I first became interested in Fusion when I found the Metroid Fusion section of Metroid2002.com over two years ago. I had played Fusion before, but not at the level that I saw in the videos. Upon more looking around, I ran into Sesshoumaru's 1% technical demonstration. It was the first form of speedrunning I had ever been exposed to, and I was amazed.

I began playing Fusion over and over again, using Sesshoumaru's run as a reference. I made significant progress, eventually achieving sub 1 hour times. Soon, my want for contributing a speedrun began.

My lack of money and knowledge prevented me from recording a normal speedrun, so I did the next best thing: a tool-assisted speedrun. Creating a TAS required no money, so I was finally able to contribute something. For a long time, all I did was sit fascinated watching Fusion frame-by-frame. Meanwhile, fellow TASer Dragonfangs was working on 0% runs, and our combined knowledge eventually led to a 0% and a 100% TAS by him and myself, respectively.

At this point, I was called back to running fusion normally by my newly obtained Gameboy Player and DVD recorder, but now with much more knowledge of the game. My initial intention was to do a 1% single-segment speedrun. In practicing for this, I regained my skill and then some. As school kept me busier and busier, I struggled to find the time necessary for the run. I decided to change my plans and work on the segmented any% run instead. As I progressed through the run, the more convinced I was that I would achieve a time of 0:47. To my disappointment, I eventually realized that the best time I could get was 0:48.

Which brings us to this run. On a whim, I took a shot at an any% single-segment to see what time I could get and to see if it would compare to the dropped segmented run. The level of gameplay I saw out of myself was surprising, and I expected no worse than 0:49.

And here it is, with a time of 0:48 and 8% items collected, two energy tanks and six missile tanks. Sorry for those of you who were expecting audio commentary; it's harder than I thought and I never found the time. Instead, I'll put everything I feel that needs to be explained about the run into these comments, and I'll split the run into parts to do so.

• Main Deck

  The first trick here is Sesshoumaru's famous vertical shaft walljumps. While it looks cool, I still think that it's the fastest and easiest way to get to the top of the room.

  In the Quarantine Bay, two quick shots take care of the hornoad. Sometimes the hornoad starts in a slightly different spot, but not really enough to mess up a speedrunner. The little jump when leaving is to open the door when I land so that I don't run into it and lose momentum, but this saves hardly any time anyways.

  The first mistake of the run is made in the next room, where I didn't grab the platform. I have a tendency to mess up more after the first mistake is made, seeing that I missed another platform right after that.

  The next mistake is in the vertical shaft before arachnus where I miss a walljump to climb up the rungs faster. This trick saves hardly any time at all, so it's an embarrassing time loss. In the same shaft, I pick up the two missile tanks, bringing me to 2% (the missiles I received in the data room don't count for percent).

  Before every boss are these annoying eyedoors. They are a perfect representation of randomness in Fusion and are a speedrunner's nightmare. Eyedoors can only be hit about half of the times that they open, so getting three hits in a row on them is a rare occurrence. It is possible to hit them with two missiles at the same time so that the eye only needs to open twice, but it is much too hard to do on console.

  Before Arachnus, I pick up the first of two energy tanks, both of which are in my path. For the fight itself, arachnus needs 15 missiles to be taken down. I find that arachnus tends to roll less if I slowly move forward while firing missiles, but it's still random. A one round fight is possible, but Arachnus rolls and I have to settle for two. As for the core-x, a new trick is used because it is possible to have two missiles in the core-x while it's forming, counting as two hits. A more recent application of this trick will be explained later.

  With the morph ball, morphing while standing on the ground will have a short little animation. Morphing in mid-air does not, so it is faster to make a short jump and morph quickly. If the morph ball falls from a certain height, it will bounce and waste time. Therefore it is faster to unmorph and morph again quickly before hitting the ground. Unmorphing on the ground also has an animation, but a slightly more complicated method is needed to skip the animation. Press up to start unmorphing, but immediately after press A and a direction to start spin jumping, and immidiately after that press B to stop the jump.

  Before the elevator, I collect another missile tank which obviously gives me more missiles for bosses but also makes Sector 1 easier.

• Sector 1

  Traditionally, when entering the first room in Sector 1, speedrunners would jump as high as they can at the edge of the platform and just barely get by the two platforms below. Going behind and under them takes the same amount of time but is much easier to do.

  The doors in atmospheric stabilizer rooms work in sets. If the stabilizer is destroyed in a certain set of frames, the door will always open at the same time. If too much time is wasted, the door will open at the end of the next set. This is why the fog in some rooms lasts longer than in others. This also prevents any time being lost from small mistakes.

  In the vertical shaft with the pirates, the morphball is effectively used as a slowfalling technique to allow the missiles to reach the pirates before samus does.

  The next room is a simple example of how the knowledge from tool-assisted speedrunning has helped this run. Before, it was thought that it's faster to jump over the water. It's actually a few frames faster to run right through it.

  The next pirate shaft always gives me trouble. I shoot any of them that might get in my way just to be safe.

  In the room after, it's again faster and easier to just run through the water instead of using the rungs.

  It's possible to hit an eye core-x with two missiles at the same time, but like eye doors, it's quite hard to do even though I tried it in the run anyways.

  The next stabilizer is killed much more quickly with the charge beam. The charge beam has a flare around it that does extra damage, so hitting it point-blank destroys it one hit.

• Sector 2

  This place is random. Nearly every room has a few different spawn sets. This basically means that each creature will either be in the spot you want it to be or it will be right in your way. Because this is single-segment and I can't reset if I get a bad room, I sometimes have to stop and kill creatures in the way. There isn't much new in getting to Zazabi; it's only a matter of being able to maneuver between the enemies in your path.

  Zazabi. The most random and annoying boss in the game. Zazabi has four rounds, three of which contain wasted jumps. After each round, Zazabi usually wastes at least one more jump than the previous round. The exception is the last round, where Zazabi never wastes a jump. Because of this, the least amount of wasted jumps you can get is three, so I was extremely lucky to get four.

  During the core-x fight is where a new trick comes in, and probably the biggest time saver of the run. It had been known before that a core-x can be hit with two missiles when it first forms, but Dragonfangs found a newer application during his TAS where the core-x could be hit with two missiles even after that. At first, it was thought to be too hard to do on console because the missiles have to hit at the same time. Because the hitbox of a core-x is actually a square, not a circle, two missiles fired up straight will get the job done by hitting the left or right side of it. After some practice, I found this was doable on console with proper maneuvering and good timing.

• Sector 4

  There isn't much new here. I do want to apologize, though, if the pausing during the Serris fight came across as cheap. All too often I mess up the two round fight, especially in a single-segment. I wanted to make sure I made the hit the first time I got the chance. At least the core-x was nice.

  Sector 3

  In the room before the vertical shaft, I use a nice trick where I crouch about halfway onto the first speedboost block. This destroys the block but stores the shinespark, which I use in the next room. I again abuse pause to help me pull off this trick. I don't want to mess up a trick like this one in a single-segment.

  In the room right after, we find the missile tank that was lovingly named "Bob" by the Metroid2002 community. Bob is the only obstacle to completing 0% runs because it's right on the path. The only way of skipping it is a complicated shinespark trick in the room to the left that has only been done on an emulator.

  The BOX fight went quite well. Of course, none of that matters when I make possibly the biggest screw up of the run. I probably should have just normally jumped out of the room instead of walljumping. I then mess up the next few rooms out of my frustration.

• Sector 6

  I grab my second and final energy tank here. When grabbing an energy tank, bombs still go off, so I only waste about half the time it normally would by laying the bomb first before I grab the tank.

  A four round Mega-X fight requires the charge beam to be inside Mega-X each time (so that the flare hits), so I was actually lucky to do that. I made a bit of a mess with the core-x, but the four round fight made up for that.

  Getting back to the navigation room can be a pain with all the enemies on the path, so I take my time to kill anything in my way and to avoid being hit.

• Sector 5/Meltdown

  After getting the ice missiles, the pause I make is to try and avoid the zippers. I wasn't thinking and hit it anyways, so it was a really dumb mistake.

  The time remaining during meltdown was 4'21, though I probably could have gotten 4'31 if I didn't get hit three times and if the door didn't shoot me three times.

• Main Deck/Sector 5

  Nothing new on Main Deck; everything went quite well. I collect the last two missile tanks on the way back to Sector 5.

  I don't get hit by the ripper this time...

  I made it back to the ship ok, but I've developed a fear of the creatures that drop goo in the tunnel. A few of my earlier 1% attempts have been stopped dead in their tracks by them.

• Yakuza/Nettori

  The space pirates before Yakuza can be quite annoying, but I got through them all right.

  Yakuza was probably the best boss fight of the run. Because Yakuza can be damaged before it comes down, I was able to finish the first part of the fight the next time it opened its mouth. For the second part, I hit Yakuza every time except for the very end, but it only needed one more hit after that.

  The Nettori fight was good, with a good use of my missiles. Taking one hit, though, cost me much more than it should have. When samus has full health, only green x's will appear. Because I had taken damage, the eye core-x was much more likely to give me yellow x's, and it did. As a result of this, I had to waste a whole bunch of time shooting the reluctant eye core-x for a green x.

• Nightmare/BOX II

  Another good boss fight. Nightmare's movements are semi-random, so I generally know where to go according to what Nightmare does. Occasionally Nightmare will go to an awkward spot, pinning me, but thankfully this didn't happen. Two rounds of jamming the B button were enough to take this guy down.

  In Sector 4, I unfortunately mess up a trick where I could avoid laying a bomb. Because speedboosting also destroys bomb blocks, I would've gone right through the blocks if I had jumped a bit earlier and lower.

  Throughout Sectors 4 and 6, I have a "better safe than sorry" attitude because of all the creatures in my path. I'd rather slow down a bit and kill them than take damage and become frustrated.

• Final Bosses

  Dragonfangs found a nifty little trick in the room with the golden pirates. Supposedly, to damage the pirates you have to shoot them in the back. Instead, the game only checks if Samus and the pirate are facing the same direction. Because of this, you can just fire the charge beam and turn around right away to damage the pirate instead of having it jump over you.

  The fastest way to kill Ridley is to use the wave beam. The wave beam does damage for each frame it is inside the creature, so it does massive damage to a large creature like Ridley. Diagonally fired shots stay in it the longest, so I tried to aim that way whenever I could.

  During the SA-X fight, I had intended to do all the work on the platform, not down below. Normally, I am able to kill the SA-X with five diagonal shots on that platform, but I mistimed the missile (some more practice would have helped; the strategy is fairly new), and I wasted a few seconds before I finally froze the SA-X again.

  And the run ends with a five second Omega Metroid fight! The reason it's so fast is because I stand in a position that allows the middle of the ice beam to go all the way through the Omega Metroid (which damages it every frame and makes the fight a whole lot quicker).

So that's the run, saving two minutes over the old segmented and three over the single-segment. As Fusion is getting old now and people are losing interest in it, there won't be many more new tricks to be found, so the current fastest methods for getting through the game stand as they are. A time of 0:47 may be possible, but whether it would be through segmented or single-segment is unknown to me. My best guess on how to achieve this would be a run with fewer segments, about 5-10 or maybe even less. A 0:47 any% run will be my last project with Fusion. Feel free to try if you're up to the challenge!

I'd like to thank a few people, starting with nate, not only for encoding this run but for talking to me about speedrunning this game and for his encouragement. He's one of the last people I know who still have interest in Fusion and he also knows firsthand what speedrunning this game is like. I'd like to thank Dragonfangs for his 0% TAS and for his helpful new discoveries. I'd like to thank DJGrenola for helping the site the time that he did and for his inspiring 17% speedrun of MP Echoes. I'd like to thank anyone from the Metroid2002 forum/IRC for any words of advice or encouragement that they gave. I'd also like to thank the SDA administrators for running this site and for hosting this run.

I hope you enjoy the run; feedback is welcome. See you next time!

When I started this run, I wasn't sure how good it would be. I hadn't finished a 100% run since early February of this year. Luckily, I still remembered where all the items where. But I just forgot techniques, such as perfect timing, to get the items.

The first time, I finished in 1:17. I looked back at my run and it looked horrible. So I decided to redo it. The second time resulted in this.

This time is, in fact, faster than my last 100% run and it was segmented also. I was surprised at the final time when I saw it. There are a lot of small mistakes, but with no saves, I have to give myself a little leeway, right?

The lowest point in my run is me trying to grab one of the power bombs. I wasted about 1 1/2 minutes trying to grab it. So if I had grabbed it on my first try, I could've gotten 1:12 or even 1:11 (depending on how many seconds over 1:13 my final time was).

I also have a few pauses in the game. One was for a split second, which is a trick that I used to keep from slowing down. The other one is during the meltdown segment. I pause for nearly a minute. Just excuse that part. I was yelled at by my parents, but I quickly resolved the matter.

I'll do a segmented one in the future, but probably not too soon. The GameBoy Player I used is just a loaner, and it must be sent off.

This is what we call "making speed running more difficult." Low% runs are already hard enough...single segment 1% runs require one to be a maniac to attempt.

1% runs are the most challenging runs in Metroid Fusion. Prior to attempting 1% I didn't really have that much interest in the game, but the challenge kepy me playing. After some joking went down when Wassup Dawgs Any% and 100% runs were available I basically decided to attempt this (It was a joke by Nate saying "You should definitely record a 1% single segment. Mwahahahaha!" that started everything. I don't think anyone at the time thought I would actually I was serious when I said I would).

At any rate, it wound up taking me 2 months to get through the entire game alive. There's really only a few trouble spots, but those few were enough to cause me a lot of grief, with Yakuza, Mega-X, and Nightmare topping out the list. In the end it took me 53 tries to pull it off, and exactly 2 days worth of taping.

By far the highlight of this run is my Ridley battle. I found a strategy that will keep him doing the same thing over and over, which is fairly easy to dodge. Occasionally he'll break the cycle and do something else, which he did in my battle with him when I only needed one more hit to kill him (thank god). The other major problem with him is lhe sometimes likes to dive low before starting a tail whip. Normally this is virtually impossible to avoid, I just got EXTREMELY lucky.

Also, after I defeated Nightmare the speed of the run went down by quite a decent margin. Nightmare is easily one of the most frusterating battles in the game and I wasn't about to die from something stupid in any of the Sectors, so I took it slow and careful.

I hope y'all enjoy the run. I doubt I'll ever try to improve the time any, even though I KNOW it could have easily been better. I just don't have it in me to try over and over to complete another one.