The Metroid Thread: BOMB ALL THE WALLS!

[narcodis]

I just played Fusion for the first time! I've owned a cart for years but never got around to it. It's... OK. I guess I don't really enjoy the flow of things. The atmosphere, the aesthetic, the boss designs, everything was oozing with style and very cool. But...

Well, there was one point in the game where I got the Speed Booster. I was in an area with a whole ton of unreachable rooms, so I spent like a solid 30 minutes searching every wall, every nook and cranny for some semblance of progression with the new cool tool I got. Eventually I gave up and went and talked to HAL and he said something to the effect of "good job finding that, now go to this next area, I've unlocked the door for you."



Later, the game gives you a super missile upgrade, and then immediately make you fight a boss that can't be damaged by missiles?? (They do this twice!!!)

Also I often got extremely annoyed that every time I beat a boss I had to fight another smaller boss, in the form of some viral beach ball with insanely long i-frames that bodies you over and over.

All in all it's not my favorite Metroid, not by a long shot, but it is definitely very playable. Just annoying.

 

[Tato]

The X who absorbs the scientist in Fusion is probably the smartest villain in the entire series. The X gains a little bit of intelligence and immediately concludes "Samus is unstoppable and will absorb us all, at least blow her up on the space station so she can't harm the X on SR388." Might have worked as well, if Samus didn't have a handy A.I. to map out rooms and tell her how to turn the cooling back on.

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

For the last 20 years, I've had a kind of aversion to first-person, but the pointer controls in Prime 3 were an exception to that, in what I had played. I think in a way, it reminded me more of a light gun game, which I loved and felt more natural to me.

I think Halo Infinite might have finally broken through that aversion for me, though, and I'm interested in trying Metroid Prime Remastered with regular controls.

You know, assuming I can find a copy.

 

[RT-55J]

One thing about Fusion that I didn't realize until several playthroughs in is that before you enter a sector to accept your mission you can just go into any other sector (that's currently unlocked) to mess around and poke in. Typically there isn't too much to see, but playing the game this way (and, to a greater extent, playing the randomizer) made me realize the extent to which progress is actually ability-gated, even if the fact is obscured by the structure of having to report back to the computer after every mission.

Bombs are required to enter Sector 4 proper -> speed booster is required to get to the security gate in PYR -> super missiles are needed to enter NOC -> varia is necessary to survive the cold rooms* in ARC -> etc., etc. They do spice things up with a bunch of special events (particularly in the mid-game), typically to force you to get items that otherwise wouldn't block progression, but it's really interesting to see the degree to which the map design would be able to stand by itself without any of the narrative scaffolding (Sector 5 notwithstanding).

(I'm sure there is a point to be made here about Other M's relative failures in this regard, but heaven knows I ain't gonna refamiliarize myself with that game enough to definitely say so or not.)

*Cold damage, unlike heat damage, inflicts knockback, which is very funny/infuriating.

 

[Becksworth]

This new Zero Mission romhack is pretty impressive as a proof of concept of what can be done modding the GBA Metroids. As much as I like Super Metroid there is only so much that can be done trying to mod it. Meanwhile between Fusion and Zero Mission there is a lot more to potentially build off of for GBA mods.

 

[RT-55J]

Desolation is earning top marks from all the hackers I trust, so I'm excited to start playing it soon.

 

[Kirin]

Lol, being able to just nope out of the entire mission is a cute Easter egg. It doesn’t seem great that it looks like a crucial power up is just hidden totally invisibly under a pile of sand, though I realize the video is kinda speed running so maybe there were hints. Looks fantastic otherwise though.

 

[Becksworth]

Okay, maybe there is still some interesting things you can do modding Super Metroid.

 

[RT-55J]

I find it really funny to think that what was once going to be a straightforward boss rush hack has turned into this full-bodied, hyper-maximalist reimagining intent on supplanting the original work.

The real question is if (after people hyping this up for a decade+) this thing will have the special Z-Factor spiciness that made that hack voted as the best and worst hack of 2012. (I, for one, would think that is beautiful.)

 

[RT-55J]

Gonna be streaming a beta test of a Metroid 2 hack that a friend of mine made:

here

 

[RT-55J]

continuing the beta test stream: twitch.tv/rt_55j

 

[RT-55J]

Three things:

- I wrote a retrospective about the sporadic history of Metroid 2 hacking:

Metroid 2 Hacking Retrospective (feat. Maps)

Metroid 2 hacking has a long and storied history --- mostly a history of nobody caring about it, except to colorize it. Depending on what you consider a kosher colorization, there have been at least 3 attempts to colorize the game (see RHDN...

cohost.org

- Inspired by a commenter to that post, I updated the TCRF page for the game a little bit:

Metroid II: Return of Samus - The Cutting Room Floor

tcrf.net

- My friend just released the Metroid 2 hack they've been working on for the past ~6 months (see my previous two posts):

distressCall

2023 Exploration hack for M2 by moehr

metroidconstruction.com

 

[RT-55J]

I'm thinking of making a thread soon extolling these two hacks, but for now I'd at least like to mention that Super Junkoid, the sequel to Junkoid, was released earlier this week:

Super Junkoid

2023 Exploration hack for SM by P. Yoshi (Rating: 4.9 orbs)

metroidconstruction.com

I beat it last night and can confirm it's excellent. I recommend entering it without spoilers.

 

[Becksworth]

I saw a AM2R Redesigned mod was in the works, which just looked like AM2R with more spikes so I'm not too interested in it...

That said why haven't we seen AM2R used as a base for more Metroid fangames? I believe there are several source code repos out there in the wild for it. Seems like that would be a more flexible engine to build off of than trying to hack Super or the GBA games.

 

[RT-55J]

AM2R has had a few mods, such as several little time trial couses and such, but the main excuse I keep seeing for the lack of full-game mods is that the codebase is a mess (same as any other game, really). Also (somewhat ironically), I think AM2R's DMCA makes people more vary of the consequences of modding the game, compared to the broader M1/SM/ZM hacking scene which has existed for over 20 years by this point with zero legal threats from the Big N.

Both of these combined seem to lead people interested in making Metroid fangames for the PC to make their own engines instead (such as this one).