Metroid Fusion 1% Run


Behold the mighty reference map, and all it's glory.

Yakuza

Here it is folks, the moment you've all been waiting for. The first severe annoyance in a low% game, and probably tied with giant plant as the most random boss in the game.

This segment was very unhappy. It took all I had just to get out without getting hit. Not everything went perfectly, but I spent about a week on this segment which is quite more than I should be spending on a single segment. And all the major stuff went right. And I got sick of that horrible pirate gauntlet.

I could have afforded to be way more perfect if not for that horrible horrible pirate gauntlet. I had to restart as much because of screw ups in there as with yakuza. Yakuza is a mighty foe and deserved his own segment, but I couldn't save before the boss door so I fear a bit of compromise was necessary. Hope I didn't disappoint anyone who was looking terribly forward to this segment, but it's the game's fault :P

I really do need lots of saves to get good near flawless segments. Ah well. Let's talk.

I: Loading from the ship, thanks to our foresight last segment we don't need to go back and talk to the computer. We can just be on our merry way.

H: Kinda nice to not need to shoot doors, ain't it?

G: KEYHUNTERS! I love these guys. Also one of the few creatures I bothered learning the actual names of. Yes I know Kihunter is more accurate, but so what! In america we use american translations dammit, keyhunter! KEEEYYYHHUUUNNNNTTTEEERRR!

You know I'm not sure why I'm a fan of keyhunters. Something about them is just all cool-like.

Anyways, remember those power bomb blocks we cleared last segment? Now we can just boost on through.

J: If I've said it once I've said it twice, main deck do not lend itself to spark tricks.

Obviously morph as close to the morph ball tunnel as you can. Kinda tough, I restarted quite a bit just from this actually. But the worst part is there's nothing cool in the universe to do with your shine.

Just... spark right as you drop I suppose. I dunno, probably not faster, but it's a shame to waste a shine.

And out we go.

K: Now this is a big room, and that is a big generator.

Alright, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go right as quickly as possible. That, obviously, is the determining factor, as the door to proceed is very high up.

So walk along the root tops. Now there's many things to consider while doing this.

landing is bad, stopping is horrible, so minimize both.

The way I shoot, using the background as markers for where to shoot and jump, is the way to clear roots with a minimum of landings and stoppings I think. then you can land on the platform before the door, and out we go.

L: Charge upon entry, and that first guy you just need to jump over, he'll always form in the same spot.

See how you can spin jump and hit him without being hit? Pretty cool, eh? Pointless, but if you jumped as short as possible then that should happen. Not something I'd restart over, but definitely a thing I was hoping to have in the final copy of my segment just for showiness. I'm quite glad I got it.

Now the next pirate could either be real close to you, or real far away.

If he's close, you'll see him, so release your charge and your missile from point blank the way you've seen done a ton by now.

It seems the ice missiles aren't so uselss here, as you can't freeze pirates. That means you can actually use them for KILLING. What a concept, eh?

Anyways, if the pirate is far away, and you don't see him there at the edge, make sure you jump when you get to the edge, as he will be shooting at you, and you need to jump that. Then when you get close to him, do the same thing, release your charge and fire a missile at point blank.

Pirates are annoyingly sturdy. They take one full damage charge AND a missile, or one distance charge and two missiles, or two distance charges. Either way, they suck. That's right, your charge beam even at a distance is stronger than a missile. Maybe ice missiles aren't THAT useful after all.

And jump the e-tank of course, this is a low% run after all.

M: Ah the pirate gauntlet.

This is a horrible room.

A horrible horrible room.

This room should be its own segment. Random factors up the hoo hah, and pretty much no contingency plans that work well for any of them.

Also, the wide beam sucks here. It sucks very very much.

See throughout this place you have to shoot out these little blocks in the floor. The wide beam is very good at MISSING them, like the pieces of the wide beam will go to either side of it, that happens quite a lot. It doth suck verily.

Be aware also that these pirates do not yield x's upon death, they instead reform somewhere else, which means the missiles you must spend to kill them do not get refilled, which means you must stop to refil at the boss door if you want to have enough to take on yakuza quickly.

Overall a very bad room for speed. This room was as much of an issue as yakuza itself.

Alright, first you have to take out that first block up top. Charge as you drop. Often times I missed because the wide beam sucks and had to restart.

Then you shoot two charges into the pirate there, jumping the shots he shoots at you, which you cannot make him not do. Then shoot out the next block hoping to not miss with the wide beam, which I often did and had to restart

Then you must outrun the x's before they reform, as reforming on top of you would be bad. Shoot the floor out.

Then you've got a pirate down here who you cannot kill quickly, really. He might be down below you or he might be off to the left, either way you're going to need to pump 3 missiles into him and jump the shot which he will unavoidably fire at you. I don't believe it's possible to jump over him without getting hit and either way he's going to be between you and where you need to go.

Also if he was on the right as he was in the video, it's going to be tough to outrun those x's, as they have quite the headstart on you.

Again, shoot the blocks out, hoping not to miss with your horrid wide beam.

The power bomb I lay when I morph will clear future blocks and add to speed.

After the crumble block, an unmorph, shoot and remorph is quicker than laying a bomb and waiting for it to explode, obviously.

Then go through, unmorph, and now you can't jump high enough to get to the tunnel up there, so you have to wall jump.

Enjoy it, it's the last wall jump you'll ever see from me. Space jump makes it so you can't wall jump, which means a lot less tricks for me to do in the upcoming segments. But at least the boss battles will be more interesting from now on, eh?

And up and out, perfect boss door, hooray! And have to wait a moment for the red-x to reform, as we'll want full ammo when we fight yakuza.

N: Well that was fun! Jumped through the doorway because it lets me skip a step, and landing is bad.

Oh ho ho ho, but the fun is just begun!

Now we have what you've undoubtedly been waiting so long to see, Yakuza.

Let's talk about Yakuza.

Something DaveB noticed a while ago was that yakuza appears at the top of the room (and I mean top) and opens his mouth to charge and fire those initial fireballs.

Alright, let's talk about what that can do for us.

We can fire missiles into him. There is a catch however. You have to be kind of close to yakuza when the missile hits him or he won't take damage. That's why I jump like a bunny there. Yes, all 9 missiles I fired DID hit him and do damage.

Notice how every time a missile went off the top of the screen, I was near the height of my jump. They won't do damage if that's not the case.

There was one which went off the top of the screen when I was on the bottom, but the trail it left lingered until I jumped again. That works too, yeah.

One of the most important things to making this work (and getting 9 whole missiles into him) is that pattern you saw of firing a missile on the way down, then lots of missiles on the way up. But not firing as I was starting my descent. Only when I was low enogh of my descent that I'd be able to jump immediately after would I fire.

And how do we know all 9 missiles connected? That's right, your eyes do not desceive you, he is purple when he comes on screen. You can hurt him enough to change color before the fight even started :D

And once the fight DOES start, here's where the randomness starts as well.

Yakuza has to open his mouth for you to do damage. He might do that when he stops the first time in the middle of the room. In fact, if you want speed, that's exactly what he should do.

OR, he might crawl around the room a while and stop somewhere else before opening his mouth. He might open his mouth the 2nd time he stops if this is the case. Or maybe not, maybe he'll crawl around a 3rd time. Maybe even a FOURTH time.

You can lose some severe timage to that crawling. Obviously if I'm the kind of fellow who needs a perfect eye door, I also will need him to open his mouth the first time he stops, which he did in the video. That's not a fun thing to try for, especially after that boss door which was after that horrible pirate gauntlet.

Alright, charges are more powerful than missiles remember. When he opens his mouth after becoming purple, two full damage charges and one missile will make him lose his legs. Also it's good to conserve missiles for the frenzy phase.

Now then, when he loses his legs there's a second or two where he's stunned with mouth open. You can get one full damage charge and two missiles in at this point.

AAAND the frenzy.

The frenzy sucks.

You have no way which way which how he's gonna move. He just flies all over the damn place. If you're doing a no-hit game, this is a genuinely annoying thing. It is very hard to not get hit.

Of course, it's his giant spinning ass that'll hit you most of the time. Avoiding his droppings isn't tough, but the way he careens across the room, sometimes almost horizontally, that's a nuisance. Yah.

So here's the thing. Full damage charges are of course more powerful than missiles. Use them pretty much exclusively.

Whether he's hit with a full charge or a missile, he'll become stunned and invincible either way, so it takes no more time to charge a shot than to fire a missile.

Now at this point you have 3 missiles left. These are for emergencies. It'd be good to have one left over for the core x.

Emergencies are when yakuza doesn't move sideways hardly at all. He is above you, about to drop a dropping on you, and coming down right behind and on top of that dropping. In this case, you need to shoot the dropping with your beam and missile yakuza before he lands on your face.

All other times, you need to try and predict where he's going to wind up, and shoot him point blank when he's about to land on you.

Needless to say, not fun.

Now, during one of yakuza's jumps, you will always have time to charge your beam just in time to hit him right before he lands again.

Ideally, you do this every time he jumps.

Realistically, well in the video there were I think 4 or 5 times he jumped where I didn't shoot him, either because he was really far away or I couldn't figure out where he was going to come down in time.

Frankly it was a triumph just to not get hit by him. Wasted jumps notwithistanding.

And I kill him, take out the core x, right by the sweet spot, almost no float time.

Jumped kinda late to grab it, but meh. I don't sweat the small stuff, not in segments like these.

And start space jumping in mid air to save time, up to the top, out we go.

O: Let there be Light. Not to mention sweeeet sweeeet save points.

P: Wow, the computer barely talks at all again. I hope this is a recurring theme from this point.

Q: That gate needs to lose some weight.

K: Yep, even though they're not connected on the above map (because I didn't map out the whole room) this is the bottom of the K room. The same one we did root top dancing on before yakuza.

Shoot the roots out best you can, I didn't do a very good job here but I was rather nervous I fear.

R: Phew, saved with :33. Not bad I suppose. I have to wonder if :32 is possible if everything was perfect. Oh well. Hopefully it'll be downhill from here (again) until Nightmare.