Run Information

Run Information
Completion Date			April 19, 2024
State			Published
Runner			Nikolaj 'ThaRixer' Sørensen
Tag			Character: Zero
Links
Verification Thread

Run Comments
This is my Mega Man X4 Speedrun in 41:18, playing as Zero and getting 100%. This has throughout time been the most competitive category in the game, and I'm proud to present a new world record. This beat the previous world record by 6 seconds. If this time gets accepted on SDA it will also obsolete Mike Uyama's 19 year old 47:31, which was set in January 2005. The theoretical max back then was thought to be a high 46, but with the advancements of better movement, spider quick kills, saber dash canceling, and much more, the time is capable of going to 40:xx in the future with enough grinding. This run is not perfect by any means, but does require high technical skill, and a lot of patience waiting for the right boss patterns, which is total RNG. Gameplan: The early game wasn't exactly the best in this run, but in my book losing 5 seconds in the first 12 minutes is not a huge deal, as the overall goal of the early game is to take as many runs to the first "gauntlet." This is what i consider to be Jet Stingray, Web Spider and Storm Owl. These three bosses are very random and will determine the pace of your run from the get go. Get as many runs to these guys as possible, and reset if you don't get anything. - Sky Lagoon: Fairly poor for my standards. Took a hit in area 1 that i shouldn't have but again, and didn't get the best boss pattern, but no need to be picky about the starts - Magma Dragoon: Clean stage and a good boss pattern - Cyber Peacock: Decent stage, could have done the boss fight a bit better, but average RNG all around - Split Mushroom: Strong area 1 except for the midboss. This new strategy i did was developed by Garuda and modified by myself. You have to jump a bit after the bosses spikes come out and hope you land exactly on the boss as the spikes destroy the platform, if you land quickly enough you can Ryuenjin into him, dealing 1 more tick of damage as opposed to if you were just standing normally on the platform. This extra tick will allow you to kill the boss a bit quicker but as you can see in my run I was 1 hit away, losing 0.9 seconds. The jump timing is very precise and I was just a bit late here. Bad second staircase, but everything else was good. - Jet Stingray: Lost 4 seconds to a triple manta pattern, but this is still fine - Web Spider: I've always had trouble with consistency on this stage, it's very hard to get the same time every time but this time I had one of my very best ones. The highlight of this run is getting the first spider quick kill, saving an immense amount of time. These quick kills are exceedingly rare. Maybe about 1 in 30 runs get one, and it's 17 minutes into the run. So grinding for one of these is extremely brutal. Very good stage - Storm Owl: This stage was all over the place. Really sucks that i messed up Area 1 as I had poured in a ton of save state practice into it lately. My hand kinda just got caught on my controller cord at the start and I got hit, lost 1.5 to it. 2 cycled the miniboss which saves 2.5-3 seconds, but threw all the time save away at the stairs after.. I usually ground dash through that little tunnel but I tried to dash jump it all, as it's faster, and it completely threw me off. Perfect RNG on the Owl fight, couldn't be better. Slash Beast: Another highlight of this run. I caught both the fastest cycles you can with Zero in Area 1 and Area 2. The beast fight itself was also clean. 1 second off of my best ever. Frost Walrus: Another super strong stage, this was the fastest walrus stage I have ever done and for good reason. Area 1 and 2 were both very solid, I got the best midboss RNG possible where he keeps his eye open, and the walrus fight? Ideal. The strat I do on Walrus on saves about 1.1 seconds and is something I didn't see anyone else do in their runs when I was learning the game, but after rewatching an old Zero 100% tutorial by Hetfield, I saw him showcase it, and after timing it, it just felt like too much time to give up, especially considering you do the fight twice. Space Port: Messed up the damage boost, but good stage otherwise. Standard RNG on the boss, nothing special here Final Weapon 1 / Iris: I tinkered a bit with this fight too compared to previous records. I do ground slashes at the start saving about 15 frames. I also end the fight with 2 ryuenjins instead of 1 ryuenjin and 2 jump slashes, this is also a bit faster. Final Weapon 2 / General: At this point my heart was racing. You're essentially just hoping General goes up and gives you the hand attack. The run is dead otherwise. Fortunately he gives me the best pattern possible and I'm able to continue. Final Weapon 3 / Boss Rush: Dragoon was good. Spider was bad, probably the worst time loss of this run. Just got absolutely nothing. Peacock is peacock. Stingray once again lost me about 4 seconds with a slow pattern. Beast was very good. Mushroom was perfect. Missed the new walrus, losing 1 second. Owl was solid given the RNG. Final Weapon 4 / Sigma: The first two phases of the boss went flawless. Hit him with minimal lag in phase 1. My SDC was on point in Phase 2 despite being very nervous. And phase 3 was honestly fairly lucky as well. So here the goal is to have the Sigma face give you the dirt attack and NOT the wind attack, which he fortunately did. If you execute correctly and don't randomly get hit by the dirt, you can one cycle here. I am honestly shocked with how fast my heart rate was going that I was able to pull this off, even with a small slip up where I accidentally did the third attack of the saber combo. I'm proud of myself for being able to stay composed and recover despite that mistake. Lost about 6 seconds to the gunner giving me the bad attack, forcing me to two cycle, but overall I can't complain about this fight, it was the fastest fight I have done with that specific pattern by a few seconds. It went very well. Shoutouts to: SCWeeb1, Awsiel, JohnnyGo, UberFamicom, Bintendo, Garuda, 8Bit, Aptamerica and everyone in the X4 Discord channel. Shoutouts to my stream chat, my discord, the vortex discord, and everyone who supported and congratulated me when i got the time.

Run Comments

This is my Mega Man X4 Speedrun in 41:18, playing as Zero and getting 100%. This has throughout time been the most competitive category in the game, and I'm proud to present a new world record. This beat the previous world record by 6 seconds.

If this time gets accepted on SDA it will also obsolete Mike Uyama's 19 year old 47:31, which was set in January 2005. The theoretical max back then was thought to be a high 46, but with the advancements of better movement, spider quick kills, saber dash canceling, and much more, the time is capable of going to 40:xx in the future with enough grinding.

This run is not perfect by any means, but does require high technical skill, and a lot of patience waiting for the right boss patterns, which is total RNG.

Gameplan:

The early game wasn't exactly the best in this run, but in my book losing 5 seconds in the first 12 minutes is not a huge deal, as the overall goal of the early game is to take as many runs to the first "gauntlet." This is what i consider to be Jet Stingray, Web Spider and Storm Owl. These three bosses are very random and will determine the pace of your run from the get go. Get as many runs to these guys as possible, and reset if you don't get anything.

- Sky Lagoon: Fairly poor for my standards. Took a hit in area 1 that i shouldn't have but again, and didn't get the best boss pattern, but no need to be picky about the starts

- Magma Dragoon: Clean stage and a good boss pattern

- Cyber Peacock: Decent stage, could have done the boss fight a bit better, but average RNG all around

- Split Mushroom: Strong area 1 except for the midboss. This new strategy i did was developed by Garuda and modified by myself. You have to jump a bit after the bosses spikes come out and hope you land exactly on the boss as the spikes destroy the platform, if you land quickly enough you can Ryuenjin into him, dealing 1 more tick of damage as opposed to if you were just standing normally on the platform. This extra tick will allow you to kill the boss a bit quicker but as you can see in my run I was 1 hit away, losing 0.9 seconds. The jump timing is very precise and I was just a bit late here. Bad second staircase, but everything else was good.

- Jet Stingray: Lost 4 seconds to a triple manta pattern, but this is still fine

- Web Spider: I've always had trouble with consistency on this stage, it's very hard to get the same time every time but this time I had one of my very best ones. The highlight of this run is getting the first spider quick kill, saving an immense amount of time. These quick kills are exceedingly rare. Maybe about 1 in 30 runs get one, and it's 17 minutes into the run. So grinding for one of these is extremely brutal. Very good stage

- Storm Owl: This stage was all over the place. Really sucks that i messed up Area 1 as I had poured in a ton of save state practice into it lately. My hand kinda just got caught on my controller cord at the start and I got hit, lost 1.5 to it. 2 cycled the miniboss which saves 2.5-3 seconds, but threw all the time save away at the stairs after.. I usually ground dash through that little tunnel but I tried to dash jump it all, as it's faster, and it completely threw me off. Perfect RNG on the Owl fight, couldn't be better.

Slash Beast: Another highlight of this run. I caught both the fastest cycles you can with Zero in Area 1 and Area 2. The beast fight itself was also clean. 1 second off of my best ever.

Frost Walrus: Another super strong stage, this was the fastest walrus stage I have ever done and for good reason. Area 1 and 2 were both very solid, I got the best midboss RNG possible where he keeps his eye open, and the walrus fight? Ideal. The strat I do on Walrus on saves about 1.1 seconds and is something I didn't see anyone else do in their runs when I was learning the game, but after rewatching an old Zero 100% tutorial by Hetfield, I saw him showcase it, and after timing it, it just felt like too much time to give up, especially considering you do the fight twice.

Space Port: Messed up the damage boost, but good stage otherwise. Standard RNG on the boss, nothing special here

Final Weapon 1 / Iris: I tinkered a bit with this fight too compared to previous records. I do ground slashes at the start saving about 15 frames. I also end the fight with 2 ryuenjins instead of 1 ryuenjin and 2 jump slashes, this is also a bit faster.

Final Weapon 2 / General: At this point my heart was racing. You're essentially just hoping General goes up and gives you the hand attack. The run is dead otherwise. Fortunately he gives me the best pattern possible and I'm able to continue.

Final Weapon 3 / Boss Rush: Dragoon was good. Spider was bad, probably the worst time loss of this run. Just got absolutely nothing. Peacock is peacock. Stingray once again lost me about 4 seconds with a slow pattern. Beast was very good. Mushroom was perfect. Missed the new walrus, losing 1 second. Owl was solid given the RNG.

Final Weapon 4 / Sigma: The first two phases of the boss went flawless. Hit him with minimal lag in phase 1. My SDC was on point in Phase 2 despite being very nervous. And phase 3 was honestly fairly lucky as well. So here the goal is to have the Sigma face give you the dirt attack and NOT the wind attack, which he fortunately did. If you execute correctly and don't randomly get hit by the dirt, you can one cycle here. I am honestly shocked with how fast my heart rate was going that I was able to pull this off, even with a small slip up where I accidentally did the third attack of the saber combo. I'm proud of myself for being able to stay composed and recover despite that mistake. Lost about 6 seconds to the gunner giving me the bad attack, forcing me to two cycle, but overall I can't complain about this fight, it was the fastest fight I have done with that specific pattern by a few seconds. It went very well.

Shoutouts to:

SCWeeb1, Awsiel, JohnnyGo, UberFamicom, Bintendo, Garuda, 8Bit, Aptamerica and everyone in the X4 Discord channel. Shoutouts to my stream chat, my discord, the vortex discord, and everyone who supported and congratulated me when i got the time.