In the world of gaming, speedrunning has emerged as one of the most impressive displays of skill, dedication, and innovation. Speedrunners strive to push games to their absolute limit, exploiting every glitch and utilizing every frame-perfect trick to achieve completion in record time. Among the pantheon of speedrun-friendly titles, the Metroid series stands tall, thanks to its exploration-heavy gameplay, non-linear progression, and movement-based mechanics. And when it comes to Metroid speedrunning, few games have made quite as big an impact as the 2004 Game Boy Advance remake Metroid Zero Mission.
As a digital technology expert and avid gamer, I‘ve long been fascinated by the technical wizardry exhibited by the speedrunning community. Metroid Zero Mission in particular showcases the incredible depth and ingenuity that arises from die-hard players devoted to breaking down a game to its most fundamental parts. Today we‘ll be doing a deep dive into the history, techniques, and impact of Zero Mission speedrunning, shedding light on why this remake of an NES classic has become such an enduring favorite for runners around the world.
Remaking a Legend
To fully appreciate Zero Mission‘s speedrunning legacy, we first need to examine its place in Metroid history. The original Metroid, released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986, was a groundbreaking action-platformer that introduced the world to bounty hunter Samus Aran and her mission to eradicate the alien Metroids. While praised for its atmospheric world design and innovative gameplay concepts like permanent powerups and multiple endings, the NES Metroid also suffered from clunky controls, confusing level layouts, and copious amounts of backtracking and grinding.
Fast-forward nearly two decades to the release of Metroid Zero Mission for the Game Boy Advance. Rather than a mere port, Zero Mission rebuilt the original Metroid from the ground up, overhauling the graphics, sound, and level design while keeping the core structure and story beats intact. The remake also added welcome quality-of-life features like an in-game map, ledge grabbing, and diagonal aiming. Zero Mission‘s most substantive change was the inclusion of an original epilogue mission after defeating Mother Brain, where a depowered Samus must infiltrate a Space Pirate mothership. With its refined gameplay and wealth of new content, Zero Mission quickly became the definitive version of Samus‘ first outing.
Speedrunners immediately took to Zero Mission like Metroids to Phazon, and for good reason. Compared to the floaty physics and obtuse layout of the NES original, Zero Mission allows Samus to control precisely while giving runners ample tools to skip and sequence break huge swaths of the game. The GBA‘s hardware itself is also more speedrun-friendly, with less lag and slowdown than the NES. It also doesn‘t hurt that Zero Mission is one of the shorter Metroid games, clocking in at 2-3 hours for an average playthrough. For speedrunners looking to iterate on a quick run over and over again, Zero Mission is a perfect fit.
Categories and Leaderboards
Speedrunning always begins with a simple question: how fast can you beat the game? In the case of Metroid Zero Mission, runners have spent nearly two decades pushing the game to its limits across multiple distinct categories:
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Any%: This is the most standard category, challenging runners to complete the game as quickly as possible by any means necessary. The current any% world record belongs to American runner Behemoth87, who blasted through the entirety of Planet Zebes in just 25 minutes and 19 seconds. To put that in perspective, the very first any% world record back in 2004 was a 1 hour and 8 minute run by Smokey. Through years of route refinements and newly-discovered glitches, any% runs now clock in at under half that original record time.
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100%: On the opposite end of the spectrum, 100% requires collecting every powerup and expansion in the game. This includes 5 Energy Tanks, 7 Reserve Tanks, 50 Missile Expansions, 4 Super Missile Expansions, and 15 Power Bomb Expansions, in addition to the 10 major upgrades. Naturally, 100% runs take quite a bit longer than their any% counterparts, with the current world record standing at 49:04 by Japanese runner Kosmic. In order to achieve that sub-50 minute time, Kosmic had to map out the most efficient path through the game, picking up key upgrades early while saving minor expansions for cleanup later in the run.
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Low%: Often referred to as "9%" after the number of mandatory items collected, low% is a minimalist run that allows for just 1 Energy Tank, 1 Missile Expansion, the Morph Ball, and Bombs. Without the Varia Suit, Speed Booster, or Hi-Jump Boots, low% runners must exploit the game‘s wall jumping and bomb jumping mechanics to overcome Zebes‘ many obstacles. As the most difficult Zero Mission category, only a handful of runners have achieved a low% clear. The current world record is a mind-boggling 34:32 by Japanese runner molotov, barely edging out American runner Dragondarch‘s previous record of 34:33.
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Reverse Boss Order (RBO): Perhaps the most unique Zero Mission category, RBO flips the game‘s boss progression on its head. Runners must defeat Ridley before Kraid, requiring some fiendishly difficult tricks and movement to access Norfair early without the Varia Suit or High Jump Boots. RBO runs culminate in the infamous "Ridley Roulette", a tricky quickkill that involves freezing Ridley with an Ice Beam and unloading a barrage of Super Missiles. The RBO record currently belongs to American runner Slurpeeninja with a time of 41:37.
Data sourced from speedrun.com leaderboards
Over the years, countless runners across multiple categories have worked tirelessly to optimize routes, discover new glitches, and push Zero Mission to its absolute breaking point. With active leaderboards on speedrun.com and a passionate community always looking for fresh blood, the future of Zero Mission speedrunning shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
Running on Glass
In order to understand how Zero Mission speedruns manage to shave off so much time, we need to dive into the nitty gritty technical details. Runners exploit glitches in the game‘s code to pull off all sorts of unintended tricks, from skipping bosses to warping straight to the endgame. While some of these tricks can be performed on original GBA hardware, the discovery and implementation of certain glitches requires the use of emulators that can pause the game on a dime or advance it frame-by-frame.
One of the most common tricks in Zero Mission speedrunning is the infinite bomb jump (IBJ). By morphing into a ball and dropping a bomb at the apex of a jump, runners can chain together bomb explosions to gain height quickly. With pixel-perfect timing, it‘s possible to ascend entire vertical shafts without the need for additional powerups like the Hi-Jump Boots or Space Jump. By bomb jumping up to Norfair early, runners can grab the Ice Beam and Varia Suit before taking on Kraid, a key route change in most categories.
Another ubiquitous trick is quick kill, a method to rapidly deplete a frozen enemy‘s health by unmorphing on the same frame the Ice Beam connects. Quick kills see the most use on bosses, allowing runners to finish fights in a matter of seconds rather than minutes. Pulling off a perfect quick kill is one of the biggest time savers in Zero Mission, but it requires extremely precise timing and spacing to execute. Famously, the world‘s top RBO runners risk a run-ending softlock with the tactic known as the "Ridley Roulette", which relies on a frame-perfect quick kill to bypass Ridley‘s hardest attack patterns.
Even more critical to speedrunning than quick kills are the out of bounds tricks Zero Mission runners have discovered over the years. By taking damage and transitioning through doors on the same frame, it‘s possible for Samus to clip out of the map geometry entirely. Runners can then navigate out of bounds to access later areas or warp directly to bosses. One of the most notorious examples is the "Alcatraz Escape", where runners can leap to the final Escape Shaft from the Kraid boss room. First achieved in a 2005 run by djcouchycouch, the Alcatraz Escape relies on a pixel-perfect ledge grab to clip through a wall, bypassing the entirety of Ridley‘s Hideout.
Ultimately, every glitch and sequence break in Zero Mission speedrunning exists because of hidden quirks in the game‘s underlying code. By exploiting oddities in enemy placement or manipulating memory values, it‘s possible to trick the game into loading Samus into unintended states or locations. Accessing these glitches often relies on external tools like memory viewing software and controller input macros. Some Zero Mission tricks are so precise that they can only be performed consistently by a computer program called a "TAS" or tool-assisted speedrun. TAS pushes Zero Mission to its absolute limit, chaining together frame-perfect tricks to achieve feats that are nigh-impossible for human hands.
While casual players may view these glitches as game-breaking exploits, the speedrunning community sees them as yet another avenue for mastery and innovation. Through relentless experimentation and collaboration, Zero Mission speedrunners continue to find new ways to break the game wide open. As hardware becomes more accessible and emulators grow more sophisticated, it‘s exciting to think about the speedrunning breakthroughs yet to come.
Putting the Run Back in Zero Mission
Zero Mission may be the premier game for Metroid speedrunning, but it‘s far from the only one. Ever since Metroid laid the groundwork for sequence breaking and alternative routes back on the NES, speedrunners have been discovering new ways to tear through the series at lightning speeds. While later Metroid games expanded the scope with more powerups and larger maps, they still provided ample opportunity for routing and optimization.
Among the 2D Metroids, 1994‘s Super Metroid remains the gold standard for speedrunning, thanks to its wealth of glitches, intricate level design, and multiple means of progression. With control options on SNES, Wii, and Wii U, Super is also more accessible than the handheld-only Zero Mission. The recent Metroid Dread on Nintendo Switch is poised to follow in Super‘s footsteps, with a passionate speedrunning scene already uncovering sequence breaking opportunities and planning fearsome routes. While Dread has a long way to go to match Super and Zero Mission‘s decades-long legacies, the future looks bright for Metroid speedrunning.
Speedrunning‘s impact on the Metroid fandom and gaming culture as a whole cannot be overstated. The famous "Secret World" in Super Metroid, a hidden area that requires a challenging series of walljumps to access, served as inspiration for the standalone epilogue in Zero Mission. And when the developers at Nintendo R&D1 sought to spice up Zero Mission‘s hard mode, they took a page from speedrunners‘ books by hiding additional powerups in sequence breakable locations. As the audience for speedrunning has grown, so too has its influence on game development.
"I think the coolest thing about the Zero Mission speedrun is how it completely changes your perspective on the game," says Behemoth87, the current world record holder in Zero Mission any%. "You start to see all these hidden pathways and possibilities that you never would have noticed in a casual playthrough. It‘s like learning a new language."
Metroid speedrunners aren‘t just expanding how we play these classic games; they‘re also using their skills for good. Since 2010, the speedrunning marathon Awesome Games Done Quick has raised over $17.2 million for charity, with much of that coming from Metroid block donations. The Metroid community also holds its own marathon called Metroid Marathon, which has raised over $80,000 for Doctors Without Borders since 2012. It‘s heartening to see the power of a shared passion for pushing boundaries channeled into making the world a better place.
At the end of the day, speedrunning is about more than just getting the fastest time. It‘s about challenging yourself, collaborating with a community, and finding creative solutions that give a beloved game new life. With their ingenious tricks and jaw-dropping movement, Zero Mission speedrunners prove that even a 15-year-old GBA game still has untapped potential waiting to be discovered. Here‘s to the next generation of bounty hunters, armed not with arm cannons, but with an insatiable drive to break the unbreakable.
