Over 3 years, 11 different full game categories of Metroid have had their world record speedruns improved collectively 60 times. 42 of these times were set by myself (CHX42) and 17 were set by CscottyW. This is the story of our combined efforts to push all of these times down to new levels never before thought to be reached.
DESTROYING METROID
Have you ever fallen so hard that when you hit the ground you can hear your bones crunch? I have. It was January of 2018 and I was walking on an ice rink, working for a company that shall remain nameless, setting up an ice show. I wasn’t doing anything except walking, when I lost my balance without being ready for it. Both my feet slipped out forwards and I was horizontal in the air, and spinning to my left. I came down directly on my shoulder and heard the loudest crunch. I instantly knew I broke something bad. It turns out I broke my collarbone so bad, I had to get a plate and 12 screws put inside me to fix it.
I was out of work for almost 5 months and it was awful. After the surgery, I couldn’t really do much, but I was able to play Nintendo games and I watched a bunch of youtube videos. Well, if you put these 2 things together, eventually you will ask the question, what is the fastest someone has beaten (whatever video game you are into). And if you want the best source for videos on this subject, you inevitably will stumble upon SummoningSalt speedrun world record progression videos. These are by far the best videos out there if you are interested in world records of retro games, and I highly suggest checking them out if you haven’t already. It just so happens that right after I broke my collarbone, SummoningSalt put out a new speedrun world record progression video. WORLD RECORD PROGRESSION: METROID.
There were 2 records in this video that were highlighted and both of them seemed ridiculous. The first is the Chris Knight 15:43 Any% Deathless No Major Glitches time, which we now refer to as Any% Classic. This time stood for 5 years when summoning salt’s video came out. The next was the Any% Deathless time held by MetroidMcfly. This world record involved a glitched route of the game that only he had pulled off, and he was way ahead of anyone else at 11:40. This video got me hooked on learning the speedrun for this game, cause it looked super challenging and fun at the same time. And it was.
Mcfly was running 4 categories of Metroid: Any%, Any% Deathless, All Bosses, and All Bosses Deathless. Any% means beat the game as fast as you can, any way possible. It’s pretty much the fastest time you can do in a game from start to end, anything goes. Any% Deathless adds the caveat that you can’t die, because dying warps you to the beginning of an area, and can allow you to skip large portions of the game. Metroid also has a feature, that if you press start on the first controller pausing the game, and then press up and A on a controller plugged into the 2nd player port, you can emulate a death and get sent to the password screen as if you died. This feature is allowed in any%, but not in any% deathless, since we consider it an emulated death seeing as it has the same result. All Bosses and All Bosses Deathless require you to kill both Kraid and Ridley instead of skipping one of the 2 bosses.
I decided to learn Any%, Any% Deathless and Any% classic. I was going to try to see how far I could really take this game, and it was going to be an epic grind. It took me a full year of solely playing metroid to finally get to a point where I felt I could actually catch these world record times. The first one I really started looking at was the Chris Knight 15:43 Any% Classic. I had been grinding Any% trying for sub 10 minutes. Mcfly was the only person to break 10 minutes at that point. I was on the verge of being the 2nd, but needed a break from the grind, as 10 minutes was a huge plateau in my progression. So I decided to look at Chris Knight’s run and see where I could gain time on him. And I found quite a bit of time in revising his route just a little bit. I decided to skip one e tank and change the kraid fight. I would gain about 12 seconds from that, and then I also streamlined some movements. All and all, on October 3rd, 2019, I was finally able to get my first ever world record of 15:26 Any% Classic, beating the 6 year old time by 17 seconds.
Now I would have loved to say that I was the first person to catch one of Mcfly’s times, but that is not the case. All Bosses had one of the best retro speedrunners out there gunning for the world record and it was none other than Yogidamonk. He was able to get a 13:45 October 9th 2019 claiming the title of first to catch mcfly. And for the rest of the year, I aimed to catch either Any% or Any% Deathless, and while I grinded the game tirelessly I still was unable to catch either time before the end of the year, but I was getting close. Really, really close.
Mcfly’s any% time was 9:42.2, mine was 9:42.9. January 2nd I put up an 11:21 Any% Deathless, Mcfly was at 11:16. I was right there, within striking distance. I was leaving for AGDQ the last time it was in person before covid, and I wanted to catch at least one of these times before I left. Going to AGDQ would be cool, but going days after taking an extremely hard world record from a legend would be way more insane. And that’s exactly what happened. January 6th I took 1 second off of my Any% Deathless time making it an 11:20, closing the gap to 4 seconds to world record. My plane left for AGDQ on the 8th. I only had one more day to make it happen. I had both sets of splits on my setup, and would mix up which route I was doing to keep things interesting. Somehow, I was able to land an 11:14 on the 7th, and break the Any% Deathless world record hours before leaving for AGDQ.
For those of you that don’t know, Games Done Quick is the largest speedrunning organization in tthe world, and AGDQ is the winter event they throw. All of the best speedrunners in the world attend it over a full week and it raises millions of dollars for charity every year. It’s an amazing event, and I was pumped to meet so many runners that I had only had online interactions with. I met so many runners that I had watched online including Tecate, fellow metroid runner and SMB2J World Record holder. We became instant friends and he was my guide, introducing me to the community and letting everyone know I had taken the metroid any% deathless world record. I met countless amazing runners, and the first day I was there was the last day that MetroidMcfly was at the event. This was the one and only time we ever crossed paths in real life. We didn’t get to hang out long, but he was genuinely a nice guy and we definitely had mutual respect for the work we had put into the game. It would have been cool to get to know each other better, but unfortunately our scheduling just didn’t work out.
The rest of AGDQ was a blast. Hanging out with so many cool people and learning how to destroy games for three days was a motivational boost to keep grinding to cement my name amongst the other runners so many people idolize. So when I got home the any% grind continued. One week after getting back home, one of the most epic days in speedrunning history was about to take place. It would be known to those who witnessed it as World Record Day, and 4 major NES games were about to have their times improved, all within 24 hours. The games were Super Mario, Super Mario 2, Super Mario 2 Japan, and Metroid.
A runner by the name of Iluvmario was the first to get a world record that day in SMB2. This itself is an amazing feat, but that was just the first world record people would be talking about. Tecate was the next, driving his time in SMB2J down even further. This was about halfway through the day, and I was pumped my friend was able to push the time down. It motivated me to try even harder. I was pushing for the any% time and I could taste it. Less than a second separated me and my goal of having the fastest metroid time ever. I was putting in attempts, when Tecate put up a message in chat. Kosmic world record 4:55.6. By this time people were losing their minds. SMB1, 2 and 2J had all been broken in the same day. How could things get any crazier? Well, it just so happens that the run I was on would be the one to finally catch the coveted McFly time. I was behind going into the last split, but I just kept pushing and when I got to the mother brain hallway at the end of the game, everything lined up. I blasted through the zebs and when I got to mother brain I had a flawless fight followed by a full speed escape. When I reached the final elevator, my time was 9:39.833, beating the world record by over 2 seconds and attaining the first ever 9:3X time. I had finally done it. I now had the fastest metroid time ever. I just kept thinking about how 10 days earlier when Tecate, Kosmic and I were all hanging out in a hotel room at AGDQ, no one would have guessed we would all world record on the same day.
Now that I had taken all the Any% category times, I started to focus on All Bosses. My new goal was to take all the categories Mcfly had once held. Yogi had taken All Bosses to 13:45 and I was focused on catching him. One thing I haven’t mentioned about the all bosses run, is that it involves a trick called zombie glitch. By having a metroid kill you while you are on the elevator entering tourian, you are able to take the elevator back to brinstar by pressing up just after you die. The game for some reason doesn’t kill you, but you have 0 health now. Metroids are unable to hurt you, but anything else in the game can kill you in one hit. By doing this we are able to reroute the game and skip the ice beam. This saves a significant amount of time and ups the difficulty of the game severely. You have to beat the last screens of the game damageless, which is hard enough, but you have to get there on pace first. Yogi had been pushing the Ridley first route, but on february 8th, i took the time back putting kraid first route on top again for this category.
All Bosses Deathless was a less optimized category, and can use the zombie glitch as well. A month after catching all bosses, I took the All Bosses Deathless time and reached my goal of having all 4 world records mcfly had once held. Yogi and I continued to push for 13:3X, and 3 days later I took the All Bosses time down again to 13:37, putting up an elite time in the category and felt it was a good place to take a break. But this isn’t close to the end of this story, we haven’t even mentioned the next top tier runner to destroy this game. I’m talking about the one and only CscottyW.
CscottyW is probably the best 2D metroid runner there is across all the 2d metroid games. It’s a bold statement and I stand by it. He currently has about 30 world record times across all these games, and I knew if anyone was going to push the game further down with me, it was going to be him. He had been dominating the 100% categories all year while I was hunting the other category times. He had improved the 100% deathless world record 4 times and took the 100% world record earlier this year and was looking for a new challenge. All Bosses became his next grind as the technical difficulty of the iceless tourian was a challenge that sparked his interest. It didn’t take long for Scotty to propel himself to the top of this category. By May of 2020, Scotty had grinded the All Bosses time down to an amazing 13:28, 9 seconds faster than my time. I was not going to let him take this time that easily, but catching scotty was going to be harder than any other time I had gotten so far.
I studied his run and compared it to my own, scouring the video looking for time saves and strategies we may have missed. I pushed and pushed until a month later, I barely was able to beat his time by one second putting up a 13:27. It was a brutal grind, but I had the 4 coveted times once again. I kept playing and pushed down any% deathless to 11:12 before I came up with a new challenge I wanted to conquer. I wanted to beat Metroid Damageless, and I wanted to use the Kraid first route. This would be very challenging as you needed to do a very specific Kraid fight and then get through the game untouched afterwards. I thought it was going to take me a lot longer to achieve this goal, but 6 days after starting attempts, I managed to land a 25:09. I had prepared myself for a longer grind, and since I landed that so quickly, I decided to put up a run in the all bosses classic category that wasn’t optimized. This was effortless but I figured I might as well put up a time since I could. I officially held 7 metroid world records by this point and I was pretty content, for a while.
The rest of 2020, I figured I would submit runs to various events since I had the momentum of taking all these times down. I took a trip to visit Tecate, and while we were hanging out, we decided to submit a race of Metroid all bosses to AGDQ. We figured that would be more fun than me just putting up a run by myself. We submitted the run on the last day before the deadline, and we were excited to find out they accepted the run. This was amazing, and we were both on cloud nine. Getting accepted to AGDQ is an honor and the next thing we needed was some amazing commentators for our run. Obviously, we thought that having the GOAT, metroid mcfly would be the perfect commentator for our run. It would have been epic, but before I could get a response from him, he decided to part ways with speedrunning and delete all of his times he had ever put up.
Mcfly deleting his times was a huge deal to the community. Runners have deleted their runs and records in the past, but usually they aren’t as well known. Summoning Salt’s video had brought a lot of attention to the game, and his disappearance had people asking all sorts of questions. What happened to McFly, was he banned? Did he cheat? Why did he delete all the video’s instead of just retiring and keeping the historical runs? For the next few months, people continued to ask these questions, and while I have my own theories on why he did, no one really knows exactly why he did what he did. It definitely bummed me out to have pushed so hard to catch his times, and then have him delete them all out of existence. I had put up an epic effort to catch these times, and all of a sudden the SRC board looked as if I dominated metroid for the last year unopposed. I felt like it took away from what I had done, I wanted people to know what a journey it had been chasing his times. All I could do was just keep pushing forward with the live events hoping he would come back so we could push the game further together. Unfortunately, Mcfly has remained on the sidelines, never returning to the grind or putting back up his runs. Luckily, there is still the Summoning Salt video out there documenting his times and the history of how he improved the world record.
The AGDQ race Tecate and I did was amazing. It was a hot mess, but we got to play for 125,000 people live and get interviewed after the race by Feasel. This was by far the largest live event I had ever done, and I decided to try to capitalize on any momentum I could from this. I started pushing for the any% 9:2x to see if I could get more viewers after getting my name out there. My sum of best segments was 9:31 so I needed to start looking for more time to save in the game. It wasn’t going to be easy, but I was determined to cut the time down even more. I scoured other runs, notes on the game, tool assisted runs and anything else I could think of. I found a couple small saves, a second here, half a second there, but nothing substantial enough to make the 9:2x a reality. I was trying all sorts of ideas I had, when we stumbled upon the key to the next big time save that would be found. I started using different doors than we used previously for the Kraid first wraps. By using different doors, I found about a 2-3 second time save getting to the Kraid door. This was a decent amount of time and was exciting. Finding time saves in 30+ year old games is a difficult task and even the smallest time saves are important at these levels. But here is where this story gets really interesting.
I was hunting for time saves and streaming on twitch so people could watch and chime in with ideas. There was one viewer in particular that helped us discover the biggest time save in years for the game. His name is Metal Machine, and he had a great foundation of knowledge about the back end of the game. While he was watching me, I was trying to figure out what was happening while I was playing the game off screen. It’s pretty hard to make sense of what you were doing, and while Metal Machine was watching me struggle with this, he offered to make a LUA script that would let you practice off screen. It did this by overlaying another image of the gameplay over the regular game. This overlay was a dumbed down version of the game, but showed the off screen areas as they loaded and you could see your character in these areas. This tool allowed us to really start delving into the game and look for saves that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible to find.
I had been trying to get CscottyW to push the game more with me, but he was focusing on other metroid games after the all bosses grind. He hadn’t shown any interest in improving the times, but then Metal Machine came out with his LUA script. Scotty saw the potential in this new tool, and it reignited his interest in the run once again. He started looking for new wraps all over the game, there had to be time saves that we couldn’t see before. Little did we know that Scotty was about to find the Holy Grail of metroid tricks, the time save we had speculated about, but was just out of reach. CscottyW found the setup for Early Kraid door, a trick only ever done in tool assisted runs which saved an amazing 18 seconds over our past methods of entering the Kraid door. It was game changing.
Early Kraid door was a trick showcased in The 8 bit beast’s tool assisted run of the game. The trick involved a very specific setup and was subpixel dependent. If you did everything right, you still only had about a 1 in 6 chance of landing it due to the subpixels of the game allowing it or not. No one had ever landed it in a run before, and it was believed to be a strategy for tool assisted runs only. But Scotty stumbled upon a new setup for this trick using the new doors we had been using for wraps. This setup involved a series of specific movements that were completed with a frame perfect left press, but eliminated the need for specific subpixels. This changed everything. Suddenly we had a way to pull off this trick with an actual success rate. It was viable to add to runs. But now who was going to be the first person to land a run with the early kraid door? Who was going to take the any% time of metroid below 9:30? Would it be Scotty, or would I be able to take the trick Scotty found and land a run before he could? The race was on as we both started furiously grinding for the world record again.
It was January 18th 2021, the one year anniversary of getting the any% world record time. I had a new strategy that would make getting world record again much more attainable, but I had to land the early kraid door, then capitalize on it. I was determined to make this happen since I knew how epic it would be to land the same world record exactly one year later. So I started putting up attempts. Hours went by with failure after failure. I’d land the trick, but wouldn’t get missiles. Then it would be several attempts before getting another chance. I played Metroid for 10 hours straight. I wanted this time more than any other time I had gotten so far. I had to make it happen.
Late in the 10th hour of gameplay, I got on a run that successfully landed the early kraid door, and I was 17 seconds ahead of world record after killing Kraid. Now all I had to do was keep up and then land a decent tourian to achieve my goal. I had already choked once earlier in the day, and it was now or never. I was on my last leg for the day and needed to make this one count. I pushed forward, but kept bleeding time throughout the run. By the time I got to tourian I was about 12 seconds ahead of my time, but I was going against my best tourian time ever. I had a good window, but I still needed to get missiles to drop.
I pushed forward through tourian, but the run was barely staying together. I kept taking damage and just barely progressing. Once you get to the last room before mother brain, you have to farm for missiles. You only have a couple of chances and the whole run depends on getting the right drop here. Luckily, the game decided to work with me and give me the missiles I needed. I forced my way to mother brain and relentlessly blasted her with the missiles the game had given me. Dodging rinkas and firing shot after shot, mother brain was defeated and now I just needed a clean escape to seal the deal. My heart was pounding out of my chest and I was breathing so heavy you could hear it on the stream. 32 jumps were all that separated me and getting world record exactly one year later. 32 jumps have never been so nerve wracking. But I persevered and landed on the top elevator at 9:33, 6 seconds faster than the world record I set a year earlier.
9:33 was a start, but the real goal was 9:1X, and Scotty was right on my tail. I landed a 9:29 a few days later, then a 9:25 a couple days after that. It was a solid run but I knew Scotty was going to catch me soon. Soon happened to be the next day. He was getting more and more consistent at the early kraid door, getting multiple attempts past it every hour. Tourian had been uncooperative with him, but January 28th 2021, the game gave in and let Scotty take any% world record from me with a 9:24. It was only 4 days until I returned the favor and put down a 9:22, and I improved any% deathless the same day with an 11:10. We were getting close to the 9:1X and neither one of us was stopping until it was a reality. Scotty was the next to put up a PB, and it was another world record, this time by a single frame. 1/60th of a second was all it took to reclaim the Any% world record title. He then started throwing down any% Deathless runs and took that world record as well, posting an 11:05 on Feb 10th. Scotty looked as if he was starting to pull ahead of me, but that wouldn’t last for long.
We both kept grinding for the 9:1X, and the next improvement would be less than half a second. Another 9:22 for the 3rd time, but now the world record was in my hands again. I was sure Scotty would take this time back, so I continued to push for the 9:1X. 2 days later I grabbed another second making the new any% time 9:21. I was starting to put a gap between us again. It was just a matter of time until one of us landed the 9:1X, any run could have been “the run”. 3 more days was all it took. I was on pace, made it through tourian and killed MB. I was on track for 9:17, all I had to do was nail the escape. About 5 jumps in, I missed a ledge and fell down 2 levels. Did I just lose it? I had to shove that thought to the back of my head and just power through. Luckily, I had lost just little enough time to still get a 9:19 and be the first 9:1X ever. Now that this goal was completed, I aimed at getting back any% deathless, and by the end of the month was able to get that too, landing an 11:01. At this point, the goal had been reached and I think we were both getting a bit burnt out, so the race for top time took a pause. But I had more plans for Metroid in 2021, we still needed to add early Kraid door to the other categories, which brings us to Maytroid.
Maytroid was a mission I made to get as many world records in Metroid as I could in May of 2021. So far we had only been using Early Kraid Door in Any% and Any% Deathless, but it actually saves about 18 seconds in most categories, and over a full minute in Damageless routing. For this reason, Damageless was the first category I decided to get during Maytroid. The reason early Kraid door saves so much time in damageless, is that the old way we entered the door involved a damage boost. For that reason, in my first damageless runs I would have to take a detour to pick up a missile pack. Now with early Kraid door, I could just go directly to Kraid and cut over a minute out of the routing. On May 2nd, I was able to put together a cleaner run than my previous one with the early kraid door and more strategies that I had skipped before. The run was 21:17, and was almost 4 full minutes faster than my previous time.
Next I tackled Any% Deathless because I knew that it still had a bunch of time to save. I was pushing to get a sub 11 minute run, and on May 6th I was able to achieve that goal, landing a 10:54 marking the 2nd world record of the month. 5 days later, the next victim was ALL BOSSES DEATHLESS. 18:11 and world record #3. It was time to take on the iceless categories, which were All
Bosses and Low%. I decided to do Low% first because all I needed to do was land a run to get world record. But landing a low% run is another ridiculous challenge. In order to do a low% run, you follow the Kraid first route, but do the damageless fight for Kraid without grabbing the etank. Next you have to go to Ridley’s Hideout to Kill Ridley. This is because you are unable to do bridge skip with this route because you cannot pick up the ice beam. Therefore, you must kill Ridley so you can make the bridge to take you to tourian. After killing Ridley and entering tourian, you must execute zombie glitch next and finish out the game. This category took me another 10 days to complete with a 14:07, then after that I landed an All Bosses Classic because I knew I could put one up easily. 24:50, world records # 4 and #5. Next up was All Bosses run that used basically the same exact route as low% but you are able to take damage and pick up items. 6 world records down, 1 more to go. I decided to wrap up the month with Any% Classic, since I hadn’t optimized it since I first set it, so I was certain I could get a run to land before the end of the month. 15:23 on a sloppy run, but it was still 3 seconds faster than my previous time and another world record. 7 world records had now been set all in one month, wrapping up one of the most ambitious set of run goals I've ever completed. But the 15:23 Any% Classic had made me realize how much further the time could get pushed down and I had sub 15 minutes in my head as the new ultimate goal for this category.
Pushing Any% Classic below 15 minutes was more than just skill, luck has to be on your side as well. You have 4 RNG walls where you need to get missiles quickly, and if you don’t, the run is dead. This grind was less about improvements to strategies, and more about perseverance and executing when the opportunity presents itself. I’d play for hours a day to only get one or two chances to complete a run on pace. I grinded the category all of June putting up a 15:22, then a 15:19 and a 15:07 at the end of the month. I even improved All Bosses Classic again for good measure with a 24:14, but the sub 15 was still just out of reach. By this time my sum of best was a ridiculous 14:35 so I knew if the game would just let ALL the things happen, we could break this monumental barrier. July, August, September, still I couldn’t get everything to line up in one run and 15:07 remained my personal best. I pushed even more, I knew it was just a matter of time, and October would be the month the game finally put me on pace to destroy my current run.
I started the run out strong with good execution going through the basic motions of the game. After getting missiles, then going to get bombs we arrive at the first RNG wall. I needed to get 5 missiles without slowing down to get the ice beam. The game gave me great RNG and after collecting the ice beam, I was only 1 second off of my sum of best segments. Next RNG wall is getting 5 missiles before the first red door you have to go through in kraid’s lair. I headed towards kraid's lair without farming anything for several rooms. After falling down the blue shaft and heading back towards the start, there is a room with a bunch of skree’s that fly down from the ceiling. I morph to ball and lay bombs every time an enemy crosses my path. First enemy, health, 2nd enemy, missile, 3rd enemy missile, 4th enemy…… missile. LET’S GO!. I knew I was on great pace and entered the kraid lair 11 seconds ahead of the 15:07, well on pace for the sub 15.
The next RNG wall can be the worst, you only have 4 rooms to farm 3 missile drops and you don’t want to stop at all. The first room I got lucky and got one drop, not a bad start. 2nd room there is nothing to farm. 3rd room there is one enemy I try to farm, but it drops health. The last room has an enemy that keeps respawning so you can farm drops. Unbelievably I got 2 missile drops in a row and basically lost no time in this split. I grabbed the Etank and killed kraid at 8:38 seconds. This was by far the fastest I had ever been through this point in the run and I was a whopping 19 seconds ahead. But there was still a long way to go from here. I escaped kraid's lair and headed all the way up to the entrance to tourian. But first I had to land bridge skip. My nerves were running high, and I missed my first attempt, but recovered quickly making it to tourian 17 seconds ahead. I was on pace to obliterate the sub 15 minute goal, the game just needed to give me missiles one more time. I kept driving forward, and in the last room before mother brain, I had 3 chances for missile drops. First bundle of metroids, I get 2 health and one missile, but that’s not enough to advance. The next metroids I farm give me one health and one missile. Miraculously, the game had given me all the drops I needed and I headed towards the final obstacle full speed.
Mother Brain Hallway is infamous for being incredibly difficult to navigate, and almost impossible to predict what is going to happen, but this is the room I've practiced more than any room in any game. I entered the room and ripped through the zebs, blasted mother brain’s glass case and pummeled her into oblivion. Nothing was going to stop me, I was getting this sub 15. All that was left was the climb, and while I fumbled a couple jumps due to the overwhelming nerves, I scaled up the platforms and landed on the elevator at 14:51, destroying my goal by 9 seconds and finally ending my quest to get sub 15.
If the grind for sub 15 Any% wasn’t enough, CscottyW had been setting a whole bunch of new World Record times as well, starting with the 100% categories. 100% deathless was knocked down 4 times in less than a month going from 42:40 to 41:49 bringing the time down almost a full minute. Next Scotty dominated 100% Classic, getting a 48:33 which gave him the trifecta of 100% world record in Metroid. But Scotty was not finished yet, he was on a mission to dominate as many categories as he could, and all bosses was next. I had 13:12 in this category with the early kraid door, but the run was far from optimal at this point. Scotty had no problem breaking that time then grinding it down to a ridiculous 12:57. As of now, all the world record times he set in this period remain the times to beat. Naturally, Any% was the next target on his list, he had let me sit with it for long enough.
This brings us to days after I had broken the any% classic world record. Scotty was on a rampage, and started throwing up attempt after attempt. My 9:19 was definitely not safe and I knew he was going to destroy the time. It took him less than a month, and on october 14th, 2021 scotty took back any% with an incredible 9:14. I let that time sit for a few months, Scotty had earned the title of world record holder and was now in control of more than half the main categories. But we both knew there was more time to grab and I was not letting him take the any% time without a fight. A few months went by, and then it was back to the grind. There were no new strats, no discoveries, only perfecting the run we had collectively put together. I kept putting up attempt after attempt, knowing that if I could get to the end of the game on pace, it was only a matter of time until mother brain let me through. I kept putting up runs and finally on February 23rd 2022, the game gave me everything I would need to reclaim the title of any% world record holder. Most of the time loss is in slight movement errors and slight time losses on the boss fights even though they were both incredibly fast. The time I ultimately would get was 9:12.150, less than 6 seconds off of my sum of best. While I have plans to push this down further, this is an extremely clean run and a time I can truly be proud of.
Over the rest of 2022, I’ve made further improvements to any% deathless, bringing that down to 10:50 and all bosses classic, which I've improved 6 times in 2022 bringing the time down from 23:52 to 22:37. While all of these categories of metroid have been improved wildly over the last few years, there will undoubtedly be new improvements in the future. As we all know, no time is ever safe while there are always new players with ambitions to push games to the next level. Who will be the next player to destroy metroid? Only time will tell.