SpineShark's Hack Reviews - Metroid Construction

Metroid: Juicy Mission by Frydi [ MZM

Exploration], rated by SpineShark on Nov 20, 2024 (

)

100% in 2:15

Beautiful in both visuals and sound.
While any% can be beaten in a couple minutes, the real attraction is finding all hidden items which is a lot of fun.
This hack also taught me a new trick (the continuous diagonal shinespark), and that doesn't happen often.

I am looking forward to future Friday hacks.

GRAVITY - Sylux's Crusade by Roebloz [ MZM

Exploration], rated by SpineShark on Nov 15, 2024 (

)

95% in 2:20

Surprisingly large map for a contest hack. It features lots of graphics and music from other games, whether all of them fit the metroid theme is debatable though. Playing as Sylux is nice, even if the implementation is a bit janky.
A big selling point is the openness of progression but it's a bit of a double edged sword. I arrived at BOX with only charge beam and not enough missiles to kill him. I was determined to finish the fight with charge shots, but for some reason they plink unless you hit a very precise spot. This made the fight extremely tedious until I randomly found that you can farm the BOX bombs for missile drops. Other bosses were pushovers because I was way too strong when I found them.
I also tried to fight Nightmare early but failed because without wide and plasma beam I didn't have enough damage output for his surprisingly tanky second phase.

There are some other things that annoy me like cramped rooms filled with lots of annoying enemies such as atomics and rinkas (eww). Knockback seems to be increased and you tend to get juggled by enemies and spikes a lot. To be honest, this was a 3 orb hack to me at first, but it does get more enjoyable as you collect upgrades so it gets 4 orbs from me.

[Europe] Metroid RE: Fusion by Meinos Belfort [

Improvement], rated by SpineShark on Nov 01, 2024 (

)

76% in 1:44

A nice improvement of Fusion with graphical updates like less cartoony palettes (sector 6 is actually dark now), red outline removal, some quality of life stuff like faster elevators, and most importantly sequence breaking. This lets you do fun shenanigans like fighting ridley before entering sector 5, not saving the animals or accidentially locking yourself out of 100% if you forget to collect bob.

Metroid: Juicy Mission lite by Frydi [ MZM

Speedrun/Race], rated by SpineShark on Jan 09, 2024 (

)

100% in 0:01

Surprisingly high effort for such a short hack, with custom graphics and music as well as multiple juice-themed ending screens. Hard mode is a proper challenge, I had to play on quarter speed to escape in time.
There's a small typo in the intro text, "Samos Aran".

I recommend.

Metroid 2000 2000 by Ing-ing [

Unknown], rated by SpineShark on May 09, 2024 (

)

52% in 4:20

A hack that keeps Fusion's event system, but brings a new story that's whacky and pretty hilarious at times.
The experience is a mixed bag, there are parts with fun exploration gameplay and parts with super trollish (trolly?) enemies and level design. The areas are large and creative, however the way forward is often obscure, I admit that I used MAGE to find it a couple times. E-tanks are scarce and the boss arenas are kinda ass.
Overall it's not a bad hack, I don't mind the challenge, I just think there's too much troll stuff.

Metroid Volonus by Alex S [ MZM

Quick Play], rated by SpineShark on Apr 22, 2024 (

)

86% in 0:37

This hack has a lot of jank, no doubt about it. The geemers falling off edges because of weird clipdata is kinda amusing though.
Gameplay-wise I think it's alright, nothing struck me as offensively bad.
A shame that the author stopped working on it.

Metroid Acrash by Heyhooheyhoo [

Exploration], rated by SpineShark on Apr 29, 2024 (

)

99% in 3:56

This hack has a lot of interesting features but suffers from a lack of polish, which brings down the experience.
Let's start with the good:
It's a nonlinear Fusion hack, which is always nice. No Adam, no navigation rooms. The rooms and tilesets look good. There is good music that was imported from other games. It has a lot of custom ASM such as new enemy behaviours, upgrade pickups, puzzles, rising lava, new physics, etc...
However, the nonlinearity is implemented in a bad way, especially in the earlygame there's only one way forward with lots of dead ends. There are one-way paths everywhere, which lead you in endless circles until you find the one room that lets you progress. It does get slightly better after you get varia though. The hack throws loads of enemies at you which are badly placed. You get hit often right after going through a door. There are walls that are actually ladders. The ceiling ladders in both BOX fights also look just like regular ceilings. Guess who only found that out after finishing the hack...
Speaking of BOX, I had to kill him thrice because he respawned for some reason. The boss rooms had their layouts changed, which just makes them more annoying most of the time (especially Yakuza). If you enter Yakuza's room fromm the back and get grabbed, you're softlocked. Many rooms lag because of too many sprites or other reasons. Occasional rooms have awful screen scrolling. I got softlocked in sector 3 because I saved in an area not knowing that you can't get out without high jump and had to edit a room in MAGE. Save stations are rare in general and there's a single recharge room, so have fun farming enemies for drops. In the middle of my playthrough, all save stations and elevators stopped working for a while, giving you another reason to use savestates everywhere. The hack also straight up crashed twice, that's fun. Sector 4 is about twice as big as it needs to be and uses the same tileset throughout, which makes it very boring.
On top of that you have graphical glitches sprinkled everywhere. The music often gets overwritten by competing sound effects. At one point all audio turned into persistent screeching, which only stopped when I grabbed an upgrade. The map menu has a bunch of problems, such as rooms that don't line up, doors and collected items aren't shown. Regular bombs need ammo, because that's something the game needed!? Speed booster only activates if you hold select, which the hack never tells you and I only know it because a review mentioned it. Screw attack drains one full e-tank per activation, which makes it useless for most situations.

In summary I'd call this hack an undercooked experiment. Play it if you really want to see the custom stuff, but otherwise I didn't enjoy the gameplay much.

Metroid Fusion RBO by Phazar [

Unknown], rated by SpineShark on Nov 21, 2024 (

)

No completion stats.

This is an unfinished reverse boss order hack from way back in 2008.
It is mostly identical to vanilla Fusion except two things:
1. Some clipdata in the reactor silo was changed so you can fight Yakuza right after getting missiles. If you beat him you will be greeted with the infamous "Security Level 1 unlocked" message, because there were no hacks to circumvent the event system back in 2008.
2. Some clipdata in lower SRX was changed so you can go fight a severely nerfed Ridley right away. After he goes down you once again get the security level message.

While I like the idea behind this hack, there just isn't any substance.
Didn't finish.

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