Speed Booster

Description

The speed booster is one of Samus’ many traversal abilities, which grants her the ability to run at incredibly fast speeds, becoming nearly invulnerable while doing so and allowing her to break through certain terrain. On top of that, she can perform a move called a shinespark by crouching while boosting to store her momentum which can then be released in any direction, propelling her in a straight line until she either contacts terrain that cannot be destroyed with the speed booster, or if her suit runs out of energy to sustain it (energy drain only occurs in Super Metroid). This makes for some very inventive and difficult puzzles, as well as speed-running strategies that tend to involve precise timing and quick reflexes.

• 

• 

Process

The speed booster does not continuously accelerate and does have a cap on its velocity. As such, Samus would output a constant amount of kinetic energy while running at maximum velocity. In order to solve for this energy output, all I needed to find was her mass and maximum velocity (Ek = (1/2)mv^2).

Her mass straight forward to find. According to Samus Aran’s Wiki page, the Super Metroid player’s guide documents her height and weight as 1.91 m and 90 kg respectively. However, they were mistranslated and in actuality, these measurements were attributed to her height and weight while in her suit. While it might seem jarring at first, it isn’t too far fetched to infer that her suit has little to no mass, given that she can project it from thin air, and that most of its protection seemingly comes from the suit’s energy shields rather than the hull of the suit (game over occurs when the shields fail not the suit’s hull). Therefore, 90 kg and 1.9 m will be the go-to mass and height for these calculations.

As for her maximum velocity, it was a bit more time consuming. Since her velocity is constant, it can be found using the equation v= Δd/Δt (change in displacement/change in time). To measure her displacement I took Samus’ pixel height as observed from her in-game sprite (48 pixels when standing straight) and used her height of 1.9 m to determine the number of meters in a pixel. I then multiplied the result by 16 (the pixel length of one square tile in the game). I then used a feature on my emulator called frame advancing which allows me to pause the game and advance it one frame at a time. Doing so, I observed how many frames it took for her to travel a predetermined number of tiles at her max velocity, which I then divided by 60 to get her time in seconds, as the game runs at 60 fps (60 frames = 1 second).

Results

After a bit of difficulty finding a good room and proper positioning, I managed to observe that Samus can travel 17 tiles in 29 frames (approximately 4.43 meters in 0.483 seconds) giving an approximate velocity of 22.3 m/s (80.28 km/h). While not close to supersonic as the manuals for some of the games state, it is still a fairly impressive feat. (Note that only exact values and not the approximates above were used in the final calculation for the sake of accuracy)

With velocity calculated, all that was left was to solve for kinetic energy. After substituting in her mass of 90 kg I ended with a grand total of approximately 22,360 joules. A very considerable amount especially for a single person (equal to about 5 grams of TNT), but no where near as ridiculous as some of her other abilities are bound to be, due to that fact that they are a bit more far fetched than running as fast as a car on the highway. The speed booster is merely the tip of the iceberg, as Samus has far more powerful abilities in her arsenal