The Metroid Thread: BOMB ALL THE WALLS!

[RT-55J]

Yeah, I saw that. It's extremely gratifying to see players of his caliber say my hack is good without any qualifications.

Anyhow, Metaquarius released another new hack (already!):

Super Metroid: Axiom

2024 Quick Play hack for SM by Metaquarius (Rating: 4.6 orbs)

metroidconstruction.com

It's a recreation of the opening area from Axiom Verge, rearranged slightly to provide a complete "mini-hack" experience. He was experimenting with this idea several years ago, but I guess something finally inspired him this past month to dust off his old project files and make something shippable out of them. Aside from using vanilla SM enemies, everything has been skillfully transferred/adapted.

The author says the skill level is "veteran" ("not for casual players"), but I think he's overselling it to avoid backlash like he's gotten in the past. To wit, the hardest parts of the hack are:

- Item names being in gibberish, so you manually have to figure out their uses.
- The first couple minutes when you're hilariously under-equipped.
- In the mid-game, if you're wall jumping around, you might end up in a pit that requires rocket jumping to exit (FYI this hack was built on top of a hack that has rocket jumping)
- Towards the end of the game you have to figure out how to apply Axiom Verge's least intuitive mechanic.

I could be wrong, but I believe the techskill floor for this hack is low enough that walljumping is not required.

Anyhow, I recommend this as a nice way to spend an hour.

 

[RT-55J]

It's extremely gratifying to see players [...] say my hack is good

Well, two months after the submission deadline, voting for the Starbase Contest winners finally happened. The hacks were pitted up together in thunderdome-bracket-style, and voting for the entire thing was done on Twitch over the course of an hour-long stream.

You'll never guess what happened:

Viva L'Italia!

While I am extremely flattered, I want to emphasize that overall this is the best contest Metroid Construction has ever had. I made a big list a couple weeks back of every past contest and verified that not only was this the greatest contest numerically, but quite arguably quality-wise as well. Any of the semifinalists in that bracket would have easily been a shoo-in for first place in almost any previous contest (and even some of the hacks from the previous round as well).

Go play some Metroid hacks.

 

[YangusKhan]

That's really exciting!

 

[Paul le Fou]

Awesome, congratulations!

 

[lincolnic]

Congrats! That's gotta be a nice confidence boost, especially since it's your first hack. Think you'll make another?

 

[LBD_Nytetrayn]

Way to go!

 

[RT-55J]

Congrats! That's gotta be a nice confidence boost, especially since it's your first hack. Think you'll make another?

Not immediately, that's for certain.

I have a few vague hack ideas percolating in my head. One, for Super Metroid, is to revisit an old hack I was sketching out back sometime between '06 and '08 when I was in high school. My intent back then was to make some post-Redesign vanilla-ish bloated Zebes (as was everybody's ambition back before Eris and Z-Factor came out). Recently I copied my old map into SMART to refamiliarize myself with my old ideas. Now, I'm somewhat interested taking all the individual concepts and seeing if I could pare them down and rejigger them into something with more a manageable scope and more interesting progression.

I also have ideas for M1 and M2 hacks, several ideas for original games, and another ZZT game I want to finish by the end of October. Oh, and I also want to take up sewing to see if I can make myself a custom plushie of the OC in my avatar.

...so, yeah, no guarantees of another SM hack from me especially soon.

 

[otakujeb]

So I am near the end of Fusion, playing for the first time, and I have Thoughts.

- I know this game isn't Super, and that roughly all the words about that have been said on the Internet already, largely on this very forum. Dread already taught me to allow Metroid games to not be Super-- in fact, after playing through most of Fusion I definitely see its influences on Dread's design-- and I really tried not to fight with the way the game wants me to play it. I was more successful allowing Dread to guide me, even though it does mostly the same things. Fusion is just so stark about it, I guess, in a way that is SUPPOSED to chaffe you and make the endgame freedom more rewarding, whereas Dread has juuuust a *touch* more subtlety about it, even if if it's still far from the invisible strings of Super. For example, I missed an E-tank near the beginning of the game, right before the first boss (the ol' trick of a secret item hidden behind another item, right from the get-go). I could not go back for it until 3/4 of the way through the game. To get back to a place I'd *already been*. I understand the idea of temporarily blocking backtracking to focus the player forward, but this is ridiculous. Dread would've let me go back after a boss or two; Super, at most, would've required me to find one upgrade.

- I didn't care for Pixel Perfect Execution Boss Battles in Dread and I don't like it here either, but I was able to learn the patterns in the later game better than Fusion. I also feel like I'm fighting the controls a bit, so maybe it's something about NSO or my Switch controller, I dunno. Something is cutting the height of my jump when things get hectic, and it turns most boss battles into a save scum.

- I'm not sure exactly how it would work, but I'd like a Metroid to somehow let you know when you find the Secret Right Way first that there's nothing but a dead end back on the obvious route. As someone who has been playing these games forever, I'm constantly finding the secret passages and then have to go back and check the wrong way to make sure I'm not missing anything before the game locks another door behind me. To be fair, Dread was bad about this too (looking at you, destructible blocks in the elevator room of the second area).

 

[RT-55J]

Something is cutting the height of my jump when things get hectic, and it turns most boss battles into a save scum.

IIRC this is because the GBA games reset your vertical speed when you break spin. M1-3 and the MercurySteam games do not share this quirk.

 

[otakujeb]

IIRC this is because the GBA games reset your vertical speed when you break spin. M1-3 and the MercurySteam games do not share this quirk.

Dang, that's exactly it. Thanks, that helped a lot.

Credits ran in Fusion, 100% and a laughable 8:30, but I think I could do a lot better speed-wise now that I understand the layout better. Ending was fine since I knew to avoid nav rooms until I was done collecting. One final gripe, I REALLY wish the map wouldn't show doors present when they've been destroyed.

... Ok, one final final gripe. Since when are Omega Metroids weak to the Ice Beam and invulnerable to missiles?

Next up, Zero Mission!

 

[otakujeb]

Further musings: If Sector 1 (SRX) was a perfect simulated biome of SR388, why did the X clog up the atmospheric stabilizers near the beginning of the game? They should love a replica of home. Unless they already knew about the Metroids onboard and were trying to deny them the environment they would need to mature?

 

[otakujeb]

Oh no guys, I might be romantically in love with Zero Mission

 

[Becksworth]

Further musings: If Sector 1 (SRX) was a perfect simulated biome of SR388, why did the X clog up the atmospheric stabilizers near the beginning of the game? They should love a replica of home. Unless they already knew about the Metroids onboard and were trying to deny them the environment they would need to mature?

Trying to heat kill Samus before she can get a Varia suit maybe?

 

[otakujeb]

Oh no guys, I might be romantically in love with Zero Mission

This is such a weird and fun game.

-- It's so oddly faithful a remake and yet so different at the same time. It's a bit like if the All-Stars version of SMB gave you Mario's moveset from SMB3 or World, complete with the Hammer Bros Suit or the Cape. It's delightfully broken-- Metroid was not balanced around Samus having 8-way aiming and crouching-- but roughly half the map is unapologetically Just Metroid In 16 Bits.

-- The other half is a blend of Super's subtle guided exploration with a few unnecessary extras like the Chozo statue waypoints (although since Metroid's item positions are mostly unchanged, the hint this gives for the Varia would be invaluable to a noob) but with Fusion's breakneck pace and maneuvering. The bosses are more or less directly imported from Super, and with few exceptions the game feels largely like an apology to fans who felt rubbed the wrong way by Fusion's purposeful constrictions.

-- That said, there's a few weird set pieces that feel like the devs are fighting the urges that led to Fusion. The barrier things blocking the Varia are simply a quick environmental puzzle to solve, but threw me off course because (just having played Fusion a day earlier) I thought I needed Super Missiles for them. Yet Super Missiles were beyond hot rooms! It took me a while to discover how to get rid of them.

-- The added stuff after Mother Brain is wholly unnecessary, but it is interesting to see the germ of the idea go from "SA-X chase" to "full stealth sequence" to "EMMI zones".

-- I love the retcon for why there are no Pirates around, except in the ship. They got Metroided!

 

[otakujeb]

And credits ran on Zero Mission. 99%, 5:15, and whoever designed that shinespark puzzle for the last E-tank in Chozodia is a criminal who should be in jail.

 

[Kirin]

I think I actually did that last shinespark puzzle, but it took a while to nail it.

 

[otakujeb]

I think I actually did that last shinespark puzzle, but it took a while to nail it.

I left a savestate there, but I could feel my joy-con stick deteriorating as I kept trying. Maybe I'll try with my pro controller and a proper D-pad.

I'd never actually 100%'ed OG Metroid, so I knocked that out this morning with a time of 1:46. It was a lot easier than I remember it being! Knowing exactly where to go is half of it, certainly. It's odd going back to the wide-open world where there's nearly no required items blocking anything off, not even hidden behind a sequence break. Just missiles and bombs gets you nearly everything else.

I'm fascinated by the passcode system and how easy it is to play with whatever items/events completed that you want, even in ways that aren't valid states in the normal game. It's almost like a built-in Game Genie.

 

[Kirin]

I left a savestate there, but I could feel my joy-con stick deteriorating as I kept trying. Maybe I'll try with my pro controller and a proper D-pad.

Yeah I must’ve done it on a DS using the original GBA cart, because I’m pretty sure that’s the only way I have it.

 

[otakujeb]

All this 'Troiding made me temporarily abandon my "Play Some New Games" policy-- which I had already fudged with my OG Metroid run-- and load up Super to see if I could do a 100% run from memory. It's been around a decade since I've played a full run (that one was inspired by coming across Parrish's Anatomy of Metroid and this forum, actually!). My usual practice since has been to load the game up every few years on the SNES mini or Switch Online and play up to the Gravity Suit.

Because Maridia, y'all.

If there is one area design in this game I don't like, it is Maridia. I get the progression here-- the fairly linear Brinstar to the crisscross Norfair to the hidden maze of the Wrecked Ship, and now we have the wide open mystery of Maridia. Honestly, it's the area that feels most like playing OG Metroid back in the day, with its melancholy tone and it's knack for somehow getting you lost despite the game having a map system. But it's been so crisp up to this point, with a steady stream of upgrades and new environments, and everything just slows down here (including Samus, despite the Gravity Suit movement is just enough slower underwater to mess with your timing). There's nothing but missile/bomb pickups between the Gravity Suit and the Space Jump unless you're sequence breaking, and the room designs are too similar. While I can picture a run from the beginning through the Wrecked Ship in my mind's eye, Maridia is just a mash of different screens and features. I was genuinely surprised that one door-crossing shinespark for a missile (to think that is the hardest shinespark puzzle in the regular route!) is so close to the glass tube entrance, for instance. Almost every door is a surprise. "Oh, it's THIS room." Yeah, if I miss any items, it's going to be here.

So I said I was only going from memory and Internet / Nintendo Power maps are off limits, but I came across the single worst part of the worst area of Super Metroid and had to check real quick if there was any trick to the two sand pits you have to sink into to get some missile and bomb packs. Surely someone, in the last 30 years of one the most popular games for speedrunning, has found a trick to get these all these items on one trip, without having to go all the way back through Maridia, right? Even if it's some insane speedrun technique normal humans can't possibly input, right?

Nope! By God, we can arm pump and mockball and short spark and single-wall-jump and warp time itself by stacking two forbidden beams, but there is no way to avoid going through both sand pits separately to get 100%.

And then you end up in the sand waterfall room under the pits. At LEAST twice. Ughhhhh

 

[otakujeb]

Super Metroid, done from very long-term memory in 3:26 with 94%. I missed 2 missiles in Old Brinstar, 2 in Norfair, and one in the Wrecked Ship (which I KNEW I missed but I could not find the right dang corner to bomb!). But... That's only 99? I have 205 out of 230 missiles, so it's definitely just 5 pickups, and I have everything else. Where's the other percentage point?

 

[RT-55J]

Did you also have 4 reserve tanks, 50 super missiles, 50 power bombs?

 

[otakujeb]

Disregard, I am a dummy. I was missing a power bomb pack from Lower Norfair.

 

[otakujeb]

100%. Yeah, that's the stuff.

I think The Choice after you get the power bombs is one of the most low-key genius game designs ever made. You've played through nearly half the game, gaining new items the whole way, and all of a sudden the game deposits you within sight of the starting point. Do you run a victory lap back through Brinstar, picking all those tantalizing secrets with your hot new abilities? Or do you backtrack towards Norfair where you know you can dig deeper?

A new player will almost certainly run Brinstar again, and be rewarded handsomely. But half the secrets will still taunt them! Secrets upon secrets!

A more experienced player may backtrack to Norfair for the Grapple and Wave Beams, then return to the junction only to face The Choice again. Surely now is the optimal time to loop back through!

But no, they still can't get everything. Experts know to move forward through the Wrecked Ship, clearing it out and ending with the Gravity Suit...

Where they are spit out of the Ship, back in the direction of the starting point. A noob might wonder why the game does this-- and an astute player will recognize the game's tendency to demonstrate your new abilities, this time by dunking you in a lake. But it's not just that; NOW is the time to clear out Brinstar, and the game nudges you back in that direction. To "move forward" by re-entering the Ship, through to the other side and on to Maridia, is known as the Forgotten Highway by speedrunners. It contains no items and only gives a short tour of the new area before Samus ends up at the true entrance, the Glass Tube-- at the bottom of Brinstar, the end of the loop.

Starting players get a guided tour of one of the biggest areas, including a glimpse of a Mocktroid and a hint about breaking the Tube. Experts get an optimized route for the fastest time through the game. Both are left feeling like they chose their path, but the invisible strings are always there.

 

[otakujeb]

Continuing on what has become my 2D Metroid marathon, I came back to GB Metroid 2 after 30 years. I -really- tried to go without a map, but everything looks too similar. I know they did a decent job changing the tiles and enemies to help differentiate areas, but A) the GB hardware is just not enough and B) I will accept no excuse for the non-Euclidian layout.

- The pacing is kind of weird. The game gives you a basic load out at the start instead of making you find the first few items, but then nothing for a short while, then throws nearly everything else at you by the halfway point. The Spider Ball is a neat idea, but it's really slow and lets them make nearly every secret passage in the game invisible with few visual clues.

- Zetas are the most annoying with the way they zip around and hide in the sand/walls, but Omegas are dang missile sponges. I wish Ice Beam would work here (cough, cough).

 

[otakujeb]

Having SR388 be 90% natural caves was a mistake, IMO. If there were more and varied Chozo ruins, for example, you could differentiate areas move easily than with rock tile textures on a monochrome screen. The uneven up-and-down terrain and huge central rooms are certainly more impressive and "realistic" than the corridors and shafts on the NES, but also make it harder to keep your bearings. Especially when it STILL does the repeating room thing.

- The Varia Suit transformation is best-in-series here. Forget a power bomb-ish effect and a fade in, give me the suit morphing in pauldrons and beefy armor any day. The animation for Samus all around is pretty spectacular, but it really seems to come at the expense of other aspects of the game.

 

[otakujeb]

Finally had a chance to finish Metroid 2 (100% in 3:06-- I futzed around too much early on before giving in and using a map). Much like Draygon, I don't think I have ever not beaten the Queen using the "secret" way. The battle itself seems a little more fair as she is more predictable than the Zetas or Omegas, who just seems to fly into you whatever you do.

I wonder if, back before it became the crux of the entire series, was anyone confused what was happening when the Baby hatched and acted completely the opposite of every Metroid you'd seen in the past two games? The silent storytelling was a little harder to read on the Game Boy than later on the SNES. I was spoiled on the ending already back then, either by word-of-mouth or Nintendo Power, and of course anyone coming to Metroid 2 after playing pretty much any later title is given the story.

Next up is Metroid Prime Remastered, thanks to Santa. Will Jeb stumble blindly around a 3D game for several hours before giving up, as is tradition, or will Prime finally click the way BotW/TotK did? Stay tuned! Or don't, it's a forum, not a TV channel. It'll be here later. It's fine.

 

[Patrick]

Good luck! Metroid Prime is a great game, I hope it clicks for you.

 

[Daikaiju]

The clicking means danger.

 

[otakujeb]

So I spent 20 minutes trying to find a hidden item because everyone said there was a noise when an item was near.

It was a noise because my suit was warning me about dangerous water. That I had already jumped over and gone past.

 

[RT-55J]

Metroid Prime is the Greatest Game of All Time, except when it decides it's had enough of that and becomes a bad shooter.