Low%

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The term low% means the lowest amount of items which the player can use to beat the game with.

The low% categories challenge the player much more than most popular Super Metroid runs. The idea and requirement behind low% categories is to collect the absolute lowest percentage of items needed in order to beat the game. These categories can be defined as follows:

  • 15% - Lowest amount of items a player can acquire to defeat all major bosses, without any glitches or exploits whatsoever. As fully "glitchless" play is not common in Super Metroid, this is not a category that is usually run at all.
  • 14% - Lowest amount of items a player can acquire to defeat all major bosses while staying within the boundaries of the rooms, on standard SNES hardware with no modifications. This is by far the most common of these categories, and will usually be what people mean by "low%".
  • 13% - Lowest amount of items a player can acquire to defeat all major bosses while staying whitin the boundaries of the rooms.
  • 12% - Lowest amount of items a player can acquire to defeat all major bosses while utilizing the out of bounds area.
  • 11% - Theoretically the lowest amount of items a TAS can acquire to defeat all major bosses while utilizing the out of bounds area.
  • 4% - Lowest amount of items a player can acquire while beating the game by any means necessary.
  • 0% - Lowest item percentage possible while beating the game by any means necessary.