California, USAThere's a newer version of the Practice Rom available: https://smpractice.speedga.me/
I'll update the Resources page, thanks for pointing it out.
I don't know of any damage that can be done to the hardware by resetting, but I'll let others answer on that.
Even without a capture card you could still record video by pointing a camera at your screen if you wanted.
To use the practice rom on console, many runners own a flash cart such as the FXPak Pro, which lets you load roms from SD cards onto original hardware.
Some runners can easily go back and forth between console and emulator, while others have trouble adjusting to the differences in input lag; I'm pretty sure Galamoz won the randomizer tournament several years ago while running the vanilla game on console, and randomizer seeds on emulator. If it doesn't bother you then you could practice on emulator and run on console, otherwise you might want to stick to one platform or the other.
Whoops, I didn't actually answer the question.
In the complex interface of higan, like on v110, you need to scroll down the "Cartridge Slot" in the menu, and put a rom in there. You also need to add something in the "Gamepad" section of the menu, and bind your keys.
Starting in v107, higan implemented a new interface that is designed to allow for literally any possible hardware configuration, including the infamous "Sega Tower of Power": https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/avznc8/nintendo_is_no_match_for_the_sega_tower_of_power/
This is at the expense of user-friendliness, but the motivation of higan is accuracy above all other considerations. Higan was sort-of renamed to "ares" starting with v111, and also included a simplified user interface if you don't need the fully-featured interface. You can find the latest release here: https://github.com/higan-emu/higan/releases
Alternatively, the newest version of bsnes has no known accuracy downside compared with higan when it comes to playing Super Metroid: https://github.com/bsnes-emu/bsnes/releases
Yep. I wasn't aware of this, but here's a video of it:
You not only have to unmorph, but then stand up.
No matter where you buy your Switch, it uses the NTSC version of the game, which was released in North America and Japan. Even in PAL regions like Europe, the Switch still uses the NTSC version. So far as we know, everything possible on console is possible on the Switch, with the exception of two obscure Major Glitches used in the Low% Glitched categories.
Low% Ice is the easiest 14% category by almost everyone's standards, and it does require a few glitches, but honestly the biggest barriers are going to be the Ridley and Mother Brain fights. You need to finish both with a maximum of 3 e-tanks, and need to survive lengthy boss fights without taking too much damage.
In terms of actual tricks required for the run:
- Either a Horizontal Bomb Jump over the moat, or a Continuous Wall Jump. Fortunately, either trick has infinite tries. Once runners learn the HBJ it tends to be the more consistent trick, but a CWJ is easier to learn well enough to get it eventually.
- Mochtroid clip to get to Botwoon. This trick is easy once you learn it.
- Gravity Jump to enter Lower Norfair. All other applications of the Gravity Jump can be easily replaced with an infinite bomb jump, but this one is basically required. I've heard that you can technically do it with a very tough version of the bomb jump, but I've never even seen it done.
- Zeb Skip. This will likely take some practice, especially since taking too much damage here will leave you with less than the required health to survive Mother Brain's rainbow beam.
You can find an overview of the Low% categories here: https://wiki.supermetroid.run/14%25
The fastest strat for that room uses a Downback: while firing those two shots to clear the blocks in the way: https://wiki.supermetroid.run/Hitbox_Manipulation#Downback
Here's the room page, though we don't have a separate video for that strat at the moment: https://wiki.supermetroid.run/Construction_Zone
Other than ebay for vintage stuff, this is the only company I know of with new-production game cases:
I don't remember if I still have those letters; they're likely at my parents' place somewhere.
I've got 100% in a few games as an adult, like Psychonauts, Guacamelee, Antichamber, and The Swapper. There are also some others that I didn't have the patience to do it without looking things up, like Hollow Knight.
For Mario 3, I saw The Wizard, so I think I learned about it from that.
I never had a Nintendo Power subscription, but my town library did, so I would often borrow issues from them and read them. I think they may have had some of the Player's Guides, but I can't remember if I ever saw the SM one.
For some games I also remember writing a few letters to Nintendo's "game counselors" for help with some games; the two I remember asking for help with are Zelda 2 and Crystalis.
When it comes to SM I'm not sure I had any outside resources -- I know I got 100% (still have the savefile on my childhood cart!), but I didn't know about Crystal Flash or the SBAs until a couple decades later.
There was enemy health info in the Player's Guide at least, maybe in Nintendo Power too. But in the modern era a bunch of info like that has been found by reverse engineering the game. Pages people have compiled together like this one tell us where to find the enemy HP, then we can figure out the damage of each attack from there: http://patrickjohnston.org/ASM/ROM%20data/Super%20Metroid/RAM%20map.asm
Mostly due to improper emulation of processing lag. Certain areas of the game cause heavy lag on console, such as Kraid rising from the ground, or setting off a Power Bomb in most of Lower Norfair. Inaccurate emulators might not have the slowdown that real hardware does, giving them an advantage here.
It's also worth noting that zsnes has a serious security flaw that can open your computer to be compromised. For these reasons and others, the Link to the Past Randomizer actually checks if you're running on zsnes, and fails to run if you are: https://www.reddit.com/r/alttpr/comments/8gfgr9/please_dont_use_zsnes/
As a result, our recommendation is bsnes if your computer can run it, and Snes9x 1.5 or greater otherwise.
The Snes9x core (with no date attached) is very common, as seen in the ALttP community's recommendations: https://alttp-wiki.net/index.php/RetroArch_Settings
That said, the core of any other allowed emulator is also fine, such as bsnes and higan.
You can find a spreadsheet of control schemes linked from this page. Changing your control scheme can help you to find a comfortable way of playing the game. For instance, I hold down A (Dash) with the base of my thumb, and reach the tip of my thumb to B (Jump) or Y (Shoot). https://wiki.supermetroid.run/Control_Schemes
Most people will "fat finger" most of the run, then for rooms with more complex movement they'll often "claw grip" or "piano" certain rooms. There are a few rooms that I will end up clawing Dash so that I can do more complex inputs on Jump and Shoot with my thumb.
Yep, the videos look fine, I just wanted to make sure this wasn't either a modded emulator or a modded rom.
Good luck with your runs!
Hey, sorry for the delay.
If you want to run on console, even pointing a phone camera at the screen is good enough, as long as the video is clear enough to see the gameplay. The most common low-cost option for capturing the console output is a GV-USB2, which can take in Composite or S-Video signals.
On your posted runs done in emulator, it looks like it's in widescreen. What settings did you do for this? I tried just stretching the fceux window before starting the game and only got a black screen on the sides instead of filling in the background color. Admittedly I'm more up-to-date on the SNES emulator world than NES. But just FYI since it sounds like you're new to speedrunning, it's common practice to use the original ROM and unmodified emulators -- I know some games have "widescreen patches" that people have made for roms that non-standard emulators can display a true 16:9 picture. https://www.retrorgb.com/widescreen-169-snes-emulation.html
For other categories, I'm fairly open to suggestions; the two you posted sound good.
The Switch version seems to be the same as any other Virtual Console version that Nintendo has released. For normal categories you won't see any differences other than framerate. There are some differences between Virtual Console and original SNES for glitched categories, but those categories aren't that popular.
A few of us have played the game on the Switch, and the consensus seems to be that the joycons give very low input lag, but the ergonomics are bad, while the Pro Controller and SNES Controller both add input lag because of the wireless connection. There are third-party wired controllers available, but to my knowledge nobody in the community has tested them yet.
If the input lag on the Pro Controller isn't noticeable to you, then feel free to keep using it, it just may make some tricks more difficult to learn.
You can rotate the periscope using the dpad on Controller 2. I never knew this as a kid, I thought it was only possible with the in-game HUD.
Also, the World Record notification was for 0% -- whenever you edit a run for this game, the category defaults to 0%, and you need to change it back.
