0%
 World Record Holder:
Pyonkichi
WORLD RECORD RECORDING
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Category Details
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Contents
History
0%, also known as Low% Glitched, is the lowest percentage required to beat the game by any means necessary. The history of Low% Glitched can be seen on the Record Progression page, including the previous percentages that were thought to be the lowest possible such as 3% and 2%. This category is defined by the item percentage shown at the end of the credits; 4% is the category with the lowest number of items collected in a run.
In order to achieve the goal of 0%, Samus must utilize block 0F(44) (also known as god block), which is probably the most powerful block in the entire game. This block does a different thing depending on Samus's X position, making it very difficult to get it to do what you want. A few of the more important things that it can do are: giving Samus ammo i.e. missiles, supers, power bombs without actually increasing her max amount (causing it to not count towards item %), removing all major items except beams and reserves from Samus's "have" list meaning that they don't count towards item %, setting Samus's max for ammo to 0, as well as crash the game a few different ways. It is pretty clear to see that it allows some extraordinary item % manipulation.
For 0%, this block is created twice. Once to give Samus 127 Power Bombs while leaving her maximum at 0, and once to remove all of her major items.
1%
After the discovery of the 0F(44) block in pre-cathedral to remove all major items, 1% was possible. Using the initial setup from 2%, then removing the major items from item %, Samus will have only missiles and supers according to the game. From there the missiles can be removed using the Ceres Reset from 3%.
Matrick was looking for a way to achieve 0% by giving Samus super missile ammo without increasing her max, because getting Varia from Kraid's Lair requires Supers. The OoB route was already figured out, the issue is currently getting into OoB in that particular room (Lower Mushrooms). Getting deep-stuck in the door there is possible using a "boomerang mockball", followed by an unmorph after the door transition, but this trick is extremely difficult. (see the notes for this TAS for more on this trick)
A 1% run was never completed, and Matrick got a setup from Sniq for artificial Varia Suit. This made Supers unnecessary for the route, so Low% Glitched went directly from 2% to 0%.
Route
The basic outline of the route is:
- Save in Parlor after Bomb Torizo
- Activate GT Code
- Create a God Block out of bounds in Parlor, then die and reload the Parlor save
- Doorskip out of bounds, and touch the God Block to get Power Bombs
- Doorskip past Landing Site, and get X-Ray
- Doorskip to Landing Site, and get artificial Varia
- Doorskip past Landing Site, down to Norfair. Create and touch a God Block to remove all major items from your inventory
- Doorskip to Landing Site, and set up the Ceres Reset to remove missiles from your inventory
- Go through Ceres, land on Zebes, and re-enter the ship
GT Code and PB Setup
The beginning up through the Bomb Torizo fight is the same as any standard category. Once the bombs are collected, the save station is used in Parlor, and a file is copied over from the save to another file. From there, the player will obtain GT Code on one of the files and return to Landing Site. If you're going for an optimized run you can use Spacetime to wrongwarp all the way to Crateria, as with Any% GT Code, and can even forgo copying the save file, but due to the Spacetime Reset effects you can't do this if you want to be able to save at the ship and reset if you make a mistake during the out of bounds navigation.
In the Landing Site -> Parlor door transition, you must activate a shinespark on the same frame you walljump-check the door in order to become stuck in the right Parlor door. After X-Ray climbing, you must navigate out of bounds to the location where you will do the X-Ray manipulation.
Depending on how crisp your X-Ray climbs are, there could be transition blocks on the ground in between the end of the climb and the next platform you need to stand on. So Space Jumping left at the height that Samus is visible through this room is the safest strat. When the room is fully scrolled to the left, there will be a hole between two platforms around the middle of the hump coming down from the ceiling on the left side of the screen. Stand on the platform just to the right of this hole, and there should be only a few pixels of Samus' feet visible.
Auto-spinjump to the left, pause to re-enable morph, and morph. Hold left, then hold jump to Spring Ball Jump after falling off the edge. A rhythm between half a second and a second should work. You should land so that you're visible on the right side of the screen, up against a wall on your left. Unmorph, face right, and auto-spinjump left against the wall.
In the next few segments of navigation, the biggest hazard will be walljump-checking transition blocks. When you're in spin you will want to be neutral on the dpad as much as possible, and you will need to break spin before moving away from being directly next to transition blocks.
Continue Space Jumping up that wall until you hit your head on a solid block. Move left to avoid it, then a few blocks above that block, move right to the wall above it. Space Jump up that wall, also until you hit your head on a solid block. Break spin on way up to hit the block again, and move right onto the platform.
Keep moving until you're back on screen, centered under the hump coming from the ceiling. Do a stationary space jump up, then after two wraps of the screen, break spin as you near the top of the screen, then move slightly left onto that platform.
Next you need to get in the right position for the X-Ray activation. When facing right, crouching, and aiming up, 2 of the pixels at the end of Samus' gun will be visible, and 3 pixels will be obscured by the rock ceiling.
Stand up, activate X-Ray, and hold down. After several seconds, part of the screen will start flashing, and you can disable X-Ray. Tap right, and fall to the ground.
Move right until you run into solid blocks (being careful not to activate Speed Booster, because then you'll run through a bomb block into a glitched block), then do an X-Ray turn from right to left. This will change a few of the blocks nearby to make the further navigation safe, but if you use X-Ray for too long, you might undo the changes to the blocks we want to use.
Morph and roll right for a few seconds, then run right until you're off-screen; you'll hit a block shortly after. Hop up on that block, then run right and charge a shinespark. A 2-tap will likely stop in the right spot. Release the spark up from a crouched position, from the left side of the middle terrace. Sparking from a standing position will softlock you in The Climb.
After this, you must kill Samus without entering the ship area. The fastest method is using the acid in Crateria Super Room. If the ship area is ever accidentally entered, it will completely erase any previous out of bounds manipulation, so it is important that the player knows how to, and when not to, enter the ship area in this run.
After successfully modifying data and exiting the out of bounds, the player has to kill themselves instead of saving a/o resetting because resetting the game, or simply causing the intro scene to play, will change what the out of bounds contains. The menu after dying also has to be taken cautiously, because accidentally showing the intro scene there, like previously stated, will ruin the previous manipulation. If you're using multiple save files, you must select "Yes" to continue, but then press B to back out to the menu before selecting the other file. A single save file is easier, since you can simply select "Yes" and continue from the Parlor save.
Power Bombs
The player should then access the other non-GT file, normalize the Out Of Bounds by entering the Climb, and then perform a Doorskip, a 2x frame perfect trick involving a frame perfect pause while falling down to the Parlor -> Climb vertical door, then a frame perfect position change (such as angle up or firing the beam) while falling through the door transition. When this doorskip is executed perfectly, the player should fall through the door transition itself, into the out of bounds.
You will need to navigate to the right, going up by one tile each time you hit a new copy of the room. Ideally you can mockball across each copy, but if you accidentally mockball off of the bomb blocks, there is a chance you could jump into a bad transition block. To avoid this, you could just roll across each copy and bomb yourself up to each new level.
Once you've wrapped the room vertically nearly twice, you'll come just above the door Sprite. Go to the far right of this level, then stand up and walk left until you stop. From here you'll do some Normalized Movement to touch the newly-created 0F(44) block at a certain position to set Samus' power bomb count to 127 without increasing her maximum.
Do a bunny-hop left, then do four auto-spinjumps to the left. To turnaround for each auto-spinjump, you can hold Angle Up and Angle Down to avoid moving out of place if you accidentally press the dpad too long.
Then do one auto-spinjump to the right, then do four bunny-hops to the right. Do one final bunny-hop to the left, and the Power Bomb item box will pop up. Hold an Angle button. Despite no fanfare, this lasts as long as a normal item pickup. Once that one is done, a Missile item box will pop up.
After this is done, you'll land on a solid block. Hold jump, then hold right 10 frames later (this is the Spikesuit rhythm, or you can use a metronome at 360bpm). This will put you in Terminator with your head sticking out of the ground, and you can jump to come back in. A bad rhythm of those two button presses will leave you embedded in the floor, softlocked.
Alternate Setup
As shown in his PB, Matrick used an alternate setup: after the first bunny-hop to the left, do a turnaround bombjump to the right without remorphing. Turn left on the ground, turn right in the air, turn left on the ground again, and bunny-hop left. A single Power Bomb item box will pop up, and hold right as it clears to hit a door transition to Landing Site.
The block shuffle effects of the 0F(44) block will have changed the layout of the Landing Site as well, so you'll spawn in an elevator block. Jump on top of it, then do an auto-spinjump to the right, and let go of the dpad after you do. You will hit the side of a solid block, and continue falling straight down. Break out of spin, and turn left. When you get hit by a spike block, it will knock you to the right and you'll land on a solid block a few seconds later, visible on the top-left of the screen.
Face right, and do a turnaround-remorph bombjump to the left. After the bomb goes off, hold left to avoid landing on a crash block. From here you'll be on a copy of the outcropping near the Crateria Power Bomb Room door. Continue down using the normal Any% Glitched setup until you hit the next room copy. Pause and unpause to prevent a softlock from the elevator block, then try to enter the door to Crateria Tube, as described below in the setup to get X-Ray. If you miss and enter a copy of Parlor instead, you can just come back in-bounds in Terminator and continue the run.
X-Ray
After navigating back in-bounds, you need to enter The Climb in order to place a transition block to Landing Site in Parlor. Do another doorskip in Parlor, fall to the ground, and mockball to the right. Wrap around the screen once, stopping just to the right of the platform in the center of the screen. Infinite Bomb Jump up, just over 2 full wraps of the screen. After the second time you pass the platform in the middle of the screen, the platform you want to land on will be just to the left, about a tile and a half above that.
Move left until you're straddling the boundary between the rightmost block of the center platform, and the bar that makes up the middle. Jump straight up into a door transition to Landing Site, and hold Jump and Right as the room loads.
You will end up on top of the room, same as when you finish the X-Ray Climb in Any% Glitched. You want to hit the door transition to Crateria Tube, where you'll come back in-bounds. This will usually happen if you hit the door directly below you at the very top, as seen with the GT Spacetime route. You can do this by either doing the "left then right" movements as with GT Spacetime, or you might have better luck by aligning to the right wall, and either morphing, rolling left until you hear yourself roll off the edge then hold right; or by pressing Shot and Left at the same time, and holding right starting on the fourth shot.
From here you go down and collect X-Ray Scope in a similar manner to a 0 e-tank route for Any% Glitched.
However, you cannot collect any Power Bomb drops until after leaving the X-Ray area, because this will cause you to lose all of your Power Bombs. After this point you can continue if you accidentally pick up a drop, although ideally you will still want to avoid them. While the enemies that often drop Power Bombs are well known such as Scisers and Firefleas, it's also useful to know that Wavers, Skrees, and Geegas have a low percent chance of dropping one, while Blue Geemers, Zeelas, and Novas will never drop one.
You will want to open the door in Red Brinstar Elevator Room on the way down, both to prevent a softlock if you pick up a Power Bomb after escaping the X-Ray area, as well as to be more time-efficient.
Artificial Varia
Next, after saving in Parlor and resetting, another doorskip is required from Parlor to Landing Site, in order to create and use the block that will give the artificial Varia Suit.
Now that you have X-Ray, each of the doorskips for the rest of this run can be replaced with an X-Ray Climb in Landing Site, but due to the lack of Supers will need to be the slow setup from 3%, rather than the faster setup from Any% Glitched.
Once out of bounds in Landing Site, you'll need to navigate through four full copies of the room, and partway through the fifth. Stop one platform above the morph tunnel, and move right so you're against the wall.
Activate X-Ray and hold down until the screen starts flashing, then tap up and down until you're right on the boundary between flashing and not flashing. Holding up for 4 beats at 240bpm should put you at the right setup before turning it off. This X-Ray activation builds a "floor" of solid blocks for the next X-Ray setup, and positions the transition blocks for when you go back to Parlor.
Matrick had a different setup for this; he held down until the screen flashed three times, and then mashed up 12-14 times. However, you'll need to use the same mashing speed he did for this setup to be consistent.
Walljump up two screens to the top of that wall, then you'll want to phase into the side of the wall such that you're standing two tiles below the floor. Out of bounds tiles have a strange property that Samus can move through them as long as her head isn't blocked. The easiest setup for this is to run as far right as you can on that ceiling (you will see the side of the ship), then run left and start firing at the same time. In between the 7th and 8th shots, start running right. If you got this right, you will start falling before you reach the right side.
When you start falling, hold left. Being too far right as you fall can cause another type of block to be created instead of the Varia block.
Now you need to do some Normalized Movement. Once you're on the ground and against the left wall, perform two turnaround-remorph bombjumps to the right, then mid-air turn to the left.
X-Ray down until the screen starts flashing, then go left to the wall. Perform a turnaround bombjump without a remorph to the right, then autospinjump to the left. Fire a shot, and you should get Varia Suit.
After the suit acquisition cutscene is done, tap right and Samus will fall. After she lands, run left until you're off-screen, and she'll be next to a copy of the ledge coming out from Crateria Power Bomb Room. It's possible you may encounter "garbage blocks" on the way there that you'll need to navigate through, possibly including tall columns of solid blocks that you'll need to walljump over.
Jump left until you see her come on the right side of the screen, then run right until she stops. You'll be at a new copy of the area you used X-Ray for. Climb the wall and get inside it as before, except don't hold left as you fall or you'll run into blocks that will crash the game. Instead, repeatedly tap left as you fall. Once you hit the ground go all the way left to the wall, then walk right (without Dash) until you hit a door transition to Parlor.
You will be in the ground underneath a copy of the left side of the room. X-Ray Climb out of the ground (including turning off Morph), and then navigate through the slope blocks into the door to Terminator.
It's possible to spawn directly underneath the door blocks, in which case during the X-Ray Climb you'll either be sent to Terminator, or Landing Site. If you're sent to Landing Site, *immediately* hold right until you stop moving, then tap left until you fall. This will put you back after the long fall in the normal out of bounds navigation. However, you will have touched an elevator block, so you'll need to pause and unpause before hitting another door transition.
Once you're back in-bounds, save and reset, then doorskip again to go down Red Tower into Norfair.
Item Removal
Pick up Hi-Jump Boots (avoiding the e-tank), save and reset, then walljump-check the door from Business Center to Cathedral Entrance to get stuck, then X-Ray Climb up 12 screens (about the same as the climb in Golden Four).
Run right for a while, jumping up a tile every time you hit a wall. After the screen scrolls back to the left, keep going until only Samus' feet are visible in the ceiling indent.
Bomb jump up three screens. Once Samus is visible on the fourth wrap, tap left to land on the platform, then continue tapping left until you land on the lower part of that platform. If you aim up and turn left, Samus' gun will just barely be visible to the left of the column.
Hold right to press against the wall. Pause and unequip Hi-Jump, then bunny-hop to the right. X-Ray-turn to the left, then do a shallow jump and turn right in mid-air. If you jump too high, you will hit a bad door transition block.
Activate X-Ray and hold down until the screen starts flashing, then press up and down until only the right-two-thirds of the screen is flashing. Disable X-Ray, hold Dash, then hold Right briefly. One full beat of the Upper Norfair music is a good timing for this.
Turn left, and do an unmorphed turnaround-bombjump to the right. Tap right once (or twice to be safe), pause, and re-enable Hi-Jump. Jump, immediately morph and unmorph, then tap left. This will align you against a solid block that's just below the peak of your jump height; the morph-unmorph limits your jump so that you won't land on it. Repeat this jump if you want to be safe, especially if you did two taps to the right earlier to make sure you weren't underneath that block.
Turn to the right, then do an unmorphed turnaround-bombjump to the left. Do an X-Ray turn to the right, with a very quick X-Ray, otherwise you might set the 0F(44) block to another type. Do a mid-air turnaround to the left.
Crouch, then jump, aim down, and expand your hitbox into the 0F(44) block. The easiest way to do this is to hold Down from a standing position, then on three consecutive beats of the room's music press Jump, then press an Angle button, then let go of Down. If it worked, you'll see an item box for Grappling Beam. Keep holding Angle and it will close, and another Grapple item box will appear. After that one is done, you will land on a solid block, and all of your major items will be gone.
If you expand your hitbox into the block and nothing happens, it might be because of the aforementioned X-Ray turn turning the 0F(44) block into another type. Two unmorphed turnaround-bombjumps to the left will put you back on the initial set of blocks after the long IBJ. If you start over from there, this setup will still work.
Activate X-Ray and turn right. After a second or two the transition block just to the right of you will go from being a bad transition to a valid one. Stop X-Ray and tap right. If you don't transition, tap right again. If you still don't transition, jump. This may be necessary if you X-Rayed too long during the X-Climb, which can change the layout given after the block-shuffle effect of the 0F(44) block.
After hitting this transition block, it should put you touching a transition block in Business Center, sending you back in-bounds in Cathedral Entrance.
Ceres Reset
Navigate back up to Parlor, and for safety you'll want to save, and copy the save file.
Do another doorskip or X-Ray Climb to Landing Site. However, since your inventory doesn't contain any items anymore, you can't turn off Morph for safety on the X-Ray Climb, and you can't turn off Hi-Jump Boots for the doorskip.
This means the setup for the doorskip will be different than normal if you're doing the newer spinjump method; the gap between the pause and right inputs is 8 frames instead of 5. You will also land on a platform not far below the door transition; tap right until you continue falling.
Go right and bomb jump up as normal, then instead of jumping straight up into the door transition and holding right as you enter, the most consistent setup is to Bunny Hop left from the same position as normal, and keep the Bunny Hop going into Landing Site. If you were to do the normal setup to the right, you'll jump into a bad transition block due to Hi-Jump. It's possible to time a jump to avoid this, but not recommended.
After you land from the Bunny Hop, you will be on an elevator block, so before you hit a door transition you will need to pause and unpause to prevent the game freezing.
Do an auto-spinjump to the right. Make sure you let go of right before you hit the wall, so that the wall stops your horizontal motion, but you don't keep going into the door blocks just below it.
Once you land, you will be at the end of the "long fall" in the normal Landing Site OOB navigation. Continue going down two full copies of the room as with Any% Glitched, and follow that route through rolling off the left side of the third room copy and landing on the solid block. Now is an excellent time to pause and unpause to handle any bad transition blocks you might've touched during the OOB navigation.
Stand up facing left, activate X-Ray, and hold up for a couple seconds. Turn right and the screen will turn blue. Stop X-Ray, turn left, and then hold X-Ray again. Use very short releases of X-Ray to buffer movement to the left, until one one pixel column of Samus' visor is visible to the left of the column of solid blue. While still holding X-Ray, turn right, and the screen will turn orange. Hold up until the screen turns white, then tap down until you're right at the start of the orange section. Hold up for 7 beats at 240bpm, then deactivate X-Ray.
Next you need to get to the Crateria Tube. One method is to tap left and fall off the block, then continue moving through another copy of the room, and then hit the Parlor door blocks as normal to hit that door transition.
However, if your movement through Landing Site is inconsistent without any visual cues, or if you find that your console tends to add garbage blocks in your path, you can try to hit the Parlor door directly to your right for a 50% chance of success. X-Ray turn to the left, then do an auto-spinjump to the right, holding right until you hit the door transition. This video shows a comparison of several different RAM patterns, some of which allow for fairly easy navigation down to the next room copy, while others are tricky, in which the spinjump for the 50/50 chance of success might be a wiser option.
Once you enter Crateria Kihunter Room there will be a large amount of black texture covering the screen. If you're near full hp you could take a 60hp hit from a Sciser to help optimize the Ceres Ridley fight. It's possible that the door at the bottom of the room will have been turned back to yellow, in which case you'll need to reset if you picked up a Power Bomb drop during the run.
Go down to the Red Tower Save Room, save, and reset. When you select the save file the opening cutscene should start up -- if it didn't, you'll need to load up the copied save file and try again. Incidentally, having Japanese Text enabled will make this cutscene longer, so an optimized run should have English Text enabled. After this you'll go through Ceres again. You can use Power Bombs to destroy the doors, and the addition of Hi-Jump will change the movement from normal.
As you land on Zebes, the planet should be exploding. Mash down on the dpad. Samus' sprite will change slightly as she re-enters the ship, and that is when time stops.
Collected Items
The items that make up 0% are the following:
Morphing Ball is required to 'awaken' the planet and utilize Power Bombs.
Similarly to above, one Missile expansion is also required to awaken the planet. Because all missiles are deleted in the end, there is no limit to the number that are allowed to be collected if one so desires.
Bombs are required to do a lot of the out of bounds necessary to make 0% possible.
Powerbombs are required to open orange doors and destroy other destructible surfaces that block the way. They are also required to collect x-ray.
Varia Suit is required in order to resist heat damage during the key out of bounds navigation. It is worth noting that Varia is not collected in the traditional way, but is rather created in the out of bounds area of landing site and collected that way.
X-Ray Scope is required as it is an integral part of most of the out of bounds navigation, allowing Samus to x-climb into the out of bounds areas of certain rooms but also to modify the BTS of blocks and create whatever blocks are necessary.
Notes
The Artificial Varia block will crash the game on the Switch, and it's suspected this behavior is the same on other Virtual Console platforms.
Potential Future Improvements
There is a known setup to set Samus' Max Powerbomb Count to 0 using the same Parlor 0F(44) block as the 127 PB setup, which would allow this run to be done without the GT Code Multi-File setup.
Using Block Shuffle tiles, you can also then create 0F(44) tiles in Parlor to remove major items and to remove missiles, which allows the run to skip Artificial Varia, and to skip the Ceres Reset.
McBrady created a video for this route.
Tutorial
Matrick created a LOTAD (Low Optimization Tool Assisted Demonstration) with commentary, that you can find here.
Chabo has a run with the hitbox viewer that uses safe strats here.
Matrick's 3% tutorial explains the Ceres Reset setup, although the 0% run has Hi-Jump, so some of the movement will be different.
