It's not exactly unknown that I'm a huge Super Metroid mark, and as such with not having much to do over the past couple of weeks since being back from the US, I've been speedrunning it like crazy to try to get a respectable time. I've got it down to 01:20, and I'm a quarter of a way through another run having trimmed a minute off up to that point. But I'd ideally like to do under an hour, and taking a minute off here and there isn't going to hack it. So, firstly:
If you're running a SNES emulator through a keyboard (or anything that has a lot of simultaneous key inputs), what do you map the buttons to? Right now I'm using the standard arrow keys for movement and the ins-pgdn block of six keys for the six fire buttons, but it causes havok with the controls (namely I can't shinespark when running to the right and firing is restricted in some directions). I've never really used a WASD keyset for anything movement-wise (i.e. I don't play FPS's on the PC) so don't want to try that for movement, although I could map dash to space (and continually have thumb on it LDO) and use some setup there. Basically I'm looking for a setup that doesn't cause conflicts due to physical limitations of the keyboard. Tempted to just buy a joypad, but meh.
Secondly, I'm looking to refine the route that I use, so if anyone's got any obvious pointers on the following it'd be useful - potential modifications I'll point out as and when I start trying out mockballing which I can't do now:
Crateria surface - old Tourain shaft - morph ball room - first missiles - extra missiles in room with e-tank in ceiling - up shaft - bomb room/Torizo fight - e-tank - Brinstar main street - (early super missiles/reserve tank, three missiles if I can mockball) charge beam - Spore Spawn (can be skipped if I have supers early) - Brinstar red shaft - spazer - Kraid - Norfair main street - (ice beam early if I can mockball) - hi jump boots - bubble room via top right door in main shaft - wave beam via wall jump in bubble room - speed booster - bubble room - save
Back door to Crocomire - e-tank in his room - power bombs - grappling beam - Norfair main street via green gate room - ice beam if we didn't get it earlier - Brinstar red shaft - Crateria behind ship - Wrecked Ship - Phantoon - one set of missiles, supers in ship - gravity suit - return to ship - save
Crateria gauntlet - Brinstar main street - early super missile room if we didn't do that on first Brinstar run - e-tanks behind charge beam, in sidehopper room behind yellow door, near morph ball area - n00b tube - Maridia - either save below n00b tube or head straight for save point two rooms before Botwoon - save
Botwoon - Draygon, stopping only for e-tank en route - plasma beam - back out the way we came ignoring everything - Norfair main street - save in room at bottom of shaft
Stop for nothing on way to Ridley except screw attack/Golden Torizo fight - kill Ridley - out via Norfair main street and large Maridia grappling room. Save at ship, kill Mother Brain, finish game.
tl;dr, yes
Frostbreath
On my SNES emulator i use the arrows for movement and the shift-ctrl-windows-alt + Z and X for all the other commands. Enter is the start button. Haven't had any problem doing so.
Good luck on trying to break the hour limit ;)
jonthomson
Cheers. Down to 1:16 now having finished the current run (could probably trim another minute by not being sloppy in the Zebes escape scene, i.e. not missing the old Tourain shaft shinespark), will try out those keys some other time, since posting that FTP offered me a bonus to clear so that takes precedence at the moment.