SNES · Any% · 1994
One of the most technically rich speedruns on the SNES, demanding mastery of mockball, wall-jumping and precise movement to finish the game in around forty-one minutes.
Super Metroid's speedrun community is among the most technically sophisticated in retro gaming. Mockball lets Samus keep her running speed when she morphs into a ball just before landing, letting runners collect items such as the early Super Missiles long before the game intends. Wall-jumping, the Speed Booster's shinespark and a host of precise movement techniques allow further sequence breaks. Memory-corrupting glitches such as the Spacetime Beam — an illegal Spazer and Plasma combination — are confined to separate glitched categories. The community runs Any%, Low% and 100% among other categories, each demanding a distinct skill set, and new skips continue to be found decades after release.