Released in the US in March 2006, Metroid Prime Hunters is at once a mediocre online multiplayer FPS and a mediocre offline single player FPS. The touch-screen look and d-pad movement controls work well, but the sum total of two unique bosses (excluding the final) does not. MPH was first introduced as a demo included with the original Nintendo DS. Samus is sent to collect 8 octoliths in order to discover and protect the "ultimate power." Six new hunters are introduced in the game, all of whom desire the ultimate power for their own duties or missions. Samus must avoid and conquer these hunters and protect the power from being placed in the wrong hands.
Best time: 1:20:35 by Zack 'DSGamer3002' Mintzer on 2007-09-28, done in 13 segments.
Author's comments:
Second, here are my comments for each individual segment:
The first few segments of the run are pretty linear, so you don't really notice anything special here aside from the one mistake towards the end of the escape. Normally I don't have problems boosting up the ledge like that, it was probably my anticipation of getting this first segment over with that caused me to mess up like that.
Boosted a bit too fast in the alt maze in the beginning, so I couldn't get a chained bomb jump there to pass that area. Both the Spire and Weavel battles could have been improved a little, but not so much when comparing recorded to unrecorded.
Nearly a perfect segment here. I probably should have dropped down in MB in the room with the two Ithraks instead of trying to kill the second one with the PB.
I can't stand this segment. Normally it's supposed to be done in one, long segment as a tie between this run's segments 4 and 5, but I decided to split it so I could keep restarting for better Slench battles and better escapes in the next segment.
The Slench battle was pretty good, but it probably could have been better. As for all of the guardians/hunters in the escape, I decided to just deal with them rather than restart another five or more times before getting a segment with a clean escape.
Noxus battle went pretty well, but I could have manipulated his AI better so I could get more headshots on him. The rest of the segment was pretty good, aside from the alt tunnel mishap after claiming the 3rd artifact.
The last two switches in Alinos Perch are hard to aim at, especially with the camera over the DS. Also, I didn't know there was a sequence break in Council Chamber where the voldrum battle was skippable until after deleting the copied savefile. That's improvable.
I can't stand the guardians in Sanctorus. After killing the first one, the second one was hiding in the upper corridor, so I figured it'd be faster to wait for it to come down than chase it around the area. Also, I apparently didn't need to scan the computer in Subterranean to deactivate the electricity. (Again, didn't know about it until after deleting copied savefile.)
Drip moat mistake with the immobile biped is an easily noticeable mistake. I tried to bomb jump at the end of the ledge onto the platform, but it obviously didn't work. Then to top it all off I got Spire in Sic Transit, which slowed me down a bit.
Only real mistake here was missing the first Imperialist shot on Sylux in the beginning of the battle against him. Still, it was my fastest battle EVER fighting Sylux, so I decided to keep it. Pretty much a near perfect segment aside from that.
I regret having prevented this segment from being perfect by the slip at the end RIGHT before reaching the ship to save. This is one of the hardest segments due to all of the lag in Statis Bunker that disables you from going as fast as one would normally like.
Oh yeah, one more credit: the programmers for inventing the Imperialist. I honestly thought I would have to restart a lot more than I did for this segment, but I knocked out the hunters that came in my way pretty quickly thanks to that weapon. If the hunters hadn't come at all it would have been great, but I still consider this either a perfect segment or near perfect.
Not much to say here, since the only real challenge here is Gorea, and what kind of challenge is that anyway? I know people have beaten Gorea in under 2 minutes, but whenever I tried to contact them on their technique I never got a reply. This is probably the next-to-best technique to beat Gorea. Also, for those of you wondering, the reason I don't face Gorea 2 is because he's not required to beat in order to see the credits and complete the game.
Overall, I can say that I'm very, very satisfied with this run. It's definitely not the best a run for MPH could be, but it's still an amazing feat. If boredom ever strikes me, I might start doing a sub-1:20 run some day, but I can't really determine whether or not that will happen for sure.
MPH is a great game, but I have to agree with the majority of Metroid fans that its single player was very lacking. The game was mainly built for its Wi-Fi functionalities, which were eventually destroyed by hackers, glitchers, etc. I used to play the game merely for the online experience, but one day I just decided to re-beat the adventure, and started making a goal to break two hours. Now here I am typing a commentary for the run which was completed forty minutes faster than my original goal.
This was my first (real) speedrun, and I'm glad I went through this experience. I may decide to do a speedrun in another game some day, but first I'll need to save up money for a DVR and all the other stuff required. So here I close the door on my overall "career" with Metroid Prime Hunters, now that I've accomplished my final goal for the game.
...at least, for now.
~ DSGamer3002 (Contact me via DSG3002 on AIM or usurper992 AT gmail DOT com)