Japanese Time Attack Results

2004-07-28 12:52:20 pm

https://secure.nintendo.co.jp/metroid/time/speed01.html
https://secure.nintendo.co.jp/metroid/time/perfect01.html

To save you from having to click anything the #1 records are:

any%: 28:09
100%: 53:08

The any% record I can believe, but that 100% record I want to see video proof. Considering my current best is 58:11 (which would put me 3rd on their list, and I KNOW can beat the 2nd place time), and the fact that I've gone over it from every angle to determine approximately what the fastest possible time would be, I find a 53:xx to be impossible to achieve through "normal" means. The best I've been able to calculate is a 55:xx, with xx being no higher than 40ish.

/discuss

Thread title:

Kridly

2004-07-28 01:21:39 pm

I read about that over at samus.co.uk and I want video proof as well. I'm not accusing them of cheating, but I find those times kind of hard to believe, not to mention that MZM hasn't been out over there as long as it has over here. But maybe those japanese people are super mutant gamers?

Dragondarch

2004-07-28 01:29:24 pm

The thing that gets me about the 100% record is that its 4m 40s faster than the 2nd place time, whereas the any% record isn't even 1 full minute faster than 2nd.
From my experience, when dealing with this many people that are trying to achieve the "best" time, you simply aren't going to have a huge variance between the top 5 or so.

Kharay1977

2004-07-28 01:57:45 pm

Quote from Dragondarch:

The thing that gets me about the 100% record is that its 4m 40s faster than the 2nd place time, whereas the any% record isn't even 1 full minute faster than 2nd.
From my experience, when dealing with this many people that are trying to achieve the "best" time, you simply aren't going to have a huge variance between the top 5 or so.

Well, you have to consider kip's 13 minute stomping of the previous MP record. Zoidi had 1:17 and kip took a WHOPPING 13 minutes off. Fastest PAL currently is 1:15, but... that is still a massive 11 minutes slower than kip.
There ARE very, very, very good metroid players out there, kip being one of them obviously.
However, for a game as short as Metroid ZM I do see your point that you'd want videoproof of a 4 minuten break of the previous record. But, I wouldn't call it impossible. Just... masterful. If it were true.

Dragondarch

2004-07-28 02:12:46 pm

Quote from Kharay:

There ARE very, very, very good metroid players out there, kip being one of them obviously.
However, for a game as short as Metroid ZM I do see your point that you'd want videoproof of a 4 minuten break of the previous record. But, I wouldn't call it impossible. Just... masterful. If it were true.

I'm sure there ARE very good players out there. I just can't see a 53:xx time coming from the route I use in my runs. Now if this person's found a better route then I want to hear about (namely so I can beat him Twisted Evil

).

I'm sure we aren't the only ones who want video proof. I'll bet the 2nd and 3rd place players want some as well.

nate

2004-07-28 03:15:59 pm

this puts us in the unique situation of actually having slower times than are printed in the media. do we know enough about how time attack works to certify that those are capable of being game sharked times?

ajbolt89

2004-07-28 03:19:59 pm

lol no way

Well, I'm pretty sure that it would be easy as shit to cheat a time. Get the password through code-breaker on the emu, and the ID from your own pack. Not too difficult....

nate

2004-07-28 03:21:59 pm

what if each cart has a unique id, and that's encoded into the password? could be easy to see if two people on two different carts both get a 02:00:00 time for example on normal.

savage-monkey

2004-07-28 03:49:38 pm

I think your I.D. is the following.

hoursecondssecondsminutes??? :this would be from your best any%run

then I don't know what the last digit would be. I think this because my I.D. is 05454568 and my recorded run was 00:56:54.

then the password would be just hard to hack.

Yoshi348

2004-07-28 03:59:19 pm

PAGE BREAKER

Ready and willing.

That last digit is probably a checksum, if your theory is right. Passwords generally have some digits at the end that are calculated from some bizarre mathematical combination of all the other digits; if the computer doesn't get the right answer, it knows the password is fake.

savage-monkey

2004-07-28 04:08:47 pm

I wonder what would happen if someone cracked the password/I.D./time. combination. I think the world would go crazy. and yeah I really want to see that 53:08. 100%. that would be something.

Kharay1977

2004-07-28 04:20:00 pm

I can easily envision methods by which they can reasonably secure time attack mode. However, nothing is totally uncrackable/hackerproof.
So... as such, I would still love to see an actual taping of this 53 minute run. Not to mention that if it indeed is true, it would be a marvelous run to watch. :-)

GameCube04

2004-07-28 04:27:09 pm

I don't believe that 28:09 any% time. Unless a different route was taken (and I don't see the route getting any better), the lowest possible time I can see is 28:40, and that's even stretching it quite a bit. To get 28:09, you'd have to not save at all, and to get every random factor right all in one run while getting through everything as fast as humanly possible... well, that's just not possible. There are more than a handful of random factors in each segment that I do, some of which have to be tried over and over again to get right (Tourian, Mother Brain, the beginning of Brinstar, Ridley). The second place time (28:52) I would believe if I saw video proof of it, but there's no possible way I see a 28:09 being done.

Does anybody know of any GBA emulators that are able to rerecord/slow down? For all we know these runs have been cheated via emulator.

There's also the possibility that they cheated by cracking the password. I know it happened in at least one Mario Golf tournament (Target Tour), but Nintendo removed the scores.

I don't believe that 28:09 any% time.  Unless a different route was taken (and I don't see the route getting any better), the lowest possible time I can see is 28:40, and that's even stretching it quite a bit.  To get 28:09, you'd have to not save at all, and to get every random factor right all in one run while getting through everything as fast as humanly possible... well, that's just not possible.  There are more than a handful of random factors in each segment that I do, some of which have to be tried over and over again to get right (Tourian, Mother Brain, the beginning of Brinstar, Ridley).  The second place time (28:52) I would believe if I saw video proof of it, but there's no possible way I see a 28:09 being done.

Does anybody know of any GBA emulators that are able to rerecord/slow down?  For all we know these runs have been cheated via emulator.

There's also the possibility that they cheated by cracking the password.  I know it happened in at least one Mario Golf tournament (Target Tour), but Nintendo removed the scores.

Red Scarlet

2004-07-28 07:11:19 pm

I('d) like to watch (some MP3 runs)

I think later in the first day I found Time Attack out (go AJ), Bladegash already had it cracked and had a password for 00:00:00 time.

Xin

2004-07-28 07:15:45 pm

There's a pretty good chance it uses the same or a similar system as Mario Golf or F-Zero GX, which were hacked as well. I haven't looked into it that much yet so I don't know.

Yoshi348

2004-07-28 07:40:48 pm

PAGE BREAKER

Ready and willing.

Yeah. You have the SMART cheaters who post plausible times (well, to non-speedrunners), as opposed to the idiot cheaters who post times of 0:20:00.

ShadowJedi

2004-07-29 10:43:59 am

Quote from Kharay:

Well, you have to consider kip's 13 minute stomping of the previous MP record. Zoidi had 1:17 and kip took a WHOPPING 13 minutes off. Fastest PAL currently is 1:15, but... that is still a massive 11 minutes slower than kip.
There ARE very, very, very good metroid players out there, kip being one of them obviously.
However, for a game as short as Metroid ZM I do see your point that you'd want videoproof of a 4 minuten break of the previous record. But, I wouldn't call it impossible. Just... masterful. If it were true.

The thing here is PAL and NTSC version differences. Without those, the difference would go down by about 8 minutes, I think. This makes MP a bad game to compare in, since there havn't been enough NTSC any% runs since all tricks were discovered.

But, as I see MZM, those times would be pretty darn hard to get. The only way I see for that 100% is if the player somehow got the PBexp in Norfair early, which should get a much better time, but there is no way to get it... Bah, I dunno, maybe the japanese version is shorter Rolling Eyes

.

[quote="Kharay"]Well, you have to consider kip's 13 minute stomping of the previous MP record. Zoidi had 1:17 and kip took a WHOPPING 13 minutes off. Fastest PAL currently is 1:15, but... that is still a massive 11 minutes slower than kip.
There ARE very, very, very good metroid players out there, kip being one of them obviously.
However, for a game as short as Metroid ZM I do see your point that you'd want videoproof of a 4 minuten break of the previous record. But, I wouldn't call it impossible. Just... masterful. If it were true.[/quote]

The thing here is PAL and NTSC version differences. Without those, the difference would go down by about 8 minutes, I think. This makes MP a bad game to compare in, since there havn't been enough NTSC any% runs since all tricks were discovered.

But, as I see MZM, those times would be pretty darn hard to get. The only way I see for that 100% is if the player somehow got the PBexp in Norfair early, which should get a much better time, but there is no way to get it... Bah, I dunno, maybe the japanese version is shorter  :roll: .

nate

2004-07-29 11:20:29 am

Quote from ShadowJedi:

maybe the japanese version is shorter Rolling Eyes

.

:/

Kharay1977

2004-07-29 01:03:21 pm

Quote from ShadowJedi:

The thing here is PAL and NTSC version differences. Without those, the difference would go down by about 8 minutes, I think. This makes MP a bad game to compare in, since there havn't been enough NTSC any% runs since all tricks were discovered.

But, as I see MZM, those times would be pretty darn hard to get. The only way I see for that 100% is if the player somehow got the PBexp in Norfair early, which should get a much better time, but there is no way to get it... Bah, I dunno, maybe the japanese version is shorter Rolling Eyes

.

Yes, I know a large portion of the 13 minutes comes from the PAL/NTSC difference. However, zoidi DID break kip's previous record. Which was in the 1:20s (1:21 ?), on NTSC.
Anyhow, can anyone confirm whether or not the Japanese version of MZM was actually the FIRST version? It could be they have some abusable bugs/flaws/glitches the rest of the world doesn't.

nate

2004-07-29 01:24:29 pm

i'm pretty sure the jp version was released after the american one. afaik metroid games have been released here first since 1994.

EDIT: i'm an ethnocentric pig. "here" is in the united states.

ajbolt89

2004-07-29 01:33:46 pm

lol no way

Hahaha... we need to find a ROM of the Japanese MZM, I would be more than happy to play through it several times to see any differences... so yeah, if anyone finds one get on IRC or something (rather than posting a link, I think that might be a bad idea).

Kharay1977

2004-07-29 01:45:56 pm

Quote from ajbolt89:

Hahaha... we need to find a ROM of the Japanese MZM, I would be more than happy to play through it several times to see any differences... so yeah, if anyone finds one get on IRC or something (rather than posting a link, I think that might be a bad idea).

I'll go searching, I'll come back to you if I find anything.

Xin

2004-07-29 02:00:01 pm

Too late :p.

Kharay1977

2004-07-29 02:01:07 pm

Quote from Xin:

Too late :p.

Well, I found it already... so... I'm not too late... :D

Xin

2004-07-29 10:42:06 pm

I mean that I already sent it to him.