metroid quarantine thread

My favorite part of these two moments is that the game lets you experience these in either order. In particular, if you head to the last metroids first without the ice beam, you can wildly scramble through those rooms with your life, after which the game will drop you into an empty version of the queen’s room (with some Baby Food in her place), and then drop down into room with the ice beam.

It indicates a remarkable amount of trust on the designers’ part to just let the players experience that.

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i like how that changes it from ominous foreshadowing to incredible relief!!

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it’s funny cause Super Metroid really only has one part that looks that raw and organic, but what a cool and memorable part it is

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can’t believe it took until like my tenth play of fusion to notice that the cores with an ‘eye’ that turns to face you are the ones that give you beam upgrades; they even fire the beam at you

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only instance i know where an enemy can sharpshoot you through a morph ball tunnel

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Metroid Construction recently hosted a 2-month-long contest called the “Starbase Contest”, with the assignment of making a space station between 15 and 60 rooms large.

Eleven entries were submitted, including my hack Tour of Italy. Critics are saying my hack is really good, one of the best, one of the only ones to ever speak truth to power through the use of morph ball tunnels, etc., but surely y’all have played it already and know all that firsthand… so what about the other ten hacks?

(disclaimer: i have only played 6 so far)

Nuts Station by alexman25

(alexman) Nuts Station_000 (alexman) Nuts Station_003 (alexman) Nuts Station_002

This hack was made by a rare dual-classing M1/ZM hacker, who is metconst’s premier “nestroid apologist.” Even though there were only a couple days left to the contest, I managed to convince him to throw something together.

It’s a bit short and slight, but as with all M1 hacks I enjoyed mapping it as a went along. Unfortunately, there’s apparently one scrolling error and a really easy softlock to dive into 5 screens from the start, but I personally didn’t run into those issues so I had a good enough time.

Verdict: Wait for the updated version.

Ceres is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Be In Space by neen

ceresisabeautifulplaceandiamnolongerafraidtobeinspace_002

This hack is the “malicious compliance” version of a contest entry. If you reread the rules up there, there’s a good chance you can guess what I mean. (Hint: Desert Bus)

The core idea behind this hack was something that I shopped around to various people from time to time as a joke (mostly to people who said they didn’t have time to make a contest hack), and my buddy neen was the one to finally take the bait and inflict it upon the world. Not only did he run with the joke, but he layered a bunch of other equally stupid jokes of on top of it, much to my joy (and everybody else’s chagrin).

Verdict: I was able to eat a burrito for the first 10 minutes of this while barely losing any time.

Achelous by Exister

What if someone amplified bisexual lighting at the expense of every other visual quality?

(Exister) Achelous_003 (Exister) Achelous_002 (Exister) Achelous_000 (Exister) Achelous_001

ngl i admire the moxie

As for how it plays: Every enemy does 50 damage, so you can only survive two hits at the start. Eventually you get more e-tanks, and so the difficulty level peters down to something manageable. You’ll also be pretty good at distinguishing between foreground and background by the end of the hack (or at least have memorized the collision mask of every single room).

Having absolutely no ammo packs is a legitimately bizarre design choice for a metroid. I approve.

This got some very low marks from other reviewers, and with my expectations calibrated that low I actually ended up enjoying this (3/5 orbs)

Verdict: you already know if want to try this based on the screenshots

Symphony of the Light (demo) by starlightintheriver

(starlight) Symphony of the Light demo_005 (starlight) Symphony of the Light demo_002 (starlight) Symphony of the Light demo_000

SotL was the one entry to the contest by someone without a prior romhack under her belt, but even ignoring that I’d say it’s a swell piece of work showcasing some promising aesthetic and level design sensibilities. I think it’s great that someone new can come in and make something of this caliber thanks to the collective knowledge of the community (despite the game and the tooling around it being a horrific mess).

The demo is kinda on the short side, but it’s rather fast paced, and puts its light/dark world gimmick through its paces.

The game has a log system to see crew members’ Famous Last Words, and one of the entries is attributed to “Charles Tingle.”

Verdict: This is a good demo. I’m excited for the full version.

The Cereth Invasion by OmegaDragnet

(OmegaDragnet) The Cereth Invasion beta 2_027 (OmegaDragnet) The Cereth Invasion beta 2_029 (OmegaDragnet) The Cereth Invasion beta 2_008

Cereth is the name of the space station in this hack, not to be confused with Ceres from Super Metroid, or Ceres B from the backstory of this hack. (I don’t get it either.)

This hack has a good amount of polish on the visual and code side of things, though in terms of level design it feels kinda perfunctory in a way. Mind you, the map layout isn’t bad, and the game does some interesting things related to events, but the average room is a bit boxier and simpler than I would prefer. Still, this is preferable to me than having the rooms be overdesigned, because at least the pacing is nice and breezy on average.

(I think this hack was meant to be one of those ones where you don’t need to walljump, but there were a couple places where I think the author forgot that.)

Anyhow, the best part of this hack is this random room with mama turtle early on:

(OmegaDragnet) The Cereth Invasion beta 2_007

There are 2.5 slightly different endings depending on a couple decisions you make towards the end of the game. Remembering mama turtle is one of them. Do not forget mama turtle.

Verdict: I forgot mama turtle v_v;;

ELEVEN by Metaquarius

Samus made an emergency landing on some unknown space station, and now she has to steal 14 energy fuel tanks and escape.

(Metaquarius) SM ELEVEN_000 image image (Metaquarius) SM ELEVEN_002

Metaquarius is a very experienced hacker who brought his A-game to this project. As with a previous contest, he seized the opportunity offered by the smaller scope to make something more experimental that you likely wouldn’t see in another romhack or a trend-following dungeon scroller on steam.

This hack has two absolutely incredible twists in it, and I wish I weren’t a fool who spoiled myself on both of them.

Verdict: This hack requires the player to do some of the advanced speedbooster shenanigans possible in Project Base, so it is impossible to recommend. Play it if you can, watch it if you can’t. 11/10

Remaining hacks:

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Metaquarius got that lush, busy art sensibility as usual

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Finished up the contest hacks:

Samus Wants Robot by Croakmire

At this point, hacks by Croakmire tend to be referred to as “croak hacks,” as if the term were a self-explanatory sub-genre. Croak hacks are the kind of hacks that you recommend to your worst enemies — they’re a special kind of kaizo. Previous hacks of his have been proven to be capable of slowly murdering top leaderboard runners in broad daylight (and I have an understanding that he has developed other torture devices that he hasn’t uploaded to Metroid Construction).

This is all to say that his latest hack is by far his fairest and most approachable:

(Croakomire) Samus Wants Robot v2_004 (Croakomire) Samus Wants Robot v2_005

This should under no circumstances be construed as a recommendation though.

(Croakomire) Samus Wants Robot v2_006 (Croakomire) Samus Wants Robot v2_007

Reportedly this hack is inspired by the old “Robot Wants Kitty” series of flash games — I have no familiarity with the source material, so I wouldn’t know how well the influence comes across. Whatever the case is, this hack is remarkably high-concept in several ways (which I’ll spoil since I assume almost none of you will ever try this (unless you’re an SMW kaizo-head looking to branch out)).

(Croakomire) Samus Wants Robot v2_011

The space station here is called “Hourglass Station.” It is shaped like an hourglass. The top half of the hourglass is cold, while the bottom half is hot. Samus must explore the station like a grain of sand — travelling horizontally between rooms is allowed, but going back up a room is virtually never permitted. There is a save station in the middle of the station, as well as save stations in the top and bottom corners. Eventually in your exploration you will be funneled to one of the two bottom-corner save stations, where you will be asked to “wait an hour”, after which the game reloads with the whole space station flipped (sans the weird center area), but what was the hot area is now cold and vice versa, and you must explore the station in a downwards direction once again in search for progress.

(Croakomire) Samus Wants Robot v2_009 (Croakomire) Samus Wants Robot v2_010

This creates an interesting rhythm to the exploration, where when an area is in its cold state you can safely do some reconnaissance/analysis for when you travel through the room in its flipped and superheated state (and sometimes vice versa). Do this enough times, and with enough curiosity and grit, and you will eventually beat the game!

(Croakomire) Samus Wants Robot v2_012 (Croakomire) Samus Wants Robot v2_014

Progress beyond just “knowledge” is hard to come by. Major items are few and far between. You start with 3 e-tanks and never gain any more — instead you have “batteries”, which are instant refills scattered around the station, and knowledge about their location is key to surviving and routing your hellruns (batteries respawn when you leave the room). There are also a bunch of “ship fuses” scattered everywhere, and honestly I have no idea what they do. I think they might trigger certain gates, but that’s just a guess on my part (I at least know they count towards the ending percentage). There are also a couple bosses.

Overall, this was perhaps the most interesting hack of the contest. I had a good deal of fun with it, despite some frustrations, but given how punishing it is it’s almost impossible to recommend.

Verdict: Croak rated my hack 4/5 for being too easy so I think it’s only fair for me to rate his 4/5 for being too hard (actually this is a lie I rated his hack first)

P.S. It’s weird to me that we got three different hacks this contest that used a variation of the inverted castle trope (not saying what the other two are).

Isolation by dewhi and mentlegen

This one is a weird mix of nice aesthetics and patchwork design. It has nice tilesets, effects, and custom music, but the design feels undercooked.

(mentlegen, dewhi) Super Metroid Isolation v1.01_007

At the start you are trapped in 3 dark rooms until you find one specific block in one specific corner you need to shoot to go to the room that turns the station on. There’s another room not long thereafter where some enemies are hidden behind columns waiting for you to stub your toe on them. Some rooms in random places are “off the map”, which is in principle cool (I love me a good overlapping or non-euclidean map), but given that those rooms just say you’re in “Tourian” when you pause it gives me the impression that they just didn’t bother fitting everything together properly, and threw random rooms under the bus to make it look like everything fits together (I could be dead wrong here though).

idk, there’s just a bunch of decision compromises, both small and large, that bothered me. It’s not a very difficult hack, in terms of combat or exploration, but it left me frequently baffled as to what exactly the intent was at certain points.

I did enjoy the mood at least. Seeing the ship becomes more overriden with flesh as you delve deeper into the lower decks is quite neat:

(mentlegen, dewhi) Super Metroid Isolation v1.01_002 (mentlegen, dewhi) Super Metroid Isolation v1.01_003 (mentlegen, dewhi) Super Metroid Isolation v1.01_005

Verdict: I wouldn’t mind a bit more polished up version of this.

Super Asteroid by Ob

Asteroids are a lottery for prospectors. They normally hope to find rare mineral deposits. This time, they found remnants of a Chozo asteroid ship. Their joy turned sour when they found active torizos that tore into the mining station.

image image image (Ob) Super Asteroid 1.05_004

The setting in this hack is by far the most well-developed of any hack in the contest, despite the small scope. The mixed tilesets convincingly convey how the both the federation mining operation and chozo ruins exist in the same environment. The areas themselves are all both fun to navigate and spatially complex in ways I envy (but am perhaps to cowardly to commit to). Also, the maps you get from the map stations have a slight tinge of feeling like in-universe schematics, with the full height of some mining shafts being shown despite being only partially navigable by the player — I love that kind of stuff.

This hack also has some very neat custom code that was just a lot of fun to play around with. The “Bomb Launcher” item is perhaps the best thing in the hack. It’s just fun to fire it constantly and see the bombs bounce everywhere, destroying any bomb blocks they touch and making quick work of enemies. It’s also used in some interesting puzzles, like in the second image here where I had to clear out some rubble that was blocking these rippers (trust me it was there):

(Ob) Super Asteroid 1.05_000 (Ob) Super Asteroid 1.05_001

The other fun custom thing in this are these Donkey Kong Country barrels, which are just hilarious to see in this context:
lBmHfFE image

The largest room in the hack is just chock full of these, and it was a really neat navigate and traverse because of that.

Supposedly this has issues with it being possible to miss progression and enter later areas underequipped, but I didn’t run into that problem.

Verdict: No joke, this is my second favorite hack from the contest.

GRAVITY - Sylux’s Crusade by Roebloz

The only Zero Mission hack submitted to this contest, and the last hack I played.

This hack makes me envious of (a) some of the tooling GBA hackers have, and (b) Roebloz’s ability to just cobble together something adequate.

image image

While, from my experience, Super Metroid has a lot more community resources in terms of pre-made ASM patches and documentation for the original codebase, GBA Metroid hackers have the advantage of a much more sensible asset pipeline. You want a custom tileset, custom title screen, custom backgrounds, custom ending images? Just shove some PNGs in there. Want some custom music? Use a generic music editor that supports 90% of the system’s library, or just shove MP3s in there. Just about the only area where SM hackers have an advantage here is inserting a custom character sprite, but as this hack shows they’re catching up.

image image

The custom Sylux sprite was taken from somewhere on DeviantArt. Hitboxes and cannon position kinda janky? Eh, it’s fine. Kitbash some tilesets together from Mega Man: The Wily Wars? Yeah that seems good. Import a bunch of compressed MP3s from a dozen different sources, but with wildly different styles? Sure why not. We need another room in this area? A bunch of randomly placed platorms and a few too many enemies should do the trick!

Now, I am being a bit hyperbolic in my criticisms here (for one, the Wily Wars tiles are pretty good!). What I mean to say is that if I were to make something like this, my internal alarm bells would be ringing wildly (more than they were for what I was actually making, I mean).

Playing it however? It’s fine.

It’s got some really big fangame energy, but it’s fine.

GRAVITY - v1.00-0 image

My biggest actual criticism is with the enemy balance — there’s too many enemies and they’re too spongey. Eventually however, you get a good set of beams and things finally feel manageable and, you know what, it feels nice — good feeling of empowerment.

As for the actual premise or design of the hack: (a) there’s an included STORY.txt that like 1000 words that I don’t remember (the space pirates stole Nightmare and things went terribad for them, I think?), and (b) it has a novel non-linear structure with 5 areas forming a ring around the final, center area, which can be approached whenever you’re ready (the difficulty can be a bit uneven depending on your route).

Word of warning: there are a couple rooms with instant death pits.

Verdict: It’s neat.

Tour of Italy by me

Rudie likes this.

In Conclusion

One of the admins on MetConst said that this contest had the best slate of hacks the site has ever seen from a contest and, well, I haven’t actually participated in that many prior contests, but I can see it.

If you want me to rank the hacks, I say this:

Sorted by Quality
  1. Eleven
  2. Super Asteroid
  3. Tour of Italy
  4. Samus Wants Robot
  5. Symphony of the Light
  6. GRAVITY
  7. The Cereth Invasion
  8. Isolation
  9. Nuts Station
  10. Achelous
  11. Ceres is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid of Space

Now, if you wanted some actual recommendations from me, this is the order I’d put them in:

Sorted by Recommendability
  1. Tour of Italy
  2. Symphony of the Light
  3. Super Asteroid
  4. The Cereth Invasion
  5. Nuts Station
  6. Eleven
  7. GRAVITY
  8. Isolation
  9. Achelous
  10. Ceres is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid of Space
  11. [empty space for rhetorical emphasis]
  12. Samus Wants Robot

Thank you for reading. Now to do something else with my life for a bit.

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Hey, I played through all these a few years back. They were some of the earliest “known” tiny scale Metrovanias, so I can see why they’d be a touchpoint for something like this.

Reading your description it looks like the mainly just grabbed the aesthetic >_>

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I’ve been thinking about this statement for a while, and was surprised to learn that MetConst doesn’t have any proper listing of every hack from every contest.

…so I did a very normal activity for a Saturday and scrubbed the contest archive forum for all the old contests and put it all together in a list on my website:

and then I made a fancy chart:

Notes:

  • The Star Base contest was indeed the largest contest in MetConst history, with 11 entries, and aside from the oatsngoats contest I don’t think any other previous contest had a comparable amount of high-quality, high-effort entries.
  • There does not seem to be any real correlation between the year and size of the contest.
  • 2016’s Justin Bailey Against the World (M1) is the first non-Super contest hack. (I was gonna make an M2 one for a 2015 contest, but fizzled out because I didn’t know how to place enemies and define doors without using a hex editor.)
  • The introduction of Zero Mission hacks from 2017 onwards is due to it finally getting a stable, easy-to-use editor (MAGE).
  • As a converse point to the above: M1 has had a good editor since 2010, but has barely had any contest hacks made for it (possibly because nobody cares about the game).
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two things before i go to bed:

  1. previously i claimed:

perfect example: audra, hack speedrunner extraordinaire and multiple randomizer tournament champion, had this reaction to Samus Wants Robot:

Screenshot 2024-07-22 203323

  1. on a lark i decided to make this comparison image of Vitality in the editor vs. in-game (with the layer blending effects active):

i just think it’s neat (also i can’t fathom the mindset needed to do this)

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I couldn’t stop thinking about this hack, so I made a map of it because I know none of you are Sicko Mode :tm: enough to play it:


(as always, the map is also on my website, etc. etc.)

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I recently played the demo for Metroid Dread and despite my previous hatred of it (you can look up the post) I had a great time with it. Once I’ve played like 20 other games I’ll maybe pick it up from Bookoff and keep the Switch On(R).

But wanted to know what’s people’s Metroid canon’s at this point. What’s RT-55J’s??? Do any of the hacks de-place a Canon entry?

When we’ve done Top Zelda games in Qing of Posters we’ve been known to be little stinkers and say Non-Zelda Zeldas like Crusader of Centy. Which Owns.

Maybe it is just too early in the day I can’t think of a Non-Metroid Metroid that I would without doubt also call METROID. Outside of like Zillion.

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metroid 2 original is the most singular, like, really impressive execution of a cohesive concept on extremely limited hardware. the spider ball alone is an incredible amount of freedom. the music and narrative beat at the end will always stick with me. the best game boy game besides pokemon.

fusion and zero mission were in constant rotation for years and i know them like the back of my hand. the engine feels the best and i can forgive transgressions like adam and waypoints because i played them first so they’re normal :wink:

metroid 1 has too much input latency, feels like molasses

remaking metroid 2 is a weakness of spirit

metroid dread is an accessibility nightmare for me, personally

the primes are their own thing but metroid prime 2 hated me when i needed it

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environmental station alpha is more metroid than other m

axiom verge asks me to embody an out of this world-style scientist man and is decidedly not metroid

i think science fiction is really critical here and specifically alien and not aliens

like when they put all of the superficial halo hoo-rah stuff in metroid prime 3 and everyone hated it? that’s what watching aliens is like

i forgot to say anything about super metroid but, look, i played it once on the wii virtual console after all of the concepts were already familiar so like playing ocarina after wind waker it’s just not going to hit

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metroid i is a “very good NES game”. the scariest one? the one most reliant on the player’s imagination, at least. idea stronger than execution imo.

metroid ii is a masterpiece. one of the best games you could name. no notes

super metroid is… interesting. worth studying. i don’t like it personally as much as m2, but i respect it. the music is bonkers good and imo the pinnacle of the title

the rest are mostly whatever to me. i like prime 1 alright. fusion has some cool ideas and aesthetics but i have no desire to ever play it again. other m is bad but kinda cute to think about. zero mission plays alright but feels wrong. i declined to play the 2 remake or dread yet and have negative interest in those

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All of them except Metroid 1 corral you down a very limited set of paths for at least the first third of the game, in many cases even when you know sequence break tech. And Metroid 1 has the most brutal and chaotic combat. So Metroid 1 is my personal favorite even as I recognize the best has to be Super Metroid if you also consider speedrunnability and ROMhack quality.

AM2R combines the strengths of Metroid 1 and Super Metroid so it would be my favorite if it were an official Metroid game. It could easily pass as one, it’s basically the Sonic Mania of Metroids, only Nintendo didn’t have the courage (actually probably desperation) of Sega to let an independent fangroup with no credentials except raw obsession take a shot at its seen-better-days franchise

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not-zeldas vs. not-metroids is an interesting topic, because if a game is top down with a clean separation between an overworld and dungeons I’m like “that’s a zeldo” — but to me metroid is less about its perspective and structure and more about vibes (lonely, soft horror, cthonic) and a hard-to-pin-down set of sensibilities. is it the tactile sensation of “bombing” everything to unravel a space? (perhaps) is it the particular sense of embodiment of being able to access every ability without pausing to use the menu? (preferrably) is it a certain sense of world-architecture? (maybe) is it about having a gun instead of a sword? (yes) (SotN and Hollow Knight are touchstones of the “metroidvania” genre, but they diverge too much for me to call them “not-metroids.”)

Axiom Verge is quite close in most respects (despite how boring the protagonist is), but the pausing to open a weapon wheel with a truly awful roster of guns drains my enthusiasm (maybe I’m just picky). Still need to play AV2.

A friend on metconst made a Metroid-like called “Psycron” on Steam. I bought it but still need to play it. (There’s an optional challenge room that looks like a wall-jumping gauntlet from a 2008 SM hack lol.) I also need to play ESA.

Sci-fi is easy fodder for a metroid, but hardly necessary as long as you commit to the other bits hard enough. The Junkoids have an occult-fantasy-dream theme, but are metroids par excellence.

I only played Other M skipping the cutscenes (I had my younger sibling clear the game before me). It rarely rose to the level of decently good, but it tickled enough of the right brainworms in the moment. It should either have leaned less or more into the 8-bit Famicom VN roots it was drawing from, rather than the incredibly obtrusive yet insubstantial middle-ground it landed on (also the script and design needed like 2 or 3 more passes before being committed to labor, but that goes without saying).

Fusion is a very nicely storyboarded series of miniature scenarios.

I’ve had this copy of Prime Remastered sitting within arm’s reach on my desk for about a year and a half now, and I still haven’t booted it up.

The QTE/finisher cutscenes in SR/Dread are a very stupid addition conceptually, but they rarely actually subtract from or add to my enjoyment of the games.

I’m prepared to eat crow when I fall flat on my face making my own (Very Original :tm:) metroidlike within the next few years.

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i think metroids don’t have melee combat

the suit and beams give a separation between the environment and player character. it’s hadouken spacing footwork from everywhere. crocomire is a fencing match

the screw attack is cathartic because you no longer have to observe these engagements, literally barreling through rooms

prime is a better translation to 3D because it moves the x axis to the z axis with projectiles and strafing without turning combat into a test of patience waiting on enemy animations

i have never enjoyed a non-metroid “metroidvania” because melee combat never feels right to me

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DOS_Handgun.webp [webp-to-gif output image]

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