Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/SuperMetroid.html
Super Metroid (100 %) (Single Segment) (ntscj/ntscus) (snes)
Super Metroid (Any %) (Single Segment) (ntscj/ntscus) (snes)
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Reason: Was there ever any doubt?
Congratulations to Matt 'zoast' Thorne!
Super Metroid (100 %) (Single Segment) (ntscj/ntscus) (snes)
Super Metroid (Any %) (Single Segment) (ntscj/ntscus) (snes)
Verifier Responses
Quote from UraniumAnchor:
Any%
The 44:32 timing is what the general SM community uses, not SDA timing, but the difference is only six seconds so it doesn't really matter.
A/V is excellent, everything's cropped/trimmed correctly and there's no audio desync that I can see. Of note is that IQ is in a colorspace that most players can't use, so you might need VLC for that one, but it looks nicer.
Movement in this game is incredibly deep and will never be perfect, but this run comes pretty damn close. If you don't mess up several times you're either cheating or you're not pushing yourself hard enough. All of the important tricks are nailed, Kraid quick kill, full shinespark over the lake, fast two cycle kill on Phantoon (though I think the RNG was slightly suboptimal), shinespark over the spike bed, quick kill on Botwoon followed by the full halfie... a reasonably quick Draygon (I think it's possible to do it slightly faster but the difference is pretty minor) and a really nice Ridley fight, even if a couple shots get missed. No extra items are picked up at all, leaving very little margin for error, especially at the end. Good kills on the metroids and a nice fast Mother Brain fight followed by an excellent escape and there's really not much else to say about this run.
Accept.
100%
See above regarding timing and A/V. I agree with the timing within a second. For some reason VLC repeated a tiny blip of audio during the StatID, but it was a random blip every time so I'm gonna chalk that one up to a playback bug.
In a game this long and full of technical tricks stuff is bound to go wrong many times, but most of the mistakes are incredibly minor.
Gets steamed multiple times during the escape. Reset.
A fall on the way out of Norfair after the grapple beam, but zoast had a nice backup strat that worked out so the time loss ended up being pretty minor.
Just barely missing the long lake shinespark, requiring another short charge (that had a minor snafu of its own).
Not QUITE sure what happened on the way back out of the wrecked ship in the grapple room, but it only cost a few seconds.
Nice to see that even the top players are a bit paranoid about landing in the wrong spot for those crumble blocks above Tourian. I think I messed that up during my bonus stream runs years back.
Full halfie!
Ridley is a little uncooperative. Just a little.
Controller rebelling just as he's about to leave Norfair for the last time.
...what happened in that double missile room above old Brinstar? Looks weird as hell. Or is that some super secret strat I wasn't aware of?
Oh no the blobs.
Didn't cost much time though.
Really smooth Tourian... except for the acid dip. Lava dip? I'm not even sure what that stuff is supposed to be. Luck could have been maybe a bit better on super missile drops but the difference is tiny.
All in all, an excellently executed run with some very difficult strats. It'll be good to see an NTSC run on the SDA page again.
Accept.
The 44:32 timing is what the general SM community uses, not SDA timing, but the difference is only six seconds so it doesn't really matter.
A/V is excellent, everything's cropped/trimmed correctly and there's no audio desync that I can see. Of note is that IQ is in a colorspace that most players can't use, so you might need VLC for that one, but it looks nicer.
Movement in this game is incredibly deep and will never be perfect, but this run comes pretty damn close. If you don't mess up several times you're either cheating or you're not pushing yourself hard enough. All of the important tricks are nailed, Kraid quick kill, full shinespark over the lake, fast two cycle kill on Phantoon (though I think the RNG was slightly suboptimal), shinespark over the spike bed, quick kill on Botwoon followed by the full halfie... a reasonably quick Draygon (I think it's possible to do it slightly faster but the difference is pretty minor) and a really nice Ridley fight, even if a couple shots get missed. No extra items are picked up at all, leaving very little margin for error, especially at the end. Good kills on the metroids and a nice fast Mother Brain fight followed by an excellent escape and there's really not much else to say about this run.
Accept.
100%
See above regarding timing and A/V. I agree with the timing within a second. For some reason VLC repeated a tiny blip of audio during the StatID, but it was a random blip every time so I'm gonna chalk that one up to a playback bug.
In a game this long and full of technical tricks stuff is bound to go wrong many times, but most of the mistakes are incredibly minor.
Gets steamed multiple times during the escape. Reset.
A fall on the way out of Norfair after the grapple beam, but zoast had a nice backup strat that worked out so the time loss ended up being pretty minor.
Just barely missing the long lake shinespark, requiring another short charge (that had a minor snafu of its own).
Not QUITE sure what happened on the way back out of the wrecked ship in the grapple room, but it only cost a few seconds.
Nice to see that even the top players are a bit paranoid about landing in the wrong spot for those crumble blocks above Tourian. I think I messed that up during my bonus stream runs years back.
Full halfie!
Ridley is a little uncooperative. Just a little.
Controller rebelling just as he's about to leave Norfair for the last time.
...what happened in that double missile room above old Brinstar? Looks weird as hell. Or is that some super secret strat I wasn't aware of?
Oh no the blobs.
Really smooth Tourian... except for the acid dip. Lava dip? I'm not even sure what that stuff is supposed to be. Luck could have been maybe a bit better on super missile drops but the difference is tiny.
All in all, an excellently executed run with some very difficult strats. It'll be good to see an NTSC run on the SDA page again.
Accept.
Quote from sjorec:
Both the any% and 100% runs were of good A/V quality. There's no signs of cheating in either one.
The runs were very well played. Any mistakes made were fairly minor. These seemed to occur more in the 100% run although that's to be expected due to a longer length.
The any% run could be accepted simply because of the route changes however the skill displayed in it puts it quite a bit ahead of the current SDA run.
I accept both runs. Nicely done, Zoast.
The runs were very well played. Any mistakes made were fairly minor. These seemed to occur more in the 100% run although that's to be expected due to a longer length.
The any% run could be accepted simply because of the route changes however the skill displayed in it puts it quite a bit ahead of the current SDA run.
I accept both runs. Nicely done, Zoast.
Quote from CyberBotX:
A/V good on both, no cheating detected on either. There really isn't much I can say about these. There are some very, very minor mistakes in both the runs, but the runs are very smooth overall. I'm easily giving them both an accept.
Quote from Dessyreqt:
I orinigally had about 2000 words typed up about the any% run (only got up to Draygon,) but I decided it probably wasn't so important to go into a full synopsis of each run with a blow-by-blow of the mistakes incurred.
Audio and video look great, except low quality, which is understandably low. I'm pretty sure it's the default LQ settings for Anri-chan, but dang does it hurt to watch.
Both of these runs were streamed at the time of recording. The any% run can be found at http://www.twitch.tv/zoasty/c/3152667 and the 100% run can be found at http://www.twitch.tv/zoasty/c/3115213. Both streams feature our protagonist on the bottom right of the screen, but noticeably lack a display of the console and the Game Genie that surely lies between the SM cart and the SNES. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO HIDE FROM US ZOAST!? Or the play on display could just be the result of hours upon hours of Super Metroiding for like two years straight. Seriously runner, do you even have a job?
Regarding timing: The any% is a 0:29, and the 100% is a 0:47. Both times have the seconds truncated, and as Super Metroid is now a game of seconds, it becomes increasingly important to differentiate the times more accurately. We can estimate what time the seconds probably are (in this case, I think the any% is ~29:20 and the 100% is ~47:15,) but even that is based pretty much entirely on the RTA time of the run.
I had a chat with Mike "The Mike" Uyama at SGDQ 2012. In addition to him repeatedly calling me a "dirty TASer," we also talked about how it made more sense to accept Super Metroid in real time instead of in game time. I believe Vorpal has also echoed this sentiment. Thus I will note the times in real time.
RTA timing starts when "Start Game" is selected and ends when Samus is facing the camera at the end of the game. SDA timing start when you gain control, roughly 5.8 seconds after pressing "Start Game." SDA timing ends when you lose control, so the endpoint for the timing will be exactly the same. I will note both times as applicable.
any% - Zoast is notoriously bad at stopping his timer on time, so I went back to the stream footage to get a more accurate grasp on the time. Samus faces forward on the ship at 44:32.18. We'll round that to the tenth since our SDA differential is rounded to the tenth. Our SDA time for this run should be 44:26.4. Note that Zoast has a faster run by 3 seconds, but I'm assuming didn't have the source video to submit that version. This run uses the best known route and has maybe 40 seconds worth of mistakes in the whole run. That is absolutely phenomenal, and it's a testament to the solidity of this run that none of the other runners (who are certainly very talented) have been able to match this time.
100% - Zoast has this run listed as a 1:17:59. However, if you take the time from the video, you come up with a 1:18:00. I went back to the twitch run, where the runner has the timer showing, and it seems he actually finished the run at 1:17:59.98. Talk about cutting it close there. However, that's RTA time. The SDA Time would be (1:18:00.0 - 5.8) or 1:17:54.1 (rounding all times to a tenth of a second.) I will note there is a run by kottpower currently available that is a 1:17:59.02, which would have an SDA time of 1:17:53.2. This is what I mean when I said Super Metroid is currently a game of seconds. This route was found via my own computer testing, and Zoast & company have made great strides towards making it both fast and consistent.
Verdict - Accept both of these please. Even though neither is the fastest run of the category at current, I believe that high quality video of improved runs that are currently (or formerly in the case of Red Scarlet's 100%) on the site should be accepted. Besides, these runs blow away anything regarding NTSC Super Metroid that has been on this site previously. Now we just need to get Kottpower to submit his 14% ice run...
Audio and video look great, except low quality, which is understandably low. I'm pretty sure it's the default LQ settings for Anri-chan, but dang does it hurt to watch.
Both of these runs were streamed at the time of recording. The any% run can be found at http://www.twitch.tv/zoasty/c/3152667 and the 100% run can be found at http://www.twitch.tv/zoasty/c/3115213. Both streams feature our protagonist on the bottom right of the screen, but noticeably lack a display of the console and the Game Genie that surely lies between the SM cart and the SNES. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO HIDE FROM US ZOAST!? Or the play on display could just be the result of hours upon hours of Super Metroiding for like two years straight. Seriously runner, do you even have a job?
Regarding timing: The any% is a 0:29, and the 100% is a 0:47. Both times have the seconds truncated, and as Super Metroid is now a game of seconds, it becomes increasingly important to differentiate the times more accurately. We can estimate what time the seconds probably are (in this case, I think the any% is ~29:20 and the 100% is ~47:15,) but even that is based pretty much entirely on the RTA time of the run.
I had a chat with Mike "The Mike" Uyama at SGDQ 2012. In addition to him repeatedly calling me a "dirty TASer," we also talked about how it made more sense to accept Super Metroid in real time instead of in game time. I believe Vorpal has also echoed this sentiment. Thus I will note the times in real time.
RTA timing starts when "Start Game" is selected and ends when Samus is facing the camera at the end of the game. SDA timing start when you gain control, roughly 5.8 seconds after pressing "Start Game." SDA timing ends when you lose control, so the endpoint for the timing will be exactly the same. I will note both times as applicable.
any% - Zoast is notoriously bad at stopping his timer on time, so I went back to the stream footage to get a more accurate grasp on the time. Samus faces forward on the ship at 44:32.18. We'll round that to the tenth since our SDA differential is rounded to the tenth. Our SDA time for this run should be 44:26.4. Note that Zoast has a faster run by 3 seconds, but I'm assuming didn't have the source video to submit that version. This run uses the best known route and has maybe 40 seconds worth of mistakes in the whole run. That is absolutely phenomenal, and it's a testament to the solidity of this run that none of the other runners (who are certainly very talented) have been able to match this time.
100% - Zoast has this run listed as a 1:17:59. However, if you take the time from the video, you come up with a 1:18:00. I went back to the twitch run, where the runner has the timer showing, and it seems he actually finished the run at 1:17:59.98. Talk about cutting it close there. However, that's RTA time. The SDA Time would be (1:18:00.0 - 5.8) or 1:17:54.1 (rounding all times to a tenth of a second.) I will note there is a run by kottpower currently available that is a 1:17:59.02, which would have an SDA time of 1:17:53.2. This is what I mean when I said Super Metroid is currently a game of seconds. This route was found via my own computer testing, and Zoast & company have made great strides towards making it both fast and consistent.
Verdict - Accept both of these please. Even though neither is the fastest run of the category at current, I believe that high quality video of improved runs that are currently (or formerly in the case of Red Scarlet's 100%) on the site should be accepted. Besides, these runs blow away anything regarding NTSC Super Metroid that has been on this site previously. Now we just need to get Kottpower to submit his 14% ice run...
Decision: Accept
Reason: Was there ever any doubt?
Congratulations to Matt 'zoast' Thorne!
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