Stardust

Stardust
Release date: Aug 13, 2009	Author: Tyjet66	Download: Version 1.7 [UH] (1252 downloads) Download: Version 1.7 [H] (753 downloads) Download: Unofficial Version 1.7 Fixed [UH] (163 downloads) Download: Unofficial Version 1.7 Fixed [H] (501 downloads)
Genre: Quick Play [?] Game:	Difficulty: Beginner [?]	Average runtime: 1:13 Average collection: 81%
Read Me: [None]	Forum Thread: [None]	Rating:
	Awards: Top Hacks 2009: Best Quick Play

Description

This hack is about as non-linear as they come (if I'm correct) and it has the same amount of final items as the original. The difficulty of this hack is kinda on the low end, so if you want more of a challenge let me know, I might make a harder version. This is my first hack so tell me what you think!

NOTE: official version has 2 items share an index, unintentionally making the max 99% items. The unofficial patch fixes this and makes no other changes.

Screenshots

Ratings and Reviews

By Cpt.Glitch on Mar 31, 2015 (

)

37% in 0:25

A very short, non-linear hack. Item everywhere, lots of places to explore. Has quite a bit of palette changes, but other than those, it is very vanilla like. Good hack to play to kill some time and is very fun to run through again and again to try and get the best route and time when speedrunning.

By Elminster on Apr 19, 2015 (

)

No completion stats.

I found this hack really underwhelming. A shortened, watered-down, easier take on the original game. Some of the palettes were nice, but I found too many of the rooms to be reminiscent of the original game, and the ones that weren't were uninteresting. Most of the save station icons on the map are not actually save stations, and there is something later in the hack that looks like a save station but is not, which was very annoying to find at low energy. Items are too abundantly easy to find, and one expansion can be found early in a very odd place; not sure if that was intended or an oversight, but it creates an unpolished feel. The escape felt discontinuous and the player can easily be led in the completely wrong direction with too little time allotted.

I don't recommend it, but the hack is easy and short, so you have little to lose if you choose to play it. I will say the room Ice is in is really neat.

By CaptainIronMan on Dec 14, 2015 (

)

No completion stats.

This is a neat hack. I would recommend this to someone who has never played a SM hack before. The hack is pretty short and isn't too difficult. The level design could help a newcomer recognize the kinds of things are suspicious and should be explored without being too challenging. Some things are more obvious than others, but any player should be able to find plenty of items.

There are a few errors, some are a bigger deal than others. One error in Tourian caused me to get stuck in a wall while in morph ball and I had to reset the game.

The room that ice beam is in is my favorite room in the hack, very cool idea.

By Aran;Jaeger on Dec 08, 2016 (

)

99% in 0:50

No animals to be saved.

Quick Summary of the meaning of my SM hack ratings:
5 orbs: SM hacks within the 80% to 100% (90% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; SM hacks for outstanding wholesome playing experiences and at most minor inconveniences.
4 orbs: SM hacks within the 60% to 80% (70% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Well done SM hacks with noticeable design problems.
3 orbs: SM hacks within the 40% to 60% (50% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Normal decent average SM hacks.
2 orbs: SM hacks within the 20% to 40% (30% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Overall messy, confusing, or punishing SM hacks with some upsides.
1 orb : SM hacks within the 00% to 20% (10% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Ruthlessly unplayable, broken, or barely from the original game changed SM hacks.

Judgement parameters summary:
° Creative ideas and features, polished design, how enjoyable and fun the hack can be, lack of hard to find or cryptic required game elements, the difficulty, and if the hack can be finished without major guides or tools.
° Note that the length of a SM hack will not necessarily contribute to my rating of the SM hack, since instead the averaged out experience over the whole hack will be taken into account to get a relative comparison between SM hacks.
° Besides this, lack of impactful changes from the original SM game also went into the evaluation of SM hacks (otherwise one may consider them among the 3 stars hacks) as follows: Ultimately, for my ratings I consider a situation in which an SM enthusiast that already has, knows about and is familiar with the original game and its prominent mechanics could only choose 1 new SM hack to play and thus would really want to make sure he/she will get a fresh and fantastic experience or journey out of his/her 1 choice.

The goal of all these SM hack ratings is so that rather new players have an overview of the whole spectrum of SM hacks and how to sort them in, in relation to each other, where SM hacks that are rated lower might still be enjoyable for more experienced players.

Finally, sometimes for SM hacks it can be relevant that they may be significantly more enjoyable from a player standpoint at which the player is well practiced and familiarized with Super Metroid's game mechanics in general, and that in particular some of the best SM hacks may not be the outright best first SM hack choices to play otherwise because of this, and for beginner SM hack players this typically steers the best first SM hack choices towards some of the SM hacks that I rated with 4 orbs instead of 5.

Rating for some hacks may be off by 1 Star, but arguably not more, and ratings are not attempted to be provided within the precision of ''half orbs''.

By Pixel_Tiger on Jun 29, 2017 (

)

90% in 0:02

Alright, this being your first hack, it was quite good. I liked how you tried to put a personal touch to it. But I think it might be a bit to much calling it a hack for beginners as there are no save stations! Using savestats is one option but you might abuse it to some extend where the fun gets lost.

And i dont know about the other guys out there but I think your escape route and the time are a bit CLOSE, I got stuck on a few tiles on my way and it was very.. VERY close to blowing up (like 3 seconds remaining). You might want to give a bit more time, especialy for beginners!

Everything was ok.

By nodever2 on Jan 21, 2018 (

)

81% in 0:02

This was quite a fun experience, but at the same time the world, in the early game, felt like it wasn't designed to be smoothly played. I'd find one item and then have to look around the whole map to find the next.

This was made much worse by the fact that I didn't know where to go at a certain point and checked every single room that I had access to like twice - turns out, there are three super missile blocks that are very easy to miss in the floor of one room which are the only way to enter a huge part of the hack. I spent a very large chunk this time here - at least an hour - just looking for those stupid blocks.

As a result of this, I had ended up beating Phantoon before going into the Norfair area at all, which I feel like was probably not intentional. However, it was extremely fun to go through early Norfair with gravity suit and wave beam and just destroy everything :)

Anyway, after I found those super missile blocks, the hack actually became like 10 times better. That was my favorite part of the hack, and after that there wasn't really a huge problem with knowing where to go. The ice beam room was AWESOME, but I wish the idea had been used more to it's full potential.

As a whole, well done. It's a bit rough around the edges, but if you give this hack some time, it redeems itself in my opinion once you get past a certain point. I'd recommend it.

(also there's almost no save stations, which is bad. Savestates are pretty much mandatory unless you like replaying extremely long sections upon death.)

By PassivePac-Man on Feb 19, 2018 (

)

79% in 0:02

It was pretty okay.

By Sapphron on Jul 17, 2019 (

)

85% in 1:18

This was an alright hack for being so dang old. I really didn't like that there were items in Tourian & the escape. For people going for 100%, that's always really obnoxious.
Palettes were kind of nice, progression wasn't that confusing and some areas were quite nice to look at.
Also, no save stations, the ship is your only save. This gets a star knocked off because it can take quite a while to get back to Mother Brain if you die.

By Paragon on Dec 01, 2020 (

)

92% in 3:55

Fun little hack! Graphics are a little funny in some areas, but there are many different ways you can go through it and it's legitimately fun to play. Item hunting wasn't a chore, but there were a few I couldn't figure out. Escape is pretty narrow.. honestly surprised I survived the first time with milliseconds left.

Definitely a hack to play, especially for people new to hacks.

By LetsPlayNintendoITA on Sep 04, 2021 (

)

100% in 1:38

Another great hack that caught my eyes and was very cool.
Just a few mistakes (morphball room having weird background on re-entering it, the ending getting normal music, and some rooms having boss music even if they weren't there) it was a very very good hack. 5 stars. 100% in 1:38. thanks!
(played the fixed version)

By Tundain on Jun 05, 2022 (

)

78% in 1:40

Very strange tiny hack, a lot of item pickups pretty much anywhere.
I did waste a lot of item early on because a progression point wasn't really clear to me (but that's just me not paying enough attention)
Other than that, there's not really a lot to say, good hack.

By Zincoshine on Jul 18, 2022 (

)

No completion stats.

I approach every mod I review as if it were its own metroidvania game and judge them accordingly, ignoring any similarities to super Metroid (for obvious reasons). The idea is to analyze the mod from the perspective of someone who bought it as a game on Steam. With this disclaimer out of the way, here's the review:

This is from 2009, a time when mods for super metroid only focused on editing rooms with no focus whatsoever on logic, appearance, or anything. Unfortunately, this mod is basically typical of that era and is completely worthless nowadays. It does however get an orb for being functional and not requiring glitching or using glitches itself.

By PHOSPHOTiDYL on Mar 07, 2023 (

)

61% in 1:32

Well, you can brute your way to wavebeam, so you dont' need grapple or springball at all.
I also didn't get spacejump or icebeam, which you don't need for tourian.

Plus early powerbombs are still an option...

Thankz for the hack!!

By Forever on Jul 08, 2023 (

)

68% in 1:52

this was actually a lot worse than I thought it'd be, it just got worse and worse the more I played, the start wasn't actually too bad, graphics are what you'd expect of such a old hack as well as the level design so I won't knock it on that, but it does show it's age for sure, lots and lots of hidden items and passageways made progression kinda annoying at some times, item progression was actually pretty open tho.

By FPzero on Jan 30, 2024 (

)

96% in 1:21

This is on the mini-hack side of things and honestly? It's not too bad even today. Its biggest faults are hiding required progression behind obstacles with no real indication a hidden path is there (the room before your likely first Super Missiles, the sandfall to Draygon). But aside from those moments, the hack is pretty non-linear. I found my way to Gravity Suit before finding Varia, and later discovered I could've had a Power Bomb right after getting Bombs proper. Its open-ended nature is both a strength and a weakness for the reasons listed above. Getting a map isn't a terrible idea when you get stuck, especially if you're looking for 100% completion.

Visually, it's a bit outdated, but this is about what to expect from most hacks' visual styles at the times. Palettes are alright, tiling is usually fine. Challenge is roughly vanilla as well. Escape timer was surprisingly short.

Is it the best hack on the site? Absolutely not, nor even the best hack of the year it was released. But it's solid enough, and you can easily finish it off in a single sitting. It's a decent enough time overall.

By ironrusty on Mar 01, 2024 (

)

No completion stats.

A fine adventure without too much world to wander in.

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