Hyper Metroid

[skepticon]

What beams do you have?  You should have all five before fighting him (or at least Charge, Spazer, and Plasma).  It is better to use the beam in that case instead of ammo.

Also, I don't know if you know this already, but you should stay in the air as much as possible when fighting him.

All five of them. I have Screw Attack as well. Regular shots seem to do no damage - I empty my missiles before resorting to charged shots - its really a pain to try and hit him with those while attempting to also dodge his movements.

[CaRmAgE]

I empty my missiles before resorting to charged shots

Why are you using ammo?  Use charged shots only.

its really a pain to try and hit him with those while attempting to also dodge his movements.

It is not necessary to use Space Jump so long as you use Hi-Jump instead.  Doing that will make it easier to charge your beam, since you won't need to somersault.  Most of the time, he just "swings" from side to side, so you just have to jump over him once when that happens.

Note: If he happens to use his tail attack, and he's facing left, he won't be able to reach you on the left edge of the platform, so you can just keep shooting him until he stops.

[Technomagus]

Actually, Ridley takes double damage from normal missiles, 100 per shot instead of 50.  Full beam combo deals 600 damage per shot when charged.  It's not a terrible idea to soften him up with regular missiles while dodging his attacks before switching to Charge.  The high fire rate of regular missiles should allow you to deal approximately the same damage or more over time it takes to charge a shot.

[CaRmAgE]

Actually, Ridley takes double damage from normal missiles, 100 per shot instead of 50.  Full beam combo deals 600 damage per shot when charged.  It's not a terrible idea to soften him up with regular missiles while dodging his attacks before switching to Charge.  The high fire rate of regular missiles should allow you to deal approximately the same damage or more over time it takes to charge a shot.

I knew about beam damage from RR's chart, but did not know about Ridley's missile weakness.  Still, I would think that depends on landing every missile you fire in order for it to be worthwhile.  That's why I felt charge beam would be easier, since the beam is wide, but maybe that's just me.

[skepticon]

I knew about beam damage from RR's chart, but did not know about Ridley's missile weakness.  Still, I would think that depends on landing every missile you fire in order for it to be worthwhile.  That's why I felt charge beam would be easier, since the beam is wide, but maybe that's just me.

The last fight I attempted before the initial post I got a really good couple patterns where I could just unload missiles into him - it felt like I got a really high percentage of hits in that fight, but still failed to finish him off with ammo based attacks, and ultimately failed to kill him at all. That was really the impetus to make the post - I have nearly every collectable available to me at this point so it felt really shitty not being able to kill him after I had (what I thought was) a good fight.

[Technomagus]

Something to keep in mind:  Only Ridley's eye and wing membranes change color in that fight, so it can be difficult to tell how damaged he is.  The yellower they are, the closer to death he is.

[Yort23]

How do you get this missile in Norfair? the other walls aren't breakable after scanning them with x-ray vision. Running doesn't seem to be an option considering the lack of space. The small area near the ceiling for the morph ball I can use to get a run at it but the ball smacks into the wall above and stops me. Unless there is something else I can do with the run shoes I'm not familiar with.

Also back about 2 or 3 screens where lava jets are i can get a run and kneel for a charge, but I cant make it back in time to use the charge before it wares off. Has anyone got this? or does anyone have any ideas?

I attached a doc file with the photo of the area

[Quietus]

You can check Mst's video of it (one way) here. :^_^:

[Yort23]

Hey thanks, looks like a pain. Now I just need to figure out how to either get to the boss room in Maridia or else gate 15 switch :p

[CaRmAgE]

(Don't know if you're still trying to get this, but this is another method in case you can't get the one from the video to work.)

It's possible to charge the shinespark where you were originally trying to do it (with the lava jets), and still make it.  You just have to recharge on the short slope right before the first tunnel.  Shinespark charges last longer than they do in vanilla SM, so it shouldn't be too difficult.

[Yort23]

Thanks for the quick reply's guys. Nope I actually got it with that other method through the south door. It was a bit of a pain though. But yep, I continued on and cleared the game. 97% first time. guess i didn't quite use the x-ray scope quite enough  :heheh: well, still it was a great game and just an excuse for me to play a bit more next time. Does anyone know a number of total ammo? just to give an idea as to what I might be missing?

By the way... Who is Oman? didnt see his name in the credits but found a silly thing

[CaRmAgE]

Thanks for the quick reply's guys. Nope I actually got it with that other method through the south door. It was a bit of a pain though. But yep, I continued on and cleared the game. 97% first time. guess i didn't quite use the x-ray scope quite enough  :heheh: well, still it was a great game and just an excuse for me to play a bit more next time. Does anyone know a number of total ammo? just to give an idea as to what I might be missing?

[spoiler=Ammo total]Total ammo is 500 once you have everything.[/spoiler]This hack doesn't really hide expansions into the walls too much (usually it's pretty obvious when that's the case), so you're most likely missing a couple secret passages.

By the way... Who is Oman? didnt see his name in the credits but found a silly thing

It's DMan, actually, or Digital_Mantra, another SM hack creator.  DMan was a beta tester for the game (and possibly was the first to find the easter egg).

[SuperM]

My cart just arrived in mail today - HYPE TRAIN!!

[Quietus]

My cart just arrived in mail today - HYPE TRAIN!!

Time to open a bottle of awesome sauce. I'm never sure on getting carts because I always think it'll never be the final version. :^_^:

[Derakon]

Finally got around to playing this hack. Technically it's very nice. Smooth play, a nice look to the levels, in general pretty good difficulty. Nice work! And now for the nits. :)

Level-design wise, I do feel like it's probably larger than it needs to be and could have stood to be more constrained -- I can't think of any time in which the game locks you into a smaller area and forces you to get a powerup to be able to "break out". Super Metroid does this all the time: you "need" ice beam to get out of Red Brinstar, you "need" wave beam to get back to Blue Brinstar, you "need" high-jump boots and Varia to do any exploring in Norfair. As a result, the level design feels a lot more focused, because you always know where you're supposed to be and thus where you should go if you want to continue to make progress. Whereas in this hack, since I can always go anywhere, I have no idea where progress lies.

The biggest offender in this respect, for me, was powerbombs. You can explore Norfair without powerbombs, and you can make it quite far while doing so, but you can't actually make any progress. There's a whole bunch of powerbomb doors that serve no purpose other than to make exploring Norfair less painful. If you happen to think that powerbombs lie in Norfair (since there's so many goddamn powerbomb doors in it), then you can spend a lot of time carefully tracing over the map, while as it happens they're somewhere else completely.

And on a related note, [spoiler]It's entirely too easy to miss where the gravity suit is. This makes exploring Maridia incredibly tedious, but not impossible -- which makes it very hard to know where the gravity suit is because you're not really locked out of very much of Maridia due to its lack. I did eventually stumble onto the gravity suit without hints, but I feel like this needed to be more strongly guided.[/spoiler]

The two things I needed to look up while playing this hack were a) where powerbombs are, and b) whether or not I was supposed to fight Gold Torizo. Incidentally, having that fight be winnable, but pointless if you don't have powerbombs? Kind of a dick move. Like three rooms after GT's room you run into a powerbomb door! And there's no items in those rooms either. Just slap a powerbomb door on the entrance to GT's room and have done with it.

[CaRmAgE]

Level-design wise, I do feel like it's probably larger than it needs to be and could have stood to be more constrained -- I can't think of any time in which the game locks you into a smaller area and forces you to get a powerup to be able to "break out".

Charge Beam? Super Missiles? Speed Booster? Then again, it's possible you got items out of the "intended" order.

Whereas in this hack, since I can always go anywhere, I have no idea where progress lies.

Well, the idea behind the hack is that you can do things in whatever order you want, so it's understandable that you'd have trouble figuring out where to go with all the possibilities.  However, you never need to wall-jump or do any other special tricks (IBJ, HBJ, etc.) to get major items in the "intended" order, so that probably would have been useful to know.

The biggest offender in this respect, for me, was powerbombs. You can explore Norfair without powerbombs, and you can make it quite far while doing so, but you can't actually make any progress. There's a whole bunch of powerbomb doors that serve no purpose other than to make exploring Norfair less painful. If you happen to think that powerbombs lie in Norfair (since there's so many goddamn powerbomb doors in it), then you can spend a lot of time carefully tracing over the map, while as it happens they're somewhere else completely.

I also complained about this in my review, so I completely agree with you here.  It's especially annoying when such a door can be circumvented without any special skills, making the door more of an annoyance than an understandable progress blocker.

And on a related note, [spoiler]It's entirely too easy to miss where the gravity suit is. This makes exploring Maridia incredibly tedious, but not impossible -- which makes it very hard to know where the gravity suit is because you're not really locked out of very much of Maridia due to its lack. I did eventually stumble onto the gravity suit without hints, but I feel like this needed to be more strongly guided.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Yeah, I think a lot of people had trouble finding this due to underwater suitless being required.  If the floor of that room and the previous room weren't underwater, it would probably be less of a problem.[/spoiler]

The two things I needed to look up while playing this hack were a) where powerbombs are, and b) whether or not I was supposed to fight Gold Torizo. Incidentally, having that fight be winnable, but pointless if you don't have powerbombs? Kind of a dick move. Like three rooms after GT's room you run into a powerbomb door! And there's no items in those rooms either. Just slap a powerbomb door on the entrance to GT's room and have done with it.

[spoiler]Actually, beating GT unlocks another, hidden entrance into Ridley's Hideout that doesn't require Power Bombs, so it's not a complete waste of time fighting him early.[/spoiler]  Regardless, as I believe someone mentioned earlier, I don't see any problems with adding a second copy of the Gravity Suit in the next room to make defeating GT early immediately rewarding.

[Derakon]

Charge Beam? Super Missiles? Speed Booster? Then again, it's possible you got items out of the "intended" order.

I did collect Charge somewhat early, and noticed on my way back from doing something else "oh, I probably was supposed to have gotten charge now instead of earlier." I don't remember supers, but you definitely aren't locked into any area involving speed booster. Note that I'm not talking about stuff like "after you get the powerup, there's a room or two that trains you in using it." I'm talking about "you have a clearly-marked region of rooms that you can explore, and there's a powerup somewhere in those rooms that you are required to have before you can leave."

The original game did a great job of this, granted that it was able to assume that you didn't know about / use walljumps or IBJs, let alone stuff like the mockball. It gets muddier with ROM hacks, since it's not always clear what techniques a hack will require. This hack notably does not have any note in the original post like "the critical path does not require special techniques", and it also makes it very easy to sequence break, due to Samus' vastly improved mobility. So if you're used to playing more demanding hacks, then it becomes easy to get lost.

Even if you have to get heavyhanded with crumble blocks, shutter gates, and other obviously-one-way passages, IMO that's preferable to giving the player complete freedom of exploration and consequently nearly zero guidance. It's still possible to allow for sequence-breaking in such a situation, of course, but even if you don't sequence break in Hyper Metroid, I don't think the game constrains your options as much as it ideally should.

[RealRed]

The enemies have excessive quantities of health and a lot of rooms are too vacant. There are a few lock-ins, too, but you may not have noticed.
It's okay Derakon, I don't like [this] hyper metroid much either.

I can't really defend the released hack anymore; I've actually already *made* an update addressing nearly every problem. It's 99% finished (and I don't mean "at that one last percent that takes two years") but caught in a development hell called "real life problems". You can thank the real life bad-guys. :(
I don't talk about it because I don't know when I'll be able to make it a tangible thing for you guys. Don't get excited.

If you can't wait, though, you might want to consult advancedpillow.

[Quietus]

I've held off this long, so I'm sure I can wait a bit longer. Also, real life sucks, and is totally overrated. :^_^:

[Technomagus]

Real life sucks.  The graphics are terrible, the plot makes no goddamn sense, and in the end the protagonist dies.

[Zero One]

Real life sucks.  The graphics are terrible, the plot makes no goddamn sense, and in the end the protagonist dies.

Dude, spoilers. Some of us haven't got that far yet :V

[Drewseph]

...but caught in a development hell called "real life problems"...

Yeah thats why Axeil took as long as it took  :bounce:
Good luck!

[Digital_Mantra]

Alright so I've been patient and nonchalant about this, waiting for it to get mentioned by those it should, it hasn't so I will.
Advanced Pillow made a boxset for Hyper Metroid. It is so professionally made that it feels like you've been transported back to 1994 in a parallel universe.
The LCE console cart is also different from current released version, I won't list the changes as that's up to Red, but they're interesting and game changing.
Lots of goodies in the boxset too, just.. holy shit!

I'm saying this now cause it's 2016 and I've been waiting for AP or Red to stop being so modest and showcase this lushness.
Post some pictures, this doesn't need to be so exclusive, nothing does. Life is short.

[ommadawnyawn]

Hi all, just beat the hack (it's the first SM hack I've beaten) and I have a few questions:
1. Was it possible to skip most of tourian on the way to the final fight (through the yellow door to the west)?
2. What was the deal with the pemanently locked door with a gate pillar in front of it around the middle of tourian (larger room w/ ~6 metroids to fight in it)?
3. Generally about SM hacking (though it relates to some comments on this hack below); a) Is it possible to make samus start out with for example the morph ball? b) Has anyone implemented warps into the game? c) Can the space station and giant metroid bits be cut out currently?

I really enjoyed the hack even though I didn't have the best initial impression of it. I do think a slightly more straightforward early game and/or less gating (in the form of, well, the gates but also green and yellow doors and some overly tough bosses, as well as use of advanced techniques to progress later on) would make it more enjoyable for ~medium skill players. You can find my extended thoughts in the form of a pros and cons list here: http://626535750121256080.weebly.com/hyper-metroid-hack.html
Feel free to correct me on anything I got wrong. I can posts screenshots with further explanations on some things if you're interested.

Edit:
I think that, apart from gating and interconnectivity, for a truly open ended experience you'd have to be able to scale the difficulty dynamically so that it responds to what the player is doing. For example if I go to norfair first then the enemies are weaker there, based on a few stats like current e-tanks, ammo and beams. But I don't suppose it's very easy to do by hacking a 16-bit game.

[Quietus]

3. Generally about SM hacking (though it relates to some comments on this hack below); a) Is it possible to make samus start out with for example the morph ball? b) Has anyone implemented warps into the game? c) Can the space station and giant metroid bits be cut out currently?

Yes, yes, and yes. :^_^:

To expand slightly:
a) Samus can start with any combination of items you choose.
b) A few hacks have used warps, though the most notable (recently, at least) would be Redesign: Axeil Edition.
c) Skipping Ceres is a case of ticking one box in an editor, and skipping the Metroid is as easy as changing the final boss, and / or just using rooms without it.