Super Metroid: Reimagined

[LexyChan]

So...I played it again to test out some stuff: I managed to kill every minor Boss in this hack without touching any Major boss (Kraid, Phantoon, Draygoon, Ridley) and theoretically I could finish it by x-ray climbing G4. (or well the one way door if you could access it).
Sadly it doesn't really give you any advantage or possiblity to finish the hack that way. It would've been quite fun tho for having this extra possibility. :P
It only took me some serious suitless Maridia routing and those midair morph jumps surely made me go insane (well..not yet but close to it)
I still was amazed that it worked and there was no softlock possible since I had no highjump and some parts were really close to get up/further.

[Omegatroid]

It took me for days to find the "speed booster" and "wave beam". Now I'm trying to find the "power bomb". I'll find them myself without no clues until I need too.  :grin:

[MetroidX]

loving this hack so far. But for the love of everything holy, I can't find the plasma beam! I am going crazy! I hate asking for hints, but I am not a kid anymore where I have all the time in the world to explore, so please someone point me in the right direction, I am not really looking for the specific location, just a an area where I can find the entrance.. I am pretty sure it's got be in Maridia close to the right entrance, thanks all!

[SavageWizzrobe]

loving this hack so far. But for the love of everything holy, I can't find the plasma beam! I am going crazy! I hate asking for hints, but I am not a kid anymore where I have all the time in the world to explore, so please someone point me in the right direction, I am not really looking for the specific location, just a an area where I can find the entrance.. I am pretty sure it's got be in Maridia close to the right entrance, thanks all!

[spoiler]Plasma is in the top-right area of Maridia. There is a room beneath a power-bombable bridge that has a Yapping Maw and a sand pit, with a sandfall. You can space jump up through the ceiling in that room.[/spoiler]

[MetroidX]

Thanks a lot! I am glad I asked, it surely would have taken me much longer to find it on my own. The varia suit was another hard find, which made grabbing the super missiles an almost impossible goal, lol. Can't believe I went through most of norfair without varia suit until it got impossible

[RealRed]

+good basic levels & solid aesthetics
+teaches walljump
-'secret' fetish. there's like minimum one shotblock per room, as well as a minimum one 'you-can't-access-this-yet'. (this includes super missile doors)
-needless enemy health. does every hacker think, "man, I wish I had to stand around shooting enemies on this game"?

frustrating. I'll probably try again later.
For game design, simplicity/convenience isn't a fault.

[Boomerang]

+good basic levels & solid aesthetics
+teaches walljump
-'secret' fetish. there's like minimum one shotblock per room, as well as a minimum one 'you-can't-access-this-yet'. (this includes super missile doors)
-needless enemy health. does every hacker think, "man, I wish I had to stand around shooting enemies on this game"?

frustrating. I'll probably try again later.
For game design, simplicity/convenience isn't a fault.

I've been playing through this and I have to agree with the secrets part. The game has a needless amount of secrets, most of which are not conspicuous in the least. The path to the Varia Suit, Ice Beam, Kraid, and more are all hidden behind shotblocks that have no hints whatsoever to them. They're just random blocks that you will either happen to shoot for some reason, or tediously find one way or another. I've taken screenshots of particularly egregious examples of this, but I haven't yet uploaded them. I'll save them for my full thoughts later on. Suffice to say I am not pleased with the fact that my progress is blocked every single time I find an item because the way forward is always hidden by inconspicuous shot blocks.

[Retroo]

Secrets are amazing. Reminds me of when i was a kid trying to find where to go in the original Super Metroid.

[Kazuto]

I've honestly got too many distractions going on at the moment to pick up another hack, but I do intend to play this at some point.  But secrets are like anything else in game design: they need to be balanced.  Too few, and the game tends to get boring because you're never challenged.  Too many, and players get frustrated with the knowledge that they're probably passing by 100 things, or from feeling compelled to waste tons of time bombing every accessible block in the room.

Good design should probably only throw a required "secret" in a few times over the course of the game, but maybe have at least a quarter of the collectibles hidden by secrets (as opposed to viewable, but blocked out by items you'll get later on).

[Omegatroid]

All I need to do now is get all items to fight Ridley.

[MetroidX]

Completed this hack last night, so I can now post my thoughts:
Pros:
>Has the feel of the vanilla game in terms of progression. My own fault was that i was playing it as the other hacks, meaning I was trying to break the sequence. (for example I tried so hard to bomb my way up some high spots, or going through most of Norfair w/out Varia suit.) However, I realized late that if you follow the vanilla progression of acquiring items and fighting bosses, things would have been more smoothly.
>For the most part, the secret rooms were cleverly hidden and yet well hinted at (expect for three rooms which I list as Cons). I also sort of figured out the author's style of hiding items after a while, which made the discovery part more predictable. I disagree with some here that too many secrets is bad. I for one like them, as long as they are not "too hidden"
>The maps are sized just enough to make the areas interesting but not long enough to make them tedious. Though it sometimes felt like it, but that's because it was first time playing it. I am sure if I were to play through it again, I would cut down on time tremendously.
>I like how essential but basic techniques are emphasized such as wall jumping and grappling. Not that nonsense of shinesparking, rapid bombing, mocking ball, etc  which other hacks have. which imo just takes the overall feel of adventure away, and instead makes it frustrating minigames within the game.
>The difficulty level is pretty much the same for the entire game, which makes it consistent. Of course that depends how much exploration the player wants to do.
>Overall the game difficulty is similar to vanilla, which is good in my opinion.

Cons
>The reason I took longer than I should have had to complete the game was due to three almost impossible to find entrances to a.varia suit | b. plasma beam (not required though) and c. entrance to Draygon (found it via X-ray) . There is really no hints to finding them, so unless you shoot crazily everywhere or explore every inch, you will have a hard time finding them. (This might just be me though) I also wanted to include the super missile but looking back now, if i had found the varia suit, the super missile would have been an easier find.
>No originality. Meaning, while the author did a very well designed Zebes, there is really nothing new in the game (excpept fo the little crocomires, lol). Ultimately, not a big problem for me here, just pointing it out that some originality wouldn't hurt.
>Too much use of grey doors. Every time I see one of them, I hate them because I don't know what will trigger them to open. The way I see it, if it's a door not is not meant to be opened until the final escape sequence, then why not just use a different object like a boulder or those metal bars. This way a player won't kill themselves trying to find a way in. I say stick with grey doors only if all enemies are killed in that area or maybe finding a certain item (this would definitely help the author point out the importance of that room).

Overall, I give this hack a 8/10. 

[SavageWizzrobe]

Thanks to the input of several people who have pointed out a couple design problems, I am now releasing a new version, v03.

Changes/fixes in this version:

-Ice beam is now less stupid to find.
-In previous versions, a room in Crateria had a design flaw where it was one screen too big compared to the minimap. The top part of the room has been redesigned to be the correct number of screens.

[DonnyDonovan]

I haven't found the exploration over the top in this at all.  Usually it's obvious from the map the area where one needs to look for the secret in order to advance.  I like having to bomb and shoot a lot to find secrets.  Like pointed out earlier, it reminds me of the NES Metroid of my youth. 

My only annoyance was obtaining Super Missiles prior to grabbing [spoiler]Varia[/spoiler].   That took me a shit-ton of save states to pull off. 

[MetroidX]

My only annoyance was obtaining Super Missiles prior to grabbing [spoiler]Varia[/spoiler].   That took me a shit-ton of save states to pull off. 

Lol, that was my issue too. I grabbed super missiles prior to grabbing the Varia. Took me two save states and hundreds of attempts lol.  But the crazy part is that we should have grabbed the Varia prior to Super. Things would have been easier.

[A Dummy]

Thanks for the update, I should probably play this some more soon, as I was stumped before trying to find the Ice beam in Norfair.
I even found the Varia suit with no problems thanks to the hint on the map of something being in that general area (And was kinda surprised it was the Varia when I was expecting to find the Spazer.) and then found the Super Missiles soon afterward.

[zaphod77]

It's possible to accidentally skip spring ball.  I bombed through the floor when i should have went right through the missile door. This sent me don a huge pit and through crumble blocks and stuck me behind a super missile door, when i had no super missiles.  Once this happens you cannot backtrack to where spring ball is without super missiles.

This earned me a lot of frustration...

[zaphod77]

And looks like i'm going to have to save state now. :(

I have Morph ball, bombs, missiles, super missiles, high jump, varia, charge beam, ice beam, spazer, wave beam.  and i'm stuck in norfair in the area where the grapple is found (i saved at the save point), 4 energy tanks an one reserve tank.  I have no power bombs, no gravity suit, no space jump, no screw attack, and no plasma beam.

Spore spawn, crocomire, kraid, and phantoon are dead (yeah i sequence broke into the wrecked ship)

So i finally got to the grapple beam, and it's ridiculous.  You have to bounce on moving platforms the go down into the lava when you step on them, and i just CANNOT get this right. even with the free refill before had through the crumble block, i messed up when i got to where there was no more grapple.  And it took me about 20 tries just to GET the grapple beam, and loosing it without getting a chance to save was soul crushing. i cannot retreat through maridia, because of lack of gravity suit, there's a secret that appears to be designed to be gotten with shinespark, but without power bombs, i need to short charge to get it, and i don't know if it even gets me out.

I have yet to save state trying redesign axeil edition, though i was tempted a few times.  but i'm gonna have t ogive in and save state, even though i completed super metroid 100%, so i shouldn't need to save state.

Did i mess up horribly and am i supposed to have collected something before i went through maridia to norfair?

This hack seems a bit unfair in letting you save past points of no return that you can get into before you are equipped for them.

Can anyone give me the intended order of items? Or the easiest order of items, if they aren't the same.

[FPzero]

On the contrary, as I played the hack I never felt like it trapped me anywhere but I didn't do any major sequence breaking other than get Varia before Ice Beam. You do have to go through Maridia early without Gravity Suit at a couple points and that leads into norfair towards an area where you can get Grapple Beam.

I don't know what to tell you. You definitely have all the items required to get Grapple Beam, maybe even an extra one or two. You're probably a little bit low on Energy Tanks overall but otherwise your goal is to just get Grapple Beam and leave through the Brinstar elevator. Power Bombs are unavailable at this point and you never need to short-charge to progress anywhere.

Unless you did some massive sequence-breaking and got a bunch of items out of order I don't think there was any time in my playthrough that I felt trapped or stuck in a point of no return without the right gear to progress.

Sorry for the non-answer.

[zaphod77]

the room before the grapple beam is killing me.  even with varia the killer lava is a HUGE penalty. when the platform dips i tr yto hop int the air but it goes off the bottom of the screen and i miss them on the way down, and i usually can't escape the lava fast enough on the way to the beam.

Then on the way back i have to cross part with grapple and part with riding, and if i fall of the riding platform, i unavoidable take a huge amount of damage and can't get back to recharge.

Without grapple, i can't get back out of that area to collect more e-tanks.

that's what i mean about being unfair.  I had the same issue with the spring ball, missing it the first time by accident and stuck unable to get it until i got super missiles.

On the trip through maridia i also MISSED THE SAVE ROOM at the point it's possible to backtrack without gravity suit, so i had to press on to norfair to find a save point, missing MORE of marida on the trip, after when i was thoroughly stuck beyond another point of no return.

IBJing my way into wrecked ship didn't bother me, as i knew i was sequence breaking, and i couldn't save until it was reasonably safe.  But only 4 energy tanks in that norfair section is very rough, and that happened through exploration, not intentional sequence breaking.

The game loves to lock you into paths once you start on the way to a powerup, and woe betide any player who didn't explore enough before they passed it. 

I know i got wave before intended. 

but damn i wish there was a closer save point to the grapple beam.

[piush]

help please. I have supers, missiles , ice beam  , varia suit , high jump, spazer, spring ball , bombs and morphball.. just running around in circles now and not sure  where to go next. so many areas blocked by wave or grapple etc. thanks for the help.

[zaphod77]

You can [spoiler]IBJ into the wrecked ship[/spoiler] for wave beam.

But you are expected to go for grapple next, which is in [spoiler]a section of norfair which you have to reach through maridia without gravity suit.[/spoiler].

You should probbly go energy tank hunting though.  how many do you have?

[piush]

good morning. I have 4 energy tanks and a reserve tank at this point in the game. I have tried to get to those areas. I followed the route from the map but get blocked by an upgrade I do not have. can you just give me the section to look for the entrance so I can proceed. thank you.

[FPzero]

I'm pretty sure you need Speed Booster to get into northeast Crateria. You can find it somewhere down in Norfair.

[piush]

thank you for your help. I found the speed booster. Once I saw the author was showing me where to go on the map. I am calling it a night but am sitting outside phantoons room . I see so many areas to explore later on. I am enjoying this hack so far.

[zaphod77]

After i finally got out of that ridiculous grapple escape area, i didn't need to save state anymore.  It throws so much of "hurt/kill you if you mess up" for your very first use of the grapple, and does not let you save between any of it.  nothing else involving the grapple has been nearly that bad. the first time the original had you grappling moving targets, falling just meant you had to go around and try again.  here, you hit spikes.  Strangely enough, the Maridia grappling stuff was less hazardous, and let you keep trying without getting killed.

Please in next version add a save point next to where you get the grapple? :)