- Abuses programming errors in the game
- Acquires BIG BOSS rank (3 alerts, less than 24 kills, no more than 1 ration used, no special items)
- Aims for fastest in-game time
- Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs
- Manipulates luck
- Plays on the hardest difficulty (Extreme)
- Takes damage to save time
- Uses one controller
- Uses SRAM to unlock Extreme difficulty
Metal Gear Solid is the gripping tale of a badass soldier named Solid Snake, who infiltrates a military base on Shadow Moses Island to stop his British twin brother from blowing up America. Not even six minutes in, he gets himself thrown in jail, and becomes so distraught over failing to save a woman he’s never met that he tries to blow himself up with plastic explosives, only to lose a critical weapon in the process. He then defeats the world’s deadliest sniper by walking into a cutscene. What? You say that ISN’T the plot of MGS1? Well it is now! Deal with it.
COMMENTS
Wow, can you believe it’s been fifteen years since this game released on the original PlayStation? Now that it’s reached the legal age of consent in sixteen countries, let’s celebrate by breaking it into tiny pieces!
First and foremost, these comments contain huge SPOILERS regarding the new tricks in this run and may ruin the element of surprise for those unfamiliar with how broken this game has gotten since January. I’d suggest watching the run first and then giving this a read.
First of all, I want to give huge thanks to mgslade, magnum66 and TheThrillness, who discovered the new glitches you see in this run. Their contributions towards the TAS route are just as big, if not bigger, than brazilianjoker’s during the making of my 1:39 run. Thanks to their efforts (
and enthusiasm), it can now be officially said that
every game in the main series (aside from
Peace Walker, whose structure is just too fragmented for that sort of thing) has a major sequence break in it.
The TAS took a little over two months to make (I started on January 19th) and all input is new with the exception of the first part of the intro playaround.
General tricks:
Boss Upgrades
The ammo and health upgrades acquired from sequence-broken bosses are upgraded as soon as you enter the room. Furthermore, the boss room’s objects have the collision of the post-boss fight room, but the textures of the pre-boss fight room. This is why, for instance, I am able to walk up to the tank waiting in ambush, as well as walk through the bookcase in the Psycho Mantis room.
Codec cancel
The codec ringtone (for lack of a better word) that precedes mandatory codec conversations can be cancelled at any time by pressing Select, which is the manual codec-call button.
Early detonation
Nikita missiles can be detonated a few frames early by pressing the R1 (un/equip) button. You’ll see this particular button get a lot of use in some of these tricks.
Elevator manipulation
Every elevator in the game has a small chance of opening immediately after calling for it. The most likely scenario for casual players is that they’ll have to wait four or five seconds for the elevator to arrive. Luck is determined by how close Snake was to the elevator when approaching it and on what frame you call for the elevator.
Infinite combo
Snake’s standard punch-kick combo is in three parts: two punches and a finishing kick that deals more damage and knocks down enemies. Doing all three parts requires three presses of the Circle button within a specific window. Pressing two buttons, therefore, does only the first two parts of the combo, and pressing Circle just outside that window will have Snake start the combo all over again. Thanks to how ridiculous this trick is, it’s
become a series tradition to include the tactic in later games in the series too.
Item running
Running with an item equipped (excluding C4 and claymores) is faster than running without one, although the difference isn’t always noticeable to the naked eye.
Over The Shoulder
Mashing the Triangle button instead of holding it will place the camera just above Snake’s shoulder a la Resident Evil 4. It’s completely useless, but fun for playarounds.
R1 running
Normally, you are unable to run silently on floors with loud grates;
there’s even a joke about it in one of the codec calls. However, Kojima’s attention to detail backfires, as Snake doesn’t make a footstep noise unless he actually puts his foot on the ground. Snake’s animation pauses for a few frames when equipping or unequipping a weapon; as such, mashing R1 while on a grate allows you to run at (almost) full tilt without making noise.
Stinger cancel
You can move around two frames after firing a Stinger, with the missile moving on its own, by pressing R1 (a shocker, I know).
Throw cancel
Snake’s animation for throwing a guard can be cancelled four frames after initiating it by pressing (wait for it!) R1, saving about two seconds each time. The R1 button can also be used to cancel the animation for placing C4 the frame after it is placed.
New/Advanced tricks:
Box Climb
At the beginning of the staircase leading up to the Hind fight in Communications Tower B, there are a set of boxes meant to block the player from going back to the elevator, forcing you to fight the Hind. However, a glitch allows the player to climb on top of the boxes if they come to a standstill on a certain part of the staircase with their weapon unequipped, and then walk forward.
Crawl Clipping
This was the first major glitch discovered, which allowed all of this crazy stuff to happen in the first place. While lying and down and crawling halfway through a vent space (with Snake’s torso outside the vent), enter first person view, hold up and immediately press X. Snake will stand up in the vent space and (in most cases) will allow him to travel out of bounds.
Dead Weapon Glitch
If a weapon is collected after a story flag has already been triggered (such as getting the SOCOM, FAMAS, PSG-1 or Stinger after the torture warp), the game treats the weapon as an ammo box. Acquiring the weapon and adding the starting ammo amount are apparently two separate triggers, so recollecting the abovementioned items (except, for some bizarre reason, the Nikita missile launcher) will give you a “dead” weapon, with 0 ammo capacity and no way to collect ammo for it (since the game treats 0 as the weapon’s ammo cap). The only way to reactivate the weapon is to kill a boss, which increases ammo capacity on all weapons, though it does not refill ammo.
Early Door
When out of bounds, doors can be opened from the wrong side, since the map loading trigger is behind the door.
Weapons Glitch
In theory, this works similarly to the Ocarina Items glitch from Ocarina of Time. In order to perform this glitch, blow yourself up with plastic explosives or C4 while lying on the ground and then, at the right time, go into first-person mode and mash buttons. As Snake is getting up from the explosion, switch to a different weapon. You will get a glitched weapon which behaves like Weapon A, but expends the ammo of Weapon B (when referring to glitched weapons I’ll call it a Weapon A/Weapon B combo). This is normally a cool but useless trick, except for skipping Sniper Wolf 2 (having a Chaff/PSG-1 combo bypasses the usual trigger where Sniper Wolf shoots you for getting too close, activating the post-boss cutscene instead) and weapon erasure (see below)
Weapon Erasure
This is a potentially dangerous trick with one specific use in the run. After creating a chaff grenade/Dead Weapon combo, “cooking” the grenade so it explodes in your hand will treat the Dead Weapon as having -1 ammo, erasing it from your inventory entirely. (Simply throwing the grenade does nothing, since the grenade disappears as soon as it’s thrown. The grenade is considered a part of Snake’s character model until the Square button is released.)
In total, 26m28s were saved. Here’s a list of general improvements in this run over the last, including an explanation of how the major glitches are used:
- 2 seconds are saved in the opening map by luring the guard who spawns with the elevator by knocking on the wall, allowing me to enter earlier. This was an improvement I knew about going into my first TAS, but by the time I was told about it I had already undergone several restarts and was unwilling to start again for such a small trick.
- One second is saved by using a chaff to distract a guard in the tank hangar, a strategy that is now possible because I don’t use nearly as much chaff compared to the last run.
- Using the crawl clip on a certain vent just prior to meeting the DARPA Chief allows the player to access the Torture Chamber from the wrong side. Otacon gives you a Level 6 keycard after submitting to torture, thus allowing you to skip the Meryl ambush, Ocelot, the Tank fight, Gray Fox, Psycho Mantis, the first Sniper Wolf fight and everything in between, as well as all the backtracking in Disc 1.
- The only reason I go back to the Armoury at all is to collect a Dead PSG-1 (which is only needed for the Sniper Wolf skip). In an RTA run, the Dead FAMAS is also picked up, which is reactivated after collecting the tank’s boss upgrade.
- The crawl clip is used again in The Canyons, where it saves a few seconds of crawling and also makes the textures in the second part of the map fail to load properly. A further out-of-bounds trick is possible after performing the first crawl clip, but it requires the cardboard box.
- At the start of the Communications Tower A stairway chase, I throw a stun grenade into the open door, which cancels the small unskippable cutscene when the alarm is triggered. The Dead Stinger is also picked up, as it is needed to defeat Metal Gear REX and quickly kill the mouse that ate the PAL card.
- The weapons glitch is used to erase the Stinger from Snake’s inventory as you enter Communications Tower B. Since the game doesn’t want you getting stuck on the Hind fight without having the only weapon that can hurt it, Otacon’s “can love bloom on the battlefield?” cutscene is only activated when you have the Stinger. Erasing it sets up the boxes for the Hind skip, although the boxes themselves will only appear when you have gone up the staircase and entered the map where the Hind fight takes place.
- The box glitch is used to stand on top of the boxes blocking your access to the elevator. I then fall all the way down to the bottom, which skips the elevator ambush as well.
- The Sniper Wolf 2 fight has an invisible barrier which makes Wolf shoot you instantly if you cross while carrying any weapon other than the PSG-1. Thus, using a Chaff/PSG-1 weapon combo allows us to walk straight forward into the end-boss cutscene, since the game thinks we’re carrying a PSG-1 with us.
- The first elevator in Disc 2 is summoned faster by exiting and then re-entering the map, which cancels the elevator animation slowly rising to the top.
- The elevator ambush in Disc 2 is improved slightly by throwing all enemies into the bottomless pit instead of just two of them.
- For some reason, the Nikita missile launcher does not count as Dead despite it being picked up after the Torture Chamber warp, so I can still use it during the Vulcan Raven fight. Said fight has been improved by 50 frames, but it’s probably closer to 20 because I also don’t switch to chaff immediately after the fight. The Dead Stinger and Dead PSG-1 are reactivated during the boss upgrade.
- 17 frames were saved when acquiring the PAL key from the rat thanks to a new method.
- Wrong Door is used in the hot key room for entertainment, as well as picking up 10 extra Stinger missiles for the Metal Gear REX fight.
- The extra missiles, along with taking damage to manipulate REX’s pattern, make the second phase of the fight go by a bit faster. Also, the image of Snake falling on his ass after being hit by REX’s penis laser was simply too funny.
- The Liquid fight was slightly improved (0.43 seconds according to the convenient Final Boss Timer of Doom) with a better infinite combo setup, meaning I only had to do a single one-hit combo instead of the two or three in my last run.
- 2.75 seconds are saved during the jeep sequence at the end due to better luck manipulation, which means I only get hit twice now. Another 3.82 seconds were saved on the Jeep fight.
Unfortunately, in order for some glitches to work, some areas become slower. Specifically:
- You have to wait for two rounds in the torture cell instead of just one. Using the torture warp puts you in the cell immediately, and the game assumes you had survived one round of torture already.
- Extra backtracking is needed following the Sniper Wolf 2 fight to reacquire the Stinger after erasing it.
- Disc 2 in general is a bit slower due to backtracking changes stemming from a lack of resources generally acquired during the normal route of Disc 1.
- The first map of Disc 2 is a few seconds slower because I don’t have the SOCOM to deal with the guard watching the crane area, which also slowed down the guard patterns.
- A few frames were lost in the hot area as I moved over to the steam room thanks to the fade-in fade-out transition. This was so I could pick up 10 extra Stinger missiles for the REX fight.
- Some other frames in the cold room were lost for entertainment purposes.
Conclusion:
It`s been a rough few months working on this thing, but I`m happy I was able to pull it off. Until next time, folks!
Noxxa: Great improvement. Now the storyline makes even less sense. Accepting as an improvement to the
previous run.
