Game:

Metroid II: Return of Samus (1991)

Duration: 1:17:17

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46

Check out my interview I did with Nicholas van der Waard for the, "Mazes and Labyrinths" series on his blog https://www.nicksmovieinsights.com/2021/05/mazes-and-labyrinths-Behemoth87.html

Since you start the game with 30 missiles, Low% in Metroid 2 collects just 3 items: Bombs, Energy Tank, Ice Beam. The Bombs are the meat and potatos of low%, using them to break the numerous blocks across the planet, climbing the giant empty rooms with the (in my opinion) best bomb jump physics in the entire series and of course dealing the 5 heavy blows to the Queen's belly. Ice Beams role is to freeze and therefore kill the 8 Metroid Larva located right before the Queen herself but it also does prove to be a useful tool throughout the run. Lastly, the Energy Tank is simply to enable you to survive the damaging effects of the Queen's belly. Echoing the Ice Beam though it is also very handy in providing you with that extra buffer.

Being that my 1:57 from 2018 was really just a semi fast playthrough with the aim of completing a low% run in Metroid 2 for the first time, I knew that if I put the time and effort in I could save as much as half an hour or more. I achieved this initially with my 2nd completed run in 1:25:21 on 24/4/21. The only thing stopping getting this category lower than 1:20 was being able to kill the Queen on the first visit when you have just 20 missiles. To pull this off you need some good Queen RNG to not run out, along with tight execution and steely nerve. Even with a perfect fight you finish the Queen with just 4 left over if you start with 20, at least with the safety first strategy I use. Roll on the stream just a week later I somehow managed to beat the Queen on the first visit in two runs. The first of these was a 1:16:36 with a textbook fight. The run was really good but earlier I fired off a missile by mistake during a few important nest areas which cost me dearly having to leave the nests to refill and then come back. Feeling that the mission was accomplished however, with no real expectation of beating it any time soon I still had plenty of time left in the stream to play for a bit more where I managed to repeat the success instantly with another first time Queen kill in this 1:14:57.

Sub 1:15 far surpassed my expectations of how low I could get this category so I'm quite happy about that. Some bomb jump Issues aside and less than steller missile drop RNG overall, there were no extra missile refill backtracks here that plagued my other runs. The Queen kill here was extra clutch at the end too. Spotting that her head was too high to roll into and using the final missile to stun her lower was a really cool way to close out the run.


The Colour scheme here was achieved after hours of experimentation with a complex arrangement of OBS filters, so I'm still playing the game on my TV with the usual dominant blue scheme for M2 that the Gameboy Player (GBI) provides. Below is my filter arrangement if you want to recreate it or something similar. Note: The order in which you put the filters also matters so if these were to be jumbled there will be some undesirable effects. I got my LUT filter from this site https://www.rocketstock.com/free-afte...​ ,and zeke39 is the final LUT in the downloaded list.

Streamlabs OBS filter arrangement:
Visual presets - Heat map.
Chroma key - blue, similarity 1, smoothness 450, key color spill reduction 1.
Color correction - gamma 0.5, contrast 1, saturation -0.25, hue shift 35.
Color key - black, Similarity + smoothness 1
Apply LUT - zeke39, amount 0.4

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