Metroid: Zero Mission Speedrunning

[PKstarship]

Hello, I have been playing Zero Mission lately, but haven't seen any forum dedicated to this highly-speedrunnable game, so I thought, why not make one? My favorite overall Metroid game is Metroid Prime, but I love speedrunning MZM the most because of the epic amount of sequence-breaks and overall speed of the game. My best time is 55.55, played on my Kindle Fire with an emulator, NO savestates. I welcome others to post their best times, and time-saving tricks. For example, the second you beat the catarpillar boss that grants the Charge Beam, exit the room as it becomes unable to damage you the instant it's killed :yay:

[Quietus]

Not to deter you from discussing it here, but there's a tonne of information you could skim through in the thread on M2K2. :^_^:

[PKstarship]

Woah, some of those people beat the game in under half an hour :holyf: I also use the touchscreen controls on my emulator, which I am shockingly good at using(my emulator has multitouch capabilities). I have access to a Wiimote, but there's just no way to make the controls work well with MZM, mainly 'cause how the buttons are laid out on the Wiimote. I also have the Item Select patch applied to my copy of MZM, but only for fun, and I don't turn items on and off during a speedrun.

[Quietus]

Woah, some of those people beat the game in under half an hour :holyf:

Yes, and nearly down to 25 minutes. You can see a number of videos of the best runs here: speedrun.com/mzm. :^_^:

[PKstarship]

Those speedruns are so perfect it makes me feel like i'm watching a TAS :affraid: Even the best guy messes up a bit though, in the room before the bombs and the hive room he lost a few seconds. I watched the top Any% speedrun most of the way through and thought it was awesome!

[PKstarship]

I just finished my first 100% percent speed-run of Zero Mission, no save-states, and I have a picture as proof:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

You can sorta see a D-pad and some buttons if you look hard enough, I played this on my tablet with onscreen controls, and took a screenshot using my emulator. I really had trouble in Tourian for some reason :metroid:, but I made it through the Space Pirate Base as Zero Suit Samus very quickly. I had an easy time backtracking after I got the Gravity Suit, as I had gotten most of the items beforehand. The hardest part was defeating Meta Ridley, he (it?) can be a pain to defeat with 100% items. Also, is Samus gambling in this ending? I've never seen this ending before. I also don't understand how I get these weird ending times, my fastest normal speedrun used to be 55.55, and now this speedrun time is 1.41.41 :lol:

[Hawntah]

Awesome. Now do 10% hard mode.

[PKstarship]

Ugh, I can barely beat hard mode with 99% :lol: anybody else have some good times to share?

[Quietus]

anybody else have some good times to share?

Well, there was this one time when me and some blonde twins...

Oh, right, Zero Mission. Never mind. Carry on, people. :=x:

[Hawntah]

Well, I finally finished my hard mode 100% run:
[spoiler][/spoiler]

Pretty awful time, I know, but considering I'm not familiar with the route...

Also touchscreen controls. Screw touchscreen controls. :nope:

[PKstarship]

Pretty great time, especially considering it's hard mode.

Also, pro tip regarding touch screen controls. Don't get annoyed and quit using them, if you keep at it you will start to instincively know where to touch without having problems. I used to have problems with touchscreen controls on games like Super Mario Bros and Pac Man, but now I play them just like I would with a physical controller :^_^:

PS: I totally use Retroarch too, I recognise the GBA overlay.

[Meeptroid]

I plan on attempting Normal 100% one of these days, suffice to say, I wouldn't feel bad about using the rom (I own the game IRL). Also, good time Hawntah, I will be honest, games are easier with physical controls, but you can get used to them. Heh, I use Retroarch on Android pretty much whenever I wanna play an FDS game, great for those.

[Quietus]

(I own the game IRL)

Either you're willing to use ROMs or you're not - ownership makes no difference. :^_^:

[PKstarship]

Bumping this because there's really no other place to post it.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

My best Zero Mission time yet, I skipped Varia, did Ridley first, and only picked up 6 E-Tanks and 3 Super Tanks. Technically not a speedrun since I saved a few times and died a few times (to be expected, I've never done this route before today), but still. It's almost 8 whole minutes off my best time of 55 minutes. No save states were used during this play (I have them locked off on Retroarch currently).

Image hosted on Discord, hopefully it isn't there only temporarily.