Kip Metroid Prime 1:23 World Record (July 16, 2003) run notes

Kip 1:23 run notes:

General notes: This run was completed in July 16, 2003 and even though it was pretty good for the time there’s still a lot of stuff that is relatively amateurish about it. Many strategies and ‘advanced’ gameplay would not come about until another year or so. From what I can tell, the run took a bit over a month to complete. Metroid Prime 1:23 by kip

Segment 1:

• Still misses a bunch of shots on the targets in the beginning
• Due to the quality, cannot always tell if he has L held or not unfortunately
• No dash off the ship even though scan dashing known at this point, but does roll
• Shoots the second door before morphing which is slow
• Also shoots the second door before morphing which is slow
• No cutscene skip in elevator (this is good)
• No dashing through Biotech
• No bomb jump in Biohazard
• Decent rolling path upstairs though
• Kills the turret for some reason
• Doesn’t save before PQ
• Scans Parasite Queen and… shoots missiles to the beat? CALFoolio’s run does this a full second faster so it’s kinda weird
• Good movement up to the elevator, gets a high 50 on the timer
• No dashes but the general movement isn’t terrible
• 5:43 ‘turret door’ which is really good for earlyish 2003
• Lack of optimal Morph Ball movement during escape
• 5:05 Ridley L O L really good for 2003
• Accidental instant unmorph and remorph which loses time, oh well
• No turret dash after losing items

Segment 2:

• SPACE JUMP FIRST AAAAAH SAVES SO MUCH TIME
• No dash back to the ship

Segment 3:

• Boring jump to the door off the ship, no dashes off the beetles
• Dashes off the elevator though
• Fast missile from the half pipe
• Doesn’t get the energy tank, which is actually fast I suppose, more reasonable in segmented than single segment
• Absolutely no strats for scarabs
• Doesn’t avoid the fight, which is fast!
• No in-game time strats in Ruined Fountain
• Barebones movement through most of the game, virtually no dashes for direct speed tricks, they are mostly connected directly to ‘skips’ or such
• Still gets fast missile before charge though
• Slow scans for Watery Hall (does the second one first, jumps to final platform for last scan which is slow)
• Just walks along the bottom to escape
• No saving for Incinerator Drone which is pretty risky in terms of segmented timesavers
• Doesn’t stand on the drone for speed strats, also missiles for I drone lol
• Really really bad Incinerator Drone luck, bad gameplay too though (misses 2 missiles on the last cycle)
• Doesn’t save before Flaahgra either (!)
• Does the puzzle in Energy Core because it’s required at this point
• Doesn’t go for Furnace energy tank which surprised me
• Deadass ‘normal walks’ through the room to gathering hall/arboretum
• Scans the runes which is actually fast, at the time anyways because you *had* to triple bomb jump to clear the gate (or so people thought)
• Even more boring than normal Flaahgra, no genius strat yet (kip would discover this a few months later in January of 2004)
• Doesn’t fall in the water twice like CAL, which is great
• EARLY WILD IN AN ANY% RUN IN 2003 (!)
• Not the best ghosts, no chaining either and misses a couple of shots
• No dash off the flower, of course
• VHS player messes up a tiny bit here and burns a couple frames
• Saves in Magmoor

Segment 4:

• Doesn’t get Nature right now because the route has you come back through here again
• Generally fairly slow movement through Magmoor (as is true for most of the game though)
• Doesn’t get the energy tank in Magmoor either
• No cutscene time save here, and no dashing strats for Phendrana’s shorelines have evolved quite yet
• Doesn’t ghetto in Ice Ruins West and rolls instead (not that much slower)
• Boost ball before wave, as has always been the case in any%
• Decent at boosting though
• Does the puzzle quickly and correctly which is great
• Pretty decent baby sheegoths too
• Doesn’t quick kill adult sheegoth so that part actually kinda sucks
• Another loooooong segment
• No early Sun here, so we have to come back at the end of the run, good boosts though
• Have to go the weird way back through Magmoor to get Ice Beam early for no reason I can tell other than bad routing (seriously had nobody figured out it’d be faster to go through the other elevator to Ice?)
• People still haven’t realised that morphing into the wall causes that piston to get messed up
• Gets lifegiver using boost in Ruined Shrine haha
• Early Ice Beam, not much to say about it other than still uses wave port which is slow
• Misses charge shot on chozo ghost and doesn’t do the statue ghetto
• Doesn’t save time with Ice Beam fast equip after cutscene

Segment 5:

• No fast dash across Frigate Crash Site so it’s kinda slow
• Doesn’t get missile in Transport Access (to Magmoor) either
• Twin Fires Tunnel with a SCAN DASH and not a Double Bomb Jump
• Second try ghetto, but all in all not a bad geothermal core especially for the time
• Saves after a “hard” segment

Segment 6:

• Spider Ball skip to far Phendrana!
• Fast frost cave too
• WTF the flying pirates are so nice to him in Phendrana’s edge
• Gets the expansion here as would be standard until like mid 2015 when discovering Magma Pool IS saved time
• Gets Spirit
• Sorta slow Research Lab climb
• Goes for tank of shame
• Doesn’t get screwed by Edward
• Interestingly enough, he goes for the tank on the left side of where you come into Research Lab Hydra to climb the room, instead of the right which is generally used now
• Slow method to get Artefact of Elder, also unmorphs which is slow
• Doesn’t get thermal (bad routing)
• Does a scan dash to save like 4 seconds in Frozen Pike which is dope
• Even though it would only cost about 8 seconds, he decides not to save before one of the most random bosses in the game
• GOES FOR SNIPES ON THARDUS AND GETS A BUNCH ACTUALLY
• Doesn’t power bomb like I was hoping sadly but still good fight (altho needs the power bomb for Phazon Mines upcoming and really no chance of a drop between here and there so I’m not sure it was in the cards?)
• Uses fast path in Quarantine Monitor thankfully

Segment 7:

• Midway of Phazon Mines because f a s t
• Fights elite pirate which is pretty slow
• ‘Yolo’ school of loading Central Dynamo Access
• 19 square maze wtf
• Has to turn back because no X Ray (route really wasn’t very good, like I said)
• Doesn’t appear to know that all ‘elite’ style pirates have a programming bug that lets you cheese them by strafing
• Doesn’t turn off the gas in vent shaft, mercifully
• Shafts with spider
• Solves Ore Processing to get to Main Quarry and out of Mines. This one is weird to me: he doesn’t go for Warrior first because boosting through the wall wasn’t known until it was discovered by Nate on June 26/2003, which appears to be a week after this segment was performed. But climbing Ore Processing completely was figured out on February 2, 2003. Not sure why he goes the slow way here.
• L jump at the bottom of Great Tree Hall
• VHS burns a couple frames here again, drops audio too
• Artefact of world
• Left side reflecting pool because the right side wasn’t known/believed to be possible I suppose?

Segment 8:

• VHS really bites out a couple sections of this run here. Interesting strats for Great Tree Hall though
• Ghost skip was standard already, which is great. Kip does it first try. Does not get LGT missile
• Goes forward through mines toward Warrior (very slow but only known way at the time)
• Doesn’t strafe phazon elite and uses plasma beam which is just so slow
• Gets confused with how to climb Elite Research and doesn’t scan the panels
• Elects not to save/get health after a long segment
• No big boy strats because we have Spider
• Skipping grapple is great and very fast
• Jumps and turns to the side for that d i s t a n c e
• Saves before OP because he is not ‘insane’ (I can’t find the exact quote but he mentioned being ‘sadistic’ or something if you didn’t save before OP in a seg run)

Segment 9:

• No strafing strats on omega pirate but does ‘omega pirate sleeping’
• One cycle plasma beam on the omega pirate!
• Has to go back for Newborn because early newborn was a little ahead of this time
• Movement through Fungal Hall B was pretty clean
• Does quick strats for Newborn (boosting immediately after the blocks are gone and bombing early)
• Slightly sloppy back through Fungal Hall B but still pretty quick
• Uses spider ball tracks this time through Metroid Quarantine B…?
• Slightly messes up the scan with the energy tank
• Intentionally skips spider ball despite having it because the skip is much faster in Phazon Processing Center
• This is where the route gets pretty bad. Treks across some of Phazon Mines, some of Magmoor Caverns, some of Phendrana just to get Sun
• Fast security drones which is nice
• Sorta bad movement in Ice Ruins West
• Slow Sun cutscene (shoots the ice really early so can’t save time morphing)
• Have to get strength too, the way kip gets it really takes me back lol
• Avoids power bomb expansion for whatever reason
• Last segment before final bosses

Segment 10:

• No ghetto to Artefact Temple yet, I suppose this was found later or kip just didn’t feel like putting in the effort (but I doubt it after reading his posts and commentary about this run. Dude liked Metroid Prime and going fast)
• No fly by skip which wasn’t a ‘standard’ for segmented runs until a decent bit later in 2007
• No Ridley boost which is really slooooooooooooow
• Actually attempts to snipe Ridley, I’m not sure this is possible but I hope it is.
• Whole fight is just generally slow because Ridley flies around the whole time
• Actually misses some of the shots to stun ridley
• Really bad management of charge beam, and does like half damage possible on a cycle. This happens more than once too
• Misses snipes and ridley dashes

Segment 11:

• Worth starting this by pointing out that kip does not have Super Missiles or Ice Spreader for the final fight
• Actually does fast impact crater which is great
• Switches to the correct beam before the fight
• Doesn’t seem to miss too many shots which is good
• Also doesn’t go for snipes which is slow
• Tries to guess the beam instead of hitting the vulnerable phase that he just had (does this and guesses it incorrectly multiple times)
• Still hitting most of the shots which is good
• Hits the ‘old’ phase on the last sub chamber but only with plasma beam, and only once. Unsure of the intended strategy.
• Pretty good luck in subchamber 4 though. Plasma, power to ice, plasma, wave
• Almost does the strat correctly, but moves and forces Metroid Prime into a bad spot
• So pool strats, kip discovered Three Pool shortly after his 1:05 (later reworked into a 1:04 as a result of the three pool)
• Bad Metroid management, gets hit by one
• VHS has one final death attempt before the run is over (“I decided to just hang out in the intro until this finally stopped in mid January. I also got a new VCR at this time, because I knew mine was going to destroy one of my segments sooner or later, and I wasn’t going to worry about this in addition to already having to do the run.“)
• Done with a final time of 1:23