U Can Beat Video Games Tackles Super Metroid

It’s yet another Youtube video post, but the subject is pretty notable, U Can Beat Video Games at last tackling the highlight of the Metroid series, Super Metroid for SNES, in an epic-length episode. Often big games get split up into multiple parts, but this time the whole game is covered at once. These videos can’t be easy to put together, and I appreciate the effort that goes into them!

As usual UCBVG covers the entire game, including all items and known cheats, and alternate endings. If you’ve ever wondered why GDQ players, hosts and audience ever shout “Kill the animals” or “Save the animals,” the ending to this video should fill in the blanks to an acceptable degree.

U Can Beat Video Games: Super Metroid (3 hours 37 minutes)

Unexpected Pinball Cow

Cows have had a long history associated with pinball. Not that long compared to the whole range of pinball, going back to the Great Depression, but in the days of games with dot-matrix displays, it became a tradition to hide cows in pinball games in some way.

Just one example. In Attack From Mars, if you hit the Big-O-Beam ramp, sometimes the animal being enlarged is a cow. (If you can’t take your eyes off the game, listen for the woman saying “Would you look at the size of that cow?!”) Further, if you press the start button several times during this animation (each press will be punctuated by a MOO), it’ll turn the Saucer Attack minigame into Cow Attack, which is actually slightly easier I find; the hit detection is pixel-accurate, and the cows make for bigger targets. Here’s Cow Attack in action (one minute):

A history of pinball cows would take quite a while to explain, and that’s not the purpose of this post. No, what I’m here to tell you is that the legend of the Pinball Bovines has crossed to the makers of Metroid Prime Pinball on the Nintendo DS, which contains a cow! Here is video proof (33 seconds):

It’s explained in a saved interview on the Metroid Fandom wiki:

Remrod: “Indeed I am. I am renting two squash courts to store about 100 machines. But our DS version of pinball is more fun than the real thing!” (laughter)

Terasaki: “That’s right. There’s even an unexpected appearance from a cow.”

NOM: “A cow? What’s that got to do with Metroid?”

Barritt: “There was a pinball game in the 1980s called ‘Fire!’ in which a cow puts in an appearance. The game is about a huge fire that once broke out in Chicago. The cause of the fire was a cow kicking over a lantern. Ever since then, cows have become a fixture as hidden characters in pinball machines. This is well-known among pinball aficionados in Europe and the States, and perhaps around half of the pinball games released since then have featured a cow concealed in them. Naturally, we also put one in Super Mario Ball…” (laughter)

Terasaki: “If you do happen to find the cow, please leave it in peace!” (laughter)

The cow in the game has wings and flies around. Please, if you play it, respect this noble beast.

On Beam Lighting’s Removal From Metroid Prime Remastered

One of the coolest graphic effects from the original Metroid Prime was dynamic lighting from some of your weapons. Not only did it look amazing to see your shots light up surfaces as they zoomed down corridors and across rooms, but they even made the game a little easier in dark places. I remember at least once using shots to help me get a read on surfaces in a pitch black area.

It was such a distinctive feature that some people were a bit upset that it wasn’t included in the recent remastered version for the Switch, especially since it was included in the remake of Metroid Prime, in the Metroid Prime Collection released for the Wii. What happened?

Youtube channel KIWI TALKZ spoke with Jack Mathews, one of the programmers of the original version, in a Youtube video, where they revealed that the beam lighting effect was designed around a specific feature of the Gamecube hardware, that made it nearly free. They theorize that it could have been included in the Switch’s version, but it would have been much more costly there, especially at its 60 fps target. The Switch was designed, either cleverly or infamously depending on your point of view, around a mobile graphics chip, that was never intended to wow with effects, even those available to 22-year-old hardware.

It is interesting though, to think there are things the Gamecube’s now-ancient 3D chips can do easily that the Switch has trouble with. Mind you, the Switch does target a much higher resolution than the Gamecube, not 1080p but still 900, which is a lot more than the Gamecube which was aimed at standard def televisions. But on the other armored hand, it has been over two decades. Ah well.

Why Beam Lighting Was Removed In Metroid Prime Remastered (KIWI TALKZ on Youtube, 6 minutes)

Metroid Planets

Edit the Frog is still taking a break from covering romhacks, there’s thousands to sift through on romhacking.net, but in the meantime, here’s a fan-made, browser-playable version of Metroid! Although it looks a lot like the NES game, it’s no hack, but a from-the-ground-up reimplementation.

We all know what Zebes looks like by now, right? All of the screenshots in this post are from the early areas of “Novus,” the new world to explore in Metroid Planets.

It was made specifically to help overcome the limitations of the NES platform, so Samus animates much more smoothly, there’s particle effects, multi-directional scrolling areas, built-in mapping, and the music uses later, more orchestral versions of the original’s music, although with an option to switch to the 8-bit originals. (I find that the music is a bit reluctant to play in the current version, though.) There’s other interesting features new features to find as well.

Freed of the NES’s dire memory limitations, Novus’s world can be a lot more colorful.

Most interesting is a built-in randomizer mode, and a second, alternate planet to explore! It’s designed along the lines of the original Zebes (here called “Zebeth,” a nod to the on-screen Romanization of Zebes in the NES game), but has some new elements, including areas that scroll in all directions, and new bosses!

Metroid is approaching 37 years old, and it was looking a bit long in the tooth three decades ago. Yet it’s still remarkably atmospheric for its age, and I find there’s something evocative about how the game’s world doesn’t feel designed like a challenging obstacle course for the player, like it just exists on its own and doesn’t particularly show any care for the player. There are some item gates, but like the original NES Legend of Zelda, many fewer than you’d expect, especially compared to their SNES sequels.

Just another day… IN SPAAAACE.

Screed time! Will Metroid still be played 20 years from now? I think so, although I find that most of the internet energy around these classic NES games now is focused on speedrunning, randomization and romhacks, and two of these three things Nintendo is actively fighting against. It’s a good example of how copyright law and corporate control has the potential to hold back both fan interest and property longevity. The rights to these games should be released to the public, while there is still a public that cares about them. Nintendo would probably get more money out of it, in the long run, from making sequels anyway.

Novus has much more item gating than Zebeth. A place like that, where I’ve fallen (and I can’t get up), and can’t go down either because of a low passage… I wonder if the Maru Mari, a.k.a. “Morphing Ball,” is somewhere close? It would be a fan-made Metroid world if the designer didn’t try to be a bit tricky with hiding it, now would it?
Freed of the NES’s limited tile space, areas can be a lot more varied. The elevators on Novus are a lot more interesting! The lava here is animated, and it hurts to move through those flows!

Metroid Planets

News 2/16/23: Switch Online, Google Share Prices, MS v Sony, Toaplan

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Welcome shlorbs and foobs to our mostly-weekly text-based internet news program! I hope you enjoyed our techno/bicycle horn fusion theme song! It’s the number one chart-topper on my homeworld, but admittedly my species doesn’t have ears. Images includes in this post are ultimately from Mobygames.

Emily Olson at NPR (swanky!): Google’s shares dropped by $100… (holds paper in front of eyes, reads twice to make sure I see it right)… billion after a disastrous AI demonstration. As a wise cartoon butler once said, “You people have too much money!” I guess we see where everyone’s looking for the next unsupportable tech bubble now that crypto’s in what I understand humans call “the crapper!” I never understood that saying personally. It isn’t the thing that craps!

Liam Doolan at Nintendo Life tells us that the game lineup on the Japanese version of the new Game Boy game collection on Nintendo Switch Online is different than the Western lineup. Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare replaces video mahjongg player Yakuman. Interestingly the article tells us that Japan-only classic For The Frog The Bell Tolls is coming eventually, although it doesn’t say if it’ll see U.S. release, let alone if it’ll come out on my planet, drebnar!

I’ll admit, Kirby’s Dream Land is pretty nice.
Just look at the smile on that bomb-throwing Poppy Bros. Sr. That’s not the look of a sane person.

Also, Andrew Webster of The Verge says that the addition of the Game Boy games make Nintendo Switch Online the ultimate retro subscription. I mean it’s pretty good, but how was it that Gameboy titles were what pushed it over the line?

Matt Bassil of Wargamer brings us the surprising news that Bank of America thinks that Hasbro is harming its business by over-monetizing Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. When a bank thinks you’re too money-grubbing you might want to sit down with some hot tea and reflect on your life.

Kotaku. Luke Plunkett. Sony claims before court that Microsoft’s request for documentation goes so far that it’s “obvious” harassment. I mean I am at a point in my blobular life that I don’t see anyone representing a corporation as saying a single syllable that isn’t mathematically calculated to four decimal places to improve their balance sheet, so who the hell knows if it’s true. Maybe it is? I am staying neutral in this fight. Acids and bases hurt my cell wall.

Metroid Prime

Oli Welsh of Polygon really likes the HD remake of Metroid Prime that Nintendo put on sale a few days ago, noting that it includes the pointing interface improvements introduced with the Wii rerelease.

Will Shanklin of Engadget tells us that a “Minecraft mad scientist” has recreated The Legend of Zelda in Minecraft, and in true mad scientist fashion is holding the work hostage, refusing to release it unless a video demonstrating it hits 5,000 Youtube likes. The article said it was at 500 likes; at our own press time it was up to 4.5K, so by the time you read this it should have enough. I will pass it along to Editorial as possible blog fodder (“blodder”) for Set Side B!

Ron Amadeo brings us the news that with the switch to monthly updates of Android 14, Google will begin just blocking apps on it made for versions of Android before 6. The reason given is security, but bah to that, old software and its preservation simply isn’t a priority for megacompanies like Google. Does anyone remember the days when it seemed like they might be a different kind of tech company? Me neither.

Nicole Clark at Polygon says Okami is the best Zelda-like. Sal Romano at Gematsu reveals that M2 is planning a collection of Toaplan shooters, including the infamous Zero Wing, the game whose U.S. translation brought us the “All Your Base” meme a 100 billion years ago. And Justin Carter at Game Developer reveals that Double Fine has made a documentary about the making of Psychonauts 2. Drebs out!

Romhack Thursday: Metroid + Saving

On Romhack Thursdays, we bring you interesting finds from the world of game modifications.

What is the ultimate fate of the library of the NES? Right now a lot of people who played it in their childhood are still around. We won’t be around forever. Once we’re all gone, or even mostly, will anyone still care about them?

I don’t believe that game design goes obsolete, but novelty is a big driver of game enjoyment, and what was once popular can fuel a nostalgic appreciation. Once both of those things are gone, will NES games be able to win new generations of players to their side?

Metroid + Saving’s file select screen, showing collected items

I think there is reason to be hopeful in this area. After all, lots of speedrunners are focused on these games, and many of them are fairly young, not even having been born yet when the NES was new and Nintendo Power was in print. Still, there are some games that are a bit player unfriendly, viewed through modern eyes, and one of them is Metroid.

The original Metroid is a difficult game to enjoy now. It’s got a gigantic game world for a NES game, but no mapping option at all. To win the player must explore, find a lot of items necessary to winning, probably find some more that make winning viable to a non-expert, and fight countless monsters that can very quickly end the player’s session. While the player can continue as many times as they wish, they always resume at the entrance to the area they were in with only 30 health, so to survive long enough to resume their explorations they usually must spend a lot of time grinding for energy balls, a process that can take quite a lot of time.

Added is a basic wall jump feature! The time’s really tricky, but since the game was designed without one, it works out okay.

Nintendo generally doesn’t remake their older games, except occasionally with graphic upgrades, such as with Super Mario All Stars. The gameplay, however, they leave alone. But they did remake Metroid, as Metroid Zero Mission, which added a lot of the later niceties that Super Metroid introduced, has a much more logical game progression, and even has an expanded end game. It seems to indicate that even Nintendo thinks Metroid is a bit hard to get into.

The map reveals the layout of the whole game, but except for a few cases, you still have to search out important items.

There is a whole genre of romhacks devoted to fixing the more unfriendly aspects of older games, and one of the most successful of these hacks, in my opinion, is snarfblam’s Metroid + Saving. It’s recently gotten an unofficial update by SimplyDanny, which is slightly friendlier, but both are substantially more playable games to people who aren’t inured to classic Nintendo difficulty.

The first thing it does is get rid of passwords. People playing with savestates may not care, but there is a lot to be said for approaching these games as they were intended by their original makers. And Metroid’s first release, on the Famicom Disk System, did have save files! So the save functionality (if you’re playing on an emulator or supporting flash cart) isn’t a revision, it’s more of a restoration. You lose the JUSTIN BAILEY password, but it’s not like the original game isn’t still out there.

The door transitions have been made much faster!

But Metroid + Saving has a lot more going for it than just that. It has a map! In the original it appears when you pause, but SimplyDanny’s version also puts a small map inset in the upper-right corner of the screen. It’s not the first classic Metroid hack to add a map (that might be Parasyte’s Metroid Automap patch), but its inclusion here is well taken. It’s hard to express how helpful a map function is to new Metroid players. It changes the nature of the game, keeping a lot of its challenge, but reducing the frustration, and also helpfully providing hints as to where secret passages may lie.

Missile doors take fewer missiles to open!

The new unofficial addition also restores all your energy when you begin a new session, makes random health and missile drops more common, and makes the game subtly easier in a few other ways. The Ice Beam has been strengthened considerably, a change I don’t agree with (it seems too powerful now), but it does greatly reduce the number of shots you must pump into late game enemies.

If you tried out Metroid before and found it its diamond-hard surface too difficult to break, you should give this version a try. It’s still challenging, oh yes, but a lot more accommodating to newbies. It is a version of Metroid for the ages.

Metroid + Saving 0.3, made by snarfblam

Metroid + Saving 0.5.2, modified by SimplyDanny

Metroid Prime’s Save System

Zoid Kirsh on Twitter (while Elon Musk hasn’t completely wrecked it yet) tweeted about how Metroid Prime’s save system works. Metroid Prime save files are less than 60 bytes long! A single Gamecube memory card block is eight kilobytes, so it’s a bit overkill, but it’s still nice when a developer is frugal!

Image, of Metroid Prime’s inventory screen, from Mobygames.

The way they explain it is that the game has a number of “world layers” which determine what is spawned in each area when it’s loaded. Which layer is active when a room is loaded is determined by a single bit in the save. That, plus some basic stats like health and ammo, and the record of object scans, all take up very little memory when bit-packed.

If Metroid Prime’s save file were 59 bytes long, that would mean it had 472 bits to work with. The passwords used by the original Metroid only stored 144 bits of data!

Romhack Thursday: Junkoid

On Romhack Thursdays, we bring you interesting finds from the world of game modifications.

A hack of NES Metroid, Junkoid doesn’t offer many changes to the original game besides graphics and area maps. Most of the engine changes it has are pre-existing patches made by other people. It uses the Metroid map and save game patch, but only offers a map for the starting region. Fortunately, while it has some cool secret areas to find, its mazes aren’t particularly complex, and I was able to complete it without keeping any maps on paper.

Junkoid’s premise is that the game world is a dream had by its protagonist, which is its excuse to provide a variety of imagery without any great coherency to it. One area seems like it’s drenched in blood, which I am not usually a fan of) Another like it’s a cloning factory, dedicated to making clones of the heroine, but its boss is a penguin that acts mostly like Ridley.

For the most part it’s not too difficult going, but I found that the final boss could be very frustrating. It uses Mother Brain’s coding most as-is, and doesn’t have the Zebetite gates immediately before it so you can get by with fewer missiles, but it’s very easy to get tossed around by the various hazards of the final area, and the boss’s weak spot, which can only be harmed by missiles, was a bit too finicky when registering hits. Still though, I can vouch that it’s possible.

Have some more screenshots:

Junkoid’s Romhacking.net page

Video: GoldenTorizoCode

This is a channel on YouTube of various Super Metroid glitches and weirdness. A lot of it is pretty deep magic, and they tend to throw around evocative terms like Murder Beam, Chainsaw Beam, and even Spacetime Beam. Those links are useful in understanding what in the burning acidic heck the narrator is talking about. Knowing and caring about the gameplay of Super Metroid is, of course, required for comprehension.

But if you do know about Super Metroid, and you do care about learning about some of the more ridiculous glitches in videogamedom, then you’re in for something that is a reasonable approximation of entertainment.

The name of the channel refers to a debug feature left in Super Metroid’s code, that can be pulled off without hyper-obscure tech, although in the process it’s likely to crash your game. When you enter into the room of the of the bosses, the Golden Torizo, if all of the face buttons are held down during the transition, your equipment will be overwritten by a number of items. The code gives you all of the beam weapons in the game, which is good, but also turns them all on at once, producing the afore-mentioned Murder Beam, which will likely crash the game, not good. The opposite of good.

Here’s links to a few of these videos: an unused enemy called a Bang, activating “God Mode,” and how to obtain and use the end-game weapon Hyper Beam against bosses. It is some pretty intense geekery, but that’s sometimes what flows out of the faucets around here.

News 9/1/22

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

It’s been a bit difficult getting consistent signals from Earth lately, and what has gotten through hasn’t been of too much interest to my gelatinous brain. Maybe some of this might pique your interest?

Jonathan Bolding at PC Gamer says that playing dual-screen with a Steam Deck proves the Wii-U was a good idea! I knew it! What they’re talking about is the ability of a Steam Deck to play dual-headed via HDMI out. This play style is explicitly supported in Wii-U emulator Cemu. The article also notes that Valve has stated that the Steam Deck has out-performed sales estimates, which is good! After the Steam Link and Steam Controller were put on sale for ultra-cheap, I was feeling bad about scooping them up as Valve was clearing out stock. Not too bad, though.

SMB3 Scribe’s tile selector

Here’s some news from a different source than usual. At romhacking.net, creator Michael Nix has been working on a pair of GUI rom editors for Super Mario Bros. 3! One, SMB3-Foundry, is for editing levels, and the other, SMB3-Scribe, edits overworlds. A game like SMB3 is a bewilderingly complex beast under the hood, and the strictures of platform, rom space and development time sometimes force unorthodox decisions, like hardcoding some object placements. There is an article to be written some time about the lengths NES carts had to go through to encode their data, which was usually done using a kind of domain-specific data compression.

SMB3 Foundry’s level editor

I have been avoiding linking CBR.com for a bit because of some excessively clickbait headlines, but a recent device change has reset my killfile, so they’re back. Shane Foley from there reports on series nadir Metroid Other M having one level that made it worthwhile. The “level” in question is in fact the entire postgame; up until the main boss, the whole game is heavily on rails, with full exploration only possible afterward.

At Polygon, Nicole Carpenter mentions the content warnings on new indie title I Was A Teenage Exocolonist, which has a number of traumatic events in the game, but is quite upfront about what will occur, going so far as asking the player if they’d like to be spoiled regarding which characters die, or may die. It is a heartening development.

Keith Stuart at the Guardian has a retrospective on gaming on the Commodore 64 at age 40. That old huh. Naw, that doesn’t immediately paralyze me with fear.

(Note: the Guardian is in one of those phases where they nag you with a huge yellow subscription ad. It can be easily closed, and not nearly as bad as some sites out there, but it happens. One article I checked this time-I will not link them-had autoplaying overlaid videos in the corner, which resulted in them being ejected from this post. Bad web designer, no biscuit!)

Baba Is You

Shaun Musgrave at Touch Arcade lists the best recent iPhone game updates. Mentioned are Baba Is You (yay!), Genshin Impact, and Mini Metro (yay again!).

Destructoid’s Chris Carter lists Switch games that make substantive use of the right Joycon’s IR sensor.

Blogfriend Kyle Orland at Ars Technica reports on Fabrice Breton, creator of indie game Brok the Investigator, and their efforts to track down Steam key scammers, curators who would ask devs for free Steam keys but then sell them. As usual from Kyle it’s great and informative reading!

From Alice Newcome-Beill at The Verge, a report on a new version of a Switch Pro controller from 8BitDo, who seem to make good products, although they note they have not yet received the controller for testing.

I’m sure I won’t see this image a thousand times over the next few months drebnar.
(Source: Lorcana’s official Twitter feed)

And for our weekly eyeroll exercises, it’s been reported everywhere but GamesRadar hasn’t been seen in these pages yet so let’s give the link to them: Benjamin Abbott relates that Disney is releasing a Magic: The Gathering style trading card game going by the name of (roll your eyes now!) Lorcana. I’m already brainstorming jokes to make about it as they leak its features over the coming weeks!

News 5/7/22: Diablo Immortal, Toy Story pinball, Metroid music takedown

“We scour the Earth web for indie, retro, and niche gaming news so you don’t have to, drebnar!” – your faithful reporter

Paul Tassi at Forbes (really? wow) mentions that it’s been discovered that not only does Diablow Immortal have significant pay-to-win aspects, but also contains measures that drastically decrease drop rates if you get too many rare items in a day.

Anthony Culinas over at The Beta Network reviews cute platformer Grapple Dog! Verdict: he likes it, mostly!

At Rock Paper Shotgun, C.J. Wheeler talks about Obsidian’s murder mystery game Pentient, which is illustrated in a style akin to medieval manuscripts! It’s always nice to see a game eschew the boring push towards photographic realism.

Gizmodo’s Andre Liszewski brings up a new controller from 8BitDo that puts all its buttons on the face. No shoulder buttons remain! It’s intended for accessibility purposes, although that doesn’t mean anyone can’t use it. And it’s only $35! Sadly it only works with the Switch and Android devices, although I don’t see why it couldn’t be put to use on PCs too? Is it blocked from working on PCs somehow, and for some reason?

Lauren Morton at PC Gamer mentions Backfirewall, a puzzle game set inside a smartphone with an outdated OS. It’s mentioned that it has a demo on Steam.

Samuel Claiborn at IGN brings information about Jersey Jack’s upcoming Toy Story 4 pinball machine, designed by Addams Family and Twilight Zone designer Pat Lawlor! I have a friend who’s really jazzed up to get their hands on it, and has preordered it, despite it selling out in three minutes and costing $15,000!

Under our new policy of one link to a major news site per news post, we have Ollie Reynolds covering Nintendo’s typically hamhanded takedown of fan content, this time of fan remixes of Metroid music. Sheesh, N!