The final game in the Prime trilogy, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was released in late August 2007. Corruption introduced a new control system that allows the player to control Samus by pointing at the screen and repeatedly performing gimmicky motions, as well as a Hypermode system that allows you to obliterate enemies in exchange for a portion of your energy bar; unfortunately, it sacrificed much of the open-ended exploration that made up much of the earlier games' gameplay in favor of linear, objective-based progression.
Best time: 2:09 by 'Paraxade' on 2010-03-01, done in 32 segments.
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I started working on this run after craztad finished his 2:32 test run in December 2007. Nobody else was stepping forward to do a run of the game, so having already had some experience running it from some short-lived attempts at a low% SS on Hypermode, I decided to do it... albeit embarassingly slowly. I completed the first segment in January 2008, and segment 2 was finished in May. Gaps several months long between segments weren't uncommon (at the worst point, there was a 6-month gap between segments). This was because I had next to no motivation to work on the run, and any time I did I had to put up with things like the controls (you might think this game's controls are fantastic, but you've never speedran it). Honestly I didn't even want to do it after I was around halfway through, but did anyway because I didn't want all my work to have gone to waste, and I didn't want to back out. I started in January 2008, landed on Bryyo in June 2008, landed on Elysia in September 2008 (I did all the Bryyo segments in a 3-month span? wow), got around the halfway point in February 2009, landed on Pirate Homeworld in December 2009 (around which point I decided to just focus on the run and finally began making consistent progress), and finished in March 2010. So this is simultaneously one of the fastest and slowest playthroughs online. XD Before I get started on per-segment comments, I'm going to go over some general things about the run that are worth noting and don't really fit anywhere else.
First - I highly recommend checking metroid2002's Corruption section for explanations of most of the tricks and techniques I abuse in the run. Most of what's not on m2k2, I'll try to explain here in my comments. Keep in mind that my run/m2k2's Corruption section was played/written based on the original NTSC release of Metroid Prime 3. A couple of the tricks don't work on the PAL version, and almost none of them work in Metroid Prime Trilogy.
Second, regarding ng+ - This run is on a new game+ file. There's very minor differences between ng+ and new game in Corruption; the differences are I don't have to scan anything (anything that needs to be scanned is pre-scanned, so I just need to aim at it in the scan visor and press Z) and I can skip cutscenes, which is required on SDA anyway; the differences are nowhere near substantial enough to warrant a separate ng+ category.
Third, regarding checkpoints and home menu abuse - There are a few things I didn't do that might've been SDA legal and made the run easier/faster (game-time-wise anyway) but that I opted not to do for a couple reasons. Frequently through the game there are checkpoints, where the game respawns you if you die as well as resetting the timer to whatever it was when you first got there. I never abuse any of these. It would've felt cheap to me, and I really didn't want to run the game like that. Come on... segments within segments? :/ Every segment is done in one run, from loading up the file to the next time I save. I was considering using the checkpoint before the final bosses, and that checkpoint only, in the same style as the Metroid Prime 2: Echoes run, but it frankly wouldn't make any sense since Corruption runs on a very different checkpoint system than Echoes, so I nixed that idea and segment 32 was done all in one run with no check abuse as well. There's also a way to skip most door loads by going into the home menu before doors and waiting a little bit. I chose not to do this because it would've severely hampered the watchability of the run, as well as making it more tedious to actually run, while only actually being any faster by the in-game timer. One other random thing I'll mention is that the game begins loading rooms when you hit a certain trigger in the room, so pretty much once you hit that trigger any mistakes you make don't cost any time as long as you reach the door before it opens. This covers for a lot of minor movement errors. <_<
Fourth, regarding my route near the end of the game - as I got closer to the end of the run, I was considering whether or not to get the Hazard Shield. There's a secret world in Skyway Access, which allows you to skip turning off the homeworld defenses and walk past most of the demolition trooper sequence. However, since getting out of bounds requires spending some time in the acid rain, it can't be done without Hazard Shield, so it was a question of whether the time saved made up for the time spent picking up Hazard. I timed the Hazard Shield as costing around ~2:10 to pick up. Turning off the defenses costs somewhere between 1:30 and 2 minutes. After running through the trooper sequence a few times and attempting the secret world method with little success, I came to the conclusion that it probably breaks even, if skipping Hazard isn't faster, since the sequence can be done fairly quickly by normal means, while using the secret world would be tedious and difficult, if not potentially slower, especially since some rooms actually take longer from the SW... if there was any time saved, I decided it wasn't worth it. Thus, I skip the Hazard Shield in the run.
Fifth, regarding technical problems - I encountered a lot of technical issues toward the end of the run. The worst was the game would randomly start loading a lot slower than it was supposed to. Obviously I can't run the game like that; I haven't spent this much time optimizing it just to lose a few easy minutes because of a hardware malfunction; so I only ran when the game decided to load properly, judging by how many dots appear next to the game's name before the title screen starts up when you restart from the home menu. I can't be 100% sure that it was as fast as it normally is with a decent Wii/disc, but I doubt there's a huge difference if any, and would've been impossible to rectify the situation without spending some money I didn't have on a new Wii or a new disc (and when I'm so close to the end anyway, it's an even bigger waste of money; slow loads in this game do not matter at all for a casual playthrough, but they make a huge difference in a speedrun). :/
Here are my comments for individual segments. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail on every little thing I did in every segment; I'm not trying to provide a substitute for actually watching the run, but rather I'd just like to explain exactly what I'm doing, point out random little details and places where I did/didn't lose time, and how to pull off certain tricks and strategies for people who are interested, including potential future runners who're interested in trying to beat my run or doing one in a separate category. Including dates for useless trivia so you can see what I meant by embarrassingly slowly x3 As I've mentioned, if you want more in-depth information on how to pull off a specific trick or strategy, visit metroid2002.
Not much to say here... the instant unmorph into the save station at the end was completely unplanned, got lucky there.
This one took me a while to get. Sometimes the second pirate will try to grab the energy cell instead of the third, and other times the third one would go too far out. During the crawlmine swarm, the crawltanks in the tunnel won't appear unless you kill a certain number of enemies. Waste Disposal is also tricky, and it ends with Berserker Lord, who sometimes wastes too much time walking around, and other times sends out three orbs instead of five (I need four). In the end, though, it went pretty smoothly; Berserker walking around for a couple seconds is the only spot with noticable room for improvement.
Now that there are no more targets to shoot, I switch lock-on free aim back on; this doesn't cost any time since the timer doesn't run on the pause menu. In the pirate fight on the bridge, the two pirates up front take less hits to kill than the ones in the back; it's quickest to kill them first since you only need to kill two before the drop ship shows up. Thankfully this also means that what would've otherwise been a fairly large mistake didn't cost any time at all. I glitched up the transmission at the end for fun. :P
Shortest segment in the run. The only thing of note in this segment is the morph ball Ridley skip at the end. Basically, the morph ball bomb mechanics are programmed so you can only bomb jump with one bomb in midair, then you'll need to touch the ground to use another one. The trick here is the second bomb is laid on the lip of the tunnel; the game thinks it's on the ground and doesn't count it as the midair bomb, leaving me free to use another one to get to the top.
This segment took me most of several days to complete (and in that time, I only ever made it past Ridley twice). The Ridley fight is total luck; you need him to be vulnerable as much as possible, but a lot of the time instead of opening his mouth so you can hit him he'll do some twirling around animation. It's also best when he grabs you if he tries to hold his claw toward the back, since then you can get in three charge shots (compared to one if he opens his mouth, and part of one if it's close to you); this is also random.
Initially I wanted to kill him the second time he grabs you; after a while I found out the game will always leave him with at least one HP during these sequences, so I had to settle for a third phase kill. Still, I managed to finish with over 12000 meters remaining (12004, actually). Thankfully the rest of the segment is a piece of cake. Just because of Ridley, though, I think I'd say this is in the top three most difficult segments in the run (the other two are 20 and 32).
I did a little speed trick in Gateway by abusing the scan visor and the speed gain you get when you strafe of a ledge while locked onto something. If you jump RIGHT before you fall off, you'll keep the speed for a very short time, allowing for very slightly longer jumps. The scan dash in Gateway can also be done with a rolling spring space jump. Also, the alpha hoppers spawn on the opposite side of the bridge that you're on; kip pointed out after I finished this that it might be possible to save a little more time by backing up to shoot the first one from range so you don't need to turn around. Don't know for sure if that would work, but it sounds like it would. Phazon management during the fight could've been better... to be perfectly honest I didn't practice the alpha hopper fight much, and it shows.
There's a trick in Gel Refinery Site that allows you to knock down the pipe your first time through the room using a ghetto jump assisted by a damage boost from a Reptilicus. I didn't use it since so far it's only been shown to be possible on higher difficulties; with a harder difficulty setting you get more of a damage boost, and can jump higher.
In Gel Processing Site, the most consistent way to do the rolling spring jump that I know of is to manage to lock on to one of the pillbugs in the tunnel in mid-jump; being locked on lets you jump farther. This is annoying to pull off because the pillbug isn't always in a spot where you'll be able to lock on when you do the jump, meaning it's more or less luck whether you'll be able to pull it off.
Rundas got pwned. :O The way the strat works is this: either Rundas or his armor is vulnerable pretty much any time in the fight. You can do some damage while his armor's forming, but you can't actually stun him until he finishes the animation, so you simply hit him again when it's done. Also, if you're standing close enough to him, he will always use his ice sword attack; this means you can just walk up close, backstep away to dodge the attack, and walk up close again to easily deal damage without risking him running off and being difficult to hit.
Normally, it's hard to tell whether or not knocking down the pipe in Gel Refinery Site would save any time; way back I timed it as saving as much time as it costs to get. That timing was done with the platform in Gel Processing Site completely raised up, though; in segment 7 I used a shortcut through that room that let me skip raising the platform, meaning the room would take longer to get through than if it was already completely up. Taking this into account, knocking down the pipe saves time.
The spawns for the enemies in Hangar Bay are completely consistent, aside from one Warphound. There are two Warphounds and four Reptilicuses. At the beginning, there's just the two Warphounds; after you kill one, two Reptilicuses spawn, and from there the last two spawn each time you kill something one at a time. The spawn points are always in these spots, in this order:
logitech also found a trick in Ruined Shrine after I finished this segment that would save a few more seconds. (link)
m2k2's page on Korakk explains the strategy I use better than I can. Also, when I get back to Jungle Generator, the reason I go in, go back out, then go back in is because for some reason the icon to bomb the generator isn't there unless you do that. After bombing the generator, I should've gone around the other side and picked up the ship missile ammo while in morph ball mode rather than pulling it in with charge beam at the door. I did it like this because the door leading out of the room opened instantly, which I'd never had happen before on any of my practice attempts, so I wasn't expecting it; I was expecting to have some downtime waiting for the load where I could pull in the ammo without losing time. Apparently, the door opens immediately when you move backwards while bombing the generator, making the room load during the cutscene.
Fun fact: since I went into North Jungle Court backwards, I never triggered the flying pirates, meaning they will never pull back one of the levers, making the friend voucher in this room a cakewalk.
There's really not much to say here, very simple segment. I found the tricks in Gel Purification Site while practicing for this segment, which is why they weren't used when I went through it in segment 8.
My Mogenar fight lasts less than a minute and a half, which is a lot faster than the hour or two a lot of people seem to take. :P The strategy is fairly straightforward; I just blast the orbs whenever they become vulnerable, and same with the boots. The only thing really noteworthy about my strategy is that by shooting out the red part of the third orb as early as possible, I skipped a fairly long sequence where Mogenar causes rocks to fall out of the ceiling, during which you can't attack it; skipping this sequence saves a lot of time.
Basically this just goes from the beginning of Elysia to the save station before the Aurora Unit's room. My strategy on Steamlord is pretty neat; Hyperball's auto targetting makes it the only weapon that can damage Steamlord while it's invisible. It takes nearly two energy tanks, but makes the fight last less than 10 seconds. I also pick up a few missile expansions. They'll save a bit of time in segment 20, after I get Seekers. There's one thing I'm confused about though... in craztad's test run, the door to the last zipline opened immediately. That never happened in any of my attempts, nor could I get it to happen going back and trying it after finishing the segment, so dunno what's up with that. :/
This was another tough one, mostly because of Defense Drone. I pick up Boost Ball, restore the AU unit, and save in the same spot I start out the segment at. The missile expansion in Skybridge Hera is actually harder to get quickly than it looks, since the sudden camera angle change throws off the controls (the game doesn't immediately re-adjust the controls for the new camera angle). My Defense Drone fight was pretty good; single-cycling it might be possible if you're totally insane, but I'm not doing it.
Not much to this other than Ghor. I originally wanted Ghor to start off the second phase with a laser attack as that allows me to stun him with a quick boost and start attacking him sooner, but when I actually started attempts I never saw him do that even once. So being unsure what triggers it if it's not completely random (every time I got it during a practice attempt I'd previously screwed up the first phase), I decided to use hyper ball instead, which isn't more than a second or two slower. My experience in segment 24 a while later pretty much confirms to me that Ghor's attack pattern at the start of phase 2 is dependent on how fast you complete phase 1, which explains why I was never able to get him to use the attack I wanted in an actual run; when I did segment 24 I encountered pretty much the exact same thing with Gandrayda, where her pattern for phase 2 was different depending on how quickly I completed phase 1, which leads me to believe that it's the same case with Ghor, and that for some reason some bosses run on a timer.
Nothing of note here, just going to the other landing site and flying to Bryyo.
This was good for the most part, except one small mistake when I got back into Gel Refinery Site that cost probably a second or two at most. It is a lot faster to turn around after you get Screw Attack than to keep going forward, and you lose very little if any time activating the spinner if you do it while Hall of Remembrance is loading.
I did a lot of timing and experimenting before I did this segment. Turned out taking the top route in Chozo Observatory is 20 seconds faster, and a hell of a lot more interesting. Turbine Chamber is a somewhat strange room as well; apparently getting Ship Grapple changes tons of things in the room. That's why the floor and the Berserker Lord fight trigger weren't there, and the spinners weren't active. It destroys the locks on the lower part of the room as well, to explain why they're shot out in the next segment.
There are two main tricks in this segment. The first one is a small sequence break, where by climbing up Turbine Chamber and touching the ceiling I can respawn in the top section. This skips having to take a huuuge detour and fighting the Berserker Lord. The second is in Zipline Station Delta, where logitech decided he hates me and found a trick where by jumping from the first floating platform and jumping off, with a lock-on for extra distance, and spacing out your screw attacks as far as possible, you can just barely make it to the platform at the other end of the room. This is much harder to do than it looks, and it took me a while to figure out how to do it somewhat consistently. As far as I can tell, you need to wait to jump until you walk slightly down the rim at the end of the platform, then from there practice the timing for spacing out the jumps. If you touch the broken fence bit at all, the game won't let you SA. Aside from that I made a few small mistakes but they didn't really cost any time.
There's a decent amount of minor mistakes in this segment, it adds up to maybe 10 seconds lost. But you have no idea how frustrating this segment was. This segment by all means should have been easy, I have no idea how I ended up having such a hard time with it. 99% of my attempts ended before I even made it to the seeker missiles. Really annoying Wii controls (spring ball not working properly the way I needed it to), terrible camera angles (if you enter the first spinner the wrong way, the camera screws up when you get out of the spinner, which makes it about impossible to continue moving quickly without screwing up) and more. Between bouts of losing and gaining motivation to attempt it and getting frustrated after a few hours or days of attempts it took half a year from when I finished segment 19 to get 20. There are a million things that can go wrong in Xenoresearch alone (I've got a list). On the odd occasion that I actually got a run past Xenoresearch, I'd usually end up losing it in Concourse, when I either miss some of the Seeker targets or missed a jump and fell to the bottom floor.
The initial plan was to segment like the test run and keep going until the third bomb component, then save by the AU chamber, but after getting so frustrated with this I decided to cut it short because there's several things that can (and have) gone wrong while going for the last bomb component, and there was no need to prolong the segment. There were several missed instant unmorphs which probably aren't too noticable if you don't know where they are, and I was planning a SSJ toward the end to screw attack across the room with the grab ledge, but I think most of these are forgivable. Hope it's understandable why I went with this run.
I feel pretty proud of this segment, it went pretty much perfectly (or as close to perfect as I am going to get it). As for my strategy in the spire fight - basically, there are two spots on the spire the ships will attack from. The first one is right in front of you when you start, and the second is behind you/to the right. The third opening on the left is never used by anything important if you destroy the ships as fast as possible. There are three ships that will attack the spire, and you need to destroy those three to finish the fight; most of the rest of the enemies don't matter, you can leave them alive. The first ship will fly at the spot in front of you and shoot until you deal enough damage to it (you can't destroy it at this point) and then it'll fly over to the one behind you. After destroying that a couple flying pirates appear which need to be killed for the next two ships to arrive; destroying them ends the fight. All the other enemies I killed was a matter of convenience, the fight is pretty much entirely just waiting around for the ships to stop and start shooting so you can destroy them. Nothing else of note really, this segment was a nice change after being stuck on segment 20 for six months. Oh, and welding is a pain in the ass.
This took me less than 30 minutes, including all attempts and all the practice beforehand. Helios is pathetically easy, I had more trouble with the seeker targets in the hallway. Happy that I got a sub-1:30 landing on Pirate Homeworld :D
Not too difficult, no fights or anything. The only tricky parts were Command Courtyard and navigating Flux Control quickly. I boosted into a couple walls and missed a spring jump at the end but none of it cost any time because of the next room loading.
This segment seemed like it was gonna be a nightmare the entire time I was working up to it, and I was always loathing getting to the point where I'd have to do it, but when I finally got there and began working on it it wasn't so bad after all. I nixed a couple tricks for the sake of consistency, since the segment had Gandrayda in it and I didn't want it to be harder than it had to be; it's possible to get to the top of the half-pipe in the morph ball maze by just boosting right as you drop off, but while practicing I was pretty much never able to do that (I did it one time in I think around a half hour of nothing but boosting up that half pipe), so I decided on a strategy that was slower by a few seconds but more consistent. There's also a SBSJ in Airshaft that might've saved a couple seconds (though in actuality I'm not really sure it saves any time at all), but I found it horribly inconsistent, not worth the time it potentially saved, and decided to cut that as well. As for this segment's main attraction:
When I started practicing Gandrayda, I found that her movements at the start of phase 2 apparently run on a timer of sorts, which is pretty much exactly what happened when I was planning out my strategy for Ghor too - the notes on m2k2's page at the time detailed a suboptimal strategy that didn't work when you killed her as fast as possible, so I ended up working out my own strategy for phases 2/3. At the start of phase 1, she always starts running to the left. At the start of phase 2, she'll always start running to the right (that is, if phase 1 is done quick enough; otherwise, she'll usually try to grab you). At the start of phase 3 she'll always go into morph ball and boost straight at you, and if you manage to stop her in the right spot she will start running straight ahead when she turns back into Gandrayda. If you play it right, you can kill her with three screw attacks - one for each phase. It still requires some annoying precision to get a good fight, but the plus side is she never gets a chance to be random. Sometimes you bounce off her and do hardly any damage, and I'm really not entirely sure what's up with that, but my guess is it happens when you hit her PED. It seems to work fairly well if you hit her side or head or something...
Not the most perfect run possible, but it's as good as I'm going to get it, so it's good enough for me :3
Pretty easy one. If you're wondering what the hell was going on in Zipline Station Charlie, basically if you just boost off the spider track at that point and unmorph you'll be high enough to get into a secret world (fancy Metroid phrase for "out of bounds") and be able to walk over the room. :P I timed it as being 4 seconds faster, so I used it. The only thing that could've really made this any faster is if I hyperball'd the door to Security Station, and even that would only save half a second or so. Also, another random glitch that occured in the run: I was still getting the transmission telling me to go get spider AFTER I got it, and eventually it got added to the logbook. When that happens, it goes permanently under "Current objectives" instead of "Completed".
Really easy, there's not much to say about this one.
This is mostly pretty straightforward. I switch lock-on/free aim off for the fight at the beginning of the segment because it required a lot of precise aiming, and I couldn't do it fast enough with it on; it's a necessity to hit all three of the beacon things, or else two more pirates will show up and that costs you 10 seconds or so. Nova Beam fight is on a timer, so most of what you do doesn't matter as long as you leave one pirate alive. Missed one hyper missile during the fight and that's really the only mistake I made.
This went much much better than I expected to get, considering it was such a long segment with a really random fight at the end, I was aching to get the run done, and I wanted to get it done fast because my Wii was giving me issues with long loads and this was one of the occasions I managed to get it to load properly. Pretty much everything went according to plan, I even killed the two advanced pirate troopers that came out of the train in Transit Station 0204 with one missile which I'm not sure I've ever done before (I usually go with 2). There's a couple things that could be improved, particularly with shooting the pirate commandos, but this was such a difficult segment it's more than good enough for me. One other little thing is that on rare occasions, the door out of Command Station that leads to Defense Access opens immediately after taking down the defenses. It saves a few seconds, though I didn't really bother with it because I had no idea what makes it do that.
I didn't realize Hyper Missiles had any uses at all until this segment. Thankfully there isn't anywhere else I could've saved time with them before this segment anyway, so no time lost.
Omega Ridley proved to be the toughest Seed boss to figure out... phases 1+2 are pretty easy but getting phase 3 to go well takes a lot of precision and luck manipulation. Initially, I was planning on trying to kill Omega Ridley quickly in phase 3 by hitting him with three hyper missiles before he starts flying... would've looked really fast and awesome :( Apparently though, this doesn't actually work, because you can't kill him during those sequences, as the game will always leave him with one HP (just like Meta-Ridley... Ridley fights suck). So I hit him with two hyper missiles instead, and get in a third when he lands. I ended up missing a few times, but like I've established it doesn't matter because he can't be killed until he lands; the only thing that mattered in that phase was getting in two hits before that happened. Additionally, during his fly-by run in phase 3, almost every time he'll do a time-consuming attack where he comes out of one of the holes and fly in a circle around the entire arena before retreating back into a hole. On this run, he didn't, which I wasn't aware was possible until I got this segment. Lucky fight, I guess.
Also, after I kill Omega Ridley the game gives me the Hazard Shield. Not that I ever actually use it.
The Valhalla wasn't attacked after all, the Federation just ditched it when they got fed up with long and frequent loads. Not much to say about this one.
Again, not much to say, it was every bit as easy as I expected. Practice + attempts up until I got this run took about an hour.
First off, lemme say that having to wait two and a half minutes on every restart to actually get back to the action sucks. Especially since half my runs got killed in Cavern Alpha which is only three rooms in. That said I got a very good run here, though it's not flawless. In Cavern Alpha it's rare but possible to get the camera stuck on the wall when you go through the little morph ball path at the beginning so you can pull off the SSJ a lot quicker. That SSJ, itself, is a lot trickier to pull off than it looks because it's hard to get an instant unmorph half the time (Samus likes to unmorph facing the path you're supposed to follow for some reason, not sure if that's related). Skipping Mr. Bouncy Monster in Drop Shaft killed a fair few runs as well; I had the most success trying to land around the middle and then holding up once I landed.
Final bosses, fun. The best strategy on Dark Samus is just to spam uncharged shots, though you won't get a fight as fast as this one by spamming alone. I found that when she starts trying to go to the center to heal, if you're right in front of her pushing her in the other direction she'll take longer to get there and you can get some more shots in. Aurora Unit phase 1 is horribly random and it'll almost always end up using a different attack after the first cycle. My plan was to keep going as long as it only used one extra attack, but amazingly it didn't use any in this run. On phase 2 it seems to use a non-quad-lasers attack more often if you stay close to it, but maybe that's just me.
During this segment I had to cope with my game disc (or maybe it was my Wii), DVD recorder, and nunchuk all crapping out on me, and was somewhat stressed out over everything for a few days and I still managed to somehow pull off an amazing run and finish in 2:09; I'd previously thought the best time it was going to be possible to get was 2:10. Lemme just reiterate, I'm THRILLED that I got 2:09. Phaaze had very few mistakes and all three boss fights were flawless, including the random as hell Aurora Unit phase 1, which I wasn't even aiming to perfect; this is probably the best run I could have possibly gotten, which is even better considering how many technical issues I was struggling with and overcame at the time.
FINAL TIME: 2:09
Been in progress for over two years and it's finally finished, and I think it's a pretty damn nice run. But I'll be the first to admit it's not perfect. Some of these segments can be improved by at least 10 seconds. This game is just so frustrating to run for so many reasons, perfecting every single segment would have taken me an eternity and made me never want to play a game again (I'm already feeling like I never want to touch motion controls again, especially for speedrunning), from needing to sit uncomfortably just so I could aim properly, since a lot of parts in this game require you to aim quickly and precisely (welding ><), to some segments just being unexpectedly difficult for stupid reasons (I thought segment 20 was gonna be easy before I started, and it ended up being one of the worst segments in the run... wtf.) and all the technical issues I had to deal with during the tail end of the run (see segment 32). I've lost countless runs to crap like the Wiimote not letting me spring ball, or the camera suddenly shifting and screwing with the controls, and more (hello segment 20!!!). Because of all this there is no way I would ever be able to perfect the run and keep my sanity, and as a result it's quite visibly not perfect. Despite the flaws though, it's not a bad run by any means. I think I'm just my own worst critic and judge the run's mistakes and flaws worse than everyone else does.
Regardless, I've put a lot of time and effort into it and it's pretty quick, a lot better than any other run that has been produced of this game, and I think most of the boss fights were pretty well done. I'd guess that this run will be beaten someday, but that seems like it'll be a long way away, since at the moment most people have pretty much no interest in running the game (me included), as you might've guessed from the fact that it took almost 3 years for a run to be finished. A perfect run might be able to sub 2 hours... hell, maybe you don't even need perfection, I don't know how much time I've lost throughout my run and there may be a few sequence breaks left in this game. In fact, a couple weeks after I finished this run, I went back to this game and looked around for some breaks, and ended up finding two new secret worlds and enough tricks to completely skip Screw Attack, which unfortunately is too slow to be helpful in a speed run but is damn cool nonetheless. Anyway, you should definitely be subbing 2 if you abuse checkpoints and the home menu but egh <_<
What's next for me, personally... I *might* consider doing a single-segment of Corruption if I get a new disc. Back in October 2007 I did a low% SS on Hypermode in 3:13, with two deaths on Pirate Homeworld and eight on Phaaze, sent it to nate and wasted a lot of my time and his before realizing it sucked and pulled it from the queue. With my experience from this run, I feel like I could do a great job if I decided to return to that... probably sub 3, deathless; though now with the Screw Attack skip making the new low% 21%, which contains tons of things I can't do in an SS, I probably won't do it unless I could still run 22%. Otherwise, I've got several other run ideas that I'm strongly considering, including Zelda: Twilight Princess, Sonic 06, and Sonic Unleashed. I'm also interested in getting to play a few games that aren't out yet like Metroid: Other M and Zelda: Skyward Sword and seeing whether they're something I'd enjoy speed running. In any case, I'm not saying I'm definitely doing anything yet; I might not do anything else at all.
In the meantime, enjoy the run... it's been over 2 years in the making. It's great to finally have it done, and it's also great to have my first run on SDA, just like you all probably think it's about damn time a run of this game went up. I wish I could say I enjoyed doing it too but I really didn't. :P So enjoy!