I put myself in full on practice mode and started grinding on Uyama's strats to improve my time.

I found out how cheap they are and got one with the hopes that I could become decent at Super Metroid. I absolutely despise emulator practice but Game Saver allows you one save state on console. But how would I do this? Enter the game changer, or should I say the Game Saver. Sub 21 seemed a nice goal since I knew I would never beat Mike, maybe I could just get close and feel like I was an actual competitor. I felt good about it and remember wanting to push my time to a respectable level. I did some practice and actually managed a meager improvement over my previous best. But that is like an animal right? I was pretty sure Mike was busy and would not be playing in it so I offered TMNT IV since I still loved playing it. No one would ever beat this run except Uyama himself and he was retiring from the game, finally happy with his run.įast forward to an online marathon called Happy Tails organized by Goobi which had an animal theme. He whittled the time down slowly until it was at an unreal low of 20:20!! Over 2 minutes faster than the old run. He quickly started crushing my times and I realized that I could not compete with the mighty dictator. According to Mike this is what really sparked his interest and got him back into the game. As I approached that magic number Mike and I were asked to be on a new speedrunning show called The Sunday Sequence Break. I set my sights on beating Uyama's 22:31, a run we both agreed was improvable and at least sub 22 was in order. He is just so damn overpowered that it is addictive to just crush the game with him. We quickly figured out that skipping enemies was not happening in co-op thus making the run somewhat of a bust.Īfter AGDQ 2012 was over I was still really enjoying playing the game. I eventually got the movements down well enough to play with Mike and not be totally embarrassed. I really overestimated my abilities because I remember being good as a kid, but I was really bad now.

He showed me some basics and I started playing on my own to learn before we would actually start practicing together. I first got back into the game when I asked Mike if he had any interest in doing a co-op run for AGDQ 2012.

Mike Uyama's 2006 run stood the test of time and even watching back in 2012 it was still as enjoyable as ever. This is a game I loved as a kid and one of the first runs I ever watched on SDA. Big thanks to Mike Uyama who pushed this game really far without much help thereby inspiring me to push it as far as I could.

Tmnt 4 boss shredder