This game is awesome, guys! I'll prove it. Let's Play Super Metroid (Redesign)!

Without further adieu, we're playing Super Metroid: Redesign, a pretty awesome (haha) romhack of the original game.



Of course, before we start, we must configure the controls.


This is, of course, the only sane configuration possible, and if you play the game any other way you're crazy. Yes, crazy. Unless you're hotarubi and use your index finger and thumb simultaneously in a claw formation to hit multiple face buttons at once. But he's crazy, so I'm still right.


Still great old Super Metroid. I don't see a Redesign here. I've been lied to.

Wait. "It was there that I foiled the plans ...". Foiled the plans? Who is Samus, a 12 year old with a dog? Mother Brain will get you someday, Samus! And your meddling dog too!


Looks like dear old MB is already on the ball. I was there 5 seconds ago, but now I have to go all the way back. Do you have any idea how much gas costs in this economy?


Still no differences.


There's a difference.

You can't see it in the pic at all, but Samus's physics have been drastically changed. Instead of the relatively floaty jump she has in Super, she now drops like a rock, ala Fusion or Zero Mission. Falling is much faster, and she's much more stiff overall. Of course, I can get used to this.

Trivia: In the patch's readme, the developer stated that he reworked a bunch of the physics so long-time players (like me and Brick) wouldn't be too familiar with the game, and would have to experience it anew. I'm not sure whether I should be hi-fiving him or punching him in the face for that. But I can work with it.

So yeah, let's go explore this space station.


Well, that sucks. I wonder what happened.


Hey, it's the Metroid! The super-freaky alien virus outbreak that killed the humans left this thing alone! Awesome. Just one question: how do I pick it up? And why can't I walljump?


Oh.

The Ceres Ridley fight in this game is easy as hell. Yes, easy. You may not know this, but it's actually possible to win, and it's very easy in this version. Normally, Ridley beats up on you until you have 29 or less health remaining, at which point he gets cold feet, decides to not finish the job, and flies off. However, if you can hit him 100 times with anything (yes, anything - the regular unupgraded pea shooter power beam does just as much damage to him as a fully charged ice wave plasma shot), you "win". This is moderately difficult in regular old Super, since you have to actually dodge stuff and his tail (which does something like 20 damage out of your 99 total health) makes it so you can ill afford some mistakes. However, in this game?

Just button mash at him from point-blank when he's on the ground at the start of the fight, and when he starts moving just stand on top of the door and fire forwards. You see, the rate of fire has been upped in Redesign. I'm not quite sure how - I think the power beam pellets travel a lot faster, which makes it so the limitation on the number of shots on screen is a lot less aggravating.

Anyways, just stand up here and wail on him. I don't think it's possible to lose, even if he does nothing but charge you with his tail repeatedly. And I suck at button mashing, so you guys probably have an easier time than I do.


When you hit that magic 100, Ridley says "fuck it" and flies off the top of the screen. Except his grip is loose after getting beat up, and so he drops the Metroid canister. That second shot is him coming back down to pick it up. As he does so, he decides this really isn't healthy for him, and he sets you up the bomb and gets the hell out of there.


Well. We have another difference here. Instead of having a minute to escape, you've got 30 seconds! GO SAMUS GO

Trivia: Some hacks suck! I can't remember which hack this was, since I certainly never beat it, but one of them redesigned Ceres a bit. It replaced the second-to-last room with a pit and some platforms. Now, the bottom platforms in this room were a small height off the ground. Exactly Samus's height when crouching, actually. Now, the physics were changed in this hack too (maybe it was an older version of Redesign, heh), so I missed the jump up, and my spin-jumping Samus got wedged under the platform and could not get back out, since she couldn't move left or right and doesn't have the Morph Ball yet. I ended up waiting out the timer and died.

What were we doing? Right, the escape! GO SAMUS GO


Ridley's power bomb is so powerful, it destroys the station before it goes off! Man, the crap falling from the ceiling really looks way better in action.


And I make it out, with 9 seconds to spare before Ridley's double-power-bomb explodes and kills us all. Yes, the station is tilting back and forth in the first shot. I've always loved the little details like this, even if said little detail makes scaling the final room a lot harder. And yes, Samus is a qualified Galactic Federation Badass Space Pilot, and is not about to hit a giant rock.

And now we get to Zebes.


This already looks very different, and we haven't even landed yet!


yes please

Oh wow. I tried playing through this a few years ago and gave up a little while after the endless/repeating cave part.

Most exciting! I recently watched a painful LP of a dude struggling through the insanity of Metroid Limit, and I am ready for more.

I was on the beta team for this hack. If you think it's hard and confusing in its current state, get this: you don't know how good you have it. It used to be harder. Way harder.
For instance, let me tell you one of the earliest differences in the game:


This didn't work until just before the hack was ready for release. If you used the in-game saving feature, large sections of the map would go black when you restored the file, meaning you'd have to explore them again. It took Drewseph several updates to hack the game so it would work as expected.
Few testers noticed this because we all abused savestates liberally.

I've never understood this. The way my thumb sits on the controller has my thumb resting comfortably over the b and the y button. B to Jump and Y to shoot. I don't understand the logic to the style you chose. that'd be like playing zelda on 64 and having the sword be on frickin c-right and the roll on c-down or something. illogical!!

This guy gets it!

Dart: I'm good, since I don't fall into a pit of lava if I fail a dbj.

And I guess my thumb is just that well-endowed, because it's really easy for me to hit A and B at the same time, and I don't have to constantly stretch it across to the Y button. [edit]actually bleh, I'll post a pic of how I hold the controller sometime. It makes sense, I promise. My thumb defaults to the A button, and pressing B is just a twitch, while I have to actually move it for Y.

(you're all still crazy, btw)

This should be interesting - the video Let's Play of this is the swearingest thing I've ever heard outside of the Christian Bale rant. Can't wait until you get to Norfair.

Also, your controls are mad.

This game is terrible. I don't know drewseph personally, but I think it's pretty clear he didn't understand at all the things that made Super Metroid appealing.

This LP, on the other hand, should be fantastic!

Perhaps, Mr. Vorpal, you're the only madman among the sane?

this game hates you and all you hold dear.

your kind words mean nothing.

I can explain this, but you're not going to like it.
He has this sort of mad obsession with pushing your Metroid Sense to its absolute limit, and that's what this hack is really all about. He'd never tell us how to get anywhere outright during the beta phase, he'd just give vague hints and expect us to figure them out. You're supposed to notice when the tinest block is out of place, or where a wall looks suspiciously like a dead end, or remember a tiny non-obvious detail from two zones ago and then go find it once you have a new item.

As for the bizarre beam-swapping mechanic, the Metroid Prime bombs, and not being able to walljump on smooth surfaces even with the Wall Jump Boots, he actually thought it was fun to have these limitations just so skilled players could figure out how to break them.


If you guys watch the other LP long enough, Drewseph appears as a guest commentator and begins to explain how his bizarre logic works.

I love these LPs of romhacks. I can't wait to see what kind of dumb stuff this one has in it.

dooooo dooooo dooo dooo dooooooooooo
Welcome back to Let's Play Super Metroid Redesign! Last time around, we kicked Ridley's butt but failed to recapture the poor metroid-in-a-jar. Can we fix this mistake? Yes we can! says Prez Obama.


Of course, we could probably fix it faster if we went left instead of right.


The very first thing the game does is dump you down a pit you can't scale your way back out of (since you can't walljump without that upgrade Dart Zaidyer mentioned). You're on your own, Samus! nosaves4u


Like the original, Crateria is, at first, sleeping and peaceful. Insects adorn the walls. I wonder how long that'll last?


No, the pirates haven't attacked yet. They've actually walled off the way to our upgrades this time, though. Finally, some smarts!


The game is taunting me.


At the bottom of this room lies a wave beam gate. Being the enterprising soul I am, I try to glitch it. Except not only do I not have supers, I'm doing it from the wrong direction. Maybe the changed physics make it work? Hint: no.


The game is always doing this. By this, I mean putting crevices in walls for no real reason. I remember from my previous experience with this game: there's no upgrade you can find if you bomb inside that crevice. It's just for decoration. Of course, given how this game is designed, you have to do this to every single one.

Yes, I still like the game, damnit.


Crateria's asleep, but that doesn't prevent it from locking you in by closing a red door behind you. The correct path here is downwards, through a shootable block in the floor. This being a Metroid game, however, we'll go up instead.


Crateria may be asleep, but these pipe creatures (I don't know their manual-given names) aren't. They also take like three shots to kill, instead of one.


Oh. Well, I guess it is downwards after all.


Bingo! An amusing note: above you is an unscalable pit. The only way to leave is to grab the morph ball and head left, through a tunnel. I don't even know why Drewseph bothered, since you need the morph ball to get out of this pair of rooms anyways.

And, of course, I mockball through it.

Whee!

Anyways, back to that room we couldn't get to a few seconds ago:

I wonder what happens now.


As a side note, this passage also exists. You can almost, but not quite, get up there if you crouch and morph at the height of your jump. You get closer than I am in this shot, I just suck at timing. If this was a TAS, I'd try drawing a pipe creature up and getting that last inch of height from a damage boost... but I'm not TASing, and I'd probably just get stuck anyways. So I won't.


Crateria has finally awoken. No, there wasn't a glowing eye-camera like in the original. I miss that. The pirates, of course, take like 20 shots to kill now, instead of dying in one hit. Same with the zoomers, but instead of 20 it's 5. This is not a good way to increase difficulty, drewseph, since despite the bigger numbers they are still completely unthreatening.


Except for this thing, which takes like 8 hits now and has a good chance of smacking into you if you suck at button mashing like I do. This place is still an infinite source of energy, though, so you're not exactly in danger here.


I bet some of you didn't know the regular old space pirates even had an attack.


Oh hey, a map station. Let's check it out.



We seem to be walled off quite effectively for now, with the elevators to other areas completley inaccessible and all of the crap to the right of the ship blocked by that damn unwalljumpable pit. Guess we might as well head back up that way, though. Nothing else to do and that thing on the far right looks very much like an important new item.


Do you see those skrees? I didn't. I jumped right into them. And we all know how dangerous skrees are.

Back at the bottom of the pit right after the ship, and - oh hey, what's this!


Unmapped area! Yay!


Of course, it takes you right back over here. This is actually progress - it looks like the area we're headed towards is reachable by another route, but that passage is blocked off by a bomb block. I wonder what's down here?


Well, I guess we have no choice but to find out now. Not with that pit that I just fell down. Also, that pirate? It's only vulnerable to missiles.


Also: wtf, spikes in MY Crateria?! And yes, of course I fell in that spike pit as I tried to jump out.


Ahahahahahahahahaaaaa, spikes, I am superior to your kind! I am standing here and you aren't hurting me! What do you have to say to that, huh?


<Spikes> Oh, we'll get you eventually.
You see, there is a missile door just off to the right. However, the green pirates deplete your missiles, so you won't have 5 to open this door. As a result, you have to farm this zoomer (which respawns once you move offscreen) for missiles. However, see that platform at the top of the screen? If you're not careful, you hit it when jumping over here, and fall in that same spike pit I just screenshotted. [edit] Went back and played through this again because I switched emulators, and it turns out there's just a spawn point like there is with the pipe creatures, where it spawns a new one when the old one is dead and has had its drop picked up (or it disappears). I didn't need to keep jumping back and forth and going offscreen, heh.


Nasty skree placement. And I betcha didn't know those things could shoot through walls.


Kagos! Yay! For those of you who haven't played SM, these things are completely passive and, when shot, spawn little hopper creatures that die in one hit and drop stuff. Like, say, energy refills.


Wonder what this is. We can't get to it yet, though.


And after more harrowing pirate escapades and lots more spikes, we reach the elevator to Brinstar. And a save point! Yay!

yes please

(sidenote: I just realized that this is the first save point since you left your ship. I haven't savestated yet and, if I died, I'd have been pretty furious. I know I'll be using states later in the game, but I guess I need to start even now)

Anyways, I figure it's time to ask a question about how you guys want this LP to go. At the current rate, which is about one update per 20 minutes of gameplay, it'll take me approximately 20 gazillion years to finish. I don't mind making these sorts of image-dense, show-all-the-interesting-rooms-and-some-that-aren't style of LPing at first, but as the game goes on I will be necessity need to be somewhat more sparse (not only for time considerations, but because you won't be able to follow my progress on a map without lots of effort at some point, and because showing every niche and cranny is stupid when there's 20 billion of them). My question is: how much do you want to see? Did you follow my progress easily, and was I clear when I talked about places I'd already visited and where I was going? I have an idea of how I want to continue past this point, I think, but I'd like to get feedback first.

I'd like to see all the bullshit design decisions pointed out, at least. Don't worry, I'll be keeping my eye open to point out any you miss. =)

The Green Pirates are also vulnerable to morph-ball bombs! Unless they changed that in this version.

I know this because it was quite a while before I ever thought to use anything else against them.

I actually don't mind text-heavy LPs where the screenshots only point out the most important (or in this case, evil) bits. I find the progress easier to follow that way. In this last update I didn't feel like I really had a grasp on the geography of the place based on what information I got from the screenshots, so more description would be cool.

Evil stuff please. In this game's case, only especially evil stuff. And clever stuff, obviously.

By geography, do you mean the general layout of the rooms, or do you mean the contents of each room? I'm guessing the former, because the latter would involve me writing "ok, and then I jumped on this platform, and fell in this pit, and got hit by spikes but jumped out, and went forwards" for each room in the game, and I very much doubt you want to read that.

"And then I shot this guy once, and then a second time, and then a third time and BOOM! He was dead. Then I took one step forward, and then another step..."

That wouldn't be very entertaining at all!

But yeah, it's more about the layout of the rooms relative to one another. Admittedly, I'm not sure what kind of descriptions I think would actually work, but do know that I have an easier time following text than screenshots.

Welcome back to Let's Play Super Metroid Redesign. Last time, we collected two items. We're doing much better this time around, though. We're getting THREE! That's a 50% increase.

We left off at the elevator to Brinstar last time. Let's be adventurous souls and head down towards the unknown.

Of course, now we have to pick a direction to go. Let's say... right. We're going right.


Oh.


Anyways, after heading left and dropping down yet another pit, we reach this peculiar formation. Please ignore the extraneous upgrades I got in this and the next few shots; I completely forgot to get screenshots the first time through. Anyways, look at it. There's a ripper moving back and forth at high speeds, and a platform. Like two thousand other places in the game, you can almost get up there with crouch jumping. I died a couple times trying to do so, but never managed it, even with a damage boost. I'm sure it's possible, though. Anyways, we'll come back here later.


Moving onwards, we reach this room. Anyone who's played Super Metroid before instantly knows what these are: power bomb blocks, to block you from getting a speed boost charge. Is the next room a speed booster puzzle?


Nah, it's just a vertically descending area with a bunch of platforms. Presumably there are some speed booster blocks in here somewhere, but without bombs it's kind of hard to check. Anyways, we head through the door at the bottom of this room and...


Get punked.


A little ways to the right, you reach this formation. If you take a running leap from here, you end up at a greyed-out door (the second shot). However, the perceptive among you will notice that it's already been filled in on my timeshifted screenshot. What unlocks that door? Feel free to start a betting pool.


But for now, we're dropping down and meeting our first sidehopper of the game. Like the green pirates, this thing is only vulnerable to missiles. We dispatch it and move on. And, after a bit more platforming and dropping down, and a few more sidehoppers, we reach a door. Inside it...


Missile get! Notice how my missile count went from 3 to 5. That's right - missile expansions only give you 2 extra missiles now. But now we're at a dead end. What gives, game?

Since I'm psychic, I can already tell you the answer and save you an aborted update and a bunch of guessing. Let's head back to where we first encountered sidehoppers.

Just to the side of that is a dead end. But wait! What's this!

Yes, the game pulled out the invisible wall gambit this early. Feel free to curse it as I did. What I *think* was supposed to happen was that you were supposed to shoot the pipe creatures right in front of the invisiwall, but miss, and watch as your shot didn't impact something. I could probably count on one hand the number of people who found the wall like that, though.


After dropping down yet another pit (I can't wait for the day I can stop saying that), we see this taunting us. Wonder what it is? It's (presumably, at least) behind a green door that's just offscreen, so we can't get to it yet.


After dropping down yet another fucking pit, we reach this. We open it and head inside. And the music changes.


It's Spore Spawn! The first real boss in the game. And, apparently, he's optional this time around, because I shot the blue door in the floor by accident and fell through.


I won't even say it.


Bingo! Walljump boots. I can walljump now... with some limitations. These limitations, more than anything else, are probably what piss Brickroad off about the game. I don't mind them right now, since I've never beaten the game, but I imagine design choices like this will render null a lot of potential replay value.

The walljump was gimped. It works like Fusion's now. You can't single-walljump anymore; instead, you need two walls at the appropriate distance from each other. In addition to that, you can only jump off of surfaces you can get grip on. Smooth surfaces, like smooth metal, are right out. The walljump is no longer an optional move you can use to sequence break. Instead, it's an expected (and required) form of regular movement.

And, since it's required, the game teaches you how to do it immediately.

etecoons <3

Inside that door is...


The map room. And it displays a lot. I actually didn't notice that stuff on the far right immediately, because it's pretty far away from anything else. I honestly can't remember what boss that is, either, or if I've ever got to it. We've got a lot of game ahead of us, folks.


Do I have to leave?


Walljumping back up to the door with spore spawn, it's greyed out. Hmm. We'll have to take the long way round (see the map).


Hey, the gate stayed open, even after room transitions. Neat.


So. Spore Spawn. He hasn't gotten a makeover for this game, so he's still easy. The safe spots aren't in the corners of this fight anymore (actually, I can't really remember where they are in the original - I mean, what kind of punk fights him when you have the mockball? ), but they're still there.


Except for when he goes into rage mode and slams down onto you. Of course, that makes it easy to hit him multiple times with missiles, so it's a fair trade, I'd say.

After killing him, we jump on his corpse to get whatever he's guarding. And... we can't get it. Goddamnit, was this guy fucking optional?


Now I no longer need to complain about pits every five seconds, because we can walljump up them now.


Remember this place? I spoke about it earlier - it's in the same room as the first sidehopper and the invisible passage. That greyed out door is no longer greyed out now that we've killed Spore Daddy. Let's go grab the loot.


I must say, it's pretty good loot.

Also, waaay back near the beginning of Brinstar, there was a ripper and a jump we could almost, but not quite, make. Now that we can walljump, we can get that item. And it is...


Goddamnit.


There's one more place to go, directly to the right of the elevator. We can scale those walls now. Doing so leads us to a long series of horizontal passages heading right.


In doing so, we see our first cactuar, er, cactus. And we get this game's version of the noob bridge. If you remember Super Metroid's version, you'll notice that the spikes above this game's version prevent you from cheating your way across without finding the run button. I think Drewseph included this just to spite nate - the bridge isn't even past a one-way gate anymore, and I'm pretty sure you can't even get to this point without a running jump or two.


This is a good example of a smooth metal wall. Unlike the metal walls we've seen so far, which are notched and grooved to allow grip, you can't walljump off this baby. Rather, it looks like you're supposed to drop down from above.


Instead, if we go down then right and go over some more breakable tiles, we reach the end of the line. You can't get in that pipe without bomb jumping over its lip, so this direction is a dead end. And we didn't even get any loot. I have various ideas about a perfectly timed morph-jump bouncing off the ground and into the pipe, but I'm not stupid enough to try them. Oh well, time to backtrack and save. Too bad, too - it looks like we could get to Maridia if we could get through this (no, we can't, because next room in that direction is incredibly fucking nasty and is literally a deathtrap without the hi-jump).


yes please

Next up: now that we have the walljump boots, we can go many places! But there is one specific place in mind. To wit: what single pit have I been complaining about for the entire LP?

[edit] oh god, I started watching the video LP, and... ahahahaha. Just watch the last 10 minutes of this. I am so fucking glad I can walljump on command, and I feel so hideously sorry for this dude.

Wow, it's becoming increasingly obvious that this game is more frustrating then fun.

This game are sick.

I remember playing it when it was first released. But back then I wasn't as good as Super Metroid as I am now, I couldn't wall jump on command and I certainly couldn't Mockball. I eventually gave up on it so I wouldn't throw my laptop across the room in frustration.

While I could possibly go back and play it now, I'd much rather watch this LP. You can suffer in my stead, Vorpal.

Three notes:

1) The walljump doesn't even work like Fusion; it works like Prime 2. You can only walljump off specific walls that are offset in a very specific way. It's not even a cool ability anymore, now it's the red key you use to get through the red doors.

2) The game combines tilesets. For example, in the first room of Brinstar you will find a hodgepodge of green and pinks areas, all intertwined. This makes it impossible to identify your location easily; Super Metroid had a huge world, but it was broken into distinct regions which in turn were broken into distinct subsections. If you had a vague recollection of seeing a high ledge in a green area, well, there is only one green section of Brinstar to check. Now you can never be sure.

3) The beginning of the game is like 99% backtracking. It's insane.