but imagine trying to do this as quickly as you can with the knowledge that you're on world record pace mistakes usually aren't punished too heavily here and you can often just land on the platform below if you slip up but if it's coming down to the wire and you can't afford to waste any seconds you've got to be perfect you can let your run go to waste at the last second one slip up and your run is over thankfully for scott kessler he didn't really have to worry about that this was the first recorded run that we're aware of from anybody so all he had to do was climb up and finish the game and he did with a total time of 22 minutes and 19 seconds this run would end up standing for about a year and a half but a guy named blake pifo better known by a screen named spiderwaffle saw room for improvement and he had a few tricks up his sleeve to help him get there scott kessler's run was good for the time but many of his techniques from moving around the stages and farming missiles became outdated to help with his movement spiderwaffle practiced the game on an emulator likely using save states to help him do sections over and over again to get better at them as well as gaining quicker more precise movements in many of the rooms in brinstar he developed a new method for farming missiles after getting bombs instead of shooting each enemy individually he grouped multiple enemies and used bombs on them thanks to early time saves like these on august 27th 2005 spider-waffle got on a run that went into craig's lair at 7 minutes and 53 seconds 52 full seconds ahead of scott kessler he used a more effective strategy in the crade fight that involved freezing a needle to prevent getting knocked back and then spammed created with shots to the body this fight alone saved about half a minute over kessler's fight and spiderwolf will save close to a minute on the climb out of craig's lair as well instead of slowly waiting for each block to respawn to move up a block at a time spider waffle moved up by shooting blocks above him to land then clearing space to jump even higher once he made it back up to taurean spider waffle was nearly three minutes ahead of scott kessler's run but he wasn't done saving time yet when he needed to farm for missiles in taurian he did so beautifully grouping metroids together and getting good luck with receiving a lot of missiles from there he defeated mother brain made his way up to the escape and finished his speed run three minutes and 37 seconds ahead of scott kessler spider waffle finished the game in 18 minutes and 42 seconds on august 27 2005. now the progression starts to get a little bit strange a couple months after spider waffle's run a guy named chris knight beat it and submitted it to twin galaxies his final time was 17 minutes and 22 seconds nowadays the footage of this run no longer exists because back in the day twin galaxies only required the referees to see video of the run after they saw it who knows what happened to the footage so we can't see this run today but according to their website his run was verified on october 30th 2005 and also his run apparently stood unbeaten for seven years [Music] it's really rare to see speedruns stand for incredibly long periods of time even really optimized runs like super mario bros have their records broken with some regularity that run was lowered from 5 minutes and 6 seconds to 4 minutes and 58 seconds from the same period of time i just feel like but nobody is able to beat chris knight's run the main reason for that was because for a period of time metroid speedrunners tended to focus their efforts on all boss's speed runs where he had to defeat both create and ridley and 100 speed runs where he had to collect every item in the game when you're playing any percent where you only defeat crade there's points where you need missiles to drop to open doors defeat bosses whatever the reason may be if you don't get missiles quickly from your farming you're basically screwed knight apparently did beat his own run a few times in mid-2012 but he didn't show anybody the recordings and he didn't submit his times anywhere so nobody really knew about it in everyone's eyes the world record was his 1722 but then in late 2012 somebody was finally up to the task jay prophet 22 he started his timing a little bit later than chris knight did about seven seconds so going by his timing the time to beat was 17 minutes and 15 seconds going into the escape it was going to be close [Music] yes it is [Music] ah god damn it [ __ ] rhythm is way off here because i don't [ __ ] get to this part nearly enough new lap record 17 1507 did i just beat him remember how i said the escape could be potentially dangerous well there you go a tied world record 17 minutes and 15 seconds of intense gameplay later it couldn't be determined who was faster however this record wouldn't remain tied for long chris knight would soon blow everybody's run out of the water on march 16th 2013 he had a great run going down at the crate's lair thanks in part to getting great missile look he then did a really quick crate fight where he just got right up in create's face and spammed missiles and after an even faster climb out of craig's lair where he used the platforms next to the blocks to jump up higher and a really fast bridge skip where he froze the rio in mid-air while jumping on top of it he was way ahead going into taurean [Music] but his biggest time save by far was the hallway in the mother brain room instead of the safe method of going beneath each platform and shooting anything that got near him knight got on top of the platforms and ran right up to each pillar to shoot it he was at risk of getting hit more but he played really beautifully here he just kept charging forward endlessly being careful to conserve his health but he wasn't stopping for anything he was getting to the end after finishing the escape chris knight had beaten metroid in 15 minutes and 43 seconds a minute and a half of a record that had stood for seven years people who saw this run just after it was posted all agreed that it was one of the greatest speedruns that i had ever seen getting the missile luck that he got along with all the other insane execution was nearly impossible to replicate if anyone wanted to beat this run there's going to need to be some serious strategy changes so there's one important thing i haven't explained yet the rules of a metroid speedrun historically the most common rule set for metroid runs have included the following two rules you can't do an up and a warp and you can't do a death warp and up in a warp is a strange feature that was built into metroid and a few other nes games at the time notably the legend of zelda if you pause the game with one controller then press up an a on the second controller you'll be warped to the start of whatever area you're in a death warp is similar if you take a death you get sent to the start of the area you're in as well these both can save you multiple minutes in craig's lair for example you normally need to climb all the way out of craig's lair to make your way into taurean if you instead just either take a death right after defeating crade or do the up and a trick you will immediately get taken back to the elevator so since you cannot warp the category is actually known as any percent warpless but up through 2013 there was one more rule that players abided by no glitches this is a pretty controversial topic a lot of you out there watching probably hate glitches and would love to see them all banned from speedruns this was the mentality of a lot of major speedrunning websites years in the past one of those websites where nearly everybody was submitting their metroid speedruns was speed demos archive since they banned most glitches from metroid people did their speed runs without glitches that's why the runs i've talked about up to this point are all glitch-free but as time went on people just said hey i forget speed demos archive we're gonna use glitches anyway this is precisely what chris knight decided to do in 2014 and there was one glitch in particular he was about to use that would forever change the way people played metroid [Music] the door jump is a famous trick that can help you access different areas of the game quicker it's performed by shooting a door open then letting it close on top of you then you press up and down repeatedly on the controller and samus will begin to move upward you can either get further up the screen by going all the way up or you can go below the screen by screen wrapping onto the bottom the main reason why this was huge for speedruns is because now there is no need to go out of your way to pick up bombs at the start of the glitchless runs you always want to pick up all the items and hope that you needed one of those items was bombs and you had to take about two minutes navigating to and from them and the main reason players needed the bombs were to bomb the floor to get to new areas now instead of doing that as long as there is a door there you could just door jump and then screen wrap to the bottom [Music] so in november 2014 chris knight had a run with this new door jump route he was streaming it live on his twitch.tv account and there were splits in the upper right hand corner but they weren't splitsper's old world record run and i'm not really sure what they're for so just ignore them while he did save a couple of minutes from not having to pick up the bombs the door jumps themselves ate up a bit at that time he also couldn't farm as efficiently without bombs having to shoot enemies individually instead of grouping them together with bombs you have to keep in mind the last glitchless run that he did was literally insane so he did start to bleed some time his crate fight was slower he didn't get amazing luck with his missile farming his climb out of craig's lair was safer he had to do a different version of bridge skip since he didn't have any bombs and he hesitated a little more in the mother brain room by the end of the escape nearly all the two minutes the door jump save was gone but not all of it he finished around 17 seconds ahead of his world record with the final time of 15 26 by early 2015 a new competitor had entered the scene controller head he developed a few new strategies including a way to get this e tank and one swift jump to the top his crate fight was also very clean holy god i'm wrecking craig right now oh yeah oh yeah buddy he got a nice bridge skip and as you can see from his splits in the corner of the screen he was on a really good looking run heading into taurian and after defeating mother brain he knew he was on world record pace the chat was hyped he was hyped and there was just one obstacle left the escape let's [ __ ] go this is definitely it this is it about [ __ ] time [Music] this is it [Music] 15 15. [Music] yeah baby that's it about [ __ ] time for seven years nobody was able to lower the metroid any percent worthless world record between the combined efforts of kris knight and controller head it had now been lowered three times in the past two years but as quickly as it began the category entered another period of relative inactivity controller heads 1515 stood on top throughout the remainder of 2015 and through 2016. and then in early 2017 a new challenger came along his username was metroid mcfly and his personal best started off innocently enough finishing off runs in the 16 to 17 minute range but that march he went all out an ultimate grind to take the metroid world record a run that remained unbeaten for two years oh gosh 1556 hell yeah hell yes [Music] yes 15 24 dude that's what i'm talking about right there oh yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] all right guys that's it what's up 15. [Music] 14 54. after half a dozen personal bests over the course of a month metroid mcfly had brought the metroid any percent worthless world record under 15 minutes he played the game so much that much that he was starting to get tired of the grind he wanted some different challenge like i mentioned before the route through the game that these players used picking up items and fighting cred for heading into taurean revolved extensively around missile luck if missiles didn't randomly drop when you needed them to then you were out of luck and would have to reset mcfly didn't want to wait for missiles anymore so he began searching for new options he would end up arriving at a tool assisted speed run of metroid from 2008 made by a guy named lord tom if you don't know what a tool assisted speedrun is i'll try to give a better description of it than in my previous videos it's when somebody goes in an emulator in order to create a theoretically perfect speed run there's tools that they can take advantage of slow motion save states or advancing frame by frame for example that can all be used to create a series of extremely precise inputs all the way throughout the run this particular tool assisted speedrun showcased a pretty strange method of making it through the game lord tom literally picked up nothing at the start of the game instead he door jumped right into craig's lair and arrived there less than a minute after beginning the game he then defeated create and made his way into taurian to progress with the rest of the game now if a human could pull this route off it would be huge there would be no need to collect the first missile pack or the ice beam at the start of the run to illustrate this here's a large image of the map of metroid you spawn here if you want to pick up the missile pack you have to go all the way [Music] to here then to pick up the ice beam you'd have to go all the way [Music] to here and then to make your way all the way back down to craig's lair you'd have to follow this path way way way back this whole process would take about six minutes of real time so instead with this route named craig first you would go straight to crain and defeat him without any items then pick up the ice beam on your way back to taurean since it was more or less on your way but there were some severe problems you see you needed to door jump in just the right way at two different locations in order to get dropped right into craig's room they both involved navigating off screen in different rooms wrapping from the ceiling to the floor and were ridiculously precise in fact for years these were believed to be humanly impossible but a guy named the tycoon carefully developed methods to make the clips just barely possible in march 2017. i'll leave out the exact technical details but the videos are in the description if you're interested you also needed to defeat craig without the ice beam you couldn't take very much damage and you couldn't freeze any of crane's shots so you'd have to maneuver around everything created through you like this it would take hours of practice for mcfly to get decent at it and many more to master it and finally when you are climbing out of crates layer before getting the ice beam there is a ripper you would normally have to freeze with the ice beam to jump off of to reach the sledge you obviously couldn't do that since you didn't have the ice beam yet so mcfly's solution was to roll onto him get damage boosted up unmorph in midair and then jump to the platform he had a 60th of a second to time this to reach the platform so was doing all this humanly possible nobody knew at first but metroid mcfly proved all doubters wrong on april 29th 2017. [Music] god man took way too much damage are in there dude well [Music] what do we got 14 22. parts of it were slow the door jumps were still new to him the crate fight took a while and touring wasn't the fastest but he had something to work with now the question was how far could he take this game the very next day he beat his own record by 35 seconds largely thanks to doing the door jumps faster yeah alright 13 48 dude then two days after that he cleaned up his movement in taurian and beat the record by 34 more seconds all right hell yeah guys 13 14 a week later he had a new strategy for krait taking more damage intentionally to give himself more opportunities to shoot grey instead of dodging shots this was enough to cut the crate fight in half oh and on that very same run he lowered the record 23 more seconds that's what i'm talking about dude that's what i'm talking about the next day he had an even faster crate fight due to taking even more intentional damage while being careful to slow up enough health to stay alive another new world record by 28 seconds this time [Music] two and a half weeks after that he had yet another new crate strategy morphing into a ball to control when he would take damage usually he did this to get hit from craig's bottom spike world record by 13 seconds [Music] [Music] mcfly has lowered the record two more times since then in 11 49 from june 2017 to get the first ever sub 12 and an 11 40 from july 2017. oh come on man oh so close to a 39 man that 11 40 still stands as of today he beat the world record more than a dozen times from march 2017 through july 2017. on the leaderboards nobody is really close to him garrison is the only other person with a time under 15 minutes and that is the history of the metroid world record from the early days of scott kessler and spider waffle to the crazy grinding of metroid mcfly the metroid world record has come a really long way mcfly has been in control of the record for nearly a year and he looks pretty unstoppable but as we all know records always get beaten whether it be from retro mcfly or from somebody else somebody will surely be able to beat metroid even faster in the future thanks for watching i'm gonna throw in a quick plug for my twitch channel twitch.tv summoning soul if you like watching games being beaten fast you're gonna want to check it out thank you [Music] you

Channel: Summoning Salt

Views: 1,776,382

Keywords:

Id: qFCF4I09Avc

Length: 27min 10sec (1630 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 11 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Epicallytossed]

Feels like I've been waiting for another one of these for forever

[u/[deleted]]

This was really well made, even charted the map and showed differences between routes. Good work!

[u/FIapjackHD]

Summoning Salt is my Personal god of Youtube atm. These Videos are so well made, I am always totally hyped whenever there is a New upload. The funny thing is that it doesn't matter if I like of even know the game in question, the content is so amazing that I always enjoy it. Keep up the good work!!

[u/pie4all88]

So is Chris Knight's 15:43 on 3/16/2013 still the Any% Glitchless&Warpless WR? Why was that category dropped so hard that it's not even on speedrun.com?

[u/StatuatoryApe]

God, i love Summoning Salt and these WRP videos, been waiting for another for a pretty long time, but its always worth it.

Curious to see how the WR develops going forward, or if the game has hit Mario bros levels of solved. The TAS shows there's lots of room for improvement, but lets see how much that is physically possible. Excited to see where things go from here.

[u/selflessscoundrel]

I'll be the rare critical voice because I do love these vids.

When panning the Metroid map to show old routes, the motion was jerky. I imagine you did it with a screencap and you just used your mouse to move the image (maybe I'm wrong).

Other than that, an enthralling video sir. Thank you again.

[u/blueboybob]

At first I was like "didnt he already do this game?", but that was Super Metroid.

[u/Second_to_None]

A midi version of Danger Zone? Nice touch.

[u/IsaacAccount]

Anybody else remember the few days of insanity when spider-waffle and the SDA team were in an all-out battle over the usage of b-hop scripts, which resulted in spider-waffle having his username forcibly changed to comrade-waffle?