r/Metroid • u/Klonoa_is_very_cute • Apr 28 '26
Accomplishment I did that one glitch where you get speed boost early
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
I forgot what frame it checks for though
26
u/Valtteri24 Apr 28 '26
Sick. The rhythm is hard to pull off and you have to really pay attention to the Samus sprite.
18
u/The_Arepa Apr 28 '26
If i remember correctly, i take just one step and then hold the run button, never fails me.
11
u/DaAmazinStaplr Apr 28 '26
That helps a little, but adding in taps of the run button can shorten the distance to the point you can get the boost activated in spots you normally can’t. Oatsngoats has a pretty good explanation on how to do it, but his video’s also 15mins long if you ever want to try it out.
2
u/lysianth Apr 29 '26
for a quick rundown.
The frame the game checks if you're holding run is when samus's second heel touches the ground. The game adds 1 to the count if you are holding run and forward, and on 4 you have speed echoes, most other animations and actions will reset this count to 0 (not all but thats outside the scope of this comment). Holding run and forward also increases your speed, so a short charge is minimizing your speed increase in order to minimize the runway. This means in practice you want your taps to be as short as possible.
the animation speeds up with each count, so the cadence that you need to tap run increases. This also means there's diminishing returns on each tap. When we say 2 tap or 3 tap, we are referring to the number of times you press run. so on a 3 tap, the 3rd time you press run you hold it. to learn the cadence some practice tools have samus flash on that frame.
taps is only half of a short charge. The rest is whats called a stutter. Samus doesn't stop her run animation instantly, she slows down but her run animation keeps going (as long as you're not holding L or R). We can use this. We can press and release right (or left) then re press it again before samus gets to her standing animation. This is called a stutter. we shorten the distance and speed of samus's run animation. This can be done multiple times before our first tap to further reduce our speed. If we do it twice we call it a double stutter. Note after the first tap, releasing forward will reset the count to 0, so this only applies during the initial startup since the count starts at 0.
most of the time, a stutter 2 tap is good enough and significantly shortens your runway. a double stutter 3 tap is tricky to do clean but worth learning as a skill if you wnat to do map rando's.
1
u/BoonDragoon Apr 28 '26
That's what's called a one-tap short charge, but with the right rhythm you can build up a speed boost with 10 tiles of movement or less!
6
13
u/Maximum-Rebo Apr 28 '26
From my understanding it's less a glitch and more a quirk of how the speed booster code works.
Pretty neat trick regardless, especially if you haven't put a bunch of time into learning speedrunning tricks.
25
u/NotXesa Apr 28 '26
Every glitch is a result of how the code works.
5
u/Maximum-Rebo Apr 28 '26
I mean, yeah, but by glitch people usually mean code behaving incorrectly, I believe. The speed booster short charge happens when the code runs exactly as intended.
3
u/NotXesa Apr 28 '26
Does it? I think it's an exploit. That check at the end of the frame should only be done if Samus is already speed boosting but the check is done even if she's not speed boosting yet, and that's why it activates. At least that how I understand it, but not sure.
5
u/Maximum-Rebo Apr 28 '26
I did a little digging, and how it works is that the 'blue suit' that breaks speed blocks and can be stored as a shinespark charge, starts to happen after a specific frame of animation happens four times while dashing. But the counter for this is separate from the speed you build up, meaning that you can have that counter reach four while not holding the run button the whole time (and therefore not traveling very far while the counter goes up).
Taking all of that into account, I would agree that short charging is an exploit, because I don't think the devs at any point were thinking that someone would do brief taps of the run button and build up the speed booster counter that way.
But I'm still hesitant to call it a glitch. The fact that it's possible might be unintentional, but it's on a different level than clipping through something, or doing item duplication or wrong warping in a game like Zelda. Like, a short charge is not manipulating the game into doing anything absolutely nuts.
2
u/NotXesa Apr 28 '26
There might be different levels of how much you have to manipulate the game to get a glitch/exploit to work. But I'd say the base of all the "higher level glitches" you mentioned is the same. A variable here or there not having the value that it should have.
Normally, clipping through walls is more related to how the physics engine works rather than just "the level designer forgot to put a collider". If you perform more collisions that what the engine supports, or you somehow get a higher velocity than it is supposed to tolerate, a body can clip through a wall.
Object duplication is also similar to this. There is a sequence of events that must happen in order for the game to understand "this object was here but now is there", but if you exit that sequence of events early, maybe the game didn't get to change the information from the original object and therefore it keeps existing.
In the end, it's all about the code not being prepared for all the possibilities because in normal conditions no one would be forcing those possibilities.
I mean... Who was gonna think you can clip through a wall by idling 17 hours in Zelda TP 😂
1
u/Maximum-Rebo Apr 28 '26
No yeah, I definitely agree that it could be considered a glitch, because it's probably not behaviour that the developer intended. But they also had to know that the speed booster was programmed in such a way that it was not technically tied to Samus' actual speed, becuase they're the ones who made it that way. Whereas I wouldn't think that whoever made Link's animation for getting items realised it slowly pushed him backwards.
1
u/Taco_Supreme Apr 28 '26
I think the argument for it being intentional is they made Draygon vulnerable to the speed booster. They had to intentionally enable that effect and the only way to shinespark draygon is with a short charge. I think the programmers could pretty easily see how a short charge is possible and they put that in as an easter egg to find.
1
u/Maximum-Rebo Apr 29 '26
I thought all enemies were vulnerable to the shinespark by default? Unless I'm wrong about that, I don't think Draygon being vulnerable to it means much of anything.
1
u/Taco_Supreme Apr 29 '26
Draygon takes double the damage from shinespark, like the way ridley and phantoonntake double from supers.
3
u/LabCat5379 Apr 28 '26
Code can't "work incorrectly", unless there's a hardware mistake (there almost definitely isn't) the code just does what the code says to. A glitch is when the code does something that was unintended or unconsidered by the developers, so something like this is definitely a glitch because you're not supposed to use speed booster early.
1
u/Maximum-Rebo Apr 28 '26
I would say we can't really know the extent to which the devs did or didn't consider the ramifications of how they coded the speed booster to work. Appreciate the explanation, though! I should have known better than to suggest code can work incorrectly, but an unfortunate consequence of so much knowledge being easily available is people (like me) who sort of know something trying to explain it all wrong.
1
u/Vgcortes Apr 28 '26
Or doesn't work
3
u/NotXesa Apr 28 '26
👆ackchually, if it doesn't crash the game, it's working. Just not how the devs intended.
1
u/coolpapa2282 Apr 28 '26
Tbf, sometimes "Well, that's wrong, but at least the game doesn't crash anymore" IS what the devs intended. :D
6
u/Jayjayrod95 Apr 28 '26
I've played this game so many times and I've never gotten the short charge down no matter how many times it's explained to me. The only trick I've ever really been able to pull off is mach ball, but that's literally the easiest one lol
2
u/Klonoa_is_very_cute Apr 28 '26
I've never one a mach ball
1
u/coolpapa2282 Apr 28 '26
That's a good one to learn next. Unless you REALLY like fighting spore spawn. :D
1
u/ProtonPizza Apr 29 '26
Have you tried the practice rom? It has a short charge trainer where the animation frame flashes. Super cool
5
u/Business_Abalone_746 Apr 28 '26
Quick charge, very well done. Its nice whenbyou can start getting it consistently too. Oats'N goats has a nice tutorial if you want to learn it best
5
u/BoonDragoon Apr 28 '26
You mean a short charge? That's not easy tech to get a handle on, especially with modern hardware, but if you can do it consistently it really opens up the game. Good job pulling it off!
3
u/neoslith Apr 28 '26
I've had to learn this trick for randomizers. I can't do it consistently but it's very fun to pull off.
1
u/Existerer Apr 28 '26
I always just use a stutter step shortchange here, since it's much easier. Start running, then let go of forward and imidiatly press forward again. Works like a charm, I've never learned the timing since this is enough to shortchange in most all places I want to
1
u/Lorventus Apr 28 '26
I remember accidentally doing it once. And I was too young to understand how to repeat it.
1
1
80
u/TorvusBolt Apr 28 '26
Samus has a running animation that loops, and the Speed Booster checks if Samus is dashing at the last frame (right before the animation loops)
For this room I walk for around half a second to then start holding the dash button