Super Metroid, Low% Glitchless

I've often been interested in the idea of game runs that collect a minimum amount of items.

A couple of years ago, in the spirit of getting all endings on Metroid Zero mission and simultaneously testing some limits of the game, I decided to do a minimum percent run on the game, finishing it with 9%. I then did the same thing on Hard mode, but with 10% (Hard Mode gives you fewer missiles, which ends up requiring you to pick up an extra missile pack or alternate item to clear one late-game room).

I enjoyed it enough that I decided to do the same thing for Fusion. Main powerups don't count to the percentage in that game (and aren't avoidable anyway), so I finished it with 1% (there's a missile pack that can't be avoided without exploiting some kind of glitch).

I made aspirations to do the same thing on earlier Metroid games, but I ran out of steam.

When this year's first Nintendo Direct had multiple old Metroid games announced for the Switch, I felt inspired to resume it.

I discovered that Metroid I was beatable with just morph ball, bombs, ice beam, and a single missile pack (but you also get bonus missiles from the bosses in that game), and it was far easier than 10-year old me would ever have guessed.

Metroid II is beatable with just bombs, the ice beam, and a single energy tank. Also, you need to either utilize a technique that allows you to jump in midair after coming out of morph-ball, or else pick up either the high jump or the space jump, to escape certain vertical shafts. The former technique may or may not be a glitch, so I did it both ways. The initial compliment of 30 missiles is enough to beat all the Metroids in the game except the Queen. But the queen can be killed with a small number of missiles and 5 bombs, laid in her belly. The caveat there is that you take unavoidable damage in the belly, around 30 energy a pop. So beating her at low missile capacity requires an energy tank.

The Omega Metroids and more particularly the Queen definitely took some practice, but I was able to do it. The Omega Metroids were a little harder because I didn't collect the extra energy tank until I needed it, but the Queen was predictably the real challenge of the run. I was grateful to do it on NSO, where I could practice with save states (though of course those were only for practice and disallowed for the actual run).

That brings me to the big one: Super Metroid. I have discovered that it's on a whole different level for this type of challenge, and I've been working on it for months now. I think I may finally be approaching the end.

The big sticking point for me has been a true minimalist approach: I'm generally not picking up items until they're strictly necessary...with one caveat so far. I've read over and over again that getting through the Zebetites and Mother Brain requires 3 energy tanks, 2 missile packs, 2 super missile packs, and 1 more pack of either missiles or super missiles. But I'm trying to do as much as I can with no energy tanks, just 5 missiles, and just 5 super missiles.

Most of the run was pretty straightforward. Even though you have to pick up a super missile pack early on, I've found most of the bosses are handily beaten without using them, picking up regular missile refills that the bosses drop. Even Draygon, whom I feared in my youth, is not that hard to beat that way.

Here's the caveat: I wanted to see how long I could go without the charge beam, and discovered that Botwoon, who doesn't drop refills, couldn't be beat with just 5 missiles and 5 super missiles. You do eventually have to pick up extras of each, so I decided to grab an extra super missile pack instead of the charge beam. But in the spirit of minimalism, I've been trying to do the rest assuming I only had 5 super missiles.

After beating Draygon, I did pick up the charge beam, because I had thankfully read that it's required for low percent on Ridley.

The first roadblock I found was just getting into lower Norfair with no Space Jump. My research only turned up one method without using glitches, and that's bomb jumping. But the fire-breathing statues in the room seem almost clearly designed to prevent that option. It's still possible. You can position yourself so that you only need to deal with one of them, at the very top of the room. But it takes a pretty fair degree of precision to time your bombs in a way that misses his fireballs. It took me a few weeks of practice, after which I foolishly believed the rest would be all downhill.

Well, as it turns out, that was nothing compared to Ridley himself.

Ridley, under minimum conditions, is many times more difficult than any other Metroid boss I've fought under minimum conditions. It's not even close. I definitely had the sense of biting off more than I could chew.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle in fighting him is his sheer amount of health. With just the charge beam, it would take 300 hits to kill him. So much of the fight is just a test of endurance.

But he's also tough. He's fast-moving, and he's relatively unpredictable. He's also difficult to follow due to his ability to fly off the screen. And at 99 health, he can kill you in as little as 3 or 4 hits.

Thankfully, do to this game's popularity for speedrunners, I was able to find quite a bit in the way of resources for how to approach the fight. With a lot of research and nearly two-months worth of practice, I'm on the verge of finally being able to beat him.

Ridley has a fairly complicated AI compared to most Metroid bosses, but there are ways to exploit it. The basic strategy is that, while he's doing pogo bounces on his tail, he's not too hard to avoid, and there's a mostly safe spot on the far left of the platform if (and only if) he's facing left while he's bouncing.

The other basic part is that some of his AI routines actually depend on whether Samus is spin-jumping or not, and breaking out of a spin jump in just the right circumstances forces him into starting a pogo-jump pattern, while simultaneously causing him to turn around if he's already in such a pattern and you're behind him.

You have to be roughly at Ridley's height when you break your spin, and it doesn't work (and will often get you hit) if he just finished a pogo sequence and is already repositioning himself for the next one. It also doesn't seem to work if Ridley is too close to the same screen edge you're on, and it's sometimes hard to tell exactly where that cutoff is.

But Ridley has so, so many subtleties to his AI. Even knowing the basic strategy, it takes a large amount of practice to get a good feel for every type of attack Ridley can throw at you. And some of his attacks take a fair amount of precise maneuvering to avoid. Higher skilled players than myself could comment better, but I'm really not sure it's always possible to avoid him at all.

And he speeds up 3 times during the fight. During the last two parts, I'm really not sure that even a skilled player can avoid damage indefinitely. Thankfully (with save state practice), I've developed a method that allows me to finish the fight relatively fast at that point. But I've yet to be able to do it from a save.

I had early on entertained trying to beat Ridley with just the charge beam, but I abandoned that idea long ago.

I divide the fight into four major phases. At the beginning of the fight, Ridley does nothing but pogo jumps as long as you stay near the ground. It's the easiest part of the fight. It took me weeks of practice to even be able to finish that part, but I can often do it now without taking damage. The most dangerous part for me is positioning myself in morph ball mode to roll under him. Most of the time it's pretty simple, but with his variance in horizontal and vertical distance there are still times he can trap you if you're not positioned well and reacting quickly.

The other dangerous part, which happens all through the fight, is when he pogos backwards off the left edge of the platform. He'll do this if you try and turn him around too far to the left. He also often does it later on in the fight if you start him pogoing right after he finishes a leftward swoop. And sometimes he just randomly does it while pogoing right just to spite you.

It's dangerous because of his fireballs. Usually they'll go over you when he's bouncing and you're close to him. But if he's too far left or right, they may hit the floor and you have to jump over it. But if he's far left and his tail is in the lava, his fireballs can hit you whether they hit the ground or not.

You can avoid damage by spin-jumping with a charge shot (being careful not to land on fire that hits the floor), but spin jumping also affects his AI, and when he's that far left something seems to tend to keep him repeating that backward pogo jump into the fire. I've gotten pretty good at avoiding damage until he breaks out of his cycle, and I usually seem to be able to "get" him back to normal by varying my jumps just right. But I can't ever tell if it's from anything I did or if it's just random. Especially when he speeds up, this seems to be one of my likeliest places to take damage. (Thankfully, his fire actually does less damage than hitting Ridley himself).

I'm not sure if breaking spin at that point can have a beneficial effect, but it does leave you vulnerable to his fire. I try it when I think I'll be safe, but it's hard to tell if it has an effect.

The first phase of the fight ends after hitting him with 60 charge shots. (Here is one big difference between myself and most of the videos I watch; most videos have people equipped with the ice-beam which does 50% more damage.) After that, he starts randomly rising off the top of the screen to swoop at you.

The first thing it learning to recognize when he's actually going up to swoop and when he's just bouncing high. You have to watch him very carefully every time he's nearing the end of a pogo phase. If he's just bouncing high, you can usually see just enough of him to tell if he's turning around. If he goes up high without turning around, he's getting ready to swoop.

To avoid the swoop, you have to wall-jump up the wall and then wall-jump over him. The timing is highly variable and he sometimes throws fireballs at the wall, which you can't see until you start jumping. Learning when to start charging is important, as well as the timing for avoiding fire that's already hit the wall. During the wall jump itself, you lose the invincibility, so there's a timing element that's very important here (I still really don't have this totally down). You also have to let go of the fire button when you start your spin jump. Otherwise it fires and breaks spin as soon as you wall-jump. But if you let go of the button, Samus will keep spinning when the wall-jump is finished, and not release the shot until you land or press the fire button.

Going up the wall is the other point where I sometimes take a hit that I didn't want to. He actually doesn't shoot fireballs, or shoots easily avoidable ones, more often than not. But sometimes he shoots them in a way I just can't see how to avoid, especially if he also starts his actual swoop very quickly.

Typically, after he swoops he then begins a dive to try and grab you. One of the best things I found in my research was a video about no-damage runs, showing how you can skip that dive every time by breaking a spin jump at his height. Instead of the dive, he'll either swoop again or start pogoing (usually the latter if the timing is right). Before I learned that, it was often difficult or impossible to tell what he was going to do after the grab attempt. But if you skip the grab attempt by spin jumping to his height and breaking it, because you're nearly at his height, you can almost always see if he's going to swoop or pogo (and if you miss it you can usually tell he's swooping if he takes more than a moment to reappear).

This second part of the fight takes 90 charge shots, and is a real test of endurance. I've gotten to a point where I can occasionally get past the first two phases without taking damage, but usually I've taken a few hits and often only have one hit left by this point. I'm not to the point where I clear this part every time, and I quite probably more often than I should if I take too much damage too early.

The end of that is actually the half-way point by damage, but it's really past that. The next part of the fight is exactly the same, except that he speeds up for the first time. All the same strategy applies. It seems like his horizontal pogoing distance is less variable from here on, so it's safer to move away if you don't see a good bounce, but the window on the good bounces is smaller due to the speed. It takes 60 charged shots to get through this phase of the fight. Despite the increased speed, he's still mostly manageable with the same strategy, as long as I can keep my head. But I'm not consistent damageless at all yet here. The saving grace is that this part is shorter than the previous phase.

Now for the last part. He has 5400 health left, he changes color again, and speeds up again. At this point, the strategies still mostly work, but it's now noticeably more difficult to avoid damage long-term.

However, with perfect execution, my remaining non-charge beam weapons are capable of dealing 5500 damage altogether. So with a bit of good luck, I'm right there.

I count my successful charge shots as I wait for him to do a swoop to the left. When he does one, on my way over him, I lay a power bomb near the middle of the screen. I then immediately do a wall jump off the right wall, and try to lay another power bomb in nearly the same place. I then repeat for the rest of my bombs.

It's entirely possible to hit him twice with each power bomb this way. But the bomb has to be placed just right. Ridley can be trapped between going towards the bomb (or you? I'm not quite sure) initially, then retreating from the bomb, in a way that often makes him take two hits from the bomb.

If all five bombs hit twice, then five missiles and five super missiles is enough to finish him. (Actually only 4 missiles and 5 super missiles, but it's easier to fire all five and the extra damage gives a buffer).

If any of the bombs misses (likely) then I've got to make it up with charge shots. I've usually already gotten a few off while waiting for a swoop. It's 3.33 charge shots, rounded up, for each power bomb hit that misses (and here that extra missile makes up some of that so I can often safely round down to 3 shots per missed bomb if I need to figure it quickly. In any case, I can fire off extra charge shots while waiting for opportune shots.

I want to wait until he's pogoing left to fire my missiles, and due to his speed I may need to do the missiles and super missiles on separate pogo sequences, depending on how far right he is when he starts bouncing.

The last trick is that Ridley doesn't die when his health is gone. He keeps fighting until he grabs you with a lunge attack. And he becomes a lot more unpredictable at this point.

Based off a recommendation from that endurance video, I usually save my last super missile until Ridley does a leftward swoop. Because he always (normally) does a lunge after a swoop, you can position yourself to fire the last shot and then let him grab you. It works most of the time, but sometimes he swings his tail in a way that blocks it.

In fact, what motivated me to finally write all this up is that this morning, for the first time, I did the whole fight up to that last super missile, but he blocked it with his tail. 

After months of practice, any improvement at all to my now-best run is victory. I only need one more successful hit than my current best run has done.

This has been quite the journey for me. It's possibly the most involved action-based game challenge I've ever done, and I wasn't sure when I started if it was going to be beyond me. But I've stubbornly persisted, and I'm close now. I'll post here when I finally finish. I'm eager to move beyond this when it's done.

7-10

I had quite the range of emotions on Saturday morning. I beat him. After two months of practice, I had an amazing run where I didn't take any damage at all until three charge shots before the final phase. The last phase went smoothly, and I won. Everyone in my house heard me cheering for joy.

But...I realized with a slight panic that I'd long since forgotten the need to practice and prepare the return path to the save, and I quickly realized it was less straightforward than the trip to Ridley.

I got all the way to the room before the save, and the Kihunter right outside the room ended up killing me.

I think everyone in my house heard me crying after that...

I'm not gonna shortcut it with save states, even though I know I did the hardest part. On the contrary, knowing I've already done the hardest part is just enough to let me know I can do it again. I've now planned out my return, and I'm confident I've figured out how to remove any significant random element there.

7-13 

I'm delighted and elated to say I did it last night.

I wasn't expecting too; I've been having very poor luck overall with the fight since my failure and I was feeling a little tired last night. But I decided to give it a try and surprised myself getting all the way to the end of the fight, even firing off the last Super Missile to get him to zero health--only to get hit by the tail he was swinging.

Encouraged by my best run since that big loss, I tried again. This time I did less well, taking a big hit in the second phase and dying in the third.

But I decided to round it out to three attempts. This time I took a small fireball hit relatively early, but I managed to keep my focus up anyway and found to my surprise and excitement that I hadn't taken any other hits even well into the third phase. I did my best to keep my nerves down as I successfully made it to the very last part.

He swooped almost immediately and I was able to start my power bombs. I managed to land eight out of ten hits, and I knew I needed to land a few more charge shots. He stayed relatively well behaved in the meantime. I think I took another fire hit, but somehow managed to still keep my nerve.

I still choked on one thing. I wasn't doing my mental math quickly enough, and I fired too many charge shots afterward. So when the opportunity came to fire off my five missiles and four super missiles, to save my last super for a swoop, I found to my alarm that my fourth Super Missile was enough to take him to zero health and trigger his new AI.

But then I had fortune smile on me. Instead of immediately going to the other end of the screen and spamming fireballs erratically, which is what he usually does when I get him to zero health prematurely, he moved up just a few tiles away and immediately lunged, grabbing me and ending the fight before I had any time to react to my mistake.

In all my practice sessions where I took all his health before a swoop, I'd only ever seen him do that once. I could barely process how lucky I felt.

I almost choked again on the way out. The second corridor on the way back is the first real danger spot I had identified before. I had determined the reliable way to get through it was to simply run across the bottom through the lava. It's nerve-racking, but in the time it takes to run across, it only deals around 50 damage with no real random element to it.

But, when I went to do it for real, I hit one of the two enemies hovering over the drop into it. I nearly panicked, and made it to other side with less than 20 energy left.

Thankfully, I was able to shove my panic down enough to realize that from the right side of that room I could refill everything safely, as long as I could stay calm and patient. I had to use charge shots to kill the purple enemies that jump from the ceiling, but they don't come onto that ledge if you don't do anything unusual to change their pattern.

I was able to avoid damage from the hopper enemies by using most of my power bombs on them. I don't know how to clear the right side of that room without taking small damage from the fire, but it's a tiny amount.

The Kihunter before the save point is what killed me before. At one point I had developed a reliable strategy for getting past him, back when I was still working on beating the Space Pirates before Ridley. But in my nervous state a few days ago I couldn't remember it well enough to execute it, tried something a little different, and messed it up.

This time I'd practiced my original strategy. The Kihunter actually doesn't spawn in front of the entrance; he starts on the level above it. But he drops down to it in the time it takes you to get back up there. Regardless of where the floors are, he always moves toward your horizontal position, and since you enter the room from the right he's already fallen to that corridor by the time you can get to it.

But, if you stay on the right side and move left at just the right time, it's possible to manipulate him in to jumping back up to his starting level. And if you stay toward the left, he won't fall back down, clearing the way to the save room. (Of course you can't stay left to go into the save room, but you should be able to see his location above you well enough to avoid him at that point.)

There's still a danger related to your field of view. When he's on the save room level, you can't see him without jumping, and even then you might miss him if he's hugging the ceiling. I seem to recall once where I mistakenly thought I'd succeeded in getting him to the top because I didn't see him in my jump, only to find him waiting for me when I moved left. I think that memory was a big contributor to me choking my first attempt out.

It's also possible for him to go up to the top level and still fall back down immediately after depending on your positioning.

But even those things are really only a risk if you try to rush it. You can jump multiple times to make sure he's not where he shouldn't be before you move left.

It took a minute or two to make him go up and stay up, but I was able to do it. And I'm thrilled. This has taken more effort than any other action-based challenge I've attempted.

Last night I went on to clear all the Metroids in Tourian. This morning, before getting myself up to the needed15%, I did a probing run using the Switch rewind to keep me alive. All this time I haven't really looked to heavily into the why of the required missile/super missile setup, but it didn't take at all long to understand most of it. There are no energy or missles drops in Tourian. I understood that was part of the reason before, but what I didn't totally connect before is that, while there's a missile station to refill your missiles, there's no way at all to refill your Super Missiles. And you can't backtrack at that point either; there's a point of no return.

One missile pack and one super missile pack isn't enough to get past all the Zebetites; if you only have one missile pack then two super missiles are needed for each Zebetite, and there are four of them. One extra expansion of either is enough to get you through the Zebetites.

So the rest of it is for Mother Brain. From all I've read, you need either two missile packs and three super missile packs, or three missile packs and two super missile packs, to defeat all the Zeebetites and Mother Brain. I can see that if you have three missile packs, then you don't need Super Missiles for the Zeebetites. But you'll have to use at least four super missiles on them if you only have two missile packs.

I've set myself to try it with two missile packs and three super missile packs. I grabbed two energy tanks and one reserve tank, which as I understand should be enough to survive Mother Brain's hyper beam attack. I got the last save and beat the first Zebetite, but that's as far as time allowed me this morning. I'll see this evening just what the final fight will end up requiring of me.

7-17

It feels like it's been more than four days since I started this; maybe that's an indication that I've been playing it too much.

Mother Brain is definitely not on the same level as Ridley, but is still definitely a cut above everything else in the game as far as difficulty in these circumstances.

Quick note: online sources say that you need either 2 missile packs and 3 super missile packs, or 3 missile packs and 2 missile packs. However, I saw one single source that said 4 missile packs would work (and that seems logical to me), and, though I haven't read this online, unless I'm having a massive brain burp in my analysis, I think 1 missile pack and 4 super missile packs should work also.

Edit: I'd left a copied save before collecting the extra missile packs so I could come back to investigate this, and eventually did. I don't know where I read that either combination of 4/1 would work, but as near as I can tell both come up exactly one missile short. 

The first six shots of any kind don't damage Mother Brain and only break the glass, and it's exactly six shots regardless of which you use (so obviously regular missiles are optimal there). With the 4/1 combo, you get 6 missiles to break the glass, then 14 missiles and 5 super missiles for damage. Missiles do 100, supers do 300, so you deal 2900 damage, just 100 shy of what you need.

With the 1/4 combo, it appears to work on paper. You need (2) supers for each Zebetite, so you have 12 left for Mother Brain. 5 missiles and 1 super missile to break the glass, then 11 super missiles is enough to drain all her health with one left over. The catch here is that draining her health is not the only win condition. You also need to finish breaking the jar. Hits on Mother Brain through the glass count towards breaking this, but it takes 18 hits regardless of missile type to fully break it, including those first 6. So even though you can drain her health with 10 super missiles, you still need a minimum of 2 more successful shots to win, and you again come up one missile short. End Edit.

Basically, that's what's needed to get through the Zebetites and Mother Brain's first form. You can refill your missiles as many times as you need, but there's no way to refill Super Missiles. If you have enough missiles to kill the Zebetites, you'll have a lower maximum of Super Missiles to use against Mother Brain. If you have lower missiles and more maximum Super Missiles, you'll have to use some Super Missiles on the Zebetites and will consequently have fewer available for Mother Brain. It seems to balance out to where you'll have almost none of either by the time you beat Mother Brain's first form.

Also, there seems to be a discrepancy in my math. Sources say Mother Brain has 3,000 health, and the first six missiles of either type against the glass won't take her health away. By my calculations, if I start firing everything I have left and don't miss (4 missiles and 10 super missiles), I should end the fight with one super missile left. And one guide I've referenced on Gamefaqs says that's what I should be left with on my current setup. But, if I don't miss, I always have two super missiles left. I don't know what the deal is. 

(Edit: I found my discrepancy; and of course it was something dumb. It's my starting values; they weren't 4 and 10, they were 4 and 11. Not sure why I was trying to use the former; maybe mentally I was shifting from the 15/10 calculation without changing the 10. You should have 2 missiles left over; the Gamefaqs guide is wrong here. It does, however, have the correct leftover value for the 15/10 scenario.)

In any case, once the Zebetites are gone, it only takes a minute or so to get through the room and get through Mother Brain's first form. Consequently, I have not relied much at all on save states for practice. I can usually finish that room with 70+ health remaining, but I've gotten to where I usually reset if it's less than 80. I'm increasingly able to get through with 90+ health, with a handful of perfect 99's in there from time to time. Although, from a practical standpoint, I dont think anything above 91 actually matters as there's nothing that can damage you for less than 20 health. Most of Mother Brain's attacks do multiples of 20 damage, but there's one that does 30. If not for that attack, any energy above 81 wouldn't matter.

Actually, since I wrote that last paragraph in stream of conscious, I should clarify that I've got two energy tanks and a reserve tank behind those. I still have to treat the fight as though it runs from 1-99; if I go below that I can keep fighting for practice, but Mother Brain's final unavoidable attack is unsurvivable if those energy/reserve tanks aren't full (or even, I think, if they're evenly full with zero energy displayed).

I've run the fight too many times in the last several days, and I've gotten pretty decent at it. Mother Brain's AI is pretty basic, and most of her attacks are pretty avoidable. But there's just enough randomness to it that, with a health bar as high as Ridley's, it's hard to finish the whole fight without taking damage. And her blue ring attack damages you even if you're flashing from damage. If it hits you just right you take damage from all four rings for 80 damage, and she can fire it at just the right time to make it virtually unavoidable.

The challenge all but requires you to focus on two different parts of the screen at the same time, which is the biggest adjustment factor for me. You have to watch the bombs she drops so that you know when to jump to avoid them. But you also can't take your eyes off her mouth, or else you won't be able to react consistently in time to her ring attack. Focusing too much on either gives me a guaranteed hit. Thankfully, the bombs have a consistent timing and cadence to them once released, so it becomes easier over time to not watch them as closely.

You also have to learn not to jump too high, except for when blue rings are coming at you. High jumps will randomly get you hit by a laser. Unfortunately, she sometimes releases her blue rings immediately as you commit to a certain jump height, which is what makes them sometimes unavoidable.

It's almost essential to keep an accurate shot count in the fight, because when she drops below a quarter of her max health she abruptly changes AI to start spamming a rather devastating attack, with almost no warning. She doesn't change color like Ridley. She gives a rather quick visual clue half a second before her attack. The attack she spams does 100 damage minimum, so it's an automatic loss if it hits you. It's fairly easy to avoid, but you pretty much have to be expecting it.

I almost got it yesterday at one point. I was within about 25 charge shots of winning when someone around my attempted to get my attention and my concentration broke.

This morning, I did some manipulation to give me a test run on the final part of the fight and escape sequence. I'd figured from past experience that they wouldn't give me too much grief, but I realized yesterday I hadn't factored the lack of a space jump into that experience. But when I tried it this morning, even without the space jump and with notable fumbling, I finished with over 30 seconds left even after saving the critters, and less than half my health gone. It looks like the end is not going to be a problem.

So I may finish this any day now. I'm trying to cut back to three attempts per sit-down with my Switch. I think I'll have this licked pretty soon.

7-18

I did four tries this morning. I came close to the fireball stage on the first try, and got there on the next two. It's the best consistency I've had so far.

Even if you account for the randomness of the rings, I can usually take four hits from full health and still be in the running, and that seems to be getting more and more common for me. It's less if any of those hits are from the eye laser (although if I start over 91, even that attack gets included in my buffer. The trick here is that the rings can do up to four hits at the same time if they hit just right.

Now that I have a bit more experience with the fireballs (I've heard this referred to as hand beam and redbeam in different sources online) I realize that the consistency I thought I'd have based on early runs was misleading. It's easy to time spin jumps to avoid taking damage from the fireballs, but the thing that messes me up is that she still fires those rings at random times. And if I'm setting myself up to dodge  or spin through the fireballs, I occasionally put myself right in the line of fire of the rings. I haven't figured out a consistent way to avoid this. Part of it, I'm sure, is that it's hard to watch Mother Brain's mouth while I'm focused on the fireballs.

I watched one video showing how to avoid the beam and fire back without leaving the ground, and I think I want to give it a try if it seems like something I can do consistently. It involves standing fairly near Mother Brain until just before the shot, then moving to the right to avoid the attack and back again to repeat.

If I can just get consistency on that last part, I'll clinch this.

07-19

Finished it last night, on I think either my third or fourth attempt.

I ended up not using the ground strategy for the fireball portion, as Mother Brain still occasionally fires rings even then. I'd stand just a little away from the wall, fire two charge shots, then spin jump (charged) toward the wall, while carefully watching Mother Brain's mouth.

I had a couple of close calls, but managed to avoid damage throughout the whole portion. That was good, too, because I think one hit from anything would have dropped me below for that part. Actually, I think I took my four hits rather early in the fight, and had thought this was going to be a throwaway one.

When I saw Mother Brain begin charging her hyper beam attack, I was ecstatic. But I had to pause the game. I knew my nerves were high, but it manifested itself in a stronger physical way than I'm used to. My hands felt like pins and needles, like I'd been sleeping on my arms wrong and my hands had fallen asleep but were now coming back. I've never experienced anything like that before, other than actually having my hands fall asleep from leaning on my arm just wrong.

Anyway, a few minutes later, it had calmed and I resumed. I screwed up the shinespark shortcut, and then accidentally went down in the next room instead of up. I started to panic from making such stupid mistakes under pressure. However, I pulled it together and ended with almost the same time left I had in my practice run yesterday, even after saving the critters. There's so much room for error in the escape.

I also have a speedrun on the docket for this game. And, I was going to research the legitimacy of a 100% glitchless best ending run; I think I've read that it's possible but I'm not wholly sure. However, I also feel like I need to take a break from this game for a bit.

8/9 I finished the above run. Not only is it possible, it wasn't even particularly hard. I think my final time was 1:48, well over an hour to spare, even after making some significant blunders that cost me probably 15 minutes.

I don't think I've ever beat this game at 100% in less than five or six hours, which is why I was skeptical of how fast I could do it. It just goes to show that I typically spend a lot more time than I think I do just mucking about.

I also did some analysis on the missile requirements for the 15% run, which I've added into two edits above, each marked with (Edit).

I'm done with this game for now, I think. I was going to move on to replays of Metroid: Samus Returns. But my New Nintendo 3DS, which I got brand new just a few years ago to replace my broken old 3DS, is not working and the local repair shop can't fix it.