Any%

The optimal any% route involves defeating Ridley first by taking the Norfair shortcut, then defeating Kraid to open Tourian, defeating Mother Brain, finishing the suitless section and then defeating Mecha Ridley. The optimal amount of ammo for this route gets 50 missiles, 6 super missiles, and 1 Etank, but there are a lot of extra safeties that can be grabbed along the way.

There are 2 important route divergences:

• Right before entering Ridley you can opt to get Hi Jump early or wait or get Hi Jump after leaving Ridley
• After entering Kraid you can opt to kill the Acid Worm to skip having to do a difficult trick, or skip the Acid Worm entirely

Brinstar

Norfair

Crateria

Norfair

Ridley