Stumbling through Super Metroid - Part 10

[davidn]

Celebrating ten parts! But this is, without a shadow of a doubt, the dullest video to produce that I've done in this entire project. After making what I thought was great progress for the last few videos, here I was reduced to running around the entire game in a very big circle for just shy of two hours, after which I asked Kjorteo to give me a pointer and through him I remembered about the giant scary face in the rock that had scared me off several videos ago.

This video is mostly me hoovering up secrets, messing about and getting frustrated. Once again, over two hours of gameplay have been compressed down into exactly fifteen minutes.

http://youtu.be/Fh2_50_qgFw

Comments

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

In response to your below comment, I suggested that visiting the statue would help him find the way forward - I could see he took it a little more literally than I intended (thinking that he could directly progress from the statue room) but I wasn't willing to be any more specific than that so I kept quiet.

It's true that, for a first time player, Crocomire might seem like the big boss of the area, but the are hints - he's not on the big statue and he doesn't have an eye door, nor a boss marker on the map. Then again, Phantoon doesn't have that last one either, because you can't access the map machine before you fight him...

I too find it awkward that you can't look at all your maps (I thought there was a way that you could, but if so it's lost on me now). I can see why they'd want to actually encourage you to move about instead of just looking at the map, but it would be helpful to be able to know that your goal is in Norfair if you're all the way at the top of Crateria.

As for finding things like the X-ray scope - well, it's hard to remember where everything is, especially if they're areas you visited at the beginning, but Metroid is fairly good at providing distinctive visual cues - like the distinctive gray grapple blocks, and the particularly tall or long geometry of the rooms that feature them. Besides, that's what the map is for!

I'm certainly not criticising David for not finding them earlier! It's his first time playing what is a fairly overwhelming game, and I know he was concerned with forward progress. It's a big ask to explore every nook and cranny, especially when easy to just assume that most of them hold missile expansions. I'm just, I guess, opining on the nature of the game's guidance, playing devil's advocate, that sort of thing.

But all the same, I don't want to pretend that the scope was particularly well-hidden. It's certainly one of the more awkward items to get, physically, but the room leading to it is quite distinctive. It's probably one of the most heavily-broadcast non-essential items in the game; it just happens to come at a time where the game is opening up considerably and it's difficult to know where to go first, let alone remember all the areas you have to revisit with your shiny new item.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that the scope was well-hidden, quite the opposite! I'm saying that the game is so big and wandery that it's easier to find a secret nearby than to remember something out-in-the-open that you didn't have the power for when you last passed it three hours ago!

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

I just realized I was talking about rooms being distinctively tall or long - if you look at the map, just about every room is tall or long! That does make it awkward to discern, definitely. It's when you're actually in the room itself that it becomes more distinctive, but reading that from a fairly basic map can be nightmarish.

[davidn]

This one, at least, is one of the few times on this doorless map that you have a conspicuous blue space that you haven't yet been able to explore!

[davidn]

Yes, the clue was a bit too cryptic - even after being pointed to the real way forward, I didn't understand your reasoning at all until you spelled it out! At least the journey led me to a few bits of new equipment...

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

It's hard to think like a new player, when even my first time through the game I already knew quite a bit about it from compulsively reading the guides in the back of video-game magazines - not with the intention of cheating, but just because I thrived on getting as much information as I could about these games that I had yet to play. This was back when a couple (http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/7/7/2/gfs_4834_2_38.jpg) of (http://lparchive.org/Seiken-Densetsu-3-(by-ddegenha)/Update%2021/24-SD3_20_17.png) screenshots (http://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20146/37-desertcrap44.jpg)* could send my imagination into a tizzy. Still, if it led to you finding all that stuff, I'm glad. And once you remembered that Norfair, you know, actually existed, you seemed to find the way forward pretty easily! I look forward to seeing your progress in the next part.

*near approximations

[davidn]

Oh, wow, yes - I used to do that all the time, reading about games that I had never seen and had no idea about... it was also really special when they were shown on television in the very rare games/technology programmes of the time. Now game videos are available everywhere and it's extremely difficult to play any game without knowing a fair amount about it beforehand.

I was particularly interested in the guides for adventure games, which described such obscure things that I couldn't even imagine the context - such as "when the frogs come down, jump on the thing that looks like a whistle". (Not a made-up example - a direct quote from a walkthrough that I can't remember the game for...!)

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

That sounds very much like a "hypnotise quarrelsome rhinoceros" moment - except actually a real solution and not just a mocking cutscene!

[kjorteo]

wear dog

[davidn]

I WORKED THAT ONE OUT ON MY OWN after trying literally every other combination of items in the entire game

[xaq.livejournal.com]

there dog (http://1.media.collegehumor.cvcdn.com/62/46/e32b6b7299ebc9111e544501907d1f84-dog-wants-to-know-if-were-there-yet.jpg)

(Sorry, couldn't resist a bad "wear/were/where" pun.)

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

This just reminded me that at one point I very nearly wrote in to Nintendo Power to clarify that there must have been some mistake, because one of their preview shots of Super Metroid showed three Samuses, two of which were blue (in hindsight clearly the speed booster), and I just couldn't fathom the context for such a bizarre thing.

[kjorteo]

You know, I'm replaying the first Metroid Prime now, and while it's a lot slower than a 2D game due to the Scan Visor and scanning basically everything, this comment just made me really love how they handled the map in that series.

http://engl165lg.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/gm8e01-22.png

• Doors!
  
• A complete legend for what you need to open the doors, even! Right there on the map!
  
• Being able to rotate/zoom/move around to highly different rooms, but you would honestly expect that if you hope to have any chance at all at being able to read a map in 3D.
  
• Yes, you can back out of the area you're in and look at the maps of other areas.
  
• IT GIVES UNIQUE INDIVIDUAL NAMES TO EVERY ROOM! This doesn't sound like a big deal, but trust me, when it's later in the game and you're trying to go back and pick up whatever you missed for 100% completion (because the Prime series completely ignores your time and bases what ending you get on your completion percentage, that's why) and you can read walkthroughs in the form of "there is a missile pack in Transport Tunnel A and an energy tank in the Ruined Gallery" instead of "the tunnel sort of near the elevator, and then the big room three big rooms after the tunnel"....

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

If nothing else will, maybe that much more comprehensive map will encourage David to try Prime when he's done with this! I don't know whether he'll be able to record it, though.

Fusion and Zero mission (and even Metroid 1 and 2) are interesting experiments to see the progression (or history) of the series, but none of that, I believe, is as fascinating as seeing how it was adapted for 3D - and FPS, to boot, to actually put you in Samus' shoes. It has to be one of the most intelligent, well-designed conversions from 2D to 3D ever. And you know, I'm completely sold on it, but I never finished it - the artifact hunt at the end slowed me to an eventual stop, and so I haven't even played Prime 2 or Prime 3. I'll have to revisit it myself, soon enough.

Let us not speak of Other M.

[(Anonymous)]

*still JD*

As someone who is a big fan of the original Metroid Prime I... warn against playing its sequel. It is an interesting example in seeing how the same team using mostly the same pieces they made a great game with can then go and make a mediocre one and has some rather fine bosses, but the game design itself is all over the place.

This is mainly due to the game going "lock and key" mad. While Super Metroid and Prime has several of these (missile/super missile/powerbomb doors, bombable surfaces, shinespark blocks, etc.) Prime 2 goes over the top absurd on this front. Between various missiles, abilities and actual keys you have to pick up there is probably 15-20 various locks and keys in the game world and IMHO the game sort of collapses a bit under all of it.

[kjorteo]

Trust me, though. If you or David or anyone play through Prime, take advantage of the unique room names to keep track of every obstacle and every powerup in every room. You don't need to draw a map (the in-game one is sufficient,) but you should be working on a little notepad file or something that looks like this:

CHOZO RUINS:
Ruined Nursery: 0/1 Missile packs (req. Bombs)
Ruined Gallery: 0/1 ??? (req. Bombs), 1/1 Missile Packs (collected)
etc.

It couldn't hurt to keep track of the obstacles that prevent even basic exploration ("why is there this big empty room with doors on the other side that I haven't been through? Oh, according to my notes it's Varia-requiringly hot in there and there was a Grapple Beam point to get over the wall") but the main goal is to have a list of all the missiles/energy tanks/etc. you've collected. If you do, then at the very very end of the game, when you just have to go beat the endboss but you suddenly remember "oh, right, there's a different ending if you get 100% completion!", you can compare your list with a walkthrough's list of what all is where, and determine instantly and at a glance where the "wait, there are two missile packs in Transport Tunnel A in the Chozo Ruins??" hole in your collection is.

This completely eliminates the "now you have new exploration powers but you forgot about that one locked room from sixteen hours ago" problem that kept David from picking up the incredibly-obvious-in-retrospect X-Ray Scope in this Super Metroid run, but only if you're not lazy with that list.

[kjorteo]

Oh, also, I think the main reason David should check out Prime is because they redid and rereleased all thee games on one Wii disk, which has even more benefits:

• Wii controls! They range from doing the same thing as before only better (as it turns out, pointing the Wiimote to aim at things is more intuitive than using a joystick. Who knew?) to helpful-bordering-on-cheating tricks at about the same tier as the wall jump in David's Super Metroid run. (In the Wii version, you can get a free little Morph Ball hop by flicking the remote upward after you get the Bombs. It is mostly meant to be a cute little time-saver for when you just need to get into a morph ball tunnel about a foot off the ground or whatever, which is why the ability to do it is tied to having Bombs. But then you get to the areas where you need to bomb-jump up to something but the ground you're on is frustratingly breakable. Before, you had to plant two bombs with perfect timing so that you could catch yourself in the blast of the second rather than falling through the floor after the first breaks it. Now, you can just hop.)
  
• Some basic ... not multiplayer, but ... if you happen to have a friend, you can send them vouchers that they can redeem for, I don't know, fun little unlockable stuff like songs and concept art galleries and stuff, I think. I've never had a friend playing through Trilogy at the same time I was so I've never tried it.
  
• Graphical upgrade stuff (aspect ratio fixes, etc.) you would expect when porting a GameCube game to the Wii.

Edit: Oh, Trilogy is one of those rare hard-to-find out-of-print titles, now. Well, that makes things more complicated. Come on, Nintendo, you can still get Twilight Princess as normal, and that was a launch title! How could you let something like Prime Trilogy fall through the cracks!? Hmph.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

Prime should be easy for him to record, as long as he's got a gamecube and a TV tuner. Consoles beyond the Dreamcast/PS1 era get difficult to emulate and I'm not sure they ever made serious headway there. Some things exist, but you need a seriously beefy computer to do it. It's pretty much better/cheaper to just get the actual console for a game as common as Metroid Prime.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

Oh. Or he could just get Dolphin and hope his processors are good enough. The CPU requirements are kind of vague.

http://www.dolphin-emulator.com/system-requirements.html

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

Well, it's the TV tuner I'm not sure about. I don't think he's ever needed or wanted to record something from console before, although I guess speculation is pointless; he either has one or he doesn't!

Maybe he should get one *hint hint* for if he ever does want to stumble through a difficult-to-emulate console game *hint hint*.

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

Well, seeing as how Dolphin is claiming that not all games have audio (if they even work) so, uh, I'd say that the Tuner is the best bet. A compatibility list would be nice, though.

They're pretty cheap, I think I saw one for about $40 and you might know that you can actually watch TV on your computer with one, so it's not only useful for capture, if what I heard is true.

[davidn]

I'm really glad there's demand for it, at this stage :) I'll definitely consider it!

[davidn]

I do have Metroid Prime, but would need a capture card to record it - not something out of the realms of possibility, my computer has been upgraded significantly because of necessity for these recording projects as it is :) I started it once but didn't get far at all - it'll be interesting to go back to it with more context.

[davidn]

Those are excellent additions :) When I started Super Metroid I found it very weird that sections of the map were given different names - there's no... settlement of any kind to name, are these just names of areas among the local cavers' society? - but it really does help to at least compartmentalize the game a little.

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

I just assumed they were named by the space pirate inhabitants (they're just presented as random foes in the game, rather than an organised force as in the Prime games), or else by the race that lived there before, the Chozo.

In broad strokes, they tend at least to be thematically/ecologically distinctive - Brinstar being the creepy plant and insect area, Norfair being the extremely hot, lava-filled caverns, Maridia being the, uh, sea or lake area, and Crateria obviously just being the surface and near-surface section. I mean, I'm stating the obvious here, but I really did find the division interesting. It compartmentalizes, as you said, and gives a definite flavour to each location, somewhat borrowing the interesting parts from the traditional "(theme)-world" construction while avoiding the worst bits. The fact that the section naming is ideosyncratic and reconcilable with the game's premise just makes it better.