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

We're supposed to make some value judgment about him on the basis of this, or something? #overlydefensive

No, but I think we can make some value judgments about the fairness and quality of his hack. =)

I just skipped around a bit because the interface for that site is fucktarded, but I took a bit of joy when he kept screwing up the wall jump in Brinstar, and when he died on the elevator ride out of Norfair. I was hoping to see him get this missile pack:



At least I think it's a missile pack, but I remember struggling to get through that part of Brinstar, and when I found that I just quit playing.

Inspired by my bitching about Retro Game Challenge in other threads, I'm going to go and play a game that I know for certain is, at best, extremely limited in audience and at worst absolutely crazy! Please try to not laugh too hard or, alternatively, keep your well-founded worry from putting me in a mental institution. Let's begin!

Last we left off, we were comprehensively detonating nukes across the planet in an attempt to make it completely uninhabitable - and in the process, we broke something.


The sea creatures will dine on a diet of glass tonight as a response to their mercury-based aggression.

And now, finally, drewseph's readme makes sense. I'll quote it again:

Well, I wonder what this is.


You certainly succeeded! I can't imagine this is the way it was originally, because I got 10 missiles for that. Now watch as we find some other way into Norfair that has yet another 'hidden' passage near it, throwing this whole conclusion into question. But whatever!


Another lava pit of doom? Well, since we can't exactly go back out, let's bite the bullet and go for it.



Well, that wasn't so bad. We're back to familiar territory now.


Interestingly enough, I thought the shaft I'm falling down right now had a key item up in it. I guess it's the more-hidden one right next door? My memory's rather vague on this point.

Since we're back here again, I took the liberty of exploring Norfair more thoroughly (last time, I just wanted out). It's turned up some interesting tidbits, such as this Metroid Prime-esque morph ball halfpipe.


Those blocks on the bottom are crumble blocks, of course. But more importantly, my exploration also turned up an elevator.


Have we found where I'm supposed to go?

After a very long ride despite extremely high speeds (I'm pretty sure I covered half the map, vertically), we reach Maridia.


Except, yet again, we found an exit and not an entrance. This is rather annoying. That won't stop the pirate from taking pot shots at me, though.


Guess they managed to save wave beam technology in the midst of the chaos that was the Prime series.

Let's head back to Brinstar. While we were pretty thorough in covering the left half of it, the right half is relatively untouched.


Such as here, for example.


The door locks behind us, for reasons unknown, but that's ok: there's a pipe in the floor, and a free set of mini-nukes.

The pipe takes us straight down, back to a room we've already visited.



There's also the small matter of this particular dick move item, right here:


Before we collect it, this item needs some background.

This item is situated in the middle of the flower room, right between Kraid and the Norfair elevator. Since its position is given away by a dot on the map, you're pretty certain to locate it somehow or other. In fact, you're guaranteed to, since after you beat Kraid and stumble your way across Hell's Run, you won't want to do that immediately, and so you'll look for something else. Anything else. And you'll find this, and you'll think it's a weird hiding spot for the ice beam.

And then you'll try to get it.

The passage to it is slightly annoying.


You have to go in the top pipe. You can bj to it from the platform, but the easiest method is to drop in the spikes, take damage, and do a midair morph. After you do so, you fall down a pit (the other pipe is a dead end) and come out the other side.


Now, it looks like you can't do much. The pipe will block you from bomb jumping, right? At this point, the only thing you can do is hold right, drop down, try (and fail) at bomb jumping back up (because you can't unmorph in this room)... and eventually get sucked in a flower at the bottom and fall through a one-way gap.


You lose; leave and try again. And the door will hit you on the way out, because you can't roll directly into that pipe. You have to bomb. And the ceiling is low enough that bombing will run you smack into the spikes, and take a chunk of life off. Not a significant chunk, and there's a pipe creature refill station nearby, but still.

gg re?

Well, what I said above is not quite true. I discounted trying too hard the first time I was through here, since I knew you had to do hell's run at this point, but the pipe I'm in in that shot also has a lip. The lip lowers you enough that you can bomb jump out, if you're lucky.


And so we're back here. To further clarify what a pain in the ass this item is, let's whip up some more awesome MSPaint art.


I'm the next Picasso, I know. No need to praise me. Greens are what you need to do, blues are cautions.

The green arrows show what you need to do. You bomb jump over the flower and then bj up (while in spikes) and grab the item. However! That flower, if you fall in it, eats you and drops you through the floor. It's very much a gg, try-again-lol moment. So you have to avoid it. Furthermore, like before, the ceiling is low enough that one bomb is sufficient to slam you into the spikes. So, long story short, you can't get any horizontal velocity at all without hitting spikes and getting knocked back, and if you did, the flower would eat you. What's a poor, helpless person like me to do?

Well, honestly, I'm not quite sure. I just kept trying and I managed to cross, somehow. But as for what I think happened... well, here's what I tried. I rolled right, into the spikes before the flower, in an effort to get damage immunity so the spikes didn't knock me back. And then I flailed at my controller trying to bomb jump right, and it happened. Amusing, huh?


We're not done yet, though. We have to bomb jump out. Which is trickier than it sounds, because the spikes are constantly pushing you around and the lip of the platform extends pretty far from the wall, meaning, you have to get dangerously close to the flower. And then stay dangerously close for a few seconds while you set yourself up.


All that, and you only get ten lousy missiles. And then, after some time, you realize: this was a decoy, and you really do need to do hell's run (or learn to IBJ, whichever). So yeah, this is a Dick Move (tm), and don't you deny it.


After we get it, we're right around here. There's one thing that's been bugging me, though. See that opening in the ceiling above us? Let's go for it.


I first tried knocking this green thing off its platform and then following it around the room until it gets to the top. But screw, it's so slow, and it's heading the wrong way. I'd be there for half an hour waiting for it, and I don't even know if I can do anything up there! There's gotta be something better.


Well, there's this thing instead. Fortunately, it moves four times faster.


It's also one of the few things in the game that I've found still move when they're offscreen!


So I get to the top and... what the fuck THAT SECOND ONE WAS NOT THERE BEFORE

Not that I'm complaining, though.


So we get to jump up a couple platforms, but the next is still out of reach of our highest jump (and we can't walljump off these walls). What's a man to do? Guess I have to wait for the bugs to come 'round my way again.


Whee, beam shields (edit: to do a beam shield, equip the charge beam and exactly one other beam, then select power bombs and charge your beam up). Also note that I tried shooting those suspicious-looking blocks in the wall, but that did nothing... Sigh, I'm bored. I feel like nuking something, even though with my luck, I'd kill the bug just as it came back up. So I'll save a state just in case and... wait what?

Let's try that again.


Well, look at that.


What the hell, that was hidden so well and I only get two missiles? I refuse to believe it. Nukes, engage!


That's more like it.


Woot, that's the second of twelve. Also note that actually getting in its hand was troublingly annoying - the ceiling is so low that it would blunt my efforts to bomb jump up. It seriously took me a minute or so to actually fit myself in there.


The second time around, scaling the wall is much easier.


Those pipes in the wall? Those are Waver spawn points. I assume one of them also has a secret behind them, but I can't be bothered to check yet - not when I have to freeze a waver to try each one of them. I'll be back when I have the hi-jump.


It's time to use my last power bomb. More things really need to drop these.


Of course, it's not until after I use it that I find a secret passage (though the left from that flower, like the hidden etank after Kraid that you need for Hell's Run) that bypasses the power bomb blocks completely. It seems like it was included specifically to get around them, as I can't find anything else in it. And now I'm out of nukes. I hope that I don't need to use one soon. :/

And we're all the way back here.


And of course I need to use a nuke. I went back farming Wavers for three minutes to get this one. That platform, though - it's too high. I'm at the height of my jump in that pic. Of course, I could single-walljump up, but I have a cooler idea.


My kickass plan is kickass. What I do is walljump off that platform, and into the spikes. I can't walljump off the spikes, of course - but I can damage boost off the spikes and, theoretically, if I aim it in the correct way and magnify it enough... I can get on. As you can probably tell, nobody is more surprised than me that this stunt actually worked (and apparently, it's much easier to boost straight down than in any useful direction!). I was expecting to have to break my hands trying to SWJ again. Of course, pulling the damage boost off probably took longer than doing a successful SWJ probably would have, but that's irrelevant. Onwards, to Maridia!


I am so glad that pipe was pre-broken.


Also, a free missile! Plus, you can't see it in this shot because the item get screen is covering it up, but there's a crab circling that platform. I kill it (to see how much punishment the crazy things take now), and it drops a power bomb! Yay!


Heading upwards, we see... well, this. And while I did my time and scaled Mt. Doom back in Super, I'm not going to do that again, especially when I'd probably just get stuck in five seconds after I got up there. Even I have limits. I guess this is yet another entrance to Maridia we can't get to.

Geez, when will we finally get there?


Heading left is uneventful. However, looking at this map... there's an uncovered blue section. It's unexplored for good reason: that's the crazy unescapable deathtrap that eats you for breakfast. However... I can SWJ now.


I'll use the power bomb here, just in case there's a secret path out I missed... nope. And now that super's mine.


And, uh, it takes me a while (check how my health drops), but I eventually get out. I have triumphed over your silly little machinations, game! Can't touch this.

It gets back at me by making this take years.

Now we've covered most of the map! There's only one thing left... the thing that some of you have been mentally yelling at me to blow up for the past twenty updates, I imagine. I legitimately forgot about it, I swear.


Bombs away.


yes please

Until next time.

So you're saying item spheres are evil because they can trick you into thinking they hold something important? But Missiles were placed in them even in Super Metroid--some of the earliest tanks you get, yeah, but that's enough that I wouldn't be unsurprised by it.

I don't know much anything about Super Metroid hacking, but I estimate that it simply isn't possible to put the Ice Beam anywhere other than Norfair, and so forth for every other item. Notice, for instance, that every non-ammunition item thus far has appeared in the same sector it appeared in Super Metroid (with the Wall Jump Boots taking the place of the X-Ray Scope.)

Lies. Anything can go anywhere. Drewseph actually wanted to (somewhat) preserve the progression of the original in Redesign, that's why everything is in roughly the same area.

How. In the hell. have I played this game this many times, and been on this board for this long, and this is the first I've heard of this???

This game continues to amaze me.

Probably because they're not very practical to use, so they basically amount to Easter eggs, like the Crystal Flash. Still awesome like the Crystal Flash, though.

Spazer: Stardust Shower
Ice Beam: Diamond Dust
Wave Beam: Asteroid Belt
Plasma Beam: Emerald Splash

Learn them, love them.

I love how there are rooms where Samus can't unmorph for no reason whatsoever.

It never ceases to bewilder me how this game can be so carefully crafted so that it is just barely playable.

I don't think I want to play through this game anymore. It's too mean.

I take it as something else taken from Prime: those third-person passages where Samus might have enough space to unmorph, but just can't.

As usual, anything taken from Prime and put into Super Metroid is a terrible thing.

Not that I'll disagree with the conclusions you guys draw, but most of the mean things in this and the last update are mean because I tried doing a bunch of things without the hi-jump, using ice beam or bomb jump shenanigans. It's not at all required or anything like that - I'm just incredibly stubborn and skilled enough to eventually get my way. After getting the power bombs, you're not really 'supposed' to do anything other than head to the tube after Kraid and crack it open. Keep that in mind.

Except for the dick move pack. Yeah, I'll wholeheartedly agree with you guys on that one. Sorry Kishi, but while Super used them outside of key items sometimes, whenever this game uses them for not-key-items they're intended to trick you and make you, well, you just saw, heh. That pack would become almost trivial to get with the spring ball, but that's not evil enough.

Also, to perform a beam shield, turn off all of your beams except the charge beam and exactly one other beam, and then select power bombs and charge your beam up. You get a different shield for each beam (as you can see with Kishi's links). I edited it into my above post, since I meant to say it when I wrote the update but forgot.

[edit] Fuck yeah, new Super Metroid low% speedrun (it's the last run on that page; ignore the typo where it says 100%, that will hopefully be fixed soon). Well, ok, it's not new, as it's been hiding away on youtube for a while, but it's finally available as a high-quality download, and if you haven't seen it yet, go watch it. Now.

Watching that just reminds me how elegant Super Metroid is compared to this weird abomination.

Wow, I love how we waited about six months for those two sentences.

This thread inspired me to watch some of the Kaizo Mario videos.

You have to admire the developer's ingenuity, I'll give it that. The design principles are reasonably sound -- you don't have to exploit glitches and is short rather than repetitive.

Of course, nobody said anything about fun.

This is awesome, but one point's been bugging me: why the extra super missile pickup? I understand needing the energy tanks ans gravity suit, but why 10 supers?

If I recall correctly, the extra Missile and Super Missile pickups are needed to break the glass casing around Mother Brain and then damage her at the end of the game.

MrBlarney's got it. Mother Brain's first form doesn't take damage from anything besides missiles/supers.

Also, the next segment of this LP will be up relatively soon. Sorry to keep you guys waiting.

You can see that this is correct by noticing that in the last battle his missiles/supers drop to zero.

Though on a related note, i was wondering why he went with 2 missile pickups and 2 supers instead of 1 missile and 3 super. I'm thinking my way through to the first super pickup with the mockball and it seems that with a little luck you could easily manage this, and it would make your life easier later in the game to have the extra supers. Is this because of the use of regular missiles against phantoon maybe, or am i missing an early game red door that causes some kind of obstruction?

It's just that the missile in the middle of the moat before Phantoon is near-impossible to avoid with the ice beam. As in, avoiding it would require bomb-jumping over it and across the entire moat at once.

Thank you, this makes alot of sense. Is it even possible to bomb jump over the entire lake?

After a little experimentation i think i know. When you morph while the charge beam is fully charged, and while the bombs are activated, it releases five bombs. On the other hand, if first you deactivate the bombs, then Samus will hold the beam charge while morphed as long as you hold down the shot button.

Yeah. There's actually another way that I know of, but it's similarly ridiculous. In short, nobody's ever going to do anything like this without TASing, and I would call shenanigans without a second thought on anyone who claims to have done so.

This word. I love it so.