General Movement
General Movement Rules
These general rules can be followed for optimizing your gameplay. Note that most of these have some exceptions, especially when there are more goals in play than strict horizontal movement, and for absolutely optimal movement you sometimes have to experiment.
- Keep jumps small, spend as much time as possible on the ground.
- Don't do anything special when running off a ledge, just keep holding the direction.
- If you're rolling off a ledge morphed and intend to unmorph, do it early.
- If you're going to perform a shinespark anyway, do it as early as possible.
- One big jump is preferable if it allows you to skip a landing, where you would only run for a short distance (1-3 blocks), because landing completely cuts your horizonal speed and will force you to accelerate to full speed again.
Moving Speeds
The horizontal speed of different sorts of movement are as follows (from fastest to slowest):
1. Shinespark 2. Grounded Speed booster = Jumping Speed Booster (Space boosting) 3. Running on ground = Rolling on ground 4. Falling spinning = Falling upright 5. Falling morphed 6. Crawling in Zero Suit
Notes:
- Trying to just stay with whatever form of movement is the fastest is usually the best idea, but...
- The most glaring exceptions are Shinesparks, which have a very long startup time (relatively) and a lengthy bonk animation when hitting a wall. This means speed booster is almost always faster if you can maintain it for the same distance as the shinespark.
Wall Jumps
- Infinite Wall Jump is a technique that allows Samus to wall jump in a single wall infinitely. It can be used in every category and even casual playthroughs.
- To perform a Wall Jump you need to jump into a wall so that you're pushed against it, hold away from the wall and press the jump button. You can move back into the same wall to continue jumping infinitely.
- You can wall jump off of a single tile wall so long as you can jump high enough to reach between the middle to top-half of the block.
Note: This does not work when you have Space Jump.
Soft Morphing
If Samus is falling and hits the ground while being in her Morph Ball form, a small bouncing animation will play, which will cost a little bit of time.
- If you are not in a Morph Ball when you start falling, avoid the bouncing animation by morphing into a Ball as close to the ground as possible.
There are situations where this is not faster, e. g.
- You are already morphed when you start falling.
- Note: You would need to unmorph in mid-air and then re-morph near the ground. The unmorphing animation reduces Samus´ falling speed a little bit, which loses you the time that you saved by avoiding the bouncing animation.
Ledge Grabbing
After getting the Power Grip upgrade, you can grab and hang onto ledges and use "Up" or "A" to climb up a ledge. However, you can also do the Ledge Grabbing technique, in which you press "A" and the D-Pad in the opposite direction of the ledge. The inputs are very similiar to a wall jump.
In general, it's slightly quicker to do the jump motion, but this runs the risk of missing the ledge grab entirely if you press your away input before grabbing the ledge.
Bomb Jumping
If you place a bomb while morphed and stay within the bomb's blast radius, which is about a 3x3 size area around the bomb, and it will propel you upwards. This only works if you are still morphed when the bomb explodes.
Jump Bomb Jumps (JBJ)
Jump bomb jump (JBJ) is a technique that will allow Samus to jump, place a bomb, and then jump and morph into that bomb, so that she will hit by a bomb from a higher location. This can potentially save a bomb jump. It is a very common technique across all categories and is used to optimize bomb jumps, because it reduces the required bomb jumps by a single bomb jump.
Infinite Bomb Jumping (IBJ)
Infinite Bomb Jump is a technique that gives Samus the possibility to bomb jump infinitely by placing bombs with a set rhythm. There are both double and single bomb jump variants, videos for both are included here. It is a very common technique and is used in both Any%, 100% and many other categories. It is also useful for Randomizers.
Diagonal Bomb Jumps (DBJ)
Diagonal Bomb Jump (DBJ) is a technique that allows Samus to bomb jump diagonally. DBJ´s can be performed as a single and double bomb jumps with their own unique rhythm. It is useful in Kraid, in 100% and in Randomizers.
Horizontal Bomb Jumping (HBJ)
Horizontal Bomb Jumping is a technique that allows Samus to bomb jump moving left or right without gaining any height. This is accomplished by placing each bomb slightly to the side of the previous bomb. This is used primarily in the Acid Worm Skip (AWS)-Room.
Shine Sparking
A Shinespark is a tech that allows Samus to charge in 5 directions: The horizontal directions, vertically upwards or both diagonal upwards directions. For the Shinespark to work, the player needs to speedboost and crouch, saving the boost. Then jump and press the direction of the spark. Shinespark works the same way as speedboost so it will also kill enemies and break Speed blocks. If Samus shinesparks into a slope, she can still running to the direction, making it a normal speedboost.
Restoring Speedbooster on Slopes
If you spark into an upwards slope while holding the direction you're sparking, samus will maintain her speedbooster and begin running on the slope. This is used in a lot of places to maintain a shinespark over a longer period of time. In some cases this tech is required by the game in order to enter some areas blocked by speedblocks, and in some cases it allows you to carry shinesparks into further rooms where they were not originally intended to be used.
Shine Breaking
A shine break is the technique used to break speedblocks on the ground that normally require you to run over them with a speedbooster and lose your speed while falling into the ground. If you perform a shine break, you will either crouch and store your shinespark on the first half of the speedblock tile such that it breaks and you keep your spark, or you've used a setup to run past the last half of the last speed block so that it breaks behind you while you keep running and store your shinespark after it.
Space Boosting
Spaceboost is a tech that allows Samus to jump infinitely with Space Jump and a speedboost so she is Space Jumping at a very high speed. To perform this the player just needs to run and get a speedboost, and then jump continually in air. This also kills enemies on the way and breaks speed blocks, just as a regular speedboost.
Ball Sparking
If you have both Speedbooster and Hi-Jump, you can run and store the shinespark, but then go into the Morph Ball and activate a Ball Spark horizontally, vertically or diagonally. This techniques gets used occasionally.It´s main uses are the Escape Spark in the final escape, for the Brinstar Super and the Crateria Power Bombs. Its use can vary a lot between categories.