Super Metroid Beta Analysis

[JAM]

NP = Another name for Wrecked Ship. No Problem? =) We could only guess how was it named.

Apparently, nanpasen (難破船) means shipwreck in Japanese. Also, TS for Tourian could be because there is no "tu" sound in Japanese, only "tsu". Similarly, Brinstar, Maridia and Ceres are probably BL, ML and CL instead of BR, MR and CR because they don't have separate L and R sounds, causing much hilarity and confusion when transcribing words into English (shamefur dispray, anyone?).

Of course, I don't actually speak Japanese so I could be completely wrong.

Press the "R" button! I said "R", not "R", you idiot! =)

This is explaining everything. I also thinked about "no difference between L and R" and I agree with you.

No problem. Check the first post for the updated package, as well as the document available separately for download or directly to view from this thread.

Thank you for all the work. =)

& that is pretty interesting stuff about the area names. I love when beta screen shots can clear up mysteries in the retail (surface area.)

Indeed. One more proof that those 2 rooms (statue room and the room before it) belongs to Brinstar originally.

In the room 7A5ED (hallway before the statues) the Allowed pointer is 8615. And the mark before $8615 in the bank $B4 is "BL2_16".

Statue room 7A66A have the Allowed pointer 8333. The mark before it is "BL2_19".

& JAM, what's up with those two weird beams you show off in the first page of your Spazer/Plasma Mix thread? You state they were left over?

Which one? There are a lot of pics. But unused tilemap is pictured here:

So, the charged Plasma originally planned like the normal plasma beams (same length) but wider.

There are a lot of unused data. I've overwritten a lot of it when working on the mixing patch. For example, there are the unused "shooting" part tilemaps for plasma beam. Both charged and uncharged. I mean, the tilemaps for this (charged plasma):
~
~~
~~~
~~~~
~~~~~
~~~~~~
Plasma beam go: ~~~~~~~

In the final version of the game only 1, 3 and 6 tiles are used and the flying variant (full lenght). They did it because of starting speed and acceleration. With physics in final version, the used tilemaps (1, 3, 6 and 7 tiles) are making the effect of beam coming out of cannon. If make the sequence to use every tilemap, then after some point the beam will come from arm cannon (not having the full length) and grow in the air.

For the uncharged Plasma, there are the tilemaps for 1, 2, 3 and 4 tiles in length, but in game there are used only 1, 2 and 4.

So, about mixing Spazer and Plasma, I think, what they do:
1. Mixed them. Mixed beam is looked the same as Charged Spazer.
2. Had an idea to enlarge the Charged Plasma beam.
3. Made a tilemaps for all beams except Spazer + Plasma.
4. Realized that there is not enough space in bank $94 to mix them.
5. Got lazy to split data in bank $94 for 2 banks.
6. Wrote a code that disables these 2 beams in the menu.

There are some beam-related arrays in the game that have size of $C bytes. Although, some of them are having size of $10 bytes (meaning the space for 4 mixed values of Spazer and Plasma).

(ASSUMPTION) (I'd like to think this area was the original location for the Statue room & the Foggy Hallway before it, & Tourian (Matches with JAM's theory, as these
rooms are in the middle of Brinstar's rooms data). Maybe even leading to the Energy Recharge Station at the bottom of the Red Brinstar Shaft! =] ) [ 4 ]

Agree with this. I think, in one of later releases, the enter to the Tourian was at the very bottom of the red Brinstar shaft (where the Energy recharge room is).

[RealRed]

Maybe it's just me, but this metroid in maridia looks nothing like the metroids in super metroid. it looks a lot more hollow, a bit more "rotund", and its spikes don't portrude very far outside of the body. Clearly there was a change in design, either to mocktroids or metroids. Who knows.

[Vismund Cygnus]

I'd agree with you Bloodsonic. My guess would be that it's an early Mochtroid, judging by the looks of it, it only has one nuclei(?) as opposed to the normal 3 a Metroid has, as well as having smaller mandibles. Also probably due to the fact that it's in Maridia, like the Mochtroids in the game. Nice find though.
I also noticed in that the Super Missile counter has 3 digits. Perhaps there was planned to be a lot mor eitems?

[Quietus]

I also noticed in that the Super Missile counter has 3 digits. Perhaps there was planned to be a lot mor eitems?

I don't think so.  At that point in the video, the missile counter displays 900, so it's likely just for testing / debugging purposes.

[JAM]

Enemy F153 is found by me some time ago (year or two).
Unfinished unused enemy. Small rotating ball.
So I dub thee mini-Oub
Dub dub dub du-du-dub dub dub
Du-dub dub dub du-du-dub dub dub

EDIT: Fixed! It's F153, not F113.

[CrAzY]

The Metroid definitely looks different, but it's hard to see the finer details with the water FX in the way. A lot of the sprites seem to be lacking their final polish.

& the missile values definitely appear to be testing values, since many screen-shots have the same amount.

The fact that the Super Missile count is 3 digits long had to have been done for a reason. Either it was copied from the normal Missile's code, or they really did plan on you collecting a hundred or more SM's. I personally think it is the latter, & they just didn't comprehend how truly big the game would be yet.

I should make notes of all the unused/unfinished enemies as well.

Diagonal Draygon Turrets
Reflect
Bang
Mini-croc
Mini-Oub
Mini-Phantoon (wouldn't that be cute?)

What else is there? I know there is some glitchy SBUG (green bugs covering abandoned crateria main street) but that seems pretty uninteresting.

[RealRed]

This isn't mini-oub, is it? (I'm putting this here because I never saw it mentioned in the topic.)

[Smiley]

A rotting Pacman with a tongue. Awesome!

[CrAzY]

I actually did mention that Pac man style growth earlier in the thread, I just never posted pictures of it. That isn't the mini - oub is it? I thought it was just some strange enemy that loads up with Mother brain.

http://debugunused.wikia.com/wiki/Super_Metroid

That's where I first heard about it.

[snibsnib]

Maybe Mother Brain originally had an eye in her first form?

[RealRed]

I didn't know it was part of the mother brain's graphics... I actually loaded a crateria palette to view him in the image I put. take note of the wings and tail to the right of it though (something that the page you linked clearly overlooks). I don't think it was meant to be connected to the motherbrain. If it is related to the motherbrain, I'd have to guess either a projectile, or perhaps a summon.
I recall hearing once that no coding exists for it, though, so maybe its use as a projectile would make sense. it's coding would be that of another monsters.

[Quietus]

It seems unlikely.  I'd say that it's 99% likely that that appendage is supposed to be a tongue, which would fit in with the Oub theory JAM was on about.

[RealRed]

Made a mockup to show you what I'm trying to point out.
This can't be mini-oub, though. He said Mini-oub rotated. Super metroid doesn't support rotating graphics, only horizontal and vertical flips... Sprites would account for this.

[JAM]

What else is there? I know there is some glitchy SBUG (green bugs covering abandoned crateria main street) but that seems pretty uninteresting.

I'll start from obvious.

Pink gates and Yellow gates (this one uses the black gate's graphics).
Upside down gates.
Already opened gates.
Screw attack blocks (working. Doesn't change the graphics. Invisible by X-Ray).
And... THIS. It's so big, but no one ever noticed it except me.



Location: $178800.

By the way, I've placed the files of mini-Oub for classic SMILE in the collab thread (JX already had them, no one ever noticed as usual). You can test it because its behaviour is programmed. Touch it and take a lot of damage. But all it can do is rotate clockwise.

And what Bloodsonic is really looks like a Batman Pac-bat or pac-man with wings. And mini-Oub I found is not using these graphics. It uses graphics placed at $1BFB00.

[Quote58]

Actually I always wondered what that giant ball thing was, but I just assumed it was used somewhere.

[JAM]

Quote58
But it isn't. No enemy uses $AF:8800 as GFX pointer. I've checked.

[RealRed]

My new favorite thread, for sure.

image of the Super Metroid instruction book... what's this? a blue gate in red brinstar?
I wonder where it was intended to be placed.

[CrAzY]

Hahaha, every time I go to reply to my own thread, someone bumped it earlier that day!

Thanks Bloodsonic, I like your enthusiasm. Thanks for showing us the Pac man with the wings overlaid as well.
I actually did make a note of this gate in red Brinstar, but totally forgot to include it.
Since that screen-shot shows us nothing besides the gate & the fact that the room uses the red Brinstar tileset, I doubt we'd ever be able to conclude where it was originally placed. I'd like to think it would be the room at the bottom left of the red Brinstar shaft (where the energy recharge station is). Why do I guess this? Well, it would be good for blocking Samus from getting back up to Crateria / Brinstar (as most normal players wouldn't have the wave beam yet & will usually get wave after ice, & the gate faces left.) That & the gate is in an area with the red Brinstar tiles, so I could easily assume a cut room.

Anyway, here is what I came to ask. What is the general consensus on the map in the Nintendo Service Center video (image 4 in my compilation. ) What do the J, E, M, B stand for? I guessed all the possibilities (?) in my doc, but am still confused.
Here is my recent thoughts on it...

J = Jump To (save points below elevators, right before bosses)
B = Bosses/Mini-Bosses
E = Energy Tank / Energy Recharge(?)
M = Missiles / Map Room(?)

But everything contradicts each other.
Look where the E's are. One is where the map room is in the final, & the other is the one that is through the Charge beam pipe. This leads me to believe that the E is for energy tank, because if it was energy recharge, it is missing in the room past Speed Booster buddies.
I don't think M stands for Map room either because there is 2 visible in Brinstar. Unless one is for the cut area, & the other is for our normal Brinstar (which doesn't make sense, 2 map rooms in one area, & the map is completely revealed after visiting only the normal area of Brinstar's map room (?), although it could be in some debug mode...) Or map rooms didn't exist yet, & the map was always displayed, who knows?

That probably sounds really confusing, & I am confused about those map symbols.

[Quietus]

Another possibility for the blue gate is that the shortcut to Maridia was originally intended to be more accessible, and they later replaced it with a reverse green gate.

[CrAzY]

That actually ran through my head, Quietus, but as I thought of it more, it wouldn't make too much sense, as it would lock the player in. (you mean the Maridia entrance near the first powerbomb pickup, yes? The only way I see that working is if they didn't implement the Maridia tube yet, this way you could somehow escape Maridia with no grav suit/powerbombs (although I guess you could escape back through that hallway to the right of the tube, past the Super Missile gate. So many possibilities!

[Quietus]

I'd thought of that too, and there's method in my madness! :^_^:

If the player enters Maridia from that gate, they'd end up in the huge room with all the grapple blocks along the top.  The player wouldn't be able to access the top doors, so they'd have to go down through one of the two doors at the bottom.  Whichever they choose, they end up in the same room - where the pirates are.  From there, they can access the turtle room (where they can't do anything), or they can head left, into 'main street'.  They could climb back up, but this would just loop back round to where they started.  Back in main street, they can go down, but they get stuck on top of the n00b tube.  They can now only go right, into the long room with the crabs.  This leads into a small room with a broken pipe (hint for a later objective!), and more crabs.  The player can go right from here, but they get stuck in a difficult room with sandfalls.  Should the player go in the sand, they can escape by rolling left and shooting upward (convenient!).  From there, they can only go back to the left, and down through the hole in the floor.  Here, they can access the map terminal (again, convenient!), or exit to the left, all of which has shepherded the player back toward the glass tube, and the entrance to Norfair, where the player should be heading for Grapple... :study:

[Jordan5]

the only reason they wouldn't allow that is if you enter the glass tube room and it's not broken, you have normal gravity, which completely ruins the cool effect of it seeming like you were walking through a tube :^_^:

[Quietus]

And that could be part of the reason for the change.  They may well have been able to add the water in if needs be, but didn't need to, since they'd blocked it off with the green gate anyway.  What I suggested is merely reasoning for the gate I mentioned being blue.  They could also have decided that the risk of a player exploring past the sandfall room was too difficult.

[TheAnonymousUser]

My new favorite thread, for sure.

image of the Super Metroid instruction book... what's this? a blue gate in red brinstar?
I wonder where it was intended to be placed.

I actually think that gate was going to be placed in:
[spoiler=This room][/spoiler]

Here's what it looks like with the gate.
[spoiler][/spoiler]

Maybe that was there to get players to make a complete cycle around crateria/brinstar, encouraging them to pick up those few items they couldn't get earlier in game?

Who knows. It's not there now.

[personitis]

I completely agree with Quietus' explanation and TAU's idea of placement (took the idea right out of my head :^_^:). The only thing I think is a bit iffy with Quietus' thought is that, despite understanding the noob tube better, unless the player had left Brinstar and explored, they wouldn't know what to do with the Grapple I'd feel. It's also worth to note that since there's an event bit that is set when the tube is broken, Mraidia "mainstreet" could've easily had multiple states, placing a locked door over the cap down to the tube as to prevent air movement while seemingly being in water. It's also interesting to think that SM could've had an (almost) intended suitless Maridia run! :grin: