Metroid II: Distress Call

[Moehr]

Manual can be found here.

Distress call received:
...
Research satellite has come under attack. Rather than risk our military project falling into the wrong hands, we have executed Process 0 eliminating all occupants.
...
With the station automata failing and organic matter weaponized there is nobody to save.
...
We rather ask that you eliminate those who have come here, and return our prototype bioweapons to the proper authorities, under article 36-C of the Galactic Border Treaty.
---

Hack difficulty is listed as unknown for the following reasons:
- you will benefit from experience with the original
- damage has been reduced a lot
- drops are more frequent and restore more health/ammo
- no missile rechargers away from gunship
- missile expansion tanks refill missiles
- the game world is smaller but not linear
- new upgrades have been added
- beams behave differently
- some new items have been added
- some custom art and enemy behavior
- one of the 4 areas is an entirely new layout
- pausing loads a map showing item locations and game info
- collected beams can be swapped (when paused, press missile toggle to cycle through them)
- anytime you eliminate a game target, the screen shakes to let you know

If you use IBJ, you are sequence breaking, and might get yourself some place before you are prepared with proper equipment; the game will let you do this and should not end up in a softlock as a result. But think twice before using IBJ!

The map is very open - feel free to stick to easier areas on several maps, then go back once you have some upgrades to harder areas. You won't be forced to do much movement through damage tiles (though the game will let you if you insist, so if there's an environmental hazard, think twice before going directly through it). It is likely hard to totally avoid the toxic clouds on a first playthrough but you shouldn't be wading through it unprepared.

There are a lot of customizations, enjoy!
If you use BGB64 you can set up palettes nicely as well.

Edit: V1-01 removes a softlock found by Paragon, and an enemy graphics load error found by somerando

[Zhs2]

35/35 items, time 3:19. Not bad, but not quite on the level of good either. For a full real M2 hack it's ambitious but unfortunately that ambition runs hard into pitfalls considering not only is it mega janky to navigate most rooms given this game's level of tech but also BACKPORTS more pitfalls from Super Metroid conventions. It's annoying to jump over the tons of obstacles you will come across, there's a pervasive atmosphere of forced damage that doesn't even work half the time because the tiles are only programmed to give your feet cancer, and you feel like you can't actually get anywhere because you weren't helped along to some of the most important traversal upgrades you need to escape tricky situations and otherwise restrictive world loops. Oh, and there's suitless underwater.

In my play experience Spiderball was the second to last major item I found (Ice beam being the last, Plasma and Spazer I found right after Bombs.) This made going from the first zone left (where I missed just about everything thinking I couldn't get any of it, I needed more movement upgrades) and falling into the second, BSL-shaped zone amazingly horrid to escape until I wandered into High Jump. Along the way I ended up abusing a damage ceiling to reach Dash Boots and getting horribly stuck underwater REALLY REALLY WISHING I HAD SPIDERBALL AND BEING FORCED TO BOMB JUMP SINCE IT'S BETTER THAN ACTUALLY JUMPING WHILE IN WATER because I didn't know where anything was. Cue of course a circuit of platform enemies that flip up and down and since they can generate doing so at they same time if you're moving too fast this made some vertical hallways where you are REQUIRED TO PLATFORM ON THEM IF YOU DON'T HAVE SPIDERBALL amazingly irritating. All of this led to a horrible and grueling experience where I was basically avoiding toxic gas thinking I would be led to stuff that helps me explore only to fall into the most painful and inescapable world loop merely because I probably double bomb jumped somewhere, I don't even remember. I would not have put myself through the search for the final 4 metroids if DMan didn't give me a location map since by the point in item cleanup I finally found Spiderball I was not feeling incentivized to scavenger hunt for the unmarked Metroids (when items were clearly pointed out from the get-go.)

This hack does have some nice features. The map is nice, if only falling straight on its face given that it doesn't help any with room connections and doesn't point out any targets. Auto-morph in small spots is also nice. But then we have things like increased bomb timers, which was likely done to discourage bomb jumping but also just makes them completely painful to use on the blocks they are required to destroy. (Thank god you can find Plasma really quick.) By contrast to either of these the Metroids are completely unchanged (aside from graphically), so they are as fully abusable as they are in vanilla M2. In conclusion, mostly open does not equate to mostly fun game design, especially given the limited design M2 is capable of. There's a reason Nintendo made this game more linear than others in the series - they knew the constraints of the system, and they knew how confusing the world would be to traverse with duplicate room spaces... plus, of course, how much you really need Spiderball.