SM hacks that are better than the orignal

[Axatax]

I know this is going to be a very controversial thread, and it's not intended as a troll post -- it's just my opinion (average Joe on the internet), and I'd like to hear the opinions of others on this topic.

I think there's a handful of hacks that have surpassed the original software in nearly every aspect.  Here's my list --

1 - Super Zero Mission.  I think this hack is just magical and a complete work of art.  Easily surpasses the original SM in *every* aspect.  Just a superlative effort.  It seems like every week someone is finding yet another clever sequence break or some funky way to get power bombs and posting it on youtube.  The TAS runs of this hack are the most entertaining out of the whole lot -- honestly, I'd buy DVDs of the speed runs if someone published them.  Awesome, awesome hack that I don't think I'll ever get tired of.  Nintendo could have put this on a cart and nobody would question it's provenance in the slightest.   :razz:

2 - Redesign.  This seems to be a love/hate affair for a lot of people here.  I think this hack is a lot more clinical (or "technical") than Super Zero Mission.  If you're a real Metroid nerd, I think this is where it's at.  It's a bigger SM and faithful to the original for the most part.  I have no issue whatsoever with slamming the emulator down to -4x speed, and playing frame-by-frame to pull off that crazy move to get that _very_ last super missile.  And yes, I abuse save states to death and I still manage to sleep very well at night, thank you.  Could I get through this game on the bare metal?  F*ck no - but I really feel the whole "process" is entertaining.  And "process" is probably the most descriptive word, if one describes Super Zero Mission as "clever".  You just have to love the game and it's mechanics to love this hack.  Nintendo would be vandalized and fire-bombed if they released anything like this on a cart.  :cool:

3 - This is really the hardest to categorize, and I don't have a lot to say about this.  I liked Z-Factor a lot and really feel it compares favorably to Super Zero Mission and Redesign.  Does it surpass the original?  I'm just not sure about this yet.  This is really an excellent first-tier hack that I think compares favorably with the best.


Just want to know your opinions about this, and if you think I'm totally insane I'd like to know that also (that'll save me a bundle on psychotherapy, at least)...
   

[Daltone]

I don't think any hack is better then vanilla. Maybe project base but that has the advantage of using vanilla maps + extras.

[Axatax]

Oh, and just to expand on this --

Z-Factor and SM Zero Mission have the best Tourians easily out of all the hacks.  Both are super-cool major plot twists.   :twisted:

[Lunaria]

I have yet to play a hack that is as masterfully crafted as Super Metroid. It may sometime seem a bit dull in comparison to hacks, but you have to keep in mind that it's because you have played it/seen it so many times already.

[advancedpillow]

Why does any one hack have to be, categorically speaking, better than any other, including Vanilla? I think there have been some outstanding hacks. I think there have been some outstanding moments in otherwise average hacks. It's not really necessary, I don't think, to then make the leap and say, "and that is why it's better than Vanilla." Having said that--Hyper, Eris, Z-Factor, PB, and MSZM are all better than Vanilla.  :lol:

[Axatax]

The guys that like vanilla the best --

I just want to know if you've played Super Zero Mission and what your opion of this hack is.

[Quietus]

I'm with some of the others here, in that a comparison is not really ideal. Since the knowledge and freedom of hacking is now so much greater, it's no longer fair to compare, as they're two completely different things. There are certainly some amazing hacks out there, some so different that they are almost a new game. Long may it continue, I say. :^_^:

[Daltone]

The guys that like vanilla the best --

I just want to know if you've played Super Zero Mission and what your opion of this hack is.

Honestly I got bored of super zero mission, the gfx didn't help with this either.

Vanilla is just something that's burned into my head, I can put it in my SNES any day and play until its finished, no hack has done that to me yet.

[DonnyDonovan]

Super Zero Mission is wonderful.

Vanilla is the entire reason SM hacking exists.  It's the game we all fell in love with.  It's a Masterpiece, on the short list of my favorite videogames of all time.

I find the entire premise of your question somewhat flawed, frankly.

[Metaquarius]

SZM : The Good.
Redesign : The Bad.
Z-Factor : The Ugly.

[Smiley]

SLT

[FullOfFail]

The childhood memories I have can't ever be replicated or replaced. And that's regardless of how technically good a hack is. That all said, I don't think any one have nailed every single aspect yet. Hyper was so close in my book, but it just didn't have a flow to it, and you always felt lost as to where you needed to go next. Your next upgrade would be in a entirely different area, with no hint or path revealed leading to it. But I guess I shouldn't rant about that too much here. Any hacker will tell you, it's hard to master all elements. Even if you're lucky enough to be both highly-artistic, and intelligent, you still have the uphill battle of finding the motivation to actually finish it.

[MetroidX]

I don't understand your query. I feel like you want us to put the original game as being part of the competition, ie. hyper vs smz vs phazon..etc vs original... if thats the case, even if it would be the first time i play the original, I would choose the original. This was made by professional game designers mind you.... but of course i can't even think of putting it part of a competition vs other hacks.. so i will just leave it out and use it as a baseline...
now i haven't played all hacks but for the ones i have played.. my top 3 are
1. Phazon v3--- cant wait for v4
2. Hyper
3. Super Metroid Zero

[RealRed]

I think there's a handful of hacks that have surpassed the original software in nearly every aspect.  Here's my list --

1 - Super Zero Mission.

2 - Redesign

3 - Z-Factor

You're wrong. That's not my opinion, that's a fact.
All three of the hacks you've listed inadequitely teach the player how to do what needs to be done in order to complete the game. They provide new levels for players of Super Metroid to play in.

A table can't be better than the legs holding it up. Without the legs, it's not even a table, it's just a board.

Also, to support your arguement, any hack would need the same test of time that Super Metroid has had, which none have.
If SZM, Redesign, or Z-factor were released 21 years ago, would it have been lauded with the same praise and high reception that super metroid has had if they were released in its place? On the SNES with no savestates, no rewinds, no bullshit?

[CrAzY]

The guys that like vanilla the best --

I just want to know if you've played Super Zero Mission and what your opion of this hack is.

Super Metroid is my favorite game ever, & Super Zero Mission is my favorite hack that I have played for it. That being said, Vanilla is vastly superior, & it mainly boils down to the level design & layout for me.

Super Metroid's progression of difficulty or required skill is very gradual, as the game basically trains you to become familiar with its game play mechanics as you explore the beginnings of Crateria / Brinstar. You get all of the basic skills, & you can beat the whole game with these basic teachings without ever wall jumping or Shinesparking or crystal flashing a single time. The way many of the rooms are designed though have multiple paths or ways to traverse it, enabling new routes to be taken when you can wall jump & shinespark efficiently, greatly increasing replayablity happiness. Not only that, you can utilize these special abilities to beat the game without powerups that would be required without their use (ice beam), which is also a cool reversal.

Super Zero Mission is wonderful, but it's complexity may contribute to some subconscious downfall to me.

Think of all of the powerups. Many of them are extremely difficult to obtain, & Vanilla's are rarely hidden in such extremely convoluted matters. This may sound like I don't like how difficult some of the puzzles are in SZM to obtain powerups, but it's quite the opposite. I am really good at controlling Samus due to a almost two decades of playing, so the new challenges presented in SZM were awesome for me, & were indeed challenging.

But what if that was my first Super Metroid experience? It wouldn't be as enjoyable, at all, & more frustrating that 30% of the game's powerups require you to have mastery & in depth knowledge of how the game works to collect them, whereas in Super Metroid you can get all the powerups with persistence, &, very rarely, the need for advanced techniques.

It's not that I would say SM is easy, but it's made just right & with its early hand holding, prepares you for the games later challenges.

There is always the nostalgia factor that blinds us from truly comparing these, but the comparison is a strange one at that, considering it is a retail game is compared to hacks made for it much later.

One thing I think might tie in a bit. In an interview with John Romero (one of the programmers / level designers for Doom), as he is playing through some Doom 2 maps he made, he mentions that if he were to release these maps on the Internet nowadays as custom Doom maps, he would get literally ripped apart by the community & the maps would be labeled as crap.

This can be said for almost any game that users can modify, as we have more time to work on our hacks then Nintendo had to make the whole damn game! So it's no surprise that some level designs in these hacks are more innovative than vanilla, but even looking at it like that, vanilla holds up & might still in fact, be superior. Super Metroid is just really well made & I see it holding up forever. It's difficult to outshine it.

[Quietus]

I'm not so sure it's fair to compare the original with hacks when you're talking about the game teaching you how to play. For any new mechanics, this is certainly a valid point, but most hacks are created by players who are experienced with the original game, and who don't need to be taught the moves all over again. As an experienced player, if every new hack forced you to perform moves to teach you how to do everything, I think it would get old very quickly, and would just start to feel like a chore.

[Lazymoth]

Regarding anyone trying to rate these with objectivity in mind:

There's really no objective measurement of how good games are, it's all subjective. It's not a fact that SZM, Redesign and Z-Factor are better than Super Metroid. But it is also not an objective fact that Super Metroid is any better than any of those hacks, either.

I think it can be said there are hacks that are objectively beyond the original on a technical level, such as X-Fusion, which is a marvel- or maybe an even more drastic example would be some of the wild things that people have done in hacking Super Mario World- but the worth of hacks and original games themselves is all up to opinion, and could never really be nailed down objectively.

I do love the original and I've played it ever since it was brand new. Project Base takes the original and does some fun stuff with it that makes it more open and free-form. In a way, I think this is superior to the original product, because I am a huge fan of non-linear level design, but it is true that for some it doesn't have the nostalgia attached to Vanilla, or they prefer Vanilla's more closed off design that funnels you more strictly from place to place. And then for some other people, the newness of Project Base reinvigorates their nostalgia for Vanilla and revives the sense of discovery that may be worn out in the classic. Between Vanilla and Base, if anyone found one of the two superior to the other, they would not be objectively wrong.

Ice Metal is a super cool game to me also because of its non-linearity. I think of any big hack that exists yet, it feels the furthest from Vanilla to me, to the point where I don't think I would even try to compare them because they accomplish different things. If someone was a huge non-linear design buff I think they would be right to find Ice Metal a superior experience, if so they chose. One game I would say sticks to the traditional Super Metroid style is Hyper Metroid, which is a very, very good hack. A lot of things about it were perfect to me, and I'm really tempted to say it's better than Vanilla, which is personally a very hard call to make.

Basically, no one is wrong in saying what games or hacks are the best to them. A discussion of objective quality could go on forever without reaching a conclusion beyond "different strokes for different folks." A poll could be made and people could find out if any hack would beat Super Metroid itself by popular vote, but that still wouldn't be objective truth. And as we've already seen, people have very different criteria for what constitutes "objective" superiority. Some might think the game would have to stand on its own without the context of Super Metroid preceding it, and others think it would be fine for a game to be considered superior even if it required the context of Super Metroid beforehand.

I think a more productive discussion wouldn't try to quantify Super Metroid as a certain level of quality with any objectivity- as no art can be quantified as such, really- but just personally ask: "What hacks do you find superior to the original game, or have some aspects that exceed the original, or have aspects that the original outright lacked? In what ways do you think its unique qualities surpass those of Super Metroid?"

[RealRed]

I'm not so sure it's fair to compare the original with hacks when you're talking about the game teaching you how to play.

I'd say it IS fair. He's refuting the arguement that rom-hacks are better than the original game. In order to be better, wouldn't the rom hacks also need to show this same mastery if not on a higher level to be better than the original game?
"Everything you can do, I can do better"?
It seems narrow-minded to ignore what the original game taught us to do in these romhacks.

[Zeke]

Nobody's used the phrase "apples and oranges" yet, so I will. The things being compared here just aren't comparable.

Actually, this is something I wish people would remember about real game series. Mega Man Battle Network fans tend to beat up on the first game compared to 2 and 3, but 2 and 3 were 90% 1. They just refined and improved the formula. Same goes for the original Mega Man series and many others.

[RealRed]

MMBN is a bad comparison. The first game WAS lackluster and shitty, especially in comparison to its plethora of sequels.

Rom-hacks of Super Metroid rarely (if ever) fix what was broken in the original. Whatever IS fixed is usually accompanied with new issues. Quality control is a rare thing among one-man deveolopment teams where the only person working on a project has a limited skill set.

[theuprising]

None of those hacks, although HUGE achievements on their own as free hobby projects, come even close to the vanilla SM. If you don't understand why, you would be the type of hacker who would spent ages adding cool additions to the game while completely missing what made SM so great, similar to redesign.

The level design of the original was a masterpiece and was also great at subtly teaching the player how to play, here's a video of some subtle instances of hidden tutorials (starts at 2:25):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcrdJD8whfE

Lets take Z-factor for instance, look at "Zaridia," the entire area is a one way loop spanning the entire map, so one slip up means you have to start the entire trek again. Basically any design which encourages the use of save states or where the reward/punishment doesn't match the action isn't the most clever level design, and redesign is guilty of quite a few areas where save states are really helpful.

[A Dummy]

I would say Project Base is the one that I think is better than the original, it almost feels like playing a modern game with all the technical changes it made.

Super Zero Mission is pretty cool, but you have to already know where things are in normal Zero Mission, otherwise you can just get lost not knowing the Varia suit is hidden at the top of Brinstar.
It also loses a few points for a few cheap shots, like the breakaway blocks while escaping Tourian making me rewind so I don't die in acid. And also, when I got to the Gravity Suit I did not have the Screw attack, and there is no shortcut to get back there, so I was a bit annoyed when I had to go all the way around through Chozodia again to finally collect it.
Don't get me wrong though, I still loved playing it, and am looking forward to when the one guy even makes custom music for it.

I have not played through Z-factor yet, but it sounds like that one gets pretty cool later.

I think Phazon Hack could be a contender with some more refining. it was nice that you are given the location of the next objective from certain rooms, making it easier to know where you need to go.
The healing spots are too slow though, when I have to stand there holding the fast-forward key for 5 seconds to heal up, I think it needs some work done to it. ( Yes I know about the secret Particles that are everywhere.)
And later enemies were annoying when you have to shoot them 20+ times to kill each one, but overall It had a good balance to it.

I loved Hyper Metroid for it's new ammo system, getting the Power bombs was suddenly a big deal when it meant that you could get 25 units of ammo back at a time.
And Spazer Plasma, the Spazer Plasma felt as powerful as you would think it to be.
And of course I loved it for being built on Project Base, and even making use of the backflip for reaching certain spots.
The only thing I think stops it from being technically better than the original, is it's still rather difficult.
Also, SPAZER PLASMA! Big props to the creator of the Spazer Plazma patch.

As a rule, I think hacks that let you go through the basic path without using any techniques like wall-jumps come closer to the original, not that I don't like more advanced hacks like Redesign of course.
And personally, I always like it when a hack makes enemies just tough enough that you actually want to use your missiles to kill them.

[JutsBeaumont]

The only one I'd say is equivalent to vanilla is Eris. Redesign is lacking because it doesn't have the same quality of set-piece that the original has: it's large and broad and technically/mechanically demanding, but it never feels like it has a meaningful sense of place. Eris is a unique success among romhacks.

I've played a little bit of Super Zero Mission but it doesn't interest me.

A lot of other hacks are just kind of ugly or miss the point of what makes Super Metroid work to begin with; some of them might be fun or even pretty good, but on a comparative level? Not quite.

All three of the hacks you've listed inadequitely teach the player how to do what needs to be done in order to complete the game. They provide new levels for players of Super Metroid to play in.

This is a valid principle of game design, but we have to be mindful of its application within other contexts; anyone who is going to play a Super Metroid ROMhack already knows how to play Super Metroid; It's built for a niche where an entire games' set of rules are already established prior to starting it. This allows it to press forward in totally different ways, it gives it a freedom the original never had, and that is a perfectly valid avenue to explore as far as design goes.

I'm not advocating for ~poor~ design, mind, it still has to be intelligently and artfully crafted, but it has a different context.

[Vahn54]

3 best so far
1. Phazon-Great hack all around
2. Redesign- I would love to see a Redesign 2
3. AM2R-game just has some difficulty issues...otherwise it's a great metroid title
3 worst so far
1. Eris-Sorry, hated being chased by an adult Metroid at the beginning.
2. Stardust- missing E-tank glitch..no thanks
3. Vino-this was so good until you get to areas that were too difficult to pass because of the structure of this Metroid title
Still haven't tried Cliffhanger, Hyper Metroid, Ice Metal, Return to Zebes, and others though

[Jordan5]

2. Stardust- missing E-tank glitch..no thanks

Care to explain that? Or are you talking about the ones set up for the heat run with the same index (like redesign)