Game:

Metroid Prime Pinball (2005)

Duration: 1:48

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2

Played on emulator (melonDS 0.8.3). US release. Single Mission mode (i.e., time attack).

Mobile-friendly version: https://youtu.be/JDCHB_5Rd6A (in case YouTube is limiting you to 480p)

The silliest level of a silly game for the Nintendo DS. There are hardly any recordings of this mode, but this is currently the fastest claimed time I'm aware of for this mission. Though, I would not be surprised if this time is beaten because this mission is ridiculous.

The main "strat" seems to be to collide balls as much as possible. There's a lot of idle flipping to keep balls in play. This attempt had a very good start and a great finish yet still could have been faster. One subtle strat is to sacrifice a ball in order to release locked balls (since they won't unlock if there is more than one ball in play). Otherwise, it's mostly a grind with a few finicky skill shots and a minor glitch which saves at least 2 seconds.


BOMB BOOST

It's not immediately obvious you can use bombs in this mission, but you can -- at least, in the very beginning. Normally, Samus will explode any bomb if she rolls close enough to it, but the game won't trigger this action until Samus has rolled out of range of it first. This check ensures that bombs don't immediately explode when they're dropped. However, there is a scenario where this exception can be bypassed.

Drop a bomb while Samus has some momentum so she is immediately rolling out of it's range. If you can drop a 2nd bomb when Samus is just leaving range of the 1st one, you will bypass the check for the 2nd bomb so it will immediately explode, thus boosting Samus forward. These bombs may need to be dropped within a few frames of each other depending on Samus's speed, but that time window gets wider as Samus slows down.

In this particular situation, you want to quickly mash the bomb button when Samus is within reasonable range of the cradle (though it's technically possible to do this near the bottom of the top screen, it will be more difficult). Ideally, you want to drop only 2 bombs, but dropping a 3rd after landing the boost is not likely to do more than maybe give Samus some extra air and waste a little time. Note, the trick is much easier to do while Samus is nearing the apex of the launch (i.e., moving slower but still going up), but this may waste a little extra time caused by overshooting the target.

The lowest time I've been able to get for the start is 1.92, but lower should be possible especially if you can do subsequent button presses within 2 frames. In any case, you can except some variability in the landing due to the way Samus moves, so you may lose time randomly depending where/how Samus lands.

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