Metroid Fusion 1% Run
Behold the mighty reference map, and all it's glory.
Nettori
Ah, a fine boss to see. Sandwiched right between Yakuza and Nightmare, and deserving of the position, it is indeed a boss to reckon with in 1%.
At least it was. But just between us, I found a magic spot that makes him a pushover :P
Well not quite a pushover. It's not easy to get to the magic spot. But once you're there you're golden.
But I'll go into that later. First:
H: Time to kill! Let's go
E: Yep, this is actually the top of the E shaft, you know, the freaky root room. Actually this isn't even the top, it's more of in the middle. It's a long shaft. We'll be visiting the top on our way back next segment, but for now it's just kind of taking up space. Yeah. On through.
I: A quick shot up, trying not to hesitate with the jump, and up we go.
J: Alright, we have a goal here.
Remember in the yakuza segment, how we had to stop at the boss door and grab the red x to refill? That wasted time. We want to not be doing that if we can help it.
Remember in the last chapter how I said I couldn't afford to waste any missiles? You guessed it, we're not stopping for a refill.
Nettori needs missiles. All 15. We currently have 14. The goal we have is to get a missile before getting to the boss door.
Fortunately there's a keyhunter right in our way. What luck! But wait, we must kill it far enough ahead of time so the x's form when we get there, because if we have to wait for the x to form, that's no better than doing it at the boss door.
"But Mister, what about refilling power bombs? Won't you need those for the fight?"
Ha ha, don't worry Billy, the 8 we have is plenty. In fact we won't even use all 8. But you'll see.
Anyway, the goal here is to fire three shots from your wide beam straight ahead followed immediately by one missile and another wide beam shot.
The initial wide beam shots clear the roots. The missile takes out the keyhunter (almost, he's frozen now) and the final shot kills him. He leaves behind x's for you. yay! The reason we finish him off with a wide beam rather than another missile is, you guessed it, the beam is faster.
After that final beam is fired, volley a few beams diagonal like to clear the path to the boss door.
Since we're not stopping for the x refill, and in addition since the door behind the boss door is pre-opened for you, if you're lucky the eye will open quickly and you can get through without ever stopping. I tried for this instance, as it's very awesome looking. And as you can see, I got it.
I figure this segment should be extra perfect to make up for yakuza. I have to justify the saves immediately before and after Nettori after all.
K: The main event.
Nettori. Scourge of the fast 1% game. Other than Nightmare, this is the only boss that is made severly lengthy from your lack of missiles.
Or at least that's usually the case. But if you'll recall the beginning of this commentary, I found a magic spot :D
The magic spot, in conjunction with using all the weapons we got, will allow us to beat Nettori and be back to the save point in, believe it or not, :35, a minute more than the save before.
Now, because of the magic spot, Nettori's danger is pretty much nil. If you can get to the spot without being hit, you're probably not getting hit.
This means all of our energy needs to go into killing him quickly. Efficient fast button strokes. No dodging or moving to worry about, just speed.
We have three weapons at our disposal to take this fellow out. Let us take them in turn.
15 Missiles:
Not that many at all. This guy takes a LOT of missiles to take down. With only 15, you're basically trying to wear down a rock by spitting at it.
However the 15 are still a weapon we have, and important to use effectively and swiftly.
Charge Wide Beam:
This beam really does get on my nerves. Alright, let's talk about full-damage charges. As you should well know by now, a shot fired from extremely close range is stronger than one fired from afar.
Fortunately the magic spot allows us to hit him from extreme close-itude every time.
The charge shots are in fact where most of the damage to nettori is going to come from. Power bombs take forever to kerplode and missiles are just plain too few.
Problem of course, is that it takes quite a while to charge your beam up over and over and over.
Power Bombs:
Let's be honest, if you think the charge beam takes a while, this outdoes it by a billion. And it really doesn't do all that much damage considering how much time it takes to explode. All told we're going to lay 7 before nettori dies, and that's laying them back to back as soon as they can be laid from the moment we enter the room.
Now we want to use all of these to deliver as much damage as fast as possible.
This means, again, swift efficient button strokes.
They key to swift efficient button strokes is being able to practice the button strokes. This means we're going to need a pattern to practice. A pattern which can be flowed into reflexively with practice, something where you don't have to think too much.
Well I think I got one actually. A very nice pattern that can be used after you get to the magic spot.
But actually that's not the big issue with the fight, though it's certainly the bulk of the time spent.
The issue is getting to the magic spot.
Now as I've said, we need to focus all energies on getting as much damage to nettori as quickly as possible. Just because we're trying to get to the magic spot doesn't mean we can slack off on that.
One of the aspects of the pattern I'm going to be falling into is laying power bombs, obviously. A power bomb cannot be laid again until the first one is completely and totally finished exploding. While fighting Nettori, I lay a power bomb as soon as possible given this rule every time I lay one.
The entire fight is going to have a power bomb either kerploding or laid and waiting to kerplode for as long as the fight goes on. And it starts as soon as we enter the room.
Upon entering, an immediate morph and power bomb drop in mid-air will start our soon-as-possible endless stream of power bombs.
Then unmorph right away after it is laid to begin charging your beam (make sure you stop holding R, duh)
I fall down the left crumbleblock to better avoid the pollen flying around. Some mid air space jumping around the pollen and as soon as you have a clear shot, fire a charge into nettori from afar. We're trying to damage as quickly as possible, remember.
You should land on the high middle platform after this first shot. Then start charging again immediately after of course, and jump into Nettori.
Yep, right into him. This is the magic spot, right inside him.
Well kind of. See most of Nettori that's there, isn't there. You know how later in the fight his front falls off and he starts shooting beams at you? That stuff that falls off was never actually there, you can pass right through it.
So by standing in this non-existant piece of nettori, on the ledge to the right of the sucky flower (don't actually touch the flower or it will suck you in), you are safe from, pretty much everything, forever and ever.
It's actually not very easy to get TO that spot. There's very little margin for error, I estimate about 2 pixels of breathing room. Too far left and the flower gets you, too far right and you hit the 'really there' part of nettori.
Still once you do manage to get there, as I've said, you're golden.
By the time you reach nettori, you've charged again, release the charge at close range for mega happy fun time damage rating.
By now, also, the power bomb is kerploding, damaging not only nettori (for however little power bombs damage for) but also taking out any pesky pollen things floating in your general direction.
When you land on the magic spot, you should have time to charge again and fire another full-damage into Nettori's knee caps and have time to morph and lay another power bomb right after the first one finishes kerploding. I actually had a little delay time, but nothing major.
Also notice that on the magic spot, that top right pollen flower thingy changes direction. Almost as if... they ANTICIPATED people standing there. But if they did, they did a lousy job, as the pollen can't hit you. The left pollenator just stops altogether. Those things are programmed weird. I mean just how many spots around the room did they think you were going to be hanging out in?
Anyways, now that we are ON the magic spot (without getting hit to boot, yay!) we can begin our magic spot pattern.
Alright, obviously charging is the bulk of the pattern.
At first I tried just charging, saving missiles for later. You can get three and a half charges off before it's time to lay another power bomb.
Yeah, you can't get a 4th charge off in time, but the 3rd one is ready real fast and lots of wasted time ends up left over.
So I filled the left over time with missiles.
My pattern is charge, missile, charge, missile, charge, missile, morph power bomb unmorph repeat.
That's it.
There's really nothing more to explain about this part of the fight. This pattern continues, power bombs being layed back to back and charge beams and missiles filling up the in between times.
Ah ha, now comes the more complicated half of the fight.
Nettori's frontage falls off and starts spitting plasma beams at you.
The pollenator flowers die, which is never something I much cared about except it's good now because we can jump straight up without worrying about them.
Why jump straight up you ask? Well the sucky flowers now suck even more, because they spit pollen bobbels at you.
The right most bobbel of the right most flower can ruin your day. But it's really not as hard to avoid as it seems.
See while nettori is busy loading his plasma beam gun with what is apparently plasma beam bullets from the way they're just sitting there like arrows, he can't hurt you.
You can jump straight up through those loaded plasma beams and never take a hit.
Well kind of. If the plasma beam fires when you're touching it, you'll get hit. But until it fires it's like it's not even there.
Also, it doesn't fire very often. You'd be surprised how seldom you actually get HIT with those things. Most of the time you can jump to your leisure.
And that's how we avoid the pollen bobbles. We still maintain the pattern of charge missile repeat, but also whenever a pollen bobble pops out of the flower, we jump, and it misses us. If our beam gets a full charge when in mid air, we release and missile in mid air, no biggie. Aaaand that's it.
Really not that bad a boss when the magic spot is used and abused. Almost immediately after I run out of missiles, he runs out of life. Worked out pretty well, eh? I even had a whole power bomb left over unused.
And now the core-x. Here's a twist, the core-x is an EYEGUY! Eyeguy the third. The two eyeguys previous were bosses in themselves, but this one is a surprise bonus.
No platforms to lure him under this time. Fortunately you have plenty of room to run back and forth.
To start, shooting him lots with the beam makes the x's come out. Eat up the missiles then feed them to Eyeguy the third.
The sweet spot is in a real weird place up in the corner there. But lure him best you can for the kill, the 5th missile does it.
I kind of missed the spot, and there was a degree of float time. More float time than should have been for being only a touch off. But oh well. The Nettori fight couldn't have been better and I wasn't going to re-do it for this loser.
Plasma beam acquired, thank the Lord, no more wide beam.
And out we go! Wasn't that fun?
L: Keyhunters that got themselves trapped in a bunch of blocks. Did someone say the X were smart? Charge as you leave.
I: And run on through, shooting the errant keyhunter who dares to approach the mighty slayer of Nettori. He should know better. Well he will now.
E: Well the roots are gone so you have to watch the pit. Jump from your speed boost right as you approach the pit and you should hit the ceiling by the door and pass into
H: Saving here twice in a row! Now odds are you're going to be overshooting the save point a bit, so do as I did, hit down when you're over it and you'll stop and land. Handy, eh?
:35 on the clock, just like I promised. The only thing that could top getting rid of that hidous wide beam would be getting rid of the hideous mustard suit. Soon my precious, soon...