Low%Rooms analysis

Low%Rooms analysis:

Route map:

The following analysis for the minimal number of in total visited rooms (not counting revisits multiple times) is meant for the theoretical (TAS) limit (in NTSC and PAL):

Restrictions:

• No Spazer+Plasma
• No OoB, No GT Code
• No G-Mode Savestation memory corruption

The blue rooms are required to be visited independent of the route one takes. The orange rooms to connect the blue areas are chosen rooms for the purpose of finding the best solution.

Number of blue rooms in total: 3 + 6 + 12 + 16 + 10 + 5 + 7 = 59.

With Underflow:

Total number of orange rooms: 6 + 2 + 9 + 9 + 9 = 35.

Number of visited rooms in total: 59 + 35 = 94.

Involved tricks and route:

Etecoon Floor Clip is done, then Phantoon can be killed (but doesn't need to be yet at this point), then in Red Brinstar an indirect G-Mode using Hellway room is done after X-Ray was collected in order to get the Maridia Mainstreet Super Missiles and climb back up the left side of Everest and go down to Lower Norfair for the Wasteland Powerbombs (using Pause Abuse if needed after G-Mode for Reverse Lower Norfair Entry). Then the route continues back up for an Elevator-CF via early Super Missiles, Mainstreet Super Missiles, Blue Brinstar-PBs, Etecoon-PBs, and Wasteland-PBs. Then a Gravity-jump back up into Maridia Mainstreet is done where suitless Slope-X-Mode with a crab can be done to superjump either multiple times or once into the Super Missile pack chamber to get to Everest room with a Blue Suit. Then another Slope-X-Mode Superjump is performed to the top door and one can spark up and out with the Blue Suit, and Gravity is collected, coming from the ocean room, with a Superjump using the right fish. Then the route goes back down to Maridia after getting Blue Suit via Elevator-CF and Crystal-Spark, where G-Mode with Blue Suit is involved, to then get past pre-Botwoon room that way and advance towards Draygon and do Underflow there and use the Flash Suit for pre-Botwoon room on the way back. Then the route continues down to Ridley again to kill him and go all the way back up (with Kraid killed at some point) to Crateria and then finally Tourian. Tourian is done with either 1 additional Tank taken or Varia taken on top of the 5 Tanks on the route (Terminator-E.T., Green-Brinstar-R.T., Botwoon-E.T., Etecoon-E.T., Fireflea-E.T.).

Technically, with just 10 powerbombs maximum and R-Mode, if there's a room to do an R-Mode CF-Force-Stand to gain a Flash Suit (without using more rooms) after the Maridia Mainstreet Super Missiles have been obtained, then the Wasteland PBs probably wouldn't be needed anymore.

Reasoning for the orange rooms:

• The Terminator room connects Crateria with West Brinstar via 1 bonus room instead of 2 in Gauntlet which one cannot use as easily to get back from Brinstar to Crateria, and both have an E-Tank.
• The early Super Missiles room adds just 1 bonus room instead of at least 4 via Spore Spawn, and reduces the distance to the Brinstar R-Tank room.
• With just 2 bonus rooms, one can gain access to the Etecoon powerbombs.
• Forgotten Highway is way too long as connection between Wrecked Ship and Maridia, and the X-Ray area should be connected up anyways, due to Reverse Lower Norfair Entry saving about 4 rooms, so the ocean path connection is taken.
• The Lower Norfair exit area is some rooms shorter than the normal path to Ridley, hence it is used.
• Maridia Mainstreet room provides a Super Missile pack and Wasteland room a powerbomb pack, which can both be collected to make Elevator-Flash-Suits possible.

• To use the Botwoon-skip path one would also need Ice Beam, and both together just adds too many rooms.

• Taking out the Crateria Elevator room to Red Brinstar, Hellway room, the Red Brinstar Elevator room, and the gold fish room would only make space for 4 rooms to be redistributed, which would not be good enough to connect Blue Brinstar with Red Brinstar via Noob Bridge room and Green Hills room, together with the West Glasstube room, pre-Spazer room, and the Red Brinstar Skree room, since that makes 5 rooms altogether.

- - -

Equivalent options:

° HJB E-Tank room / Varia room / Kraid E-Tank room / Blue Brinstar E-Tank room / Ridley E-Tank room / Gauntlet E-Tank room (possibly via Superjump using the top left green pirate and an R-Tank).

° Instead of taking the Wrecked Ship Entrance hall, one could also superjump all the way up in the ocean room and use the Attic room to get to Phantoon and back out.