Stumbling through Super Metroid - Part 9

[davidn]

Here's another fifteen-minute episode, in which this time a whole lot more happens! The exploration continues, I end up a bit stuck, then remember something I ignored earlier and get right back on to the route again, including epic battles with two bosses, one manageably small and one intimidatingly large. And grabby.

http://youtu.be/1NSei4KciRA

Comments

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Maridia: you want to throw up, thinking about going from one side of Maridia to the other. Great music, though!

I'm glad you had so much difficulty with the boss of this area, or as I've always called it, the. . .that, thing. I've never actually come up with a name for it. .

[xaq.livejournal.com]

"I don't think Americans know what Kinder Surprise is..."

I only know about them thanks to the legal hullaballoo there is about whether they're legal to sell in the US. (Short answer: they aren't. (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/21/342) Long answer: Under U.S. Code Title 21, Section 342, they're marked as an "adulterated food" due to being a confectionary with something wholly embedded in them that serves no functional or nutritional purpose.)

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Oh, uhh...did I accidentally reply to Crassadon's reply instead of the main post there? Hehe, whoops.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Ohhh!!! I completely forgot to mention Kinder Surprise!! :D

I love them!! Everybody at my school would love them, and we would trade the little toys around; and even some of the teachers love them, and would trade the toys, too~ They would sometimes be rare "solid" toys, and you could trade two of the standard ones for one of those. . I still sometimes buy them; I just got a future race car.

I think they are banned in the US, because the small parts may injure children--although no other country has this issue, to my knowledge. I also think there's now a "Kinder Surprise-like" item for sales in the states with much the same general structure. But who knows! I must play video games, and cannot look this up!!! D:!

[xaq.livejournal.com]

They are illegal to sell here, yes; I provided a link to the text of the specific law covering them in that last comment. To piece the exact wording together [and fill in the blanks as necessary, something which English 111 drilled into my head last semester], it goes like this:

"A food shall be deemed to be adulterated [and thus illegal to sell within the United States] if it is confectionary and has partially or completely imbedded therein any nonnutritive object, except that this subparagraph shall not apply in the case of any nonnutritive object if, in the judgment of the Secretary [of Health and Human Services] as provided by regulations, such object is of practical functional value to the confectionery product and would not render the product injurious or hazardous to health[.]"

So basically, unless this person (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secretary_of_Health_and_Human_Services) says they're okay, we can't have them. (That "judgment call" caveat, by the way, is why we're allowed to have lollipops even though the handles meet this criteria of them being "adulterated" foods.)

[davidn]

I wonder why it only applies to confectionery - a chocolate egg with an obvious plastic bubble in it is banned, but a gravel and tyre pastie is fine?

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Welcome to America. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v307/WillRennar/ViridianPonyShrug.png)

[davidn]

We used to play poker in sixth year of school using the little things that came in those eggs as tokens. I'll have your turtle and raise you a small aeroplane and this thing that looks like a dishwasher.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

. . .Secretly, I don't even know what the hands of cards even are, so I would still like to play that version.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

I have to say, it amazes me to no end (and often baffles me) how you do things in a way that seems completely illogical to me in this game.

Particularly taking down Draygon THE HARD WAY. ....I'd actually forgotten that was possible!

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

There's an easy way??!!?!?!!!!?!?!?!?!!

. . .an easy way that a usual player can pull off??

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Yep. Those blaster things that he blew off the walls at the start of the fight? The Grapple Beam will latch onto those.

You can let Draygon grab you, wait until it gets you close enough, then latch on and barbecue the both of you. If you've got enough health, it will die from the shock before you do.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Those crafty bastards. . . Anyway, I always beat the boss the same way David did. Which is why Maridia was always quietly nightmarish to me, because I knew I simply might not be able to beat the boss when I reached that far. I honestly had much the same issue with the phantom of the wrecked ship, Phantoon, though that area was much more claustrophobic.

[davidn]

Yes, people were very eager to tell me that after they watched me going the long way around! And that's a really great feature, almost reminiscent of something like Metal Gear Solid... you can fight the battle as given, or you can use your ingenuity (I didn't) to make the best of the boss's behaviour and use it against it.

[davidn]

I always have the help of editing :) Though yes, that was easily the hardest boss yet, being able to take a lot of damage and knowing that if you messed up you lost about three energy tanks and had to wait for ages until you were free. (I imagine it taking so long is very deliberate so that you can notice the alternative route...)

I dread to ask, but what else was surprising to you about my route in this video!

[xaq.livejournal.com]

I mentioned it in the video comments...the bit Raven mentions in the comment below. Honestly, the thought of using the Spring Ball to take that tunnel in reverse to get the E-Tank has never occurred to me until you did it.

Not quite as much of a "How/Why did he do THAT!?" as how you got to the Grappling Beam room, but still not something I expected.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Oh, I realised, I might as well mention now -- I normally made it through that quicksandy area without the spring ball by speed-boosting through the bricks below it! (And straight across the top of the quicksand itself in the process...)

[davidn]

Xaq mentioned that on the Youtube comments as well! Why did I not try that... it would have got me in a position to be killed by the boss much more efficiently.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Gah, I feel like I'm the only person who cares about spoilers this much. .

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

He already did it!

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Yeah, nothing really lost in telling him how he -could- have gotten something, especially considering he did it the hard way (or, more accurately, the ridiculously complicated way which none of us would have ever thought of) and we're just telling him how it was -supposed- to happen.

Still, now he's making me want to play through it again and see how well I do without the Speed Booster.

[xaq.livejournal.com]

...And I think I just found my answer. The Ice Beam is completely inaccessible without the Speed Booster, it seems. o_O;

[xaq.livejournal.com]

Okay, so after a compromise of "get the Speed Booster, then shut it off as soon as I have the Ice Beam," I managed to get it, crushed Crocomire (I should note that I'm doing this on a cheating-bastard run; max Energy, Missiles, Super Missiles, and Power Bombs right off the bat), got to where you made your infamous How The Hell Did He Get Up There run at the Grappling Beam...

and 47 attempts later, I pulled it off! :D Had to drag the whole damned swarm of fire gnats along to do it, but I did!

[kjorteo]

You can Mockball to get the Ice Beam (and to get past that one set of collapsing blocks + lowering gate thing combo in Brinstar that's also meant to require the Speed Booster), but that's ... not the most legitimate technique in the game. (At least wall jumping is something you're supposed to be able to do, whereas Mockballing is straight-up glitch exploitation.)

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but, he's already beaten the Maridia boss; regardless of anything, that will have no impact on the video in any fashion. If he didn't know that he can quickly run through those bricks, it's still possible that fact could influence future videos. . .slightly!!