Metroid Fusion 1% Run
Behold the mighty reference map, and all it's glory.
Meltdown
I was considering calling this segment Dante's Inferno, cause it was a whole lotta hell. Ba dum ching.
*crickets*
Why you ask? Well, there's only really one reason, that being a distinct inability to SAVE.
OOh it just makes me want to... rrrgh. This thing should have been two or three segments. It definitely needed a save before the eye door (and right after that horrible horrible horrible, but nice looking, wall jump ledge thing in the I room)
Also, I'm afraid I was forced to compromise myself in this segment. I have thusly far done everything within my power to play each segmeut uber-efficiently. I do not jump over enemies if I can kill them and keep running, so on and so forth.
Due to the sheer length of the segment, however, I had to take precautions in order to be able to get things done. Basically I had a list of 3 things that had to go right: The wall jump in the I room, the perfect boss door, and a reasonably good boss fight. Oh, and never getting hit of course. Getting all that to happen ALONE just took immense retries. Seriously, not cool.
I will say now there's a lot of things I COULD have done if I wasn't forced to cut them in the name of sanity. I'll explain what they were when I get there.
Well, speaking of getting there, let's go to the breakdown:
A: Look ma, no hands!
B: Remember last segment how I said Ice Missiles are more trouble than they're worth? Here's a fine example. I can't kill the stretchy guy the same way I did the last time I was here (one full-damage charge and a missile), because the missile won't kill him, it'll freeze him! Gotta waste two missiles on this freak if you don't wanna slow down.
Same as last time, use the background to mark where you need to start running from, then run on through to
C: Also just like last time. Use the background as a marker for where to shine. Drop to...
D: AH yes, a difference! This time I don't really have anything useful for that spark to do, so I just shoot the door and use it now :P Hey, at least it kills stretchy and gives me four missiles.
E: The mighty E shaft. This was the H shaft in segments 9 and 10, but this time we're going down, not up. Well, not up YET.
Alright, when you hit the wall after the spark, hold left, that'll make you spin left. Stop holding left. You'll still spin left.
The thing about spin jumps (which hasn't really been useful until now) is that while spinning, you have to move in a direction. Only a non-spinning jump allows you to go vertical only.
So what you want to do is just fall down the shaft, only changing directions where I do. Use the background as a marker for where to spin left again at the bottom. That little box thing on the pipe is what I used. You'll hit the bottom without a scratch. Now, believe it or not, you're going to be going right.
F: Yep, we're going to F. Why are we going to F you ask? Well to build a shine of course.
You DID enter with a charged beam, yes? Shoot the two spiky tykes and lay your bombs and blow the wall. Killing a few spikys before the second bomb blows will reduce the number you have to kill on the way back. Provided, of course, that any moved in the direction that they'd be down there now. It could be that none will get in your way other than the original 2 you shot. It could be that they all will, or anything in between.
Either way, once the wall is bombed, continue on
G: Using the background as marker (or just the celing, stop when there's nothing above you) then make a U-ie and back left
F: Remember that fire like a madman strategy I used back in SRX? Yep, gotta remember way back now. That's right, use it again. Kill the spikys, don't let them ruin your day.
E: And you should have just enough room (a bit to spare in fact) to build a shine before hitting the wall. Now, another mid-air spark.
Refresher: Spin jump, then shoot to break the spin, then hit jump. This is a mid-air spark.
Now then, you want to do this as high as you can, the shot you shoot to stop spinning will open the door. Then spark left through the door.
H: This room is gonna suck later, but it's a whole lotta nothing now. Spark on through. If you were high enough when you started the spark, you'll go right to the door. If not, you can just jump to it by holding the jump button when you crash.
I: Here it is. If there's any trick in any part of this run that you thought was difficult, I assure you this is worse. This is probably the first trick that actually required pixel perfection. That ain't cool :P
I'm lying actually, there is room for error. It's probably closer to bi-pixel perfection. Still, it's more than I'm used to.
Here's the deal. You wall jump off that wall there, and then hit right when you're far enough out (and let go of jump) to shift right, then you shoot to break your spin, as well as slow your fall. Then you grab the ledge.
There really isn't any way to have reference here. You just have to keep trying until you get a real real good feel for it. And odds are, when you do manage to do it, you'll get a non-perfect eye door or screw up somewhere else. But keep at it, rome not built and all that.
Personally I tried over and over and over (using savestates to hone my skills, pray for those who would try this without) and now I can do it about 1 in 4 times. Trust me, that's better than it sounds for this kind of thing.
Well anyways, once you manage that, leave, charging of course.
J: Shoot the rightmost guy in the celing, he has a bad habit of coming close to dropping fire on you. Leave again
K: Alright, run toward that guy and jump just as he spits at you. It'll be at the same point every time, I used the lines on the floor as reference for where to jump. Then wall jump off as high as you can go. That wall jump will force stretchy to see you and come on out, at which point your wall jumping self is above him. Fire an ice missile down and out you go.
L: I hope you charged before entering this room. This is a really really bad room.
It's also the only room where we have to cross paths with fire weridoes. Fire weirdoes are horrible horrible things. If you kill them, you can't just run on through. They leave behind flames (sometimes) and I'm still not sure what determines if they do or not. If they don't, you can run through (sometimes) unless of course they left a trail of flame behind them that didn't quite die down enough yet.
Bottom line. It's possible to run through both of the fire weirdoes that you kill without slowing. However, after what you did in the I room and with a boss door ahead, I wouldn't. In fact, I didn't. I compromised and played it safe, I jumped every time. Please forgive me ;_;. I really do feel bad, but I know it was the right choice, or I may still be stuck on that segment.
Alright, I'm getting ahead of myself. Fire diagonally up where I did to kill the fire weirdo on the roof so he can't ruin your day.
Now, there's a purple guy ahead of you that you need to take out. They take 3 ice missiles. You got no choice but to use them, cause he needs to die.
I'm lying, no he doesn't. It is possible to just freeze him and time your jump JUST so, so that you jump in between him and the corner of the ledge, without hitting anything or slowing. That, again, I didn't do. This segment was bad enough. I had to cut corners and play safe. He had to die.
And die he did. 3 missiles and then more fire weirdoes.
Since I just had to use a missile, there's no way on earth to build a charge in time to take out the first fire weirdo. And your fine ice missiles that Galactic HQ in its infinite wisdom supplied you with, cannot take them out either. It takes 2 to kill them, and you can't fire two in the time it takes you to get there. Especially since they're so short you have to angle down from close range to hit them.
Ugh.
Alright, you are forced to jump the first. Release a charge into the second from mid air. Make sure you don't do this until you're far enough along in your jump that you won't land back into the first fire weirdo you jumped. I had trouble with this...
But anyways, the second fire weirdo may leave fire, so jump anyway, even though he's dead. In retrospect, there's no point in killing him. But he makes me angry!
Now, with your charge again, you wall jump off the side, hang on the ledge, and do another one of those release-during-pull-up maneuvers you saw in the last segment. This one takes out the final fire weirdo.
Oh yeah, there's a fire weirdo on the celing who often will drop fire on you RIGHT as you pass under. Avoid this by freezing him.
Jump the fire left by the guy you just killed. Even if it looks like it's too mellow to be a threat, sometimes it still is.
And fire an ice missile at the purple stretchy. And drop, and out, and charge as you leave.
Phew, what a horrible horrible horrible room.
Ah, but it gets even better!
M: In a minute... this room is peanuts. Just make sure you're charged, and jump over everything. Your charged self will kill the weirdo up top, aaand that's about it.
N: Did you spot the compromise in this room? A cookie if you did!
You guessed it, it's possible, with the proper random factors, to actually jump off the leftmost side of the mid-height platform and jump through the tiny gap in the top platform. But, if the hoppidy up there moved over it, you died trying. Not worth the risk.
What I did instead was a lot nicer. If the hoppidy close to me moved right, I shot him, if he moved left, well I still shot him, just not immediately.
It takes a full-damage charge to take out a hoppidy, remember. Point blank.
Either way, now it's the boss door.
Most likely, after EVERYTHING you've done, you will now get an imperfect one. I'm sure I don't need to again remind you just how much time is wasted by a bossy boss door. Wait for the perfect one. I did. It's all for you, you know. You'd better be enjoying this. *shakes fist*
Alright, if you have at least 4 missiles left, don't stop to get the red x refill the boss door leaves. And you probably should have at LEAST 4 missiles, at least if you followed my directions.
O: It's the RETURN of the REVENGE of the SON of EYEGUY II!
This guy is as stupid as his dad. Very non-random, you can control him.
Alright, first off, one shot to his scientist form will make him tuuuuuuurn
Get on the platform where I got. Your left foot should be on solid ground, your right off. Get your missiles and your down button ready and wait...
Listen for the "vwwwoooooo" sound that this fellow makes. The instant the third "vwwwoooooo" starts, fire straight down (by jumping straight up). You'll hit him smack in the eye.
Now, wait for him to open his eye again. You have to look kind of close, as there's hanging stuff obscuring him a bit. But yeah, when he opens, you jump and fire down, then once the missile hits him, you floor it left.
When you get to about the end of the room (you can cut short a bit) floor it right
Drop off the ledge, and shoot a missile left. You'll get him a 3rd time.
Now you wall jump off the right wall there, land left, jump lefter, then fire diagonally up right as you fall. The dude will be facing left, and you won't be there, so his shot will miss you. Not only that, but you just killed him on the sweet spot!
This, also, takes practice. If you don't have savestates, well I don't know what to tell you. But then again, you also may not be doing a no-hit run. So go nuts. Maybe it's okay if he hits you, since as soon as you get the wide beam, you get your health and ammo back anyways.
Wide beam. Quiet useless, but it has it's redeeming traits. Land on the 'puter, and you saved the system! I had 4:28:xx as my time when I switched the timer off. If you're around there, you're golden.
And now you gotta get back to the nav room, still without saving. Ready?
Alright, first the jumps up back to the door. Jump short as always. If you jump late, you can skip a step on the last jump.
N: Yep, another compromise.
Believe it or not you can start a speed boost here. If you're against the left most wall on the bottom, and run right, you can boost into the next room.
But, stopping in time is very not easy, and after doing all you just did, do you REALLY wanna screw it up by falling in the lava? Well maybe you can try it anyways, cause you don't care if you fall in the lava. But you know, no-hit run and all, can't risk having to restart.
So what I do instead is just... leave, normally, very unflashily.
M: If you're trying for that boost, you're going to have to hit down to shine on the PERFECT spot. I mean perfect. I STILL can't do it anything close to consistantly, even with save states. Though I didn't practice much with it, cause I decided not to do it.
Anyhow, jump out, killing the weirdo same as last time you were through here.
L: L room is Hell room. Now if you managed to carry a shine to this room, just line yourself up and spark on up, killing stretchy and on the whole making your life easier. If not, time for wall jumps. You have to start on the right wall to get up to the top ledge in as few hops.
I'm lying again, by the way. If you manage to do it perfectly, jumping as high as possible on every part of the wall jump, you can start on the left wall, on the highest tippy part of the outcropping, and make it in one jump less. Also something I did not attempt. If you go too low though, it's murder to try to make up for it, the jaggedness makes it a hard place to get up.
Now, make sure you grab onto and pull yourself up that ledge as fast as possible. When you get close to stretchy, he'll start to spit, and only seeing you in front of him will make him stop, so he can stretch at you. There were times when I got this far only to be spit at. Don't let it happen to you.
Alright, remember that idiot stretchy you had to kill the first time you were here? Kill him again. Before you got the wide beam, a charged beam and 2 missiles wouldn't have been enough to kill the dude, but now it is. Do like I do and he'll die. Also ice the fire weirdo on the roof as you drop, or he may drop fire on you.
Exit and away. I actually started my jump before the door transition
K: This is to prevent hitting the side of the ledge I'm jumping on, which would slow me. Now then, don't hit the stretchy, leave, that's about it.
J: Be sure to kill the top left fire weirdoes, or they will rain on your parade.
I: The horrible I room. Not really so horrible going down as going up. I actually meant to have a full charge on entering this room but my finger slipped. You could hear me fire a couple times before the door transition. That was a bad attempt to re-orient my finger, which failed.
I wanted to kill the fire weirdo here, but icing him does just as good. Either way, he ain't gonna poop on you.
H: A very bad room. The good news is it's not random. The bad news is, if you want to get through without slowing without being hit, you need to be real fast.
Fire your charged beam off and recharge when you're close to the edge. Then jump as LATE as humanly possible, to skip as most of the ladder as humanly possible.
Now there's an optical illusion with these rooms. The platforms are not as large as they appear. You see that melty overhanging stuff? That's not really there. The platform stops where you'd expect it to stop if that stuff weren't there making it look longer. So though you have to jump late, remember to not jump so late that you forget to jump before the platform stops, if that makes sense.
Anyway, you'll see in my video how one of those fire flares barely missed me, as I was going just fast enough to go beyond it. This was due to my late jump. There were times when I got THIS far, only to be hit HERE, and made to restart. Not fun.
But if you do make it, the rest of this room is easy. No more close calls. Jump, release your charge then hit up immediately after to kill the second creepy thing. If you do it the other way around, samus will be paralyzed for hours. Shooting while on ladders is bad. That's Sesshoumaru's Law.
E: Now the last time we were in this area (going TO eyeguy) you probably had a question:
"Hey Sess, it takes so long to go right and bomb those walls, isn't it faster to just go left and take the ladder? Does it really save any time to spark through the H room if it takes so much time to build a shine?"
The answer is, it didn't save time. It didn't really cost time either, well, maybe it cost about a second, but yeah, there was no time gained by doing that. You pretty much broke even.
Why the trouble then? Well aside from being flashier (this is a showmanship run remember) the reason for the trouble was this:
You are here, in this giant shaft. You need to get to the top of the shaft. That usuall requires climbing a biiiig ladder, series of ladders in fact, with stretches all about. If I want to do that without getting hit, I'll have to freeze all the stretchies on the way, cause they'll spit at me.
That will take, to put it mildly, a very long time.
So I'm not doing that. I'm going right instead.
F: No, your eyes do not decieve you. The wall you bombed the first time in here, it's still gone. That's why we did it the first time around. If you take out the time it took to bomb that wall, then yes, it WAS faster to spark through the H room :)
Just mentally chalk that bomb-time up to this, the return trip. And that won't change the fact that it's faster to spark up the E shaft, either.
Anyway, you did this before, you know what to do.
G: Using the surroundings as reference, don't go farther than you need to. The reason I jumped was because if I hadn't, the boost would have kicked in, and it's hard to stop when that happens. You either have to skidd to a stop, or crouch, then get up from the crouch. No, as bad for speed as jumping is, it's still better than letting the boost kick in I think.
F: Fire like a madman
E: Now you are going to want to get your shine, then move as left against the ledge as you can, THEN spark straight up. Only being as left as you can, will you be able you spark straight to the top of the shaft.
Yeah, you heard me, you can go the entire length of this shaft with that one spark. No interruptions, no waiting, or your money back.
P: This time you're going to bomb the bottom most block on the left wall. Then roll through it.
Q: And drop down.
C: Uh... go left... yeah....
B: Fire diagonally up to remove yon gate, preferably with no slowdown.
A: Fire as you run to clear the blocks, then shine and spark up, then left, wall jump, right, fire, charge, kill the freak, aaaand save.
Before the computer, unfortunately, but you won't get a chance to do it after. :26 on the clock? Hmmm, not bad I suppose, since the segment WAS 4 minutes on paper, or at least in mp4.
And I never ever want to do that again. Hopefully it'll be downhill from here.