Metroid - Galactic Marine

[stat!k]

METROID - GALACTIC MARINE
A HACK BY SRAROKZ (STAT!K)

Special thanks to the METCONST community for all your help, I stand on the shoulders of romhacking giants.

---STORY---

Galactic Federation outpost "Snowball" is a small outer rim ice-planet which contains a scientific research wing dedicated to examining the effects of the planet's extreme cold on the local fauna.
somewhere deep within the ice sheet is a facility of unknown origin.

Space Pirates have attacked the outpost and aim to locate the hidden facility to steal whatever may lie within.

You are a galactic Federation Marine and the only survivor of the Space Pirate attack. your mission is to locate and secure the research material.
The Hunter is busy on another mission and will not be providing assistance, pray she answers our distress calls before it's too late.

Remember Marine, you are not a Hunter.
You will need to use every tool at your disposal to stand a chance against the Space Pirates.

---NOTES---

NO special techniques are required to 100% this hack.

Walljumping is enabled but is never required.

You will die, saves and energy recharges are spaced regularly.

You may need to resupply in an area before you head deeper into the ice caves, think of this like a bonfire in other games.

This hack is 100% compatible with original hardware and is designed to be enjoyed without the use of savestates.

There are 38 items total to collect for 100%, item percentage at the end works as you would expect.

There are many routes through Snowball, beaten the game already? try for a low item%! how low can you go? (two mandatory items)

---CREDITS---

See below and ingame credits for contributions.

Name    Item
Adamf,    Ammo sizing
GF Kennon,    Frigate tileset
Black falcon,    ice caves tileset
GF Kennon,    chozodia tileset
webbros,    abandoned mines tileset
BlackFalcon,    Skipping Ceres
P.JBoy,    bomb torizo trigger item
Ob,    Bomb launcher
Tundain,    Charge missiles
Dewhil100,    Event station
BlackFalcon,    Flex glow
Tundain,    Gate locking system
nodever2,    Heatbit
Crashtour99,    Physics table disassembly
Scyzer,    Save/Load
Physix,    GF trooper
Scyzer,    Ending total
Scyzer,    Speedkeep
P.JBoy,    Eyedoor projectile crash
nodever2,    Skip intro movies
nodever2,    Improved bomb
ameobaOfDoom,    Enemy solid block fix
nodever2,    eyedoor charge vulnerability
P.JBoy,    Pj's Bank logs
Scyzer,    item dots
JAM,    ridley escape timer
Tundain,    planet no explode
HAM,    ridley anywhere
HAM,    Mysterious station music

-edits-
1.03 title demos removed & minor room changes
1.02 fixed camera issue in final boss room & oob in escape
1.01 fixed a permastuck in lower caves

[junkrares]

Played and finished this today, 1:23 @ 92%. Not sure what/where I missed it, but I felt flushed out enough to make it through every challenge. For a first hack (I assume?) this was very well done with just the right mix of quickplay and exploration. Just had a few quick thoughts I'd like to share, both positive notes and some constructive criticism.

Pros:
Good tiling and palettes, especially for a first hack. Sometimes the lower frozen areas were a little too blue in metal rooms, but otherwise very well executed. The use of layers and parallax were also well done. To add to this, the overall layout of the map was pretty decent as well. Nothing felt useless or too big or arbitrary.

The map screen was well done, with good clues to the invisible walls and secret passages. I liked the open circles for event rooms, the dots and crosses for unfound/found items, and that the maps/data didn't reveal every room. I also enjoyed the map data blurbs. Highlighting thermal damage rooms was also appreciated.

The story was decent, and the atmospheric details made each area unique and enjoyable to be in. I didn't even get bummed out by the forced suitless water areas. It just felt like that was an obstacle to overcome to explore the world. Well done! 

Excellent use of existing ASM/resources. Its always enjoyable to use charge missiles and the grenade launcher. The tooltips on pickup for things were also a nice touch. At a certain point, I didn't even miss having morph ball or the other usual Power Suit upgrades.


Cons:
The absolute lack of health drops was a downer. I am sure it is intended, but I felt it made the game more of a chore than it needed to be. Not being able to farm and instead having to backtrack to recharge rooms was not a positive. This is also on the back of making normal shots very weak and charged shots very strong. Combine that with some truly oppressive enemy/environmental damage in some areas and overall low health and ammo access -- it made a lot of the difficulty feel artificial.

Touching on the above no-health-drops, making missile tanks only have one missile, and then also making missiles slow, AND making SpoSpo, Phantoon, and Torizo not drop missiles was a bit cruel. I'd bring the drop pattern back to vanilla for all enemies, and also make missile tanks worth at least two if not five.

Given that the ASM for recharge at save points exists, it felt a little weird to have recharge and saves be separate pods in the same room. I understand the goal was to have rooms that sometimes had one or the other, but it felt a little cumbersome.

The lack of spin jump was very weird. It made walljumping a little awkward, and lead to odd sprites like charged beam wall jumping where you're bouncing off the walls or CWJ'ing without spinning. I get that you are trying to eliminate pseudo-screw, but it just looks funky. I think you would be better off tweaking or zeroing pseudo-screw damage and still giving us spin jump frames.

Speaking of walljumping, there are some very easy sequence breaks that seem to be punishable by either getting nothing/nowhere or getting your ass beat by a boss you weren't ready for. It is almost childs-play to accidentally stumble into Phantoon with three missiles and zero e-tanks. This is not really a criticism, just wanting to mention that it is easy to get in over your head with some basic game skills.

Just a nitpick, but maybe find a better name for the planet than "Snowball." :P

I am sure I had some other thoughts, but they've escaped me at this point. Overall, I enjoyed this hack and look forward to what you come up with next.