Small detail that I’d like to mention about the Metroid attacking Samus; there’s another theory that the Metroid may not immediately recognize Samus, but that the suit’s “low energy” beeping made it remember her. Since she would likely have been on low energy after fighting the Metroid Queen and encountering the baby Metroid.
So often have I played games that offer so switch between "patterns" And most of the time I thought "both of these mapping patterns suck, why can't action X be on button Y?
I think the controls are great specifically because they’re a little clunky. It feels like you’re trying to pilot a mech suit, but once you’ve got the controls down, it’s like you’ve become proficient with the power suit itself
@@will_of_europa Super Metroid isn’t transportation. It’s allowed to be clunky. Video games are allowed to be difficult and unwieldy if that contributes to an experience in a meaningful way. If you don’t like that, that’s fine, but I think it adds charm and gravity to your movements.
Its so wierd that i very recently replayed Super metroid this year. This is by far my favorite review of this game. I really like the bosses in this game because they are all unique and have a different feel from eachother with that amazing presentation mentioned. Crocomire is built more like prey instead of a predator with its eyes on the side, and defensive nature. I love that bosses like crocomire and spore spawn feel more like habitants instead of actively being against Samus.
So is this like, a mad about including women thing, or like a mad about using the phrase Chad at all, or like "the proper term in 4chan Lore is Stacy" or like... I don't know, help me out here.
The sounds the bosses make sometimes, are in fact straight out of a Godzilla movie, Ridley uses modified angirius roads and crocomires death uses modified titanosaurus roars
Super Metroid has always been one of my favorite games. I found it when I was eleven the year it came out. I remember being completely fascinated by it. When I finally got the title for Christmas, I thought the game broke after the Ceres Station sequence. I kept asking where all the enemies were. I was also so stumped by the morphing ball that... I called the Nintendo Hotline for help (It was only my 2nd video game ever). Coming back up that elevator to find space pirates waiting? It suddenly showed me what Metroid and video games could truly be.
As an SM speedrunner I must say this is an excellent video! Your gripes run almost parallel with mine, especially breaking the spin jump. This is by far my favorite game of all time. I appreciated every minute of this video!
Great video. Small channel but I can see a very clear future with your in-depth review style and holding no punches on dropping your opinions to the viewer.
Glad someone else has the same spinjump problem as me. Never realized it was actually because of the Dpad angle lmaoo. I played on an emulator w/ an xbox controller [easier on my hands :( ] and I STRUGGLED w/ both spinjumps and chaining spacejumps together but never quite knew why. That makes so much more sense LOL
This is my #1 Video Game of All Time. I grew up wishing i could play this game when i was like 5-6 years old, and once my aunt lent me her SNES+Super Metroid (with her supervision of course) i was around maybe 8 years old but i couldnt pass the game & always ended up getting stuck or frustrated in numerous places, but i was HOOKED on the game. It saddens me that she's a mom and she hasn't touched Metroid ever since her teen years.
Great video, all points are extremely valid. Even if SM hasn't aged as gracefully in some areas it still is a complete triumph of it's genre. I see SM almost like a ballet. It can be clunky/difficult if you're not used to it, but if you take the time to understand it's mechanics the movement can be downright gorgeous. That's why it will always be my favorite game of all time.
I think the "Sequence breaking" here is good because, it's based more on player learned skill, the wonk ass wall jump that doesn't work right, turning into being able to do it fairly reliably enough to scale a wall when you want to on a future playthrough. And over all the player is often alot more free than they would initially believe. Sure it could go for some variety, but It is nice that, you don't need an item to do it, you're free to try jumping around on a 2nd or 3rd playthrough and see what you can do or maybe reach early. Even a few places they expect you to have the grapple beam, you can by pass it like the one area with a bunch of spikes, you can just tank the damage, you don't gotta swing, or run through an area with heat without the suit to protect you. Even in this video talking about going back to an old area with abilities you show the room in Pink Brinstar with just a bit of water on the floor to make you think you need the Gravity suit, but you can wall jump on top of that platform, go the end, sprint and and press down at the very tippy end of the platform and have just barely enough room to do it and then shine spark sideways to get that Energy Tank without the gravity.
I'm enjoying the video a lot, but in my personal opinion, Super Metroid is the pinnacle of Samus' movement in the entire series. For example, the jumping in Fusion and Zero Mission might feel tighter at first, but they're so much more limiting. The more skillful you get at Super Metroid's movement, the more flowing and graceful it is, to a point where it vastly eclipses any of the other games. Just my opinion though.
I can’t fully agree but I totally respect it. Something was lost in the sequels and Super does maintain a unique je ne sais quois with its movement. I think the main game doesn’t utilize this movement all that much, but I do know that it’s insanely useful in many rom hacks and such.
My favorite game of all time, thanks for another great video! Look forward to fusion next! Enjoying your personal retrospectives! Hope you crack 1K soon!
very professional and well written script for this video!!! also the fact you drew the thumbnail by hand is INSANE. i am very impressed and i’m looking forward to more content from you!!
Literally, the best video game critique I have ever heard/seen. I liked and subscribed midway. Now, as the video is over, I find that I have SO MANY MORE (hourish+) videos to watch!? Dude...thank you
Yea, love the shoutout to mother brain's theme. Something about that music is just so freaking apt to what is going on. Maybe that is why it is not as praised as other music which can easily be listened to while not playing. Of course, that is subjective but I feel there are a lot of metroid's music that I could just listen to at anytime, while the mother brain theme feels to me more dependent on the context. That being said, it doesn't subtract anything that song accomplishes, the lows being constant as they are feels like an analogy to the monster you are facing, multiple times larger than you, ever encroaching forward to end you, unwavering. The highs feels to me like a reflection of my internal screams during this whole event hahaha. The panic, the emergency of the moment, the confusion of the metroid doing what it does and the aftermath. Analyzing music is absolutely not my forte and I most likely didn't catch on to other subtleties but hot damn, being able to communicate so much with so few channels and bits is genius work. Great video, thanks and cheers!
Dread's sequence breaks are INSANE. I love them so much. They're so intuitive, too. I barely had to look anything up, and when I did, the solutions were jawdropping.
Your critique about the controls, particularly jumping and surrounding abilities, resonates with me so much that it unlocked the memory of exactly how this game feels to play despite not having touched it in about 2 years. I'm well versed in platformers on both ends of the momentum spectrum (Mario = very momentum, Mega Man= no momentum, constant movement when direction pressed) and way horizontal movement definitely always bothered me. I think in the context of the way spaces are designed, it kinda makes sense though since there aren't really many large-room jumping opportunities to feel cool, the claustrophobic design is definitely restrictive toward feeling the controls in that way I think. On the opposite side, in a game like Mario Odyssey I would be pressing buttons and doing all sort of fancy moves just when moving across flat ground because there's just so much physical room for player movement expression. But of course the player expression in Super here comes from finding ways to utilize niche tech to skip stuff, or do things in "unintended" ways which makes it a bit more like a puzzle with stringent execution than a true platformer.
Fusion was my first Metroid and what got me into the series, but Super is by far the one I come back to the most now. It’s just infinitely replayable for me. It doesn’t take super long to beat, and every time I play I find something I didn’t know before. It’s timeless to me.
Super Metroid is a game I don't enjoy as much as I would like. A lot of what it does I love in theory, but I haven't given it enough time to be used to the quirks of its movement and world. I've beaten it once, with a second run that I set down while combing the world for enough missiles to get past Ridley. I think I will eventually become comfortable enough in it to replay it regularly and then it will probably shoot up my top games list, but I can't pretend it doesn't have a couple hurdles to new players which I think you did a good job of highlighting.
The reason I had several years in between the save station before Ridley fight and finally beating it (the other reason is not having a save room NEAR the boss fight itself) was the mechanic of being cancelled out of the spin jump with the slightest touch on d-pad up or down. So no, you're not the only one who had problems with that mechanic.
seeing samus blast monsters is one of my first core memories and definitely cemented metroid as my favorite thing very early on in my life, as time went on i could only understand more of the nuance and magnificence of the method of storytelling and the story of the series itself and only grew to love it more. there are so many great life lessons to be learned from seeing samus go on her adventures. sorrow, grief, anger, acceptance, you feel everything, and you can tell that samus feels it too. And the way that these games are able to make you feel truly powerful by the end of each game is something alot o f modern games seem to struggle with. everything is a damage sponge all the way through the same and the only real powerups are used to kill fodder enemies. but Metroid always finds a way to let you blast through everything, even the final boss in some games. Samus is extremely powerful and i love how they show it. i wouldnt just say that super metroid is one of the best games of all time, its one of the most influential pieces of media that has ever been created. so many people have been inspired by this game you cant look around a corner without seeing its influence in media. this series deserves so much more attention than it gets in this modern era, its one of the pinnacles of storytelling (in my opinion).
I have a very funny history with Super Metroid. I'm a gamer, well before the term was ever coined. I've played every single Mario up to Sunshine back in the day(including hotel and Mario's missing) I'm a huge Fighting Game cat too. I've always heard how great of a game Super Metroid was and as soon as I had an emulation, I tried it. First attempt I gave up due to the enormous cutscene. Second attempt I couldn't find even Bombs(I am not a metroidvania guy) than tried many times after that but never got any thrill from it, with the passing of each year, I've grown to love watching longplays and Speedrun of games I've beaten and those I did not, Super Metroid was among the bunch. From watching so much of it I've beaten it, kind of bitter with the back tracking after Ridley but sure, mission complete. But, curiously, after each time I've beat it, the game became exponentially BETTER! To me Super Metroid akin to Shadow of the Colossus is a game not of instant gratification, the satisfaction coming from the power trip of overcoming the clunkiness of the controls and becoming omnipotent in a scenario where you shouldn't thrive. Donkey Kong Country also fits this bill.
You are definitely not alone in your critiques of the run button and control scheme. These aspects of Super are the main things that turn players away before they finish the game. As someone who joined the fandom after Super, going back to it after playing with better control schemes was especially awkward and irritating. Metroid 2 had a bad space jump but was otherwise rather inoffensive compared to Super - I find Super clunkier even than Metroid 1. Uncancellable spin jumps are also very annoying.
Played this game for the first time two years ago and was shocked by how well it held up. It could have been released by some indie developers today. Aside from a few quality of life things, it immediately hooked me and never let go. It is very rare for me to enjoy a game that old. I’ve only been able to finish three Super Nintendo games. Chrono Trigger, Mario World, and Super Metroid.
I hate the item selection, but I will say for it's time before we had dual sticks and could allocate such things to a dpad, it's def superior to having to menu.
It would have been elegant if they had programmed it so if you pressed select and a direction to toggle through the 4 items. Then use select to deselect used item and keep select when just on the beam to go to missiles. Granted I get this game was coming out late and was probably over budget to put more effort into the controls.
Saying that Super Metroid simultaneously has some of the best movement and also the clunkiest movement is one of the truest, most accurate statements I heard. I love speedrunning this game but man, it can also be frustrating for someone new. On your point about sequence breaking, I think it’s unfair to compare Dread’s variety of developer-intended flashy sequence breaks to Super’s. Many of these were not “intended” although the developers knew they might be possible, so it’s just a reward for the player. No one in 1994 was worried about coding new and interesting ways to get items; it was left to player imagination and experimentation with the mechanics.
Regarding samus’s jumping, I think it is overly criticized and I actually prefer it to the other sidescrollers due to its flexibility. Want to not jump as high? Let go of jump. Want to move around in any direction and change poses mid-air? Have at it! Also you’re not the only one who hates the spin breaking mechanic; it is a bain to all speed runners!
Super Metroid is the first game in the series I played, and I enjoyed playing it a lot in the years between the release of it and Metroid Fusion. One criticism I have on your video is how you kept comparing the use of shinespark in Super Metroid to what came years later in future games. I greatly appreciate that the shinespark puzzles in Super Metroid are few and treated as more of an extra easter egg. I can't stand the way shinespark has been overused in games starting with Fusion. The puzzles are tedious, and I'm glad Super Metroid doesn't want the player to do maneuvers like what Dread wants the player to do at times. I don't think any Metroid game after Super comes close to being as great as Super is. Super Metroid feels more pure and lacking in gimmicks.
1:34 it is the year 2024 and i am now discovering you can KILL THE SILVER GEEMERS?? Ive played this game upwards of 15 times and never knew that. Incredible video man!
I think the combat of Super, while not nearly as fleshed-out as its sequels, still manages to be equally as engaging most of the time. A game like Dread is engaging because of its stellar boss design and the 360 degree shooting arc for Samus, but Samus’s limited directional range in Super means fights are substantially more about positioning rather than observing quick boss patterns and countering at the right time to stun enemies. You’re definitely right to say that the boss designs in Super could’ve been more engaging, but I think even despite that it lives up to the quality of its sequels to this day.
So, about not being able to skip the intro TECHNICALLY you can watch it once, reset the SNES and copy that file to have two 0:00 files, it's used in speedruns to not have to have the cutscene as part of the timer
Unlike most content creators, you started out with pretty high production values and solid presentation. (yes, I did see your very first video to be sure) Even I took a few videos to really get into the swing of things. Honestly my biggest gripe is just your lack of confidence when you're reading a script, there's a good amount of pauses here. Also maybe think of if you need a visual video example for *every little thing* you want to mention. It absolutely shows your shining commitment and worm ethic but sometimes it's not needed imo. I'd like to see what you eventually cover next outside of metroid. Also please consider a different name, try looking up here on UA-cam "pipi da feces" with that space between 'da' and 'feces' and you'll see what I mean.
I grew up with super Metroid as my first metroid game. Maybe because of that, i never had issues with controls. I really loved that you can wall jump on one side of the wall, which you cannot do in any other metroid. Giving you the ability to sequence breaking. I mean super invented the idea of sequence breaking
8:20 I wish this idea was used in Mega Man X01 against Vile. There's no way to defeat him, you're not rewarded with a slightly different outcome for performing better. You just run into him to take damage quickly and trigger the cutscene of Zero saving you.
Charged Beam + Wave + Plasma actually out damages Super Missiles enough that it's a more viable strat for enemies and bosses once you pick up Plasma. I personally don't recall having too many issues with accidentally cancelling spin jump by pressing Up or Down. I've always used either a SNES controller or PS4/PS5/Pro Controller though. I'd posit if it's happening too easily it's probably more of a controller sensitivity issue than skill issue. But I can agree that Spin Jump was handled better in future games that removes a good chunk of frustration with Wall Jumps or Space Jumping. Phantoon will always feel like the hardest boss to me mostly because he does a lot of damage and you don't have access to a lot of E-Tanks by that point, and if you don't know to charge spin to avoid his rage attack it makes him all the harder. But I do like all of the major boss fights for how unique each one feels. Spore Spawn can go and rot though. Super Metroid remains the best game to 100% in the series because of its level design. The fact that Crateria and Brinstar are the only areas you genuinely need to backtrack to in order to pick up every collectible, plus the fact that you can save this backtracking until after you clear Wrecked Ship is a huge part of this. But I think the two biggest contributors to this Vs later Metroid titles is that you get Power Bombs about halfway through the game, and there are no Screw Attack specific blocks (Or baby Metroid blocks) to force you to go back to every area for at least 1 pickup when you are literally a few screens before the final boss. If there are 2 things I would change, it would be doing something about the Maridia double loop (either putting a connection between the left and right pits or just making it not a one-way sinkhole for either side), as well as moving the Spring Ball to an earlier spot (perhaps the E-Tank that's unlocked after beating Kraid) and putting something else in that spot instead, perhaps the reserve tank for Maridia or something.
I have no explanation for some of the other bosses, but Kraid being back, as we can see, there's more than one of them. Which this game shows you by first murdering the child and then its mother... and then its planet taking care of any family that might be around.
I think the controls are challenging, but rewarding. I just refused to let the controls kick my butt, and now I love them. I still have my little frustrating moments, but I'm still amazed that I keep getting better everytime I beat it.
fun fact: the red brinstar track was later on sampled by producer cardogotwings for the song gang activities by baby keem, give it a listen it’s a banger
22:20 "I also don't feel like I need that much time in the air, so maybe the falling speed could be increased a bit. I'm unsure about this one, but I do know that I prefer the jumping physics in any of the sequel games". Super Metroid Redux comes with an optional "Heavy physics" module which does just that, and I GREATLY recommend trying it out. I used to wish I could have Super Metroid with the jump physics of the GBA games, but that's changed--now when playing the GBA games, I wish the physics were as good as in SM Redux.
love this video but describing the continuous walljump to skip past the moat and reach wrecked ship without speed booster/grapple beam as "just another walljump" is absolutely wild and if you ever try to do so yourself you will see why. It's ungodly precise and just really fucked up lmao nothing like normal kinds of vertically ascending walljumps. red tower climb is also by no means a super simple affair either...and i think that personally the speed booster version of early wrecked ship is rad. managing to squeeze in the charge window to then skip across the entire long entrance corridor in an instant is such an iconic and satisfying trick to pull as you mention there is a lot of silly and glitchy stuff too and while I understand that you'll never learn what a mfing springball jump is without looking it up, it's still just really cool that a lot of that stuff is there and especially if you frequently play things like randomizers, the sheer breadth of techniques to get around in Super is so awesome and appreciated also while i agree that dread's sequence breaks are godlike, i think that zero mission's sequence breaks are lame as fuck lmao they're all just bomb jumping or random ass missile block reveals a hidden passage. only good one is "early" super missiles but that one is pointless because you just get supers by going to ridley first anyways. the fact that literally the entire game is open with just bombs and missiles is also sleeper as fuck imo and really hampers it as a randomizer game too imo...also i know it's a glitch and it's not super fair to call it out bc like there are some glitchy skips in super that also suck titanic balls but like FUCK early power bombs that clip is so aids oml i hate that shit it singlehandedly saves like 10 minutes of meandering about looking for power bombs in Zero Mission Hard 100% but its so stupid to set up and guhhhhhh
also FYI: if you do those one way sand pit items AFTER you've beaten draygon, you can take the shortcut that opens in the room that the big pipe connects to to enormously streamline the process. The fact it also naturally leads to obtaining both Plasma Beam and Spring Ball, while then placing you next to the area exit makes the looping design pretty inoffensive IMO as long as your routing is smart. lastly, while I can agree that the bosses aren't incredible (Though I love Super's Ridley, I also agree that that fight is a big slugfest lol), there's actually a lot more in terms of what weaponry does best in what fight: Crocomire limits Supers to one at a time, so you're required to either time hits with regular missiles and quickly switch to a super while firing, or rely on your charge shot which actually does the same damage but with a much bigger hitbox if you have wave/spacer/ice. Phantoon massively punishes using a Super for anything other than the last hit (but also takes increased damage from them to make counting your hits rewarding) Draygon has the secret Grapple Beam kill, Golden Torizo dodges your missiles and outright catches your Supers and throws them back at you, heavily encouraging the use of your charged Plasma Beam instead, which...is actually stronger than Super Missile spam anyways, actually! Likewise, as long as you have Plasma, the optimal way to defeat Mother Brain (past her first form) is to use charged shots, and spend your super missiles to get through the first part of the battle faster instead. Ridley is actually the only fight past Kraid that has the order of Supers>Missiles>Charge, and this is specifically because he takes double damage from both super and regular missiles. Charged Plasma is still really good against him though and has the advantage of being able to better keep track of his HP, so often you'll see 100% speedruns use it over regular missiles after using up their supers.
I have tried that wrecked ship wall jump countless times and have never been able to do it. Though it is insanely precise, I do still think it ultimately is just another wall jump. I guess my greater concern is that the intuitive breaks are rather samey. Though upon reflection, I’m not sure you could really call that particular wall jump intuitive since it’s so difficult. I think my larger point is made even worse if there’s less to offer when it comes to varied and intuitive sequence breaks. Admittedly I’m unsure of what you mean when you say the red tower climb is no simple affair. If you Super Missile the rippers, an IBJ will get you back to Green Brinstar from the bottom. And if you’re starting at GB trying to go up, Super Missiles will again clear the way to make for what I see as another basic wall jump. You gotta shoot out the ceiling and get through it before it regenerates, but I think that’s not enough for me to consider this sequence break very unique. I agree that it’s cool that Super has plenty of glitchy stuff too. Though they aren’t very appealing to me personally, I get that they appeal to a lot of people and deserve to be celebrated. On the matter of ZM’s sequence breaks, I’ll leave the specifics for my own eventual video on that matter. I’ll agree that there aren’t that many tricks, and it has more alternate sequences and less straight up breaks, but I actually quite enjoy the breaks that are just hidden paths. It’s totally valid to dislike that the whole map opens so quickly, but for me it’s kinda like how I put it in my Metroid NES video. Metroid 1 kinda does its own thing with de-emphasizing item progression in favor of a small but open experience. I really like that about it, but I also get the hate. I’m very curious to check out what you’re talking about with Maridia’s shortcut after Draygon. I’m gonna make sure to poke around to find this more optimized routing because I’m eager to make that part quicker. Great to know there’s something to be done to make it go faster. I can see your point about Crocomire. I’m sure that landing charge shots is faster, though I still do think that merely makes the fight faster instead of more complex or interesting. I’d like for Crocomire to have some more interesting behaviors or attacks. I mentioned Phantoon’s Super Missile quirk, and I do appreciate that they included that, but I had no idea that any one boss takes more or less damage from specific attacks like your mentioned example with Ridley. I meant to talk about the Golden Torizo, and I was going to bring that stuff up. I noticed that if you stand in the right place, he’ll miss when he throws the Supers back at you. If if you just want to tank the few hits, you can fire Supers at him fast enough where he can’t catch them all and dies pretty quickly. Charged Plasma might be stronger but I’m curious if spamming Supers is higher DPS against him? If Missiles are useless against Mother Brain and possibly against Ridley compared to your beam then I’d actually consider that a let down because it means there’s little incentive to go out of your way to find the missile tanks. It’s interesting to know that there are optimizations for using specific weapons against specific guys. I kinda wish the game had some means of indicating boss weaknesses to specific weapons, maybe such as a specific sound effect when hurt with a weapon they’re weak to, or maybe the boss could flash a unique color, but it’s interesting to know it’s there. Glad you enjoyed the video and I appreciate you teaching me so much about hidden little quirks in Super, as well as sharing your own thoughts. I’m gonna search up “Early Power Bombs Zero Mission” to see this hell for myself.
@@FlatulentFetus Sorry, for red tower I was more talking about doing it while leaving the Rippers still alive--it's pretty simple if you go out of your way to kill them, I agree. (Worth noting that if you got Power Bombs from the room after Crocomire, you can drop one to kill all of the rippers considerably more quickly than if you used Supers. I know you could have just gotten the Ice Beam at that point, but that's a little slower than going and getting it when it's time to fight Ridley) If you crouch down and aim straight upwards into the Golden Torizo, your charged Plasma Beam will hit it twice with every shot, utterly obliterating the thing's health. There's actually a certain place you can stand (Pretty much on top of his foot) that acts as a safespot from his wave attack and lets you keep firing those double hitting shots into him. Sadly, ever since I got good at that safespot, that boss has turned from one of my favorites to a total pushover....feel bad for the guy, honestly. As for the faster route to get Maridia 100%, in order to do it, after beating Draygon you need to backtrack to that long hallway that you speed boostered through on your trip there--while the game doesn't let you turn back around from Botwoon's room, by standing around in the sand pits directly beneath that room's Energy Tank, you get pulled downwards into the room beneath, and then can go from there back into the big room that is connected to those two one way pits. Then it's a matter of taking one of them down, getting the items, using the shortcut that opens from beating Draygon to get back to that hallway, and finally get the second pit's items and get the hell out of there. Hopefully I described things well enough. You're right that all the missile tanks are pretty superfluous, but at the same time...when have you ever *really* needed much more than like, 80 missiles? And even that's a bit generous, to tell the truth...even in games where Missiles are very good, like Zero Mission, still have way more missiles than you could ever really know what to do with. (Well, obviously every tank is worth it in 1 and 2 but besides those it's really hard to actually spend all the missiles you get in a 100% playthrough)
Since I only ever play Super on a CRT on my SNES i thought there was something wrong with the visuals for a bit. Graat video. I agree on the bosses and mostly on movement. The movement feels so satisfying sometimes and annoying others. Space jump is something i to this day suck at.
One thing about the difference between SM, ZM, and Dread in terms of sequence breaking, I think it’s the fact that the sequence breaks in ZM and Dread are mostly dev intended. Not that there aren’t glitches, but ZM specifically is pretty tight and generally the breaks are all dev inserted. It’s why they tend to use more of Samus’ tool kit. The SM sequence breaks don’t feel like they were really intended, but when they ended up in the game the devs seemed cool with leaving it in. Dread has more “glitch-type” sequence breaks though. I put things like mockball in Super and pseudo-wave in Dread as glitches that the devs didn’t plan around at all and didn’t find out about until players found them on release. I’m just glad that pseudo-wave hasn’t been patched out (afaik)
The devs behind SM did not leave anything in they didn't intent to. Sequence breaking was not even a thing before the early 2000s when every kid and their teachers felt like being special because of it. Sequence breaking was not a thing in 1994. All we had to learn was to get 100% Item Rate and getting through the game in under three hours. The rest is bs nobody asked for.
a lot of newcomers dont know that the Escape From Zebes theme from super metroid is a different song from Major Boss/Ridley's theme. the escape theme is more frenetic and panicked due to the feature of a siren/alarm and dissonant staccato of percussions
1:35:00 Nah, charged plasma shots deal more damage than missiles or Super Missiles, at least against Spore Spawn, Ridley and Mother Brain. If you sequence break to skip Spore Spawn and take him out later, the Plasma Beam one-shots him.
This was a good video. This is my favorite game of all time, but it's getting harder to recommend to people as time goes on, because of the controls and some obtuse design decisions, I also don't have the newbie's perspective with the game, unfortunately. The game is amazing without all the weird sequence break tricks, and as you touched on a bit, no Metroid game even after this has been quite as open as this one. You can't reverse the boss order in the later games, for instance. It's for things like that that this one ever so slightly edges out over the later games, Zero Mission, Fusion, and even Dread. For one other reason, as well. 100%ing Super Metroid is still the best experience in any of the games, in my opinion. I have a massive dislike of the later game's tendency to make you do a huge item collectathon at the end of the game. It breaks the flow and just feels tedious to me. With Super Metroid, I can reasonably get 100% of the items by the time I reach the time to go and fight Mother Brain. But again, because of the controls, I believe one can only appreciate them when they have a decent grasp of them. Despite how apprehensive I am about retro games being reviewed through the modern lense, I understand your critique. Good review.
I played Super Metroid after playing Prime 1, Fusion, and Dread. It was interesting to have that previous metorid experience from "easier" games. It definitely helped for a few puzzels. If i tried to play super metorid as a kid i don't think i would get very far. Overall i really enjoyed Super Metroid. My only complaints are controls. Wall jumping and shine sparking are difficult to learn.I did get stuck on the noob run bridge because i forgot there was a run button, even though i saw there was when i was in the menu. Also the fake wall on lower norfair got me too. But otherwise the game combot is pretty fair. You don't get bosses that are impossible to kill. I can see why people like this game. It definitely a classic and has aged fairly well comapred to others from the time
Small detail that I’d like to mention about the Metroid attacking Samus; there’s another theory that the Metroid may not immediately recognize Samus, but that the suit’s “low energy” beeping made it remember her. Since she would likely have been on low energy after fighting the Metroid Queen and encountering the baby Metroid.
And also the low energy siren activates at the end of the ridley tutorial fight if you dont beat him
Also the baby Metroid is literally the "super" metroid.
"Every game needs button mapping"
FINALLY! Someone who understands!
It absolutely SHOULD be an industry standard!
Great video!
So often have I played games that offer so switch between "patterns"
And most of the time I thought "both of these mapping patterns suck, why can't action X be on button Y?
Not exactly a hot take.
@@_V.Va_ To everyone except game devs, unfortunately.
I think the controls are great specifically because they’re a little clunky. It feels like you’re trying to pilot a mech suit, but once you’ve got the controls down, it’s like you’ve become proficient with the power suit itself
Yeah its like walking on the moon and not in a bad way
this.
You get it.
"I think the cybertruck is great specifically because of it's poor build quality"
That's how you sound.
@@will_of_europa Super Metroid isn’t transportation. It’s allowed to be clunky. Video games are allowed to be difficult and unwieldy if that contributes to an experience in a meaningful way. If you don’t like that, that’s fine, but I think it adds charm and gravity to your movements.
Solution to the unskippable intro:
Have one savefile that starts after the intro, and just copy that whenever you start a new playthrough
Only Problem is Difficulty but you can 2 just started save files
@@christotidis6014 Wait, Super Metroid has Difficulty options?
@@torkelsvenson6411it has an easy mode. For kids I guess, because the game isnt particularly difficult. I've never heard of anyone using it lol
Its so wierd that i very recently replayed Super metroid this year. This is by far my favorite review of this game.
I really like the bosses in this game because they are all unique and have a different feel from eachother with that amazing presentation mentioned.
Crocomire is built more like prey instead of a predator with its eyes on the side, and defensive nature. I love that bosses like crocomire and spore spawn feel more like habitants instead of actively being against Samus.
Yeah and crocomire doesnt even atack you if you just stand there only 9nce you atack it it gets agresivd
#Justice4Croc
Man SNES game devs that did include button mapping were such Chads and Chadettes.
I get what you're saying
But I wish you said it in a different way
That's not up to me, though.
We have better words for this than "Chad and Chadettes" is all I'm sayin'.
@@the_lizardfaceMeaningless
So is this like, a mad about including women thing, or like a mad about using the phrase Chad at all, or like "the proper term in 4chan Lore is Stacy" or like... I don't know, help me out here.
@@deletedTestimony keep digging if you wanna, but it's really not that deep....
The sounds the bosses make sometimes, are in fact straight out of a Godzilla movie, Ridley uses modified angirius roads and crocomires death uses modified titanosaurus roars
Super Metroid has always been one of my favorite games. I found it when I was eleven the year it came out. I remember being completely fascinated by it. When I finally got the title for Christmas, I thought the game broke after the Ceres Station sequence. I kept asking where all the enemies were. I was also so stumped by the morphing ball that... I called the Nintendo Hotline for help (It was only my 2nd video game ever). Coming back up that elevator to find space pirates waiting? It suddenly showed me what Metroid and video games could truly be.
I swapped Metroid1 for Castlevania2 with a neighbor and he came over asking me how to get unstuck after he found "the key". You weren't alone.
@@AnalyticalReckoner "Why can't Metroid crawl?" LOL
As an SM speedrunner I must say this is an excellent video! Your gripes run almost parallel with mine, especially breaking the spin jump.
This is by far my favorite game of all time. I appreciated every minute of this video!
Great video. Small channel but I can see a very clear future with your in-depth review style and holding no punches on dropping your opinions to the viewer.
It is easy to state your opinion. What he does well is explain why he has the opinion.
Glad someone else has the same spinjump problem as me. Never realized it was actually because of the Dpad angle lmaoo. I played on an emulator w/ an xbox controller [easier on my hands :( ] and I STRUGGLED w/ both spinjumps and chaining spacejumps together but never quite knew why. That makes so much more sense LOL
I just found this channel a couple days ago and figured this would be the next video, I’ve been looking forward to this! Keep up the great work!
This is my #1 Video Game of All Time.
I grew up wishing i could play this game when i was like 5-6 years old, and once my aunt lent me her SNES+Super Metroid (with her supervision of course) i was around maybe 8 years old but i couldnt pass the game & always ended up getting stuck or frustrated in numerous places, but i was HOOKED on the game.
It saddens me that she's a mom and she hasn't touched Metroid ever since her teen years.
Great video, all points are extremely valid. Even if SM hasn't aged as gracefully in some areas it still is a complete triumph of it's genre.
I see SM almost like a ballet. It can be clunky/difficult if you're not used to it, but if you take the time to understand it's mechanics the movement can be downright gorgeous. That's why it will always be my favorite game of all time.
i just played through this game for the first time! it’s very interesting to watch.
Very pro feeling video. Amazing job especially for a small channel. 10/10
I think the "Sequence breaking" here is good because, it's based more on player learned skill, the wonk ass wall jump that doesn't work right, turning into being able to do it fairly reliably enough to scale a wall when you want to on a future playthrough. And over all the player is often alot more free than they would initially believe. Sure it could go for some variety, but It is nice that, you don't need an item to do it, you're free to try jumping around on a 2nd or 3rd playthrough and see what you can do or maybe reach early.
Even a few places they expect you to have the grapple beam, you can by pass it like the one area with a bunch of spikes, you can just tank the damage, you don't gotta swing, or run through an area with heat without the suit to protect you.
Even in this video talking about going back to an old area with abilities you show the room in Pink Brinstar with just a bit of water on the floor to make you think you need the Gravity suit, but you can wall jump on top of that platform, go the end, sprint and and press down at the very tippy end of the platform and have just barely enough room to do it and then shine spark sideways to get that Energy Tank without the gravity.
I'm enjoying the video a lot, but in my personal opinion, Super Metroid is the pinnacle of Samus' movement in the entire series. For example, the jumping in Fusion and Zero Mission might feel tighter at first, but they're so much more limiting. The more skillful you get at Super Metroid's movement, the more flowing and graceful it is, to a point where it vastly eclipses any of the other games. Just my opinion though.
I can’t fully agree but I totally respect it. Something was lost in the sequels and Super does maintain a unique je ne sais quois with its movement. I think the main game doesn’t utilize this movement all that much, but I do know that it’s insanely useful in many rom hacks and such.
LET'S GOOOOOOO man your metroid videos are peak
Investing in the pipi dafeces stock before 1k subs.lock it in. All aboard my pipi train
20:00 that's the beauty of the speedrun, running is essential XD
My favorite game of all time, thanks for another great video! Look forward to fusion next! Enjoying your personal retrospectives! Hope you crack 1K soon!
nice shout out to Vizzed, used to love that website
very professional and well written script for this video!!! also the fact you drew the thumbnail by hand is INSANE. i am very impressed and i’m looking forward to more content from you!!
Dude you are so underrated. All of your videos are great. I can’t wait to see what you make next
Literally, the best video game critique I have ever heard/seen. I liked and subscribed midway. Now, as the video is over, I find that I have SO MANY MORE (hourish+) videos to watch!? Dude...thank you
Yea, love the shoutout to mother brain's theme. Something about that music is just so freaking apt to what is going on. Maybe that is why it is not as praised as other music which can easily be listened to while not playing. Of course, that is subjective but I feel there are a lot of metroid's music that I could just listen to at anytime, while the mother brain theme feels to me more dependent on the context. That being said, it doesn't subtract anything that song accomplishes, the lows being constant as they are feels like an analogy to the monster you are facing, multiple times larger than you, ever encroaching forward to end you, unwavering. The highs feels to me like a reflection of my internal screams during this whole event hahaha. The panic, the emergency of the moment, the confusion of the metroid doing what it does and the aftermath. Analyzing music is absolutely not my forte and I most likely didn't catch on to other subtleties but hot damn, being able to communicate so much with so few channels and bits is genius work. Great video, thanks and cheers!
I want to congradulate you on your well written script for such a relatively 'small' channel. I subbed and please keep up the Metroid content.
Subbed. Great SM analysis, truly the game that keeps on giving.
clicked solely for the thumbnail. gem video
Dread's sequence breaks are INSANE. I love them so much. They're so intuitive, too. I barely had to look anything up, and when I did, the solutions were jawdropping.
Awesome video, keep up the great editing.
Whoa this is a very high quality video. Very nice work I am subbing now😈
I got cross bombs early in dread and i didnt even realize it was a sequence break until i saw my partner play through that area
ever since I watched the Metroid NES video I subbed and ive gotta say you make really good videos. thank you for your work!
the mother-brain boss theme is pure childhood terror to me. still gives me chills.
Love to discover hidden gems like this channel on UA-cam man, really enjoyed this video, looking forward to more
Peak video essays
Your critique about the controls, particularly jumping and surrounding abilities, resonates with me so much that it unlocked the memory of exactly how this game feels to play despite not having touched it in about 2 years. I'm well versed in platformers on both ends of the momentum spectrum (Mario = very momentum, Mega Man= no momentum, constant movement when direction pressed) and way horizontal movement definitely always bothered me. I think in the context of the way spaces are designed, it kinda makes sense though since there aren't really many large-room jumping opportunities to feel cool, the claustrophobic design is definitely restrictive toward feeling the controls in that way I think. On the opposite side, in a game like Mario Odyssey I would be pressing buttons and doing all sort of fancy moves just when moving across flat ground because there's just so much physical room for player movement expression. But of course the player expression in Super here comes from finding ways to utilize niche tech to skip stuff, or do things in "unintended" ways which makes it a bit more like a puzzle with stringent execution than a true platformer.
Fusion was my first Metroid and what got me into the series, but Super is by far the one I come back to the most now. It’s just infinitely replayable for me. It doesn’t take super long to beat, and every time I play I find something I didn’t know before. It’s timeless to me.
I love Fusion. It's my favourite survival horror game
For whatever reason, the first 2 .minutes spoke to me so much in the fact that I could resonate with your nostalgic reflection instantly.
Super Metroid is a game I don't enjoy as much as I would like. A lot of what it does I love in theory, but I haven't given it enough time to be used to the quirks of its movement and world. I've beaten it once, with a second run that I set down while combing the world for enough missiles to get past Ridley. I think I will eventually become comfortable enough in it to replay it regularly and then it will probably shoot up my top games list, but I can't pretend it doesn't have a couple hurdles to new players which I think you did a good job of highlighting.
I never get tired of playing Super Metroid. It's too fun trying to best my own time. Great video!
The reason I had several years in between the save station before Ridley fight and finally beating it (the other reason is not having a save room NEAR the boss fight itself) was the mechanic of being cancelled out of the spin jump with the slightest touch on d-pad up or down. So no, you're not the only one who had problems with that mechanic.
seeing samus blast monsters is one of my first core memories and definitely cemented metroid as my favorite thing very early on in my life, as time went on i could only understand more of the nuance and magnificence of the method of storytelling and the story of the series itself and only grew to love it more. there are so many great life lessons to be learned from seeing samus go on her adventures. sorrow, grief, anger, acceptance, you feel everything, and you can tell that samus feels it too. And the way that these games are able to make you feel truly powerful by the end of each game is something alot o f modern games seem to struggle with. everything is a damage sponge all the way through the same and the only real powerups are used to kill fodder enemies. but Metroid always finds a way to let you blast through everything, even the final boss in some games. Samus is extremely powerful and i love how they show it. i wouldnt just say that super metroid is one of the best games of all time, its one of the most influential pieces of media that has ever been created. so many people have been inspired by this game you cant look around a corner without seeing its influence in media. this series deserves so much more attention than it gets in this modern era, its one of the pinnacles of storytelling (in my opinion).
I haven't even watched this yet but anyone who devotes a nearly two hour episode to their Super Metroid nostalgia deserves a like.
I just discovered your channel and I have to say I'm really liking your content. And I love the original artwork you use in your thumbnails!
I have a very funny history with Super Metroid. I'm a gamer, well before the term was ever coined. I've played every single Mario up to Sunshine back in the day(including hotel and Mario's missing) I'm a huge Fighting Game cat too. I've always heard how great of a game Super Metroid was and as soon as I had an emulation, I tried it. First attempt I gave up due to the enormous cutscene. Second attempt I couldn't find even Bombs(I am not a metroidvania guy) than tried many times after that but never got any thrill from it, with the passing of each year, I've grown to love watching longplays and Speedrun of games I've beaten and those I did not, Super Metroid was among the bunch. From watching so much of it I've beaten it, kind of bitter with the back tracking after Ridley but sure, mission complete. But, curiously, after each time I've beat it, the game became exponentially BETTER! To me Super Metroid akin to Shadow of the Colossus is a game not of instant gratification, the satisfaction coming from the power trip of overcoming the clunkiness of the controls and becoming omnipotent in a scenario where you shouldn't thrive. Donkey Kong Country also fits this bill.
I’ve been really enjoying your detailed reviews. Keep up the awesome work
You are definitely not alone in your critiques of the run button and control scheme. These aspects of Super are the main things that turn players away before they finish the game. As someone who joined the fandom after Super, going back to it after playing with better control schemes was especially awkward and irritating. Metroid 2 had a bad space jump but was otherwise rather inoffensive compared to Super - I find Super clunkier even than Metroid 1. Uncancellable spin jumps are also very annoying.
Super is difficult to learn and difficult to master. But the movement has a lot more depth than later titles, it just takes learning
54:08 "You have no choice but to sink back down to the ground"
*NSO Rewind Function has entered the chat*
Me thinking green brinstar had the best track, but forgetting the true goat was mother brains theme, genuinely I really had just forgotten it
Played this game for the first time two years ago and was shocked by how well it held up. It could have been released by some indie developers today. Aside from a few quality of life things, it immediately hooked me and never let go. It is very rare for me to enjoy a game that old. I’ve only been able to finish three Super Nintendo games. Chrono Trigger, Mario World, and Super Metroid.
I got to play this on a decent sound system and the bass drop at the title screen activates something in my soul. Metroid3 sounds as good as it looks.
I hate the item selection, but I will say for it's time before we had dual sticks and could allocate such things to a dpad, it's def superior to having to menu.
It would have been elegant if they had programmed it so if you pressed select and a direction to toggle through the 4 items.
Then use select to deselect used item and keep select when just on the beam to go to missiles.
Granted I get this game was coming out late and was probably over budget to put more effort into the controls.
@retrofraction I'm hoping we get a super remake from Mercury, and that they port Samus Returns to the Switch.
...this rules
Saying that Super Metroid simultaneously has some of the best movement and also the clunkiest movement is one of the truest, most accurate statements I heard. I love speedrunning this game but man, it can also be frustrating for someone new.
On your point about sequence breaking, I think it’s unfair to compare Dread’s variety of developer-intended flashy sequence breaks to Super’s. Many of these were not “intended” although the developers knew they might be possible, so it’s just a reward for the player. No one in 1994 was worried about coding new and interesting ways to get items; it was left to player imagination and experimentation with the mechanics.
23:25 you're not alone. I have a ton of problems with my spin getting interrupted. It drives me nuts and I thought I was crazy.
This is great overall. My only gripe is the music is way louder than your voice in many places.
That music issue is especially noticeable with how loud I made Green Brinstar. Makes me cringe a little bit seeing how loud it turned out.
rip federation soilder who died to the door eye, showing the gap between the federation and you.
Dude all his videos kick ass! I cant wait for dread analysis.
Woo new vid!!!!
Regarding samus’s jumping, I think it is overly criticized and I actually prefer it to the other sidescrollers due to its flexibility. Want to not jump as high? Let go of jump. Want to move around in any direction and change poses mid-air? Have at it! Also you’re not the only one who hates the spin breaking mechanic; it is a bain to all speed runners!
Glad you're seeing this through, keep up the good work
Brilliant review for an amazing game.
mapping run to L is a game changer
what a fucking channel name lmao
Super Metroid is the first game in the series I played, and I enjoyed playing it a lot in the years between the release of it and Metroid Fusion. One criticism I have on your video is how you kept comparing the use of shinespark in Super Metroid to what came years later in future games. I greatly appreciate that the shinespark puzzles in Super Metroid are few and treated as more of an extra easter egg. I can't stand the way shinespark has been overused in games starting with Fusion. The puzzles are tedious, and I'm glad Super Metroid doesn't want the player to do maneuvers like what Dread wants the player to do at times. I don't think any Metroid game after Super comes close to being as great as Super is. Super Metroid feels more pure and lacking in gimmicks.
1:34 it is the year 2024 and i am now discovering you can KILL THE SILVER GEEMERS?? Ive played this game upwards of 15 times and never knew that. Incredible video man!
I only found out in the making of this video actually, while I was gathering footage.
I think the combat of Super, while not nearly as fleshed-out as its sequels, still manages to be equally as engaging most of the time. A game like Dread is engaging because of its stellar boss design and the 360 degree shooting arc for Samus, but Samus’s limited directional range in Super means fights are substantially more about positioning rather than observing quick boss patterns and countering at the right time to stun enemies. You’re definitely right to say that the boss designs in Super could’ve been more engaging, but I think even despite that it lives up to the quality of its sequels to this day.
So, about not being able to skip the intro
TECHNICALLY you can watch it once, reset the SNES and copy that file to have two 0:00 files, it's used in speedruns to not have to have the cutscene as part of the timer
A helpful tip that I will make good use of in the future. Hell yeah thanks
My earliest memory is dying to Draygon when I was 2.
Incredible that you got that far at such an age
That thumbnail really got me
Unlike most content creators, you started out with pretty high production values and solid presentation. (yes, I did see your very first video to be sure) Even I took a few videos to really get into the swing of things. Honestly my biggest gripe is just your lack of confidence when you're reading a script, there's a good amount of pauses here. Also maybe think of if you need a visual video example for *every little thing* you want to mention. It absolutely shows your shining commitment and worm ethic but sometimes it's not needed imo. I'd like to see what you eventually cover next outside of metroid.
Also please consider a different name, try looking up here on UA-cam "pipi da feces" with that space between 'da' and 'feces' and you'll see what I mean.
I grew up with super Metroid as my first metroid game. Maybe because of that, i never had issues with controls. I really loved that you can wall jump on one side of the wall, which you cannot do in any other metroid. Giving you the ability to sequence breaking. I mean super invented the idea of sequence breaking
8:20 I wish this idea was used in Mega Man X01 against Vile. There's no way to defeat him, you're not rewarded with a slightly different outcome for performing better. You just run into him to take damage quickly and trigger the cutscene of Zero saving you.
Charged Beam + Wave + Plasma actually out damages Super Missiles enough that it's a more viable strat for enemies and bosses once you pick up Plasma.
I personally don't recall having too many issues with accidentally cancelling spin jump by pressing Up or Down. I've always used either a SNES controller or PS4/PS5/Pro Controller though. I'd posit if it's happening too easily it's probably more of a controller sensitivity issue than skill issue. But I can agree that Spin Jump was handled better in future games that removes a good chunk of frustration with Wall Jumps or Space Jumping.
Phantoon will always feel like the hardest boss to me mostly because he does a lot of damage and you don't have access to a lot of E-Tanks by that point, and if you don't know to charge spin to avoid his rage attack it makes him all the harder. But I do like all of the major boss fights for how unique each one feels. Spore Spawn can go and rot though.
Super Metroid remains the best game to 100% in the series because of its level design. The fact that Crateria and Brinstar are the only areas you genuinely need to backtrack to in order to pick up every collectible, plus the fact that you can save this backtracking until after you clear Wrecked Ship is a huge part of this. But I think the two biggest contributors to this Vs later Metroid titles is that you get Power Bombs about halfway through the game, and there are no Screw Attack specific blocks (Or baby Metroid blocks) to force you to go back to every area for at least 1 pickup when you are literally a few screens before the final boss.
If there are 2 things I would change, it would be doing something about the Maridia double loop (either putting a connection between the left and right pits or just making it not a one-way sinkhole for either side), as well as moving the Spring Ball to an earlier spot (perhaps the E-Tank that's unlocked after beating Kraid) and putting something else in that spot instead, perhaps the reserve tank for Maridia or something.
Thanks for going through the trouble to make that thumbnail.😂
The world would be a much dark place without this game
1:25:20 "the sounds that they make sound like something out of a Godzilla movie"
Does he know, chat?
I have no explanation for some of the other bosses, but Kraid being back, as we can see, there's more than one of them. Which this game shows you by first murdering the child and then its mother... and then its planet taking care of any family that might be around.
No child left behind.
This is by far my favorite game on the SNES.
I think the controls are challenging, but rewarding. I just refused to let the controls kick my butt, and now I love them. I still have my little frustrating moments, but I'm still amazed that I keep getting better everytime I beat it.
Sounds like a problem millennials and their kids seem to have. As we played the game in our days we had no trouble getting used to the controls.
“He forces you to hang out and periodically open himself” 😳
fun fact: the red brinstar track was later on sampled by producer cardogotwings for the song gang activities by baby keem, give it a listen it’s a banger
I just gave it a listen and my girlfriend filmed me twerking to the song. It’s not my kind of music but that’s still neat.
22:20 "I also don't feel like I need that much time in the air, so maybe the falling speed could be increased a bit. I'm unsure about this one, but I do know that I prefer the jumping physics in any of the sequel games".
Super Metroid Redux comes with an optional "Heavy physics" module which does just that, and I GREATLY recommend trying it out. I used to wish I could have Super Metroid with the jump physics of the GBA games, but that's changed--now when playing the GBA games, I wish the physics were as good as in SM Redux.
Without a doubt, the greatest game of all time.
The first Meridia song is my favorite
23:08 It's not just you, man. I remember that was one of the only things about Super Metroid that annoyed me and made wall-jumping frustrating.
love this video but describing the continuous walljump to skip past the moat and reach wrecked ship without speed booster/grapple beam as "just another walljump" is absolutely wild and if you ever try to do so yourself you will see why. It's ungodly precise and just really fucked up lmao nothing like normal kinds of vertically ascending walljumps. red tower climb is also by no means a super simple affair either...and i think that personally the speed booster version of early wrecked ship is rad. managing to squeeze in the charge window to then skip across the entire long entrance corridor in an instant is such an iconic and satisfying trick to pull
as you mention there is a lot of silly and glitchy stuff too and while I understand that you'll never learn what a mfing springball jump is without looking it up, it's still just really cool that a lot of that stuff is there and especially if you frequently play things like randomizers, the sheer breadth of techniques to get around in Super is so awesome and appreciated
also while i agree that dread's sequence breaks are godlike, i think that zero mission's sequence breaks are lame as fuck lmao they're all just bomb jumping or random ass missile block reveals a hidden passage. only good one is "early" super missiles but that one is pointless because you just get supers by going to ridley first anyways. the fact that literally the entire game is open with just bombs and missiles is also sleeper as fuck imo and really hampers it as a randomizer game too imo...also i know it's a glitch and it's not super fair to call it out bc like there are some glitchy skips in super that also suck titanic balls but like
FUCK early power bombs
that clip is so aids oml i hate that shit it singlehandedly saves like 10 minutes of meandering about looking for power bombs in Zero Mission Hard 100% but its so stupid to set up and guhhhhhh
also FYI: if you do those one way sand pit items AFTER you've beaten draygon, you can take the shortcut that opens in the room that the big pipe connects to to enormously streamline the process. The fact it also naturally leads to obtaining both Plasma Beam and Spring Ball, while then placing you next to the area exit makes the looping design pretty inoffensive IMO as long as your routing is smart.
lastly, while I can agree that the bosses aren't incredible (Though I love Super's Ridley, I also agree that that fight is a big slugfest lol), there's actually a lot more in terms of what weaponry does best in what fight: Crocomire limits Supers to one at a time, so you're required to either time hits with regular missiles and quickly switch to a super while firing, or rely on your charge shot which actually does the same damage but with a much bigger hitbox if you have wave/spacer/ice. Phantoon massively punishes using a Super for anything other than the last hit (but also takes increased damage from them to make counting your hits rewarding) Draygon has the secret Grapple Beam kill, Golden Torizo dodges your missiles and outright catches your Supers and throws them back at you, heavily encouraging the use of your charged Plasma Beam instead, which...is actually stronger than Super Missile spam anyways, actually! Likewise, as long as you have Plasma, the optimal way to defeat Mother Brain (past her first form) is to use charged shots, and spend your super missiles to get through the first part of the battle faster instead. Ridley is actually the only fight past Kraid that has the order of Supers>Missiles>Charge, and this is specifically because he takes double damage from both super and regular missiles. Charged Plasma is still really good against him though and has the advantage of being able to better keep track of his HP, so often you'll see 100% speedruns use it over regular missiles after using up their supers.
I have tried that wrecked ship wall jump countless times and have never been able to do it. Though it is insanely precise, I do still think it ultimately is just another wall jump. I guess my greater concern is that the intuitive breaks are rather samey. Though upon reflection, I’m not sure you could really call that particular wall jump intuitive since it’s so difficult. I think my larger point is made even worse if there’s less to offer when it comes to varied and intuitive sequence breaks. Admittedly I’m unsure of what you mean when you say the red tower climb is no simple affair. If you Super Missile the rippers, an IBJ will get you back to Green Brinstar from the bottom. And if you’re starting at GB trying to go up, Super Missiles will again clear the way to make for what I see as another basic wall jump. You gotta shoot out the ceiling and get through it before it regenerates, but I think that’s not enough for me to consider this sequence break very unique. I agree that it’s cool that Super has plenty of glitchy stuff too. Though they aren’t very appealing to me personally, I get that they appeal to a lot of people and deserve to be celebrated. On the matter of ZM’s sequence breaks, I’ll leave the specifics for my own eventual video on that matter. I’ll agree that there aren’t that many tricks, and it has more alternate sequences and less straight up breaks, but I actually quite enjoy the breaks that are just hidden paths. It’s totally valid to dislike that the whole map opens so quickly, but for me it’s kinda like how I put it in my Metroid NES video. Metroid 1 kinda does its own thing with de-emphasizing item progression in favor of a small but open experience. I really like that about it, but I also get the hate.
I’m very curious to check out what you’re talking about with Maridia’s shortcut after Draygon. I’m gonna make sure to poke around to find this more optimized routing because I’m eager to make that part quicker. Great to know there’s something to be done to make it go faster.
I can see your point about Crocomire. I’m sure that landing charge shots is faster, though I still do think that merely makes the fight faster instead of more complex or interesting. I’d like for Crocomire to have some more interesting behaviors or attacks. I mentioned Phantoon’s Super Missile quirk, and I do appreciate that they included that, but I had no idea that any one boss takes more or less damage from specific attacks like your mentioned example with Ridley. I meant to talk about the Golden Torizo, and I was going to bring that stuff up. I noticed that if you stand in the right place, he’ll miss when he throws the Supers back at you. If if you just want to tank the few hits, you can fire Supers at him fast enough where he can’t catch them all and dies pretty quickly. Charged Plasma might be stronger but I’m curious if spamming Supers is higher DPS against him? If Missiles are useless against Mother Brain and possibly against Ridley compared to your beam then I’d actually consider that a let down because it means there’s little incentive to go out of your way to find the missile tanks. It’s interesting to know that there are optimizations for using specific weapons against specific guys. I kinda wish the game had some means of indicating boss weaknesses to specific weapons, maybe such as a specific sound effect when hurt with a weapon they’re weak to, or maybe the boss could flash a unique color, but it’s interesting to know it’s there.
Glad you enjoyed the video and I appreciate you teaching me so much about hidden little quirks in Super, as well as sharing your own thoughts. I’m gonna search up “Early Power Bombs Zero Mission” to see this hell for myself.
@@FlatulentFetus Sorry, for red tower I was more talking about doing it while leaving the Rippers still alive--it's pretty simple if you go out of your way to kill them, I agree. (Worth noting that if you got Power Bombs from the room after Crocomire, you can drop one to kill all of the rippers considerably more quickly than if you used Supers. I know you could have just gotten the Ice Beam at that point, but that's a little slower than going and getting it when it's time to fight Ridley)
If you crouch down and aim straight upwards into the Golden Torizo, your charged Plasma Beam will hit it twice with every shot, utterly obliterating the thing's health. There's actually a certain place you can stand (Pretty much on top of his foot) that acts as a safespot from his wave attack and lets you keep firing those double hitting shots into him. Sadly, ever since I got good at that safespot, that boss has turned from one of my favorites to a total pushover....feel bad for the guy, honestly.
As for the faster route to get Maridia 100%, in order to do it, after beating Draygon you need to backtrack to that long hallway that you speed boostered through on your trip there--while the game doesn't let you turn back around from Botwoon's room, by standing around in the sand pits directly beneath that room's Energy Tank, you get pulled downwards into the room beneath, and then can go from there back into the big room that is connected to those two one way pits. Then it's a matter of taking one of them down, getting the items, using the shortcut that opens from beating Draygon to get back to that hallway, and finally get the second pit's items and get the hell out of there. Hopefully I described things well enough.
You're right that all the missile tanks are pretty superfluous, but at the same time...when have you ever *really* needed much more than like, 80 missiles? And even that's a bit generous, to tell the truth...even in games where Missiles are very good, like Zero Mission, still have way more missiles than you could ever really know what to do with. (Well, obviously every tank is worth it in 1 and 2 but besides those it's really hard to actually spend all the missiles you get in a 100% playthrough)
Since I only ever play Super on a CRT on my SNES i thought there was something wrong with the visuals for a bit.
Graat video. I agree on the bosses and mostly on movement. The movement feels so satisfying sometimes and annoying others. Space jump is something i to this day suck at.
One thing about the difference between SM, ZM, and Dread in terms of sequence breaking, I think it’s the fact that the sequence breaks in ZM and Dread are mostly dev intended. Not that there aren’t glitches, but ZM specifically is pretty tight and generally the breaks are all dev inserted. It’s why they tend to use more of Samus’ tool kit.
The SM sequence breaks don’t feel like they were really intended, but when they ended up in the game the devs seemed cool with leaving it in.
Dread has more “glitch-type” sequence breaks though. I put things like mockball in Super and pseudo-wave in Dread as glitches that the devs didn’t plan around at all and didn’t find out about until players found them on release. I’m just glad that pseudo-wave hasn’t been patched out (afaik)
The devs behind SM did not leave anything in they didn't intent to. Sequence breaking was not even a thing before the early 2000s when every kid and their teachers felt like being special because of it. Sequence breaking was not a thing in 1994. All we had to learn was to get 100% Item Rate and getting through the game in under three hours. The rest is bs nobody asked for.
a lot of newcomers dont know that the Escape From Zebes theme from super metroid is a different song from Major Boss/Ridley's theme. the escape theme is more frenetic and panicked due to the feature of a siren/alarm and dissonant staccato of percussions
Button Mapping is always a good idea to include as an option. Especially in a game where the default layout isn't really that great.
Perfect video game. It's perfect.
1:35:00 Nah, charged plasma shots deal more damage than missiles or Super Missiles, at least against Spore Spawn, Ridley and Mother Brain. If you sequence break to skip Spore Spawn and take him out later, the Plasma Beam one-shots him.
i run this game on keyboard, and apart from my control scheme (wasd ijkl qo nc) its a complete upgrade
no accidental unspins for me
This was a good video. This is my favorite game of all time, but it's getting harder to recommend to people as time goes on, because of the controls and some obtuse design decisions, I also don't have the newbie's perspective with the game, unfortunately. The game is amazing without all the weird sequence break tricks, and as you touched on a bit, no Metroid game even after this has been quite as open as this one. You can't reverse the boss order in the later games, for instance. It's for things like that that this one ever so slightly edges out over the later games, Zero Mission, Fusion, and even Dread. For one other reason, as well. 100%ing Super Metroid is still the best experience in any of the games, in my opinion. I have a massive dislike of the later game's tendency to make you do a huge item collectathon at the end of the game. It breaks the flow and just feels tedious to me. With Super Metroid, I can reasonably get 100% of the items by the time I reach the time to go and fight Mother Brain. But again, because of the controls, I believe one can only appreciate them when they have a decent grasp of them. Despite how apprehensive I am about retro games being reviewed through the modern lense, I understand your critique. Good review.
Also, I very much skipped hi jump boots until after kraid because I hate the feeling of walking into a room with no idea if it’ll damage me or not
I played Super Metroid after playing Prime 1, Fusion, and Dread. It was interesting to have that previous metorid experience from "easier" games. It definitely helped for a few puzzels. If i tried to play super metorid as a kid i don't think i would get very far. Overall i really enjoyed Super Metroid. My only complaints are controls. Wall jumping and shine sparking are difficult to learn.I did get stuck on the noob run bridge because i forgot there was a run button, even though i saw there was when i was in the menu. Also the fake wall on lower norfair got me too. But otherwise the game combot is pretty fair. You don't get bosses that are impossible to kill. I can see why people like this game. It definitely a classic and has aged fairly well comapred to others from the time