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

You know what's a really "fun" part of Hell's Run? (and not recommended without save states at the refill pipe at least) Bombjumping up to the Energy Tank in the area right before the refill pipe!

Hell's Run is certain a challenge = fun moment, but it's also another example of stretching Samus's abilities to the limit at every opportunity. It knows what you can do in Super Metroid, and makes you do it!

That's... nice. An unfair challenge that is oh-so-pleasing to see completed. I guess I can see the appeal in it.

Speaking of Metroid Prime, the bomb tunnels in the Hell's Run section of Super Metroid Redesign (second room) kind of remind me of a tunnel section in Prime...

I have, but that's years and years after my initial exploration of Norfair. By the time I did it I was pumped up on, "Okay, I'm going to fucking do this. I know Norfair like the back of my hand, I know where the safe spots are, I have plenty of energy. Let's rock."

I have to say, that...was probably the second stupidest thing I've seen in a hack. I say that because I know that somewhere, somewhere someone must have done something even more difficult in some Mario hack. I just can't think of where...

Maybe it's second place to every single invisible block placed in a Mario hack?

Let me tell you about this game called Kaizo Mario World.

No.

Just. No.

But listening to that guy suffer was pretty awesome.

Hell's Run is really not as bad as it looks. It's tough, but on the scale of insane hacks, it pales so much to Kaizo.

Of course, everything pales in comparison to Kaizo.

There's much worse than Kaizo out there. Kaizo is mostly fair about its tricks beyond the split-second reaction stuff.

Didn't know if there was a better place to put this, but here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbsH5rGqL7o

I've been trying (and failing, repeatedly) to get 5000 points in FF7's Speed Square lately, and I can't help but wonder if Drewseph coded the damned thing, as it commits pretty much every single design sin he did with Redesign. Just say no to required clairvoyance for success, people!

After braving my way through two increasingly complex timed sequences involving Pirates, waggle switches, and then popping on a special visor and sit around for a few seconds to summon my ship to blow some crap up in MP3, I'm miffed with Retro.

Why would you do this?

There's here. Funnily enough Hell's Run and the original LP is mentioned there as an example of what hopefully won't go wrong with it.

Because I have the completionist's itch, and want to get that damned Umbrella before I start disc 2. I can't imagine how painful doing this was before YouTube existed, and people could share TAS videos that show you where to aim and when. My top score before that was about 2000. Now it's about 4800 thanks to said videos, which is still insufficient.

Even if you know exactly what to expect, it still takes a ridiculous degree of luck to succeed, due to the insanely wonky controls. Heck, I once used savestates and just barely made it after something like an hour of incremental saving and loading. It's ridiculous.

Believe me, I know the feeling from the last time I tried this. Fortunately, I'm playing it on PSP (about time they put the game on PSN), so I can use the analog nub. Meaning the movement is ever so slightly less wonky. But not by much. If nothing else, at least I don't hurt my thumb trying to do it with a D-pad...

The LP is pretty good, especially if you like outrageous accents.

Honestly, really frustrating games are an experience only dulled for me by adding angry words. Which is why I have to shout so much playing video games. True video game pain is self-evident in its agony.

Out of morbid curiosity, I went and scanned through the SA LP archive, and...

There is a Kaizo Mario World 2.

After watching that, I want to thank Drewseph for making Redesign so easy.

H..How can that be considered fun by anyone..?

Oh yes, I watched it not all that long ago and enjoyed it thoroughly. Psychedelic Eyeball has been gifted with one of the greatest accents anyone has ever possessed. I now just assume that every one of our Canadian Talking Tyrants is posting in that voice. Yes, even Nadia. It makes Talking Time all that much more pleasant!

HA! I even commented in that thread. Doh@!

Bloody hell, you're as forgetful as me.

Hi, and welcome back to Let's Play Super Metroid Awesome-design! Last time, in a special segment released only to paid subscribers like you, you saw the best part of the game. Which is not to put down this update - the rest of the game is the second-best part.

Right? Right?

That's what I thought.

Right now, we're doing two things: picking up the next key item, and showing off that underwater trap room I didn't get a chance to display earlier. The key item is really easy to locate - it's that lonesome blue dot just above the energy and missile refills. Let's go there now.


Whee! But why was the ice beam's rate of fire drastically reduced?


We're back in this room - the pipe maze. Now that we have the ice beam, we have access to a few more pipes. Most are dead ends, though, and the one we want is clearly the most difficult one to reach.

An interesting note is that, if you can infinite bomb jump, you can get into this pipe early, which will let you skip hell's run. But wait! I haven't told you what the item is! How can it do that?

Let's find out!


After some bomb jumping and platforming, we find out why there's a missile refill station right below us.


And our sequence break'd item is...


The Varia suit (not Barrier Suit, as some traitors named Kishi would have you believe). Now we resist heat and take less damage in general. Ok, getting this thing early wouldn't really have been a sequence break, since you almost certainly still need the ice beam. However, hell's run would have been much easier! That's something, right?


Let's get out of here and go show off that underwater trap.

Here we are. Those yapping maws have decent aim, now that we can't jump worth a damn. Thankfully, though, the actual jumping-across-platforms part isn't too hard.


That lack of difficulty won't stop me from screwing up while trying to take a screenshot, though. And for your enjoyment, I'll be sure to mimic this accomplishment and screw up right into spikes for your future enjoyment.


There's actually only 3 yapping maws in the room, so this is all of them. And yeah, that last one is pretty nasty.


Of course, now that we have the ice beam, we can cheat past them. This shot is from the other underwater room, the one with an alternate route along the floor.


I neglected to mention this particular passage earlier because I wasn't ever able to get in it. The combination of spinjumping + running + exiting underwater + midair morphing was too much for me. I tried some more, though, and managed to get it. after finally giving up and mapping the slowdown key


This takes you to the other side of the room. You can't get over here otherwise without the Gravity, since the wall is too high.


Will you look at that? More spikes. These are actually tricky, since - since there's so many of them in a row, and you're underwater - you can't just jump past them, and their contact damage will push you back the way you came. The trick? Just turn around.


Spikes have a great work ethic - they'll do it all for free, effortlessly.

uh


uhhhhhhh

A quote from the game's readme is relevant right about now.

One is required? Uh, if I be pedantic and say that the walljump boots aren't new, since you could walljump in Super... so if there's another required new item... uh, I don't think this is very likely and I'm probably imagining things, but Drewseph, if you made your own version of Symphony of the Night's spike breaker armor I will hunt you down. I just had to say it.

Wait, shit.

wtf there's a passage there? I know what I'm doing at the beginning of next... man, it's not going to be at the next update, is it? Not since I've already screenshotted it (no, it's not uploaded to my photobucket yet, cheaters). But I could've sworn I checked there... he must be talking about a passage that just happens to run by it, and isn't actually connected to it (or is one-way or something).

Now that that's done, and I know to stay the hell away from the spike parade, I went around trying a bunch of things.


First priority is to get back to Crateria and main Brinstar so I can try some new shit with the ice beam. Unfortunately... the passage just above the norfair elevator is blocked, even though I can get up there with judicious application of a super missile (to knock the crawler off the wall) and said beam now.


So's the way I came down to this area in the first place. I'd need to be able to IBJ to get into the pipe passage I used to get down here, and, well, I can't (I spent some time trying). The ice beam lets me get all the way up here, but...

As such, it's time for a Random Curiosity Dump! Where we have to go is clear now, but there's some cool stuff around too.


I'm pretty sure you couldn't shoot through these in the original game. And at the same time, a slight hop has it hit them? I don't get it.


Also: mini-kraid! Take a close look at those two pictures. That's right... he moves back and forth. Neat. I've never noticed this before, since he dies so easily in the original game (one super, ugh), and this capability is completely useless, but he moves back and forth like his older brother! Awesome, Nintendo.

(I cite Nintendo because, for some reason, I can't imagine this being Drewseph's work)

I could've sworn there was a missile expansion in here somewhere, but I can't find it. Alas. It's time to move on.


even in games, vaginas self-censor with graphical glitches


And, finally, I guess there's only one place to go. Until next time.

The only other 'new' powerup is a device that gives back the ability to use multiple beams at once. So really, none of the items are genuinely new.

Hi! You are currently reading The Awesome-est Let's Play Ever (tm), currently up to the bowels of Norfair. Well, not bowels. We're not that far in. More like, say, the esophagus.


As we descended into Norfair, there was an earthquake, and while I'm not 100% positive I'm pretty sure it meant that this wall is now bombable. Or something. It's as if, you know, the constant heat drain without the Varia suit and the 10 minutes you have to take to bomb through this wall isn't a big enough barrier to sequence breaking.

But before we plunge deeper, there is one more errand we must run.


We had to go through this room during Hell's Run. Hopefully you remember it.


After a sequence remarkably like the one right in front of the magmoor->phendrana elevator in Prime, we DBJ up three times and grab an etank. For some unfathomable reason, I remember this tank being really, really hard to get. Like, I couldn't get it with save states in my previous playthrough, and left it abandoned. That's why I didn't try to get it during my hell's run video. Of course, as soon as I try for real, I find out that I've been timing the last bomb in the DBJ slightly incorrectly, and I should place it a fraction of a second earlier. This tank has less margin for error than the rest of the DBJs in the game, apparently, and I blame the new physics.


Astute video watchers may have noticed a purple door show up in the corner of the screen during hell's run. Unfortunately for us, the room behind that door is filled with fiery death that you need the grapple to cross. We'll leave this be for now.


Also, you can skip the missile gate right in front of the ice beam room. I find this incredibly hilarious, since Drewseph is trying to be accessible for once in this hack - except there was a missile recharge 30 seconds ago, and this is in the middle of fucking hell's run. He couldn't have pulled this off more uselessly if he tried. It's great.

Anyways, I'm done with my tangents for now. Time to progress!


Past that bomb block wall is a series of lava pits. The logical thing to do here is to dive in.


Hey, a missile! I guess this lava was fake after all.


PSYCH

If you jump across the lava pits like you're supposed to, you reach a map room. Since the map for Norfair is huge and would take like five screenshots to fully display, I've taken the liberty of stitching them together for you in a hastily-assembled MSPaint-quality collage. Thank me later.




Sorry about the missed area in the top middle, but I wasn't expecting to do a collage when I screenshotted this section, and you've seen it in hell's run anyways.

I really should stop playing so far ahead that I can't go back and fix my mistakes, right? :/

Anyways!

The next room has two options: you can either mockball under a descending wall or you can midair morph into a passage above it. For completion's sake (and because I'm just that awesome), I do both.


It also has our first encounter with the Norfair type of sidehopper. Curiously, these seem to be weaker than their Brinstar cousins. They only take one missile to dispatch. They may or may not do more damage, but with the Varia's damage reduction and my increased amount of etanks, I haven't noticed.


Also, this room has stuff hidden in the ceiling. We'll be spinesharkin' up there as soon as we can.


This room, by contrast, doesn't have anything hidden in the ceiling. Instead, it's in plain sight! We can't quite manage the jump, unfortunately, although a little birdie tells me something neat is hidden up there. Also, a dick move by Drewseph (lowering the rate of fire of the ice beam) resulted in these pipe creatures doing far more damage than they should ever be doing at this point in the game, since they don't come out all at once anymore. This results in me turning the ice beam off and only turning it back on when I need it.


Next room is just a straight vertical drop down. If you'll remember the map, there's two ways we can go from here. Let's try the first one.


Brickroad was complaining earlier about using multiple tilesets in close proximity, but, man, I love that. It makes everything feel more organic and interesting. Not that Super was uninteresting in this respect, but this is better, I'd say. Yes, heresy, I know.


The other path requires either the ice beam or some tricky bomb jumping.


Let's head right.