Prolific Metroid Speedrunner Sets New Super Metroid World Record

If you are familiar with the Super Metroid speedrunning community, you’re probably heard of the illustrious Oatsngoats. He’s famous for being one of the best players in the Metroid community, having impressive times in various categories such as Any%, Low%, and 100% (we’ve even covered him previously when he created a speedrunning tutorial series). Today, he has gotten a new record in the Any% category, which seeks to beat the game as fast as possible without utilizing the game’s most powerful glitches.

His time in the run was a remarkable 40:36, a whole 9 seconds faster than the previous record of 40:45, held by zoast. While a matter of seconds may not initially seem particularly noteworthy, Super Metroid’s runs are incredibly optimized. Prior to the 40:45, there had been 2 40:46 runs and a 40:49 run. If you look at the Speedrun.com page, you’ll see that all the top times are pretty close together and sometimes there are periods of months or even a year before a new record is made.

The run itself is very complex, requiring precise movements and knowing advanced tech. One helpful technique used for most of the run is called Arm Pumping, which boosts Samus’ running speed slightly. There’s also a lot of nuance in platforming (such as how Oatsngoats dodges the platforms while falling down the elevator shaft to Brinstar near the beginning) and every boss showcases his deep understanding of their movesets.

I found the Ridley fight particularly fascinating, with even the leadup utilizing damage boosts to get to the boss room faster, and the fight itself using the Moon Walk and Special Charge Beam Combo mechanics that many players don’t even know exist.

The run is also heavily reliant on some good luck to get the types of ammo he needs from destroyed enemies, and thankfully this run gave Oats the resources he needed. After a pretty clean final escape sequence, OatsnGoats ended with an on-screen time of 40:36.7, an in-game time of 27 minutes, and an emotional speech, glad that his efforts over the past months had finally paid off. You can see the video in full below.

Oats will likely continue to run Super Metroid in the future, though he has also stated that he may return to speedrunning Metroid Dread for a while.

What do you think of the run? Does it pique your interest in speedrunning Super Metroid? Let us know!

Source: Oatsngoats

GameWyrm

GameWyrm (AKA GameWyrm97) is a Website Reporter for Omega Metroid. Probably binging a random YouTube series.