When you see the timer come on at thirty seconds, instead of the square minute the original gave to escape the doomed space colony, you know you aren't in fucking Kansas anymore. Then you touch down on Zebes, and you're not even in Oz. You're in a crazy, spawling nightmare landscape, a mad alteration of the Super Metroid ROM. This is a Bizarro world my friends, a place where items are strange and newly hidden, where pacing is made, not given, where wall jumps are expected for mere navigation. Then there's all the super-advanced moves, things not even composited from programmed moves of the original, but glitches, glitches, that you must use in order to get an energy tank, or another super missile.
But Drewseph, the creator, who now works for some AAA studio, didn't stop at a topographic redesign. He got his hands into the guts too. Gravity has been adjusted, the I/O period cycle for wall-jumping has been slacked a bit. Missiles now give you +2 capacity, rather than the +5 you expected from the original, and Super Missiles are only +1. Enemies do more damage, of course, but the genius of this redesign is the new balance that results, and what you get is a tight economy where those pipe spawn points, you know, with the easy insect kills that pour energy and missiles like a fountain, are as much relief as you can hope for.
At one point, you must sprint through a lethally hot Norfair in order to find the Ice Beam, which you need to get the Varia suit. I think thats about all you need to know. This game is meant to be played with any-time saving, it's meant to be played by people who can speed run the original. This is a game whose challenge is simply not possible given the constraints of the original, you must master the nooks and crannies, the bugs that became features, in order to compete. But when you climb the cliff, and literally, when you wall jump off a one-square high cliff and then flip back onto it, you will feel amazing. No game have I played, indie or mainstream, retro or modern, that has challenged me so, and given me such endorphin rushes.
The escape sequence takes about 26 minutes.
I recommend fast-forwarding through the Something Awful videos, but watching the one where Drewseph comes on to give his designer commentary.
N.B.: Super Metroid Redesign was created as an IPS patch to the original Super Metroid ROM image. To play, you will need a SNES emulator (like ZSNES, linked to above--versions for PC, Mac, and Linux); an IPS patcher for SNES ROMs (the link above takes you to a page that links to several); and an, ahem, legal copy of the Super Metroid ROM, which, you know, you're on your own obtaining. And of course the IPS file for the redesign, which we also link to above.
Elitism rears its head again
I remember reading an interview EGM did with Koji Igarashi years ago. He said the original Castlevania was so hard that very few players finished it. This was compounded by the fact that it was a pure action game; three lives before Game Over, that sort of thing. However, when they created Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, that was more forgiving in several respects. The save points, of course, but also the ability to level up your character if you came up against an enemy you couldn't defeat. The result was that many more players were able to enjoy the entire game.
So this "Metroid Redesigned" thing sounds like it's restricted to players who know enough about the glitches to use them, who are skilled enough to pull them off reliably, who are dumb enough to charge blindly through a burning lava zone...
(Of course, given that it runs on an emulator, there's the "ultimate instant save point feature", but still...)
Given the mass of no-brainer
Given the mass of no-brainer duck soup action games today, a masterfully balanced insane difficulty mod warrants attention. We need more elitism, we need more extreme challenges and deep games that feature the "Oh, you've done it now!" difficulty option.
I agree with the second speaker
Yeah, nothing wrong with some precise craft. You can follow the walkthroughs and learn the crazy moves, thats part of the fun of it. I highly recommend you give it a shot. There's also a Zelda Rom which is similarly hard, I might review that one of these days.
I downloaded the ROM but it
I downloaded the ROM but it says it's a bad rom.
I've found a walkthrough-map!
Good news! A 100% walkthrough (which also claimed to be "painless") has come up recently. Try one of the links below:
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/2519/supermetroidredesignwal.gif
or
http://www.mypicx.com/08032010/Super_Metroid_Redesign_Walkthrough/
hey
hey whats up
im a great fan of yours i juss wanted to let you know that i really love metroid games ever since it came up
and now that i head that theres a new game that was redesign i just want to let you know if i could play this game since its a challenged
gliches
If you do the RESET glich you can recollect items...If you save and reset it (with reset glich done) you can go back to space colony with all items...everything but missles.