User:Turbine2k5/Beginner's Route WIP

This is a modified Nintendo Power% route designed by User:UNHchabo for new speedrunners familiar with the game but wanting to start learning. There is already an excellent beginners' tutorial by Mishrak, but that route has several techniques that you want to learn early on when speedrunning but still might require some practice to get them reliably. Once completed, runners can learn various tricks to cut out safeties as they move towards a more common Any% KPDR route.

A few assumptions and information about this route:

• This route assumes you can walljump, but have trouble chaining multiple walljumps together.
• This route avoids mockballs entirely.
• This route assumes you can shinespark vertically, but don't know how to do horizontal shinesparks.
• This route assumes you don't know how to short charge the Speed Booster.
• This run does one diagonal shinespark, but you could use the Grapple Beam to traverse Mt. Everest instead.
• This route doesn't do the Zebetite Skip, so you need to pick up enough Missiles to destroy the Zebetites.
• This run avoids Arm Pumping entirely. It's a "free" time save, but runners should understand when and where to use it before implementing it.

Movement Tips

• Stop on a Dime -- Holding an angle button while moving will stop Samus immediately, allowing you to scoot in a direction to adjust Samus’s position. Also, you can hold an Angle button as a room loads to stop immediately.
• Walljumping -- Make sure to press away from the wall and then press jump to execute a wall jump.

Submission Information & Tools

• Console vs. Emulator -- First you will have to pick what hardware you will learn to run on. Using a console with an original cartridge and a CRT or PVM (Professional Video Monitor, usually used in TV studios) will have the least amount of input delay, but this can be hard to acquire. Some runners use a flash cartridge (like the FXPAK) in place of the actual game cart. The cheapest way is to use an emulator with a legally acquired copy of the game but double check the Leaderboard Submission Rules to make sure it’s allowed.
• Practice hack -- The practice hack is used by many runners as it allows players to teleport to any rooms, setup equipment, and most importantly use save states in game to practice tricks. While using this isn’t required, learning its features will help to accelerate your improvement as you progress.
• Control Schemes -- Make sure you follow the rules of the leaderboard for whatever control scheme you intend to use. Most controllers are allowed provided you don’t use any macros or turbo. Also, Simultaneous Opposing Cardinal Directions (or SOCD for short) must resolve to neutral, meaning you can’t use anything that will allow inputs to toggle back and forth in this manner. Outside of this, keyboards and hitboxes are allowed as well as third party controllers and the original SNES/SFC controllers.
• Discord -- The SM Speedrunning Discord is a very helpful place to ask questions about the game, discuss routes and tricks, and more. Anything that might not be clear here or on the wiki might be known by a lot of the community, so just ask!

Video

Some notes from UNHChabo:

I was inspired to create this video because of the recently-added Nintendo Power% category, which follows the route laid out in an issue of the magazine. The problem is that the route is very inconsistent in the skill level that it expects out of the player -- it makes you get Grapple Beam before you can pick up Wave Beam, even though that's a fairly simple walljump, but it expects you to get the Norfair Reserve Tank before Grapple Beam, which means you need to get there through either a very precise walljump, or by using a Damage Boost. This run collects largely the same set of items, but doesn't require even a moderate level of skill to do so. Compared with Nintendo Power%, this run collects one less missile pack (the Grapple missiles), skips Spring Ball, skips X-Ray, and collects one additional Energy Tank (the Fireflea E-Tank in Lower Norfair).

I uploaded my splits file here. I use the autosplitter script, which is included in LiveSplit. The Autosplit settings used for the video included splitting on every item pickup, as well as certain door transitions.

Some mistakes that I made in the video:

• I really meant to turn on my input viewer when recording this, so you could see what buttons I'm pressing for any given move
• I left the room after grabbing the Alpha Power Bombs without grabbing the missiles behind the statue, so then I had to go back to get them
• I grabbed the Golden Torizo Supers before fighting Golden Torizo, which is a perfectly valid order to do it, but it's not what's reflected in my splits
• At the start of Mother Brain's Room the autosplitter splits twice. At the time this was a known bug that sometimes popped up, and it's since been fixed. Hitting the "Undo Split" button once put the timer back where it should be.

Route

These are the splits from UNHChabo's split file, with the segment times in parenthesis.

1. Enter Ridley's Chamber (16.08s)
2. Finish Ridley (26.52s)
3. Ceres Escape (18.12s)
4. Blue Brinstar (41.22s)
5. Morph Ball (10.75s)
6. First Missiles (10.75s)
7. Blue Brinstar Missiles (10.72s)
8. Back to Crateria (16.07s)
9. Bombs (1m09.23s)
10. Bomb Torizo (23.58s)
11. Terminator E-Tank (29.78s)
12. Green Brinstar (15.25s)
13. Charge Missiles (39.78s)
14. Charge Beam (04.82s)
15. Enter Spore Spawn Room (42.50s)
16. Spore Spawn (1m19.12s)
17. Spore Spawn Supers (25.40s)
18. Green Hill Missile (30.10s)
19. Spazer (45.08s)
20. Norfair Elevator (13.22s)
21. Hi-Jump E-Tank (14.00s)
22. Hi-Jump Boots (09.40s)
23. Hi-Jump Missiles (05.83s)
24. Back to Brinstar (20.77s)
25. Enter Kraid's Chamber (32.25s)
26. Kraid (35.20s)
27. Varia Suit (03.02s)
28. Kraid E-Tank (28.85s)
29. Norfair Elevator (12.43s)
30. Cathedral Missile (29.12s)
31. Lower Bubble Mountain Missile (24.75s)
32. Speed Missiles (2m00.15s)
33. Speed Booster (01.75s)
34. Wave Missiles (28.58s)
35. Wave Beam (05.73s)
36. Enter Croc's Chamber (48.13s)
37. Croc E-Tank (1m01.83s)
38. Crocomire (32.35s)
39. Post-Croc Power Bomb (12.03s)
40. Grapple Beam (21.33s)
41. Upper Bubble Mountain Missiles (2m33.25s)
42. Norfair Reserve (18.93s)
43. Hidden Missile (00.75s)
44. Ice Beam (1m01.40s)
45. Brinstar Elevator (35.78s)
46. Alpha Power Bombs (1m01.00s)
47. Power Bomb Missiles (18.07s)
48. Crateria Elevator (33.28s)
49. Moat Missiles (31.28s)
50. Enter Wrecked Ship (27.17s)
51. Enter Phantoon's Chamber (26.85s)
52. Phantoon (1m57.15s)
53. Wrecked Ship Left Supers (17.83s)
54. Gravity Suit (1m49.48s)
55. Elevator to Brinstar (25.83s)
56. Turtle E-Tank (2m00.00s)
57. Turtle Missiles (11.05s)
58. Crab Supers (43.23s)
59. Aqueduct Missile (28.02s)
60. Aqueduct Supers (02.18s)
61. Enter Botwoon's Room (27.93s)
62. Botwoon (35.05s)
63. Botwoon E-Tank (14.28s)
64. Precious Room Missiles (2m33.98s)
65. Enter Draygon's Chamber (08.28s)
66. Draygon (1m16.07s)
67. Space Jump (05.35s)
68. Plasma Beam (1m20.80s)
69. Back to Norfair (1m01.00s)
70. Lower Norfair Elevator (54.20s)
71. Enter GT Room (50.92s)
72. GT Missiles (02.48s)
73. Golden Torizo (30.25s)
74. Fireflea E-Tank (1m14.47s)
75. Enter Ridley's Chamber (1m41.28s)
76. Ridley (49.65s)
77. Ridley E-Tank (02.98s)
78. Exit Lower Norfair (1m31.30s)
79. Leave Norfair (44.42s)
80. Crateria via Everest (45.80s)
81. Golden Four (33.65s)
82. Baby Metroid Room (2m02.68s)
83. Mother Brain's Room (1m11.53s)
84. Mother Brain 1 MB1 (43.78s)
85. Mother Brain 2 MB2 (1m35.32s)
86. Mother Brain 3 MB3 (1m27.32s)
87. Escape Climb (38.70s)
88. RTA End (25.45s)

Next Steps

Once you are comfortable with completing the route, you can save a substantial amount of time by implementing some aspects of Mishrak's tutorial. Over time you can drop these safety items to speed up your route, as long as you are comfortably able to complete a run without that safety.

Some easier adjustments:

• Wall jumping up Bubble Mountain is significantly faster than taking the long way through Volcano Room.
• If you're able to do the shinespark across The Moat, you can skip Grappling Beam, including the need to fight Crocomire. If you have trouble with the West Ocean shinespark or can't afford the health, you can just turn off Hi-Jump Boots and jump across those platforms
  • Hardest parts of not having Grappling Beam:
    • Crateria: Shinespark across The Moat
    • Maridia: Wall jumping up overhangs OR jumping on frozen Mochtroids (see Colosseum), consecutive wall-jumps, shinespark for Energy Tank in Mama Turtle Room
    • Skipping the Grappling Beam also means that you'll need to learn to kill Draygon with some other method, such as the "Beginner" strategy listed on Draygon's page
  • If you are still getting Grappling Beam, it's faster to walljump up Post Crocomire Shaft than going through the Grapple Tutorial rooms
• If you can do the Zebetite Skip, you can skip several missile packs, which can save substantial time from both traversing to the location, and the item fanfare itself. (A rough guess is that a beginner needs around 80 Missiles and 15 Super Missiles to get through Mother Brain 1 without the Zebetite Skip [see Mother Brain Room].)

Also consider other resources like ShinyZeni's General Movement Tutorial, which will show you more General Movement tricks and other intermediate strategies.