Continuous Metroid Game?

[Blastbunker]

Hey everyone,

I'm not sure how to approach this post, but here goes. I have zero modding skills and the few times I HAVE attempted it it was... well terrible. I just don't have the proper mindset or skills for it; however, I do highly appreciate games with good lore and/or game-play. I've been a fan of the Metroid series since I was a wee lad and while I never got into the insanity of the upper echelons of game-play I still love to (re)play each game in the series. As it stands, and as I'm sure you all are aware, Nintendo has taken a massive dump on our fan base over the last 10ish years and while trying to remain optimistic, I'm doubting we're gonna get anything else worth mentioning from them, especially after the tragedy that befell AM2R.

SO, I turn to my fellow fans and the modders of the community. What I'd love to see is a compilation of sorts spanning the 4 mainstay games (references to the Prime trilogy would be glorious as well) with consistent and updated: graphics, controls/game-play, and lore. What I'd like this to entail is: the ability to play each game in order without having to re-adjust to the controls each time, the ability to "free roam" during each mission (RBO shenanigans sort of thing), logical reasoning as to why Samus has to regain standard upgrades for each mission since she randomly lost all her previous ones (from a lore stand point with the exception of Prime, Echos, and Fusion this always drives me bonkers), and of course consistent graphics (which might seem silly, but could really accent each mission and upgrade received). Basically AM2R the whole series.

That probably seems extremely greedy and a lot to ask for (I do understand what a massive undertaking that would be), but I won't deny that if Nintendo had done it I'd have willingly and readily dropped $100+ on it. If people would be willing to point me in the direction of top notch hacks that get close to what I laid out above I'm sure I could be satiated with that at least (temporarily :wink:). I've played all the vanilla games as well as AM2R and the "Super Metroid: GBA Style!" hack (combo of the Control Freak and Project Base hacks), so I'm open to any other suggestions on top of those.

Other than that I'm not quite sure what to say outside of potential suggestions/ideas on what I'd like to see in a continuous Metroid game. I guess I'll wrap up with, thank you to all the people who have made hacks and everyone else keeping this community alive.

[Grimlock]

I think the only way you would see anything close to what you described would be if it were a retail game.  Instead of having each game in its entirety I would think they would have greatly simplified versions of each game broken down into missions that capture the essence of the original game it emulates.  It would be an interesting project to work on.

[Quietus]

I also think that when it comes to lore, you're setting yourself up with a more difficult task when it comes to the acquisition of abilities and moves. If you want logic and lore, it would stand to reason that it's unlikely that Samus would lose her abilities, so it's much more difficult to make a game, and particularly difficult to direct the player. This happens because if Samus starts with her abilities, it's very hard to restrict her ability to go where she pleases without some basic get a key, open a door, get a key, etc. (Substitute 'key' with whatever you choose).

I think that for games like Metroid, you need to sacrifice at least a part of the lore-friendliness, as there has to be an element of "Samus needs to lose her abilities because it's just a game, and we need the player to collect stuff." If you don't, you have Samus start with everything, and there's no reason to explore.

[Blastbunker]

Yeah, that was my concern. I'll admit that AM2R blew away my expectations on what it achieved, but to see that done with everything else would be an additional 10+ years if a company didn't pick it up.

This might be overly optimistic/fairy tale sort of thinking, but I don't believe the missions would have to be simplified to achieve this goal. If each game gave a rational explanation that's already present, such as Super Metroid's item selection option in the menu or Prime's beam selection. For example, exemplify that on each world/mission Samus would logically run into new enemies that are immune to her current weaponry and so she has to acquire new ones. Not necessarily ditch all her current armament, just adjust it. While the Power Suit is a versatile unit, it's not all powerful and has limits as to what can be equipped. This would add an additional level to the games with mixing and matching her array of weapons and armor and allowing for intriguing new weaponry combos like the power bomb/beam shenanigans of SM. This could include ammo tanks to each that could be unique to that planet/mission. And they wouldn't even need to introduce a ton of new things on each mission either as long as the enemies vary on weakness that you can exploit. We'll refer to Echos in this case where they introduced the Ing which could die to her standard items, but the Light weaponry did more. That also added a good reasoning as to why she didn't carry those powers over is because those people and the planet itself lended her power that she obviously wouldn't be able to take with her. As much as I love the games, this would add another layer to the formula to change up the standard, get the Varia suit then the Gravity suit, get the bombs, missles, and supers of each. Problem with this would be health tanks which I guess you could assign to each different suit? But that could get bad with limited resources... All hypothetical, so I'm not sure.

Another thing that always bugged me, this is more of a tangent rant but have wanted to discuss for awhile, is that Nintendo locked the Metroid series in this weird box where the story can't progress without odd installments that have no huge impact on the established  lore, make the name "Metroid" relevant, or rebooting. Well, maybe they could... but it'd feel like a cop out like Other M. It might sound like I'm fawning over the Prime trilogy with this next bit, but in reality it's more that Nintendo showed what they could have done with series in it's entirety and squandered it. To me what makes Prime great is that the entire trilogy is based around one main enemy, one Metroid, that continued to persist and adjust to Samus. Three games, one big boss. While I wouldn't want the series to get "Ganoned" it felt really good and slightly intimidating what all just ONE Metroid was able to accomplish in the right scenario. That's something that would have made for an impressive stretch. Where we "now" know that the Metroids were created to keep the X parasite in check, the concept that the Pirates or the Federation brought Metroids all over the galaxy and each planet they are introduced to they mutate and augment to it in some unique way.

The end game of the series by all means could be Samus hunting down their home planet and exterminating the species, followed by the X resurgence, which if played right could make for an additional continuation off of Fusion. What's to say the one of the X that had cloned a human didn't escape on a ship and become the next great threat to the universe and Samus being the final "Metroid" has to eliminate them? That last bit I feel is what someone at Nintendo intended to do, but never got around to it...

I know this is all just delusions of grandeur that will never happen, and I definitely don't want Metroid to become like Assasssin's Creed or, hell, Pokemon, but I just wanted more. Hacks are awesome, but they can only do so much to sate the itch...

[dewhi100]

If we're talking about pie in the sky here, a game where you could play every mission at once would be neat. By which I mean you could warp to any of the missions' starting points (usually her ship) from any of the other starting points. You might want special considerations/limitations for better integrating those missions' particular quirks, but overall you could just search for items wherever you want.

There are all kinds of ways you could go with this. Collect tons and tons of missiles, stack high-jump upgrades, use powerups in missions that weren't intended for them, all sorts of sequence breaks, and maybe even a penalty for sequence breaks; the enemies get stronger and environments more hostile during all that time Samus spends flying between planets.

All this is missing is someone to actually do it. Reminds me of most of my other great ideas, actually.

[Blastbunker]

Right? It definitely falls under the category of I wish I had the time and skills to pull it off, cause I'd do it in a heartbeat just for the chance to play it all. I AM going to start looking into how to do a lot of it for curiosity sake, yet I don't really wanna repeat of DoctorM64 lol. That's part of why I threw the idea out there in case someone would be interested in a head's start or to point me in the right direction. That and I really just wanna play more Metroid, and have been digging for good remakes/models.

[dewhi100]

Well, there's this fusion hack that makes the gunship usable: http://forum.metroidconstruction.com/index.php/topic,18.msg56757.html#msg56757

And the engine made for AM2R could be an option. Actually, a few different people are making engines IIRC. No links though, sorry. For something like this, maybe tweaking one of those would be good enough, or maybe you'd need to make your own.