That 58 kB figure refers to the zipped file. The actual NES rom is 128 kB.
…however, the NES version is a very, uh, economically produced port of the FDS version, with several kilobytes of code and data (including the entire music engine!) being copy-pasted across several of the game’s 8 16kB banks. This likely accounts for how small the game is zipped up, at least. Also, this means that if they had been willing to do some slightly more ambitious re-engineering of the game, that they could have very easily given the NES version more variety in terms of level design and graphics without increasing the size of the ROM.
(I’m too lazy to look up the filesize of the original FDS release right now.)
I’m sorry I thought you were literally saying it should be a pixel art production!! I tried to give full consideration to 2.5D productions having gotten much much better in recent years but I guess we were talking past each other
yeah it’s more like if going the 2.5D route is still gonna end up so lukewarm, I’d rather have them just committed to pixel art instead. I’d love to play a 2.5D version of this game that actually knocks the atmosphere and aesthetic out of the park, could definitely imagine that and would be more than content with that.
Looking into it, Side A is about 46kB and Side B is 50kB. Getting conflicting estimates for the maximum size per side of an FDS disk (56kB per Wikipedia, “more than 64kB” per the nesdev wiki (how much more???)). Either way, that’s 96kB total, which gave the fellow doing the FDS conversion a whopping 32 kilobytes of slack to work with.
okay I completely love this game now, all of my gripes seem trifling next to everything that it nails so well. so far (I just got the gravity suit) it’s everything I could want out of a sequel to fusion. I don’t know if I’ve ever played a metroid game that controls this smoothly without compromising any of the nuance of metroid’s peculiar movement system.
it does make me wonder if “metroidvania” has really been a misnomer this entire time, describing a genre that the metroid series itself never particularly aspired towards but just happened to be an easy-to-parse shorthand for. as early as metroid II the structure was already toying with more linear approaches with artificial gating, opting for smaller scoped search-action segments in the larger context of a horror experience. super metroid sort of lands inbetween the two and has more cinematic aspirations, but then fusion doubles down on linear/funneled progression in the name of making a more claustrophobic horror/thriller experience. it’s notable that zero mission sticks hardest to the psuedo-linear, sequence-break heavy template that has been ascribed to the metroidvania label, and that’s also like, easily the weakest of the 2D series.
the throughline here to me is just that the games are more concerned with atmosphere, suspense, and (sometimes) outright horror. the actual structure, pacing, and level design have always been malleable towards those ends. this is why the issue with production quality still bugs me, because I feel like dread swings hard for the same kind of atmosphere and feeling as fusion, and the inconsistent production values and bland art direction are really the only thing holding it back. on the other hand, it’s an excellent follow up to fusion as a primarily action focused “search action” game, and as an action game it may well be the best of the 2D series. the puzzle-platformer stuff is great too – I’m loving the ridiculous shinespark puzzles and how nuanced the shinespark controls are.
incidentally I think the game looks/sounds/feels much better in portable mode. even the loading times between areas is faster! and for some reason the map is much easier to read as well. I guess this shouldn’t be surprising because it was originally meant to be a portable metroid title, and I’m sure there are usage statistics that steer devs towards optimizing one over the other. but boy I sure wish a little more care was put into making it sing in docked mode.
honestly though just completely redesign the UI and the ugly fonts and take literally any other aesthetic approach to handling block and powerup icons and that would really go a long way.
gotta say as someone who is often irked by this kind of thing, I don’t really mind any of the “quality of life” stuff so far. I’m assuming you mean all the map annotations? honestly I quite like being able to find a spot on the map that I haven’t completed yet and tell at a glance if it’s something I should make another attempt at now that I have a new upgrade.
also I have gotten lost (at least in the sense of ‘what do I do next’) several times so I can’t say I agree that it holds your hand too much. it’s about on par with fusion in that regards, except it’s a little more funnel-heavy in the front end. it opens up magnificently when you get the space jump, as these things should be, and I’d say at this point in the game it’s actually more open-ended than fusion ever was, even if there is still only ever one path to progression.
one small gripe I have is how convoluted some of the routing is. I’d prefer if this game just didn’t have teleporters, since navigation is already so confusing as it is, and the load times for them are so awful. kind of love how unintentionally psychedelic the teleporter loading screens are though.
I decided to replay Super Metroid the other day because I was reading reddit too much (my fault, I know), and a certain burgeoning opinion of “ooh Dread’s gamefeel and play control makes Super feel unplayable in comparison” felt like an insult to me, personally and specifically.
Super’s good, y’all.
I had a longer post queued-up in my brain comparing the two game, but the short version of it is that I realized that am not fond of the sorts of contortions and distortions that the power grip (ledge grab) adds to the level design — makes things too gummy and sticky and stop-starty. Just let me jump higher by default and actually able to fail jumps, goshdangit. For all the frictions Dread managed to expertly sand off of Samus’s movement, Super still feels like the brisker game in general.
yeah the ledge grip is too sticky and I actually prefer fusion’s approach to wall-jumping if they won’t give us super’s repeatable wall jumps, because there are many times in boss fights where you’re up cornered against a wall and you really only want to climb vertically without bouncing off laterally into harm’s way. I’d still rather there be a discrete input and not just “if you press jump against a wall then you’re wall-jumping”
it’s true that super metroid has stiffer controls but that’s something I quite like about it. the controls are extremely precise and it really makes you feel the weight of operating samus’s power suit. it adds to the immersion and is appropriate for super’s more cinematic, atmospheric ambitions.
and tbh I’d probably still prefer a new metroid game that is more in that style but I can’t fault dread for not being that game. it’s tempting to to be disappointed by it as the first mainline metroid game in over a decade and not satisfied with it as the direct sequel to fusion that builds upon and expands its core concepts. but I mostly admire it for how much it sticks to its guns and isn’t interested in retreading the series but instead moving it forward.
I honestly don’t hate the plot, either. the dialog writing is just kind of awkward and loafy, which is a shame bc one of the things I really admired about fusion was how well written and dry its incidental dialog felt. but it was cool to see samus be all like “it’s cool bro I speak chozo”, and I’m relieved that (thus far no spoiler pls) the only actual-language voiced dialog is adam’s vocodered speech-to-text monologues, though they somehow managed to make that sound vaguely lame too.
the soundtrack is fine too, it too basically picks up where fusion’s soundtrack left off, and again the only issue is the tinny instrumentation and over squashed compression on everything.
really all the constituent parts here are very good, I just wish they had been handled more artfully. but I really respect how dedicated it is to pulling off what many would consider an anachronistic game design concept. something kind of cool and old school about that imo
I feel like the cycles on these bosses are just a touch to long for trying to be more action oriented. This seemingly final boss fight feels more like an endurance run than asking for any kind of mechanical mastery of the game.
I feel like the movement concept in NES Metroid was almost the reverse: Samus was more agile than the average platform-shooter protagonist. She had air control and could move quickly while “crouching”
Then even while making Samus objectively even more agile, Super Metroid subtly reversed the vibe, mostly because the Speed Booster makes the power suit feel like a 5-ton truck that’s slow to accelerate but then can’t be stopped
anyway I just beat this. I think it’s terrific. doing a second playthrough to try get a better clear time, just like old times sake. I really didn’t mind anything about the ending. definitely into this game exploring samus’s kafka-esque transformation into a mutant bio-freak, and the whole samus I am your father thing was definitely hokey but I absolutely love how the fight ends with them just screaming at each other as the fortress collapses. really just into their characterization of samus in this game overall, feels like penitence after how badly other m apparently bungled all of that.
something about the boss fights in this game is that they have this exaggerated difficulty curve where the first few attempts I just get my ass absolutely trashed, and then after a few more tries I suddenly have this neo I know kung fu moment and can come close to completing the fight barely taking any hits. really satisfying.
I still very much feel the same way about this game… the fundamental concepts are all very good, I just wish certain things could have been handled with more finesse. would have been nice if the whole affair didn’t feel vaguely like bionicle.
watching some supermet footage again last night and comparing to dread, i immediately realised a thing i really dislike about dread and indeed a bunch of recent titles in the format is how zoomed out the camera is, and particularly in dread’s case, how much screen is basically just black space
i think there needs to be more distinction between navigating an actual space and navigating a blown up minimap
I feel like this is a nigh-inherent disadvantage of 2.5D. bloodstained felt the same way to me.
but I don’t know if it’s a function of how zoomed out the camera is. the original metroid’s samus is tiny on screen compared to super metroid, and I think its atmosphere is stronger for it, and it’s probably the easiest to get lost in game of the series. it’s more that when you don’t have a fixed frame of reference and can zoom, pan, and tilt the camera freely, it engenders that kind of visual style and level design that creates the feeling of viewing a map instead of a world.
to me, this still fundamentally comes down to art direction and visual design. if anything I quite prefer having more negative space to work with in a game like this, but only if that space is used to depict scenery, create a sense of place, and add atmosphere.
