A sequence break is a route through a game that its designers did not plan: collecting an item early, skipping an area, entering a room from the wrong side. The idea only makes sense in games built around a sequence. In Metroid and its successors, each new piece of equipment opens doors that were closed before, so the designers decide the order in which the world unlocks, and players set out to prove that they do not have to follow it. Edge’s example in 2007 was the original Metroid, where “a playthrough can be altered dramatically by finding the ice beam before the bombs (which should be impossible)”.
Fast facts
- Definition: “the use of a route other than that intended by the game creators”, the meaning most runners agreed on, according to Edge in 2007, while noting that they “don’t agree on a single definition”.
- Classic example: Metroid’s ice beam before the bombs.
- Earliest uses in the press: a reader’s letter to Classic Gamer Magazine in July 2004, and Retro Gamer’s Super Metroid feature in 2005.
- Where it mattered most: speedrunning, where a break can shorten a route, and low-percentage play, where it lets players finish with as little equipment as possible.
The term in print
By the middle of the 2000s the phrase needed no explanation among Metroid players. In July 2004 a reader wrote to Classic Gamer Magazine about Metroid: Zero Mission: “Sequence Breaking seems to have reached the Japanese designers. Zero Mission was definitely designed with Speed and Low Percentage runs in mind.” Retro Gamer’s feature on Super Metroid in 2005 described the game’s afterlife among its fans: “many practice sequence breaking and attempt to challenge the massive bosses with as little equipment as possible (20% or less is fairly good)”.
Edge explained the term to a general readership in September 2007, in a feature on speedrunning:
Given that basic standard, however, the tricks are fascinating — particularly ‘sequence breaking’. Though runners don’t agree on a single definition — thanks largely to an odd application, of all things, of the intentional fallacy — most take it as meaning the use of a route other than that intended by the game creators.
The “intentional fallacy” aside is Edge’s own. Literary critics use the phrase for the mistake of judging a work by what its author meant. Whether a route counts as a break depends on what the designers intended, and runners can only infer that from the game itself.
Later the same year Retro Gamer reviewed Super Metroid on the Wii’s Virtual Console and gave it 99 per cent for longevity, with no gloss at all: “The sequence breaking and perfect score challenge, yup ages.”
Which games reward it
The 2007 Edge feature separated two skills. One is execution: Contra and Mario, said the runner Mike Uyama, “have no route-planning to speak of, so they depend on better execution, and in some cases luck”. The other is routing, and sequence breaks belong to it. “The Metroid series in particular seems to have been made for route planning,” Edge wrote, “with sequence breaks and hidden tricks abounding in the series.” Uyama said the same of Zelda, which “has a lot of tricks, shortcuts and sequence breaks that are discovered every month, so it’s important to establish a good route and make sure you know all of the tricks”. Edge’s example was Ocarina of Time, where a route “incorporating all known shortcuts gives a chance of completion in 4h 46m”.
Nathan Jahnke, who founded the Metroid 2002 site, explained why video games leave room for this when pinball, say, does not: “all pinball games have more or less the same mechanics”, whereas video games, “being completely free of any kind of real-life physics or other common-sense rules, lend themselves well in many cases to imaginative ‘outside of the box’ solutions”.
Rules and boundaries
Speedrunning communities had to decide which breaks were fair. The Speed Demos Archive, founded in 1998 as a Quake site, would post a run of almost any game “as long as a verifier can be found for a run — but no game-ruining glitches such as stepping outside of the gameworld, tool-assisted runs, or use of homebrew emulators are allowed”. On that rule a skipped area could stand, but a clip through the edge of the world could not. Ali Campbell, one of the site’s administrators, described the routes as shared property: “It’s nearly always a single individual that performs a particular run, but the end product usually ‘belongs’ to the community as a whole in some way”. The speedrunning entry tells the wider story, from Doom’s recorded demos to Quake done Quick and beyond.
Sources
- Classic Gamer Magazine vol. 2 no. 2, July 2004, letters page: Greg Bandera on Metroid: Zero Mission and sequence breaking.
- Retro Gamer issue 19, 2005, p. 50: “The Classic Game: Super Metroid”, “Score Attack” box (see the Super Metroid entry).
- Edge issue 179, September 2007, pp. 78–83: “Scream if you want to go faster: the art of speedrunning” (the definition; Metroid’s ice beam; Ocarina of Time; Mike Uyama; Nathan Jahnke; the Speed Demos Archive’s rules; Ali Campbell).
- Retro Gamer issue 44, 2007, p. 94: Super Metroid Virtual Console review (longevity 99%).