Super Duper Metroid
Release date: Dec 04, 2021
Download: Version 2.1, unheadered (10423 downloads)
Genre: Exploration [?]
Game: SM
Difficulty: Veteran [?]
Average runtime: 4:43
Average collection: 82%
Read Me: [None]
Forum Thread: Release Thread
Rating: Star Star Star Star Star
Other Links: Launch Trailer
Description
Super Duper Metroid is now complete ! Now using ProjectBase 0.8.1 engine.
When Daltone dropped his unfinished hack, it was roughtly missing a good chunk of Norfair and Tourian.
I took upon myself building missing parts, fixing bugs, upgrading the hack from PB 0.7 to PB 0.8 and programming some *extra* stuff.

It also comes with 2 extra in-game modes :
-> Mirror : Zebes is flipped horizontally and has a new palette;
-> Rando : All collectibles are randomized;
"Mirror" and "Rando" can be enabled pressing SELECT button on the save file screen.
I suggest trying out those game modes for subsequent playthroughs only.

Story
Defeat the brain in the jar and get out! What?
Don't tell me you'd have preferred vengeance driven plot involving miscarriage, tsk?

Credits
- Metaquarius
- Daltone

Thanks
- Digital Mantra
- Project Base Team
- Nintendo
Screenshots
Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot Screenshot
Ratings and Reviews
By Kremit44 on Dec 08, 2021 (Star Star Star Star Star )
87% in 4:15
It's Super Duper alright. It's a very fast paced and open hack. Project Base 0.8.1 is pretty unreal and it's an excellent first hack to have utilized it's features. I was really happy to see this completed because after playing through the incomplete hack I could see the potential was clearly there for something excellent. Metaquarius really polished it up and added some cool features to make this one of the best hacks available and a great addition to the Project Base legacy. Clearly this is meant to be enjoyed by speedrunners, which isn't surprising given PB's purpose and Dalton's other hacks Super Metroid Grand Prix 1/2, but it's still a fun playthrough as an exploration hack. My biggest complaints would be I think it's a little too open for my liking given the progression still really hangs on finding a suit, or at least for me it did. Perhaps it's also a little too easy. All in all though it's outstanding. Thanks for the great hack to all responsible, it was impressive to say the least.
By Digital_Mantra on Dec 08, 2021 (Star Star Star Star Star )
5% in 0:37
[Watch Video]  
Super Duper Metroid is to Project Base 0.8 what Hyper Metroid was to 0.7, a full hack that utilizes the mobility in a fast paced landscape.

This hack also boasts the most non-linear Metroid experience yet. You won't play it the same way twice, or even five times.
The challenge lies in what the player wants the challenge to be. Made by and made for fans of project base and routing some personal bests.

Duper quickly became one of my all time top 3 favorites, easily and unapologetically shoving one of my others out of place.

Huge thanks to Metaquarius for completing the final stretch of Daltone's hack. It's been a privilege to see this hack grow over the years.

Oh and Dreads got nothing on Duper.
By RT-55J on Dec 08, 2021 (Star Star Star Star Star )
87% in 5:20
This hack is Superb Duperb.
By shaktool7 on Dec 10, 2021 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
Hack Of The Year 2021.
By Zhs2 on Dec 11, 2021 (Star Star Star Star Star )
86% in 6:08
This hack is... alright. I wouldn't say it's actually super duper, maybe just super. This is because of heavy similarity with Vitality, in the granularity of exploration you must apply in order to acquire what veterans of Super Metroid these days consider "optional", the biggest offender in this case being beams. Expansions not so much but I'm not amused by the concept of half e-tanks, even if it does lend to seeing them all over the place.

I can't in good faith give this hack five stars because the non-linearity lends to a rocky start of your first playthrough, your efforts to plumb Duper's Zebes surrounded on all sides by threatening sidehoppers, heatruns, and water - it will be just as frustrating as mine for the first couple of hours, guaranteed. Underwater suitless is in fact required for the "intended" sequence of major items, but the moment you find Gravity Suit the hack is promptly blown wide open for the taking, making most threats rather unthreatening. Only one problem: you still have to find it, and you're not going to have a good time without Charge Beam, also just about as stupidly hidden within the muck of a "broken lamp" passage a room prior.

Beyond all that, if you're an elite player I understand this hack offers more options for replayability than your typical SM hack, so props for that too.
By ocesse on Dec 12, 2021 (Star Star Star Star Star )
100% in 4:47
A new classic has just been born.
But was it absolutely necessary to hide Charge Beam so well?
By eddyslmn on Dec 13, 2021 (Star Star Star Star Star )
% in 2:15
I would totally rate it max if I could make this work on my mini SNES. I am currently playing on pc and loving it, but I really do wish this would work on the mini SNES T_T No matter what core I use, it won't work. Once this gets fixed, probably best hack ever after Redux [EDIT: a member of the forum was nice enough to post a fix to apply to the patched SM rom that fixes this mini SNES issue here: https://forum.metroidconstruction.com/.../topic,5443.75.html 5 morph balls it is chief ^^]
By AdvantaJeous on Dec 20, 2021 (Star Star Star Star Star )
76% in 4:02
[Watch Video]  
If there was one game I wish I could experience again, it was Super Metroid. This hack absolutely captured the experience of the original for me. I had a blast exploring with so few items and then finding all the little hidden spots and entrances that are not obvious, but not impossible to find. I thought nothing would top Ascent for me, but this easily overtakes it.

I also found a cool Easter Egg that I posted about in the forum, but it is a massive spoiler, so I will not mention it here.
By Insomnia Speed on Dec 21, 2021 (Star Star Star Star Star )
84% in 6:40
best hack of 2021, and one of the greatest of all time. I especially like the non-linear design and you can change the physics to vinilla style.
By bem on Dec 23, 2021 (Star Star Star Star Star )
100% in 0:00
Very good hack !!!
The second path way is very fun ^^

vraiment très bon hack !!

je ne mets que 4 car j'aurais apprécié une fin un peu plus travailler ^^ (à moins que j'ai loupé quelque chose)
By Contendo on Jan 06, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
(Dont remember my stats, might do another playthrough at some point.)

This hack has so much good stuff in it and I really want to like this hack.
My problem is that the hack just feels like a lot of good ideas were just stitched together resulting in me just wandering around in the world without any real goal. It is hard to find a proper path of progression at points. For exploration this hack is fantastic but at a cost of any direction.
Given, many items can be skipped and, as far as I know, the hack can be beaten without ever grabbing morph. But that also leads me to my next problem, the item placement feels like a randomizer, funny enough there is a randomizer built in. Sometimes I explored parts of an area expecting to get a specific item, just to get another useless missile tank or a completely different item, which unlocks progression somewhere on the other side of the map.

Well even with all my negative points this hack was still able to amaze me at times, which allows me to still rate 4 orbs.
By Sapphron on Jan 06, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
100% in 4:36
Really impressive that a mirror mode and randomizer were built into the ROM, huge props for that.
A Super Duper solid hack with lots of secrets and basically no intended path.
Finished.
Recommend.
By MetroidNerd#9001 on Jan 12, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
82% in 4:19
So there's a lot of good things about this hack, but I also have some issues with it too. This hack has really good flow with its movement, and its openness makes the world fun to explore, but it may also be the hack's greatest flaw.

In your exploration of the hack, you are bound to hit some kind of progression chokepoint. Everywhere you haven't explored is blocked off by stuff you don't have, except for the path to one of the items you need. For me, this happened when everything was blocked off by either Speed Booster or Power Bombs, and the path to Speed was blocked behind a hidden wall that X-Ray wouldn't reveal. Why is X-Ray inconsistent about these things? Sometimes it works, but other times it will tell you something is solid when it's either bombable or not solid. It's little things like that which really hamper the hack's overall quality.

This may just be a Project Base thing, but this hack way overdid it with its Speed Booster mechanics. There are just too many ways to activate speed, even by accident, that it takes away the thrill of using the upgrade almost entirely. Not to mention some of the ways you can activate it make absolutely no sense.

A lot of other upgrades also seem haphazardly hidden, especially the beams. Why is Charge so well hidden? Why is Ice one of the last upgrades in the game? Where even is Spazer? Both suits are also hidden in such a way that I don't even know which one you're "supposed" to find first. Varia continues to confound me in this hack. No matter which path you take, you will have to take some level of heat damage to get it, but this isn't communicated to the player at all, and depending on what path you take, you may be spending a very long time in superheated rooms before you get there. Instead of making Varia satisfying to find though, this design choice just makes you go "oh finally" in a very frustrated tone when you get the suit.

Another little thing: why can you shoot foreground tiles? Yeah, it's a cool effect, but it's also really distracting. Similarly, parts of the hack feel a bit too consistent with which tiles are breakable. Some areas have breakable tiles everywhere, but most of them just amount to nothing, making players feel like they just wasted their time.

Wow. I've been pretty negative up to this point, so I guess I should end with some positives. The new intro sequence is kinda cool, the tiling looks fantastic, and I like the QOL changes to the pause menu. A highlight of the hack for me had to be all the roomstate shenanigans around the glass tube in Maridia. I've never seen a hack do something like that before, but it was really cool to see it implemented. Overall, this is a good hack that I recommend playing, but I still have several issues with it from a game design perspective. Don't let that keep you from enjoying it, though.
By KaptenR on Jan 14, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
84% in 4:35
[Watch Video]  
This was absolutely a really good hack. Clear that a ton of time went into this! Excellent level design. The hack is really open, but yet you do not get lost so easily (at least I didn't). The rooms are always nicely looking, you don't get bored with how it looks.
I did not find the hack to be so hard, I think probably quite new players can beat this.

There also seem to be a lot of replayability! With both the random items option, and the mirror option.
but there is also the hidden challenge, where you do NOT pick up morph ball! This makes for an insane challenge! Very cool!

I give the hack 4.5 / 5. It was great! :D
By thedopefish on Jan 17, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
71% in 3:59
[Watch Video]  
Pretty cool hack. Very open-ended with lots of stuff to find. I ended up finding both suits pretty late, and never picked up plasma. Energy tanks are only worth half each, so there are more of them to find. Built-in randomizer is a really cool idea.

It reminded me of Hyper, with the Project Base physics and some nice vanilla-ish visuals. Also with it being easy to stumble into a very difficult GT fight before it's necessary to go there. And unfortunately also with fact that I got stuck wandering the planet for an hour looking for PBs after I had exhausted all my other options.

A couple other things that were a bit weird:
- rooms are littered with shootable air tiles in the background for no apparent reason; I found it distracting
- some empty item rooms early on, that were apparently duplicate morph locations?
- the path to charge beam is rather well hidden, although the item itself is conspicuously visible. it's a good spot, but a little questionable for such an important upgrade
- x-ray lies to you sometimes

Overall it didn't blow me away with anything new and innovative, but I found it quite enjoyable.
By DeviousB on Feb 15, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
87% in 9:21
This hack is almost a bit too open as I felt like I got to some areas and items too early, and it was a bit disorienting yet made for a bit of a challenge. The graphics are gorgeous, the colors pop, the maps, rooms and tiles are both unique/top-notch and the controls are tight and snappy. My biggest complaint is some bosses are just super-duper ammo sponges. Especially Ridley. It's an easy fight that lasts forever due to the sheer amount of missiles and super missiles this absolute unit of a boss can tank. Who do I sue for carpal tunnel, amirite you guys? And yes you read that right, my completion time is 9+ hours (game is huge) because i was searching for beams forever and literally finding everything else instead. As far as replay value goes it's the king of that hill. Also probably the most freedom of any SM hack i've played and almost had a "freestylish" feel to it so traversing the maps was very satisfying.
By Syphon on Feb 22, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
86% in 3:37
Great hack. Loved the open-ended design of it.

Recommended.
By Kriken Empire on Mar 25, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
85% in 5:28
Another chapter in the grand story of "where the heck are power bombs?"

Really though this hack was fun, but clever in its cruelty. If you like finding items more than the critical path, this is the hack for you. I almost thought I'd 100% the game before I got to Tourian just by accident. The map is...there, but combing every square inch is much more important to finding anything. Unfortunately this hack also suffers from the syndrome of "everything looks like a secret/breakable block." Difficulty-wise you've got some heat runs and underwater stuff with no gravity, but relative to most other hacks it's not so bad. Combat is easy though, so overall it leans more into the exploration side of things. It feels like a "Super Metroid 2.0" (hence the hack's title I suppose) but maybe in the most boring way possible. Praise worthy for its quality, level design, and atmosphere while also being kind of forgettable.

Just gonna compare this to Hyper Metroid real quick, only because of that snark in the description. I didn't manage to find plasma, and it was tough finding it in Hyper. A Gold Torizo walls you out of what feels like the right path just by being tough as nails. Its "openness" is full of long dead ends for pickups, punishing difficulty if you try to sequence break, or just really well hidden paths to where you shouldn't be (Zero Mission style). Casual wall jumps ended up being massive sequence breaks that translated to a ton of time being lost as I had none of the items I was intended to have. A few too many grey doors, with some seemingly never opening in my playthrough. It's also a project base hack. All of this could describe Hyper.
By therealsusan on Jun 09, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
80% in 5:01
Overall very fun hack. The new intro alone makes checking this out worthwhile. I really liked the option for changing the bomb timer.

Unlike others, I didn't have a problem finding anything except supers & I thought item placement was great.

I didn't like how speed booster handled & the foreground objects breaking when shot was distracting.

There's an easy soft lock right after you get space jump, too, if you accidentally kill the snail.

The reason I'm giving it 4* instead of 5* is the endgame kind of falls flat.
By KPF on Aug 26, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
Very good work Metaquarius Daltone.
Fun and challenging without the (throw the controller on the floor) Frustration.
I would like to see MORE of YOUR work.
And the Game Engine you used is PERFECT.
By brized on Sep 09, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
I enjoyed this much more than Hyper if only because Speed Booster wasn't the last major upgrade and the map feels like it's made to be run around in at mach speed.

The more open map style is something you'll love or hate. I loved it.


That said, some critique:

It should have used Hyper's X-ray Visor and made sure that it wouldn't bug out in rooms where it's useful.

Some optional items require Speed Booster mechanics specific to Project Base 0.8.1 to get them. Problem is, there's nothing in-game that teaches those mechanics. The player shouldn't have to look up documentation or videos outside the game to figure out stuff like re-spinning out of a shinespark, etc.

Tourian felt underwhelming.
By Zincoshine on Sep 20, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
86% in 6:01
The first 5/5 super metroid exploration hack I've managed to find. It gets all the metroidvania design elements right without any major flaws whatsoever. The only notable negative thing about the hack that I can think of is that it feels derivative of hyper metroid, although that's probably my fault since I played this right after playing hyper metroid. You should definitely play both, but play hyper after this because hyper's endgame is significantly harder. For that matter, I have no idea why this is listed as a veteran hack, there's no advanced tricks needed anywhere on the mandatory path and it is easier than hyper metroid. All in all it's just a good all-around well designed metroidvania that any fan of metroidvanias is going to enjoy.
By vsf3000 on Oct 10, 2022 (Star Star Star Star Star )
% in 5:20
very enjoyable. nicely balanced difficulty (some parts call for advanced tactics, especially if going for 100%). i didnt really have any real issues with this one, other than not understanding the ship scene at the beginning (maybe theres more to it than i realized, it seemed interesting but pointless), and that the conclusion felt very abrupt.

overall, i strongly recommend this one, one of the best for sure.
By Spodej on Feb 13, 2023 (Star Star Star Star Star )
80% in 3:48
Animal saved.
By Lionel Ghardin on Feb 14, 2023 (Star Star Star Star Star )
100% in 7:57
By far one of my favorite hacks, the randomizer alone makes the game have a replay value far above other hacks. This hack really pushed what I thought was capable from the Super Metroid moveset, and forced me to get more and more creative with how I approached the game. The Golden Torizo however was not a fun fight, and thankfully is rarely seen in the randomizer. I've probably put well over 40 hours into doing randomizer runs, and am still coming back for more.
By H A M on Feb 16, 2023 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
this hack suffers from floating pirate syndrome
By Bluetree on Mar 23, 2023 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
[Watch Video]  
* Patch for AnaloguePocket / FGPA-Cores: https://forum.metroidconstruction.com/index.php/topic,5443.msg70105.html#msg70105

Have played 0.5h, like it very much.
By Grandirus on Mar 26, 2023 (Star Star Star Star Star )
100% in 1:31
I just want to thanks de creator for this great hack.

Btw.: my 1:31 - 100% run was in Rando mode.
By FANXINGPRIME on Apr 15, 2023 (Star Star Star Star Star )
70% in 4:33
I am fond of the neoteric opening and the high degree of completion.
By HillMessiah on Jul 08, 2023 (Star Star Star Star Star )
70% in 4:00
Positives:

Non intended boss order, openness of the game, pretty visual, smooth gameplay, either because High Jump got even higher, Space Jump physics is adjusted, door transitions are fast and smooth. Minimal text, nice secrets. Build-in Mirror Mode and Rando, which would make me give a decent hack 4-5 stars by default (but see below). Also, super cute mini Metroids in Tourian. Very intended and I'm assuming racers/speedrunners would love this hack.

Negatives:

A bunch of foreground being destroyable, made the gameplay very distracting. That, couple with X-ray sometimes trolling you by not revealing stuff made it difficult to notice some hidden things.

Exploration is a bit erratic, being a nonlinear hack. I guess the devs wanted to leave it as open as possible due to randomizer nature of the hack, but that also meant you could hit a bunch of dead ends, get places harder than what you're supposed to endure, or exploration sometimes not feeling rewarding. I felt exploration quite unrewarding because there wasn't a lot of logic in the placement of some items (see next point), and either items were very well hidden or took me too long to find them.

For example, imo Kraid, GT and Ridley felt very unrewarding with their boss rewards, the first I expected a beam upgrade, Varia if the creators were feeling generous or Spring Ball to make Maridia's navigation smoother. In fact, I missed SB completely in my playthrough; had to check the map for 5 minutes to see where it was. I was soon to get annoyed by Kraid's area when I explored better and got a beam upgrade and "early" Supers. GT and Ridley felt unrewarding because the first was quite difficult, but it gave an upgrade I'd rather get it much sooner, defeating the purpose of beating it, and Ridley was way way too easy and its reward was useless at that point for me. I could go there earlier, which would make their upgrades meaningful probably, but I wasn't sure if I could survive due to heat damage, which, gain, defeat the purpose of their rewards. Also why make E-tanks give only half??? It increased item count, but felt like it was only small upgrades to get.


Sequencing break for Phantoom felt rewarding because it massively improved my exploration capabilities. The boss was very tough for me, doing it second with not a lot of ammo, and Phantoom being much faster which felt quite annoying for me. In fact, most of the stuff in the game screams for you to go fast, but quite ironically Speed Booster is quite deep in Norfair and it was the last item I got. It felt very useless, and dunno if I would use it a lot aside racing setups or going to Phantoom instead of using IBJ.

That was my main gripe with the hack. It is categorized as exploration, but even with me looking well in most places, I fought 3 bosses without suits (at least the hack isn't a huge chore without Gravity in Maridia), and while stumbled across 3 beams by exploring (finding Wave, Spazer and Plasma felt rewarding), Ice was so out of the way and Charge being visible and needing to enter rooms before in hidden spot to get it was quite annoying. The back and forth of the hack, while less annoying than some hacks out there due to this one being speedy to play, got tiring due to lack of fast travel + possibility of getting softlocked or stuck in places and figuring out where to go. If you could grab Varia and Speed much earlier, but maybe they where well hidden it would've been dope.


Tourian, aside the cute mini metroids, was quite underwhelming compared to the rest of the hack, and it's only saving grace in gameplay is the route to enter there in low%. My evaluation is mostly about a first playthrough and exploration in mind, because that's what the hack is tagged. If this was meant to race, speedrun, I would bump it to 4-4.5 stars, but it's not. Most of the value of the hack is if you go fast or play the randomizer mode. In my case, I went faster than my average pace due to the hack's good gameplay and completely missed the suits, Ice and Charge.

Funny enough, the game was much fun to do a randomizer, because I got a beam upgrade early, which make Brinstar's enemies not being damage sponges and made gameplay much better. I do recommend people to play this hack, there's great quality there but with some design flaws, and it trying to aim for both exploration and speedrun only made the exploration part worsen, hence, my grade.
By Kirarin on Dec 25, 2023 (Star Star Star Star Star )
75% in 3:12
Finished this a couple of weeks ago, but I let it sit with me for a while before grading it.


For the stuff I didn't like or could be improved... Speed Booster should be available earlier or at the start imo; it's a waste having it locked where it is. The hack is so fun to maneuver when you have it! High Jump is super cool when you get it, and you get it early if you go the "intended" route, so Speed would make exploration or go fast much smoother.

Tourian could see some work, namely being too easy, but I can see why it's designed that way, because the game has more than one route to beat it, so I won't nitpick on it too much.


There's some problems with tilings, X-Ray and other things the others pointed out, so I won't comment more on that.

The hack is great. For me, it was super fun and rewarded my skills/exploration and game knowledge, which is enough to make it better than average. Couple with huge replay potential with inbuild rando + mirror mode and a nice low% route, makes going back to it more enticing than most of other exploration hacks. It's also designed for players of all skill levels imo. If you know some tricks and go fast, great! If you want to take your time, also great!

Recommended. Would say for anyone to play this at least 2 times, normal and a randomizer.
By Metroid Violinist on Jan 12, 2024 (Star Star Star Star Star )
79% in 3:55
Its a phenomenal hack with a few minor gripes. I enjoyed how truly open the world was, letting me explore each area basically however I wanted, and at no point did the openness feel like a negative. Super Duper Metroid gives players an experience that evokes that of the original game, however, far more rewarding to those knowledgeable on some of the movement tech.

That being said, it isn't perfect:
Whilst I found X-Ray far more useful than in the base game, as others have pointed out, its a bit inconsistent. In addition, I thought the Charge-beam's location and the route leading to it were not very clear. I had spent longer than I'd like to admit finding it.

I also found myself soft-locked in one of Maridia's morph tunnels, specifically the one where you have to guide the snail to break away some sand tiles (due in part to a collision error.) However, it wasn't too much of a dent on my enjoyment, as I had recently saved (Though, I can definitely see it being an issue for those who don't save often.)

Even if you aren't a veteran in terms of skill-level (I'm no expert on the game myself), I'd recommend Super Duper Metroid to anyone looking for a Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels treatment of Super Metroid.

EDIT: Changed the item collection rate to the actual percentage I acquired and adjusted the overall rating to 5 orbs, as despite the few flaws, it deserves the highest rating possible.
By FPzero on Feb 19, 2024 (Star Star Star Star Star )
90% in 3:38
This hack's openness is both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness.

The early parts of the hack feel great to explore and find things and is by far the strongest part of the game. There are secrets hidden everywhere, with hidden paths letting you get around what you think are dead ends. The intended item path isn't very clear so for a while you're just stumbling upon upgrades during exploration. Your first missile or super missile tank could be from a number of places if you just explore carefully. X-Ray can be obtained super early, giving you extra incentive to track down as many secrets as you can, and there certainly are a lot of them to discover. Sometimes you'll find secrets within secrets, or a dead end with a powerup will turn out to actually have a hidden path in it out to a different nearby hallway. Undoubtedly this helps with the randomizer mode, giving you tons of ways to navigate the planet.

Now, part of this will be my own experience talking from the route I ended up finding everything, But I feel like the mid-to-endgame was very boring to actually play. See, I stumbled into Maridia some time after finding Grapple Beam since that seemed like where the grapple ceiling in Crateria was leading me and after some time ended up finding Gravity Suit and fighting Draygon as my first major boss. My reward was Space Jump. After that point, I never really had any trouble with anything the game threw at me, and I had barely half the major upgrades. Outside of finding Varia Suit, I basically spent the rest of my playthrough doing fast area cleanup with nothing threatening me any longer, even faster once I found Plasma Beam. The whole second half flew by in a blur with barely a care in the world. I didn't have to pay attention to anything really, I was just so overpowered. Like I said, this is definitely a result of my routing, but it was all totally possible to do with little difficulty, and frankly I don't recall any other obvious areas I'd found by that point to go towards instead of Maridia.

Part of that was the placement of Varia Suit. I'll just touch on it briefly, but it's just so far out of the way. I didn't find it until I had Power Bombs and discovered I could break the Maridia tube from outside the tube. If I didn't go that way, I would've had to do a very lengthy heat run. It's obtainable way earlier than PBs, but it feels highly unlikely a player would dedicate their time to such a long run without knowing a heat run was actually required. It feels like a real misstep to place Varia where it is.

My last major critique is that I felt like a lot of rooms were big just for the sake of being big. Some of them are downright sprawling. Others are very open but have little in them. I know I had Space Jump for most of my playthrough, so this is probably not a fair critique, but it felt like the actual level design mattered very little after a while. This may have more importance in a random run or if you take a different route though, so I'm not going to be too harsh on this topic. My playthrough is subjective, I understand that.

It's a good hack, competently made and definitely replayable even without the extra modes it adds. It just didn't live up the the transformational expectation I got from looking at the rating and reviews. I'd still recommend playing it, but I wouldn't put it in my favorites list personally. Commendable effort nonetheless.
By CrystalUM_ on Mar 07, 2024 (Star Star Star Star Star )
100% in 6:02
Super Duper Metroid is a great hack. Of course, the situation with Prime was repeated (I dropped the game), but this walkthrough was interesting. I got even more familiar with the advanced tricks, but I'm so sorry I used the map when I started collecting the last percentage and it was SO interesting to look for things.
I recommend this hack for the walkthrough!
By hmsong on May 06, 2024 (Star Star Star Star Star )
91% in 7:51
This review is specifically only for the normal casual gameplay -- no bomb jump, and wall jump was only used after I was taught that by the animals (which was early enough).

PROS:
- The descriptions -- You have most of the item descriptions available by pressing X button on menu. And speaking of which...
- The extra section for the menu (press L on the map) was truly excellent. It had lots of options (I left as default), and it described how to use the backflip (not that I used much of it). It also had numerous quality-of-life features, such as being able to move quickly after landing and quick morph. It also had a way to control how fast the bomb exploded. Very nice.
- The charge bomb was excellently used, since you can now sort of "aim" the charge bombs. This would have been more useful if Spring Ball was available earlier. Oh well.
- I love how X-Ray was available somewhat early. It is such an anti-frustration feature, and I'm not sure why most of the other hacks don't have this available earlier.
- The Speed Booster is really flexible and fun to play around with. I mean, you get it as the 2nd to the last key items you get, but still. There are SO many things you can do with the new Speed Booster.
- The map is large, but you are generally faster due to being able to move quickly after landing.

CONS:
- the bosses are far too easy, sometimes even easier than vanilla (looking at you, plant boss, Phantoon, and Draygon).
- Foreground breaking by beam is very unnecessary due to how distracting it is.
- X-Ray doesn't work on numerous blocks/paths. Now, you can generally know what needs to be done by looking at the map and/or using intuition, but there are just too many of those, and some of the hidden things are damn near impossible to find due to X-Ray not working.
- Some of the item orders you get are... questionable. For example, you get Ice Beam AFTER Space Jump. What the heck? That makes the whole point of Ice Beam meaningless (other than just simply higher DPS). Space Jump should be one of the last items you get, since it makes Grapple Beam and Ice Beam obsolete. Also, you get Gravity Suit BEFORE Varia Suit, and therefore Varia Suit's Def is never used. You should have at least switched the Def stat of Varia Suit and Gravity Suit (and change the description).
By Kalt on Jul 04, 2024 (Star Star Star Star Star )
68% in 4:21
QOL features are the best I've seen yet, progression is the extremely smooth and intuitive while having plenty of nonlinearity, and it helps that the areas are gorgeous as well.
By NaOH on Sep 04, 2024 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
This is an excellent Super Metroid rom hack all around. I don't normally play a lot of metroid hacks, but I dipped my toes back in with this one. To be honest, the name is what pulled me in -- and I'm just slightly disappointed that the game doesn't feature a third tier of missiles, "super duper missiles."

There are only a few rough edges. For instance, not everywhere was fully tested with the x-ray scope -- the critical path to some bosses, for instance, are obscured by foreground tiles and the x-ray scope doesn't see through them (it looks to be a bug, and not by intention.) Another point of confusion was the "gone and died to heaven" room -- I've since learned this is a meme in the community, but for first-timers it's a bit baffling that the map station reveals this room in particular. I spent a few minutes here poking around, assuming it had to be important. If I were to make one change, I'd let this room be hidden on the map, not blue.

Despite those frustrations (and let's not forget the lack of super duper missiles!), I had a blast exploring this open-ended but neatly bounded map all the way through to the end. If you've never played a good super metroid hack before, this is for sure one to check out.

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