Mind-blowing new Super Metroid speedruns

[Quasar]

New world-record Any% Single-segment Speedrun by Hotarubi in 0:31

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwHgVvKeQVs - part 1 of 6

See the channel for the other 5 parts. Just for reference, this unassisted run is faster than the first TAS run of the game ;)

New super-broken TAS run in 0:12 (yes, that's twelve minutes) by Cpadolf and "hero of the day".

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YvQtItgznQM - part 1 of 2
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ykcVEYHj9EE - part 2 of 2

[Joe]

that 12 minute run is pretty awesome

[Quasar]

Yeah, especially the part where the player travels back in time to trigger an uninitialized-memory glitch that creates an offscreen door above Mother Brain's chamber, allowing the boss fight to be skipped :)

[Creaphis]

I'm not familiar with this game, so I enjoyed what I watched, but I have no idea how four minutes of nonsense accomplished anything.

[Tango]

Jesus I can't imagine how you'd find glitches like that. That 12 minute thing is insane.

[Udderdude]

Super Metrowned.

[Quasar]

Creaphis said:

I'm not familiar with this game, so I enjoyed what I watched, but I have no idea how four minutes of nonsense accomplished anything.

I assume you are referring to the x-ray climb? When you're trapped in a door, using the x-ray scope causes your position to increase vertically, but the scroll offsets of the screen are not changed. This means that Samus is moving up through the memory space used for the room's tile map. Once she reaches the top, she will wrap around to the bottom. The x-ray climb has to be performed repeatedly in the entrance to Tourian until Samus is close enough to reach the elevator in the room just below that is protected by the boss statues.

Note that this must be reached without being able to see what you're doing, and I have no idea how they figured out the precise distance to travel by climbing except possibly plain old-fashioned reverse engineering ;)

As for the time-travel glitch, the title screen is a tile map, and it too is stored in the same memory used for rooms. If you load a save game and never travel into a large-enough room, parts of the title screen data are still stored in the tile map memory but off-screen.

By loading the old copy of his save game file and dying in that particular room in Brinstar, he has modified an off-screen part of the title tile map that happens, coincidentally, to represent a door. It would ordinarily face right, which is useless. Dying in that particular room leaves the door set to exit left, however, and the room to the left of Mother Brain's chamber is the first escape sequence room :)

TAS is all about tearing into the game to find every possible exploitable glitch.

[sgtcrispy]

mmmmm super metroid speed runs. :)

[caco_killer]

Quasar said:

I assume you are referring to the x-ray climb? When you're trapped in a door, using the x-ray scope causes your position to increase vertically, but the scroll offsets of the screen are not changed. This means that Samus is moving up through the memory space used for the room's tile map. Once she reaches the top, she will wrap around to the bottom. The x-ray climb has to be performed repeatedly in the entrance to Tourian until Samus is close enough to reach the elevator in the room just below that is protected by the boss statues.

Note that this must be reached without being able to see what you're doing, and I have no idea how they figured out the precise distance to travel by climbing except possibly plain old-fashioned reverse engineering ;)

As for the time-travel glitch, the title screen is a tile map, and it too is stored in the same memory used for rooms. If you load a save game and never travel into a large-enough room, parts of the title screen data are still stored in the tile map memory but off-screen.

By loading the old copy of his save game file and dying in that particular room in Brinstar, he has modified an off-screen part of the title tile map that happens, coincidentally, to represent a door. It would ordinarily face right, which is useless. Dying in that particular room leaves the door set to exit left, however, and the room to the left of Mother Brain's chamber is the first escape sequence room :)

TAS is all about tearing into the game to find every possible exploitable glitch.

Those are incredible glitches. I can't even begin to imagine how they figured out something like that.

[sgtcrispy]

Quasar said:

I assume you are referring to the x-ray climb? When you're trapped in a door, using the x-ray scope causes your position to increase vertically, but the scroll offsets of the screen are not changed. This means that Samus is moving up through the memory space used for the room's tile map. Once she reaches the top, she will wrap around to the bottom. The x-ray climb has to be performed repeatedly in the entrance to Tourian until Samus is close enough to reach the elevator in the room just below that is protected by the boss statues.

Note that this must be reached without being able to see what you're doing, and I have no idea how they figured out the precise distance to travel by climbing except possibly plain old-fashioned reverse engineering ;)

As for the time-travel glitch, the title screen is a tile map, and it too is stored in the same memory used for rooms. If you load a save game and never travel into a large-enough room, parts of the title screen data are still stored in the tile map memory but off-screen.

By loading the old copy of his save game file and dying in that particular room in Brinstar, he has modified an off-screen part of the title tile map that happens, coincidentally, to represent a door. It would ordinarily face right, which is useless. Dying in that particular room leaves the door set to exit left, however, and the room to the left of Mother Brain's chamber is the first escape sequence room :)

TAS is all about tearing into the game to find every possible exploitable glitch.

This once again proves my theory that speedrunners are a bunch of crazy fuckers. :)

[Death-Destiny]

Wow. Impressive.

Using memory glitches to create doors? 0_o

You'd have to be pretty bright to figure out all these bizarre errors. I'd never have been able to do so. When I do speedruns, my most complicated ideas are nothing like "I'm going to go back now, which will cause a memory initialization error to create a door just where I need it to skip the final boss fight." I am duely impressed.

[Inferno]

sgtcrispy said:

This once again proves my theory that speedrunners are a bunch of crazy fuckers. :)

I support this theory, as the 12 min speedrun was absolutly sickening.

[Creaphis]

Sheesh. Well, thanks for explaining it. I've always assumed that these tricks are found through the ceaseless play of thousands of nerds, but I couldn't believe that exploits this obscure would be found by trial and error, so it's good to know that there are actually technical methods of figuring this stuff out. I would be terrified to know that someone has enough time to find tricks like this by accident.

[myk]

Death-Destiny said:
When I do speedruns, my most complicated ideas are nothing like "I'm going to go back now, which will cause a memory initialization error to create a door just where I need it to skip the final boss fight." I am duely impressed.

There's a considerable difference between TAS and regular speedrunning. While TAS hacking related knowledge may help speedrunning, many of the tricks become practically impossible during normal play, because they depend on incidental quirks that are beyond the player's control or moves that aren't possible with mere human dexterity.

[exp(x)]

This reminds me of the insanity of the TAS Mario 64 runs. Talk about breaking a game.

[Bashe]

...

MIND = BLOWN

IN EVERY POSSIBLE WAY

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

[Technician]

I can't really contribute a comment on this video that hasn't already been posted.

[Creaphis]

Technician said:

I can't really contribute a comment on this video that hasn't already been posted.

Thanks for letting us know.

[Csonicgo]

exp(x) said:

This reminds me of the insanity of the TAS Mario 64 runs. Talk about breaking a game.

That game has so many exploits you can technically beat the game in under an hour. For N64's first game though, the amount of fun in that one cartridge outlives any new game I've played in a long time. That's a damn shame.


Quest64 had an exploit that could give you max spells at the start. something to do with a secret chamber in the start area that wasn't supposed to be in the final version. Either way, it made the game piss-easy and beatable in 50 minutes. Graphically the game was beautiful and the music unmatched for many years in terms of N64 music, but the gameplay sucked.

[Siggi]

That's just broken.

[Technician]

Csonicgo said:

That game has so many exploits you can technically beat the game in under an hour. For N64's first game though, the amount of fun in that one cartridge outlives any new game I've played in a long time. That's a damn shame.

I think I didn't get all 120 stars until like four years after I beat the game and even then it took a while. Mario 64 can be beaten in an hour but if not exploited it is one of the most satisfying games around.

Sadly Mario Sunshine also takes ludicrous amount of time to collect all stars but not because of clever puzzles and obstacles. Its’ just stupid hard to find all blue coins or even a hundred coins for that matter.

[Csonicgo]

Technician said:

Sadly Mario Sunshine also takes ludicrous amount of time to collect all stars but not because of clever puzzles and obstacles. Its’ just stupid hard to find all blue coins or even a hundred coins for that matter.

SMS had a lot of frustrating parts for me. the sand bird level was awful, and the constant grate climbing in the harbour was some of the most frustrating experiences in mario since SMB2. I don't remember mario ever being frustratingly difficult as SMS was. The music was awesome though.

[exp(x)]

Csonicgo said:

That game has so many exploits you can technically beat the game in under an hour. For N64's first game though, the amount of fun in that one cartridge outlives any new game I've played in a long time. That's a damn shame.

Actually it can be beaten in under 6 minutes and with 0 stars. That's what I'm talking about when I say broken.

[Technician]

The fish platforms are the only star I haven’t gotten along with the leaf red coin one as well. I haven’t even started on getting the entire secret stars or 100 coin ones.

As for speed runs the author of this video is extreme! That's all he does are runs. His Quake run (Video quality is crap) is great and his Doom 3 Nightmare run is also stellar. He has one hell of a memory.

[Shaikoten]

exp(x) said:

Actually it can be beaten in under 6 minutes and with 0 stars. That's what I'm talking about when I say broken.

Yeah but don't forget that this particular video is tool assisted, I'm not sure if those glitches are possible for humans or not (though I would be interested to find out if they were.)

[exp(x)]

Shaikoten said:

Yeah but don't forget that this particular video is tool assisted, I'm not sure if those glitches are possible for humans or not (though I would be interested to find out if they were.)

When Csonicgo said "technically", I interpreted that to mean by any means.

[Fredrik]

Tango said:

Jesus I can't imagine how you'd find glitches like that. That 12 minute thing is insane.

It was discovered by Kejardon, of course. I've met him on and off on IRC during the last five years, and my impression is that he has spent most of that time disassembling Super Metroid.

He should be working for some computer security company.

[myk]

Fredrik said:
He should be working for some computer security company.

Maybe he's hacking banking systems and mysteriously filling bank accounts he has access to.

[SYS]

Judging that speedrun with his carved up Super Metroid ROM it likely is the mysterious bank account.