MarioFan2468's Ratings and Reviews
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T O U R O F I T A L Y by RT-55J [SM Exploration], rated by MarioFan2468 on Jul 09, 2024 (Star Star Star Star Star )
85% in 1:15
yeah

there is no bomb and its amazing
the secrets are in the morph holes and all you have to do is go there through the fake wall
i would like more games to remove bomb too bc it felt nice

this whole game is only secrets
i like games that make me have to metroid around for secrets like this
it reminds me a bit of metroid fusion master quest, but the secrets here are less of a puzzle

i like the theme its very present for the whole game
i never knew what a amarena was before this

the lava was very soft so i can stay in it for a major while
even without any suit i felt at ease to dive in and explore the submerged rooms

i found the tourian-like section too much harder than the rest of the game so i used savestates
i failed to manipulate the core-x's position reliably and the contact damage hit hard
the escape was good tho

have a taste
V E R T I C A L I T Y by Tundain [SM Exploration], rated by MarioFan2468 on Apr 26, 2024 (Star Star Star Star Star )
84% in 4:53
good good good

in this hack things are different in a funny or cool way
every area is very tall
the music is tastefully tweaked in a way that its still vanilla, but plays w your expectation
i particularly like the "evil crateria caves" theme
though the lack of music in speedbooster room was one of the best uses of silence i ever experienced
enemy ai is altered for the majority of enemies i thnk
when the pancake floated in reverse i laughed in real life
phanton was a bit hard to figure out, but i had time since he deals little damage
wreckship miniboss is also very funny

the big thing about this hack is the hover thruster
its a custom upgrade (theres many custom upgrades in this hack) that allows you to float down like mario's cape
there are many puzzles that focus on your control over the hover thruster to not touch the instant-reset zapper blocks
it works well i like those puzzles and i like using the upgrade outside of the puzzles too, especially to use with walljump

there is also custom upgrade to your charge beam called overcharge
when you charge for too long, you will drain hp and fire a super blast that hurts to shoot
i didnt use it too much except to kill the metroids bc the metroids take many shots to freeze
so if i super blast them with overcharge ice they will freeze instantly which creates an element of strategy

you have to hit 10 or 9 gates hidden in the world for tourian to open
they were hidden but i didnt miss any on my way there
thing i did not like is that to go from upper maridia to lower maridia is a bit difficult to navigate because the geysers get in my way

but yeah
its not too hard and i can use my walljump to go places
secrets hidden in a way that i feel observant when i find them
i like it
Metroid Fusion Master Quest V2 by Gameringly [MF Exploration], rated by MarioFan2468 on Sep 19, 2023 (Star Star Star Star Star )
60% in 4:43
yes i liked this hack
its hard but not because you have to go through instakill enemies or execute some very hard and obscure glitch, you just have to use your brain
at first the puzzles are a bit simple, but when you gain enough upgrades they become really cool
i especially liked the securitylock4 gauntlet where you went all over the place in new rooms to try and get the lock open

i did not understand this for about 60-70% of my playthrough, but the way forward is always in the rooms you recently gain access to
a lot of times i would go back too far and search in rooms that did not lead anywhere
also yeah the platform to drop through in sector 6, i figured it out after a while, but then i thought there would be more of those later in the hack so i tried dropping through everywhere else uselessly

aside from those minor problem its a good hack
navigation guy is funy
it will test your metroiding skills thoroughly
try it now
M2Fusion by LOO-E [M2 Quick Play], rated by MarioFan2468 on Apr 01, 2025 (Star Star Star Star Star )
No completion stats.
I AM AN APRIL FOOL! :(

This is an imitation of fusion's opening cutscene up until samus's ship is supposed to appear.

The music is reproduced perfectly.
Good idea on using sprites for stars to make parallax. They seem to update at 15 FPS tho, possibly to make them slower, but i'd prefer if they were 60 FPS with subpixel speeds.

The text "Loo-E Presents" appears with a typewriter effect, but "Presents"'s letters do not appear one-by-one, instead appearing with half of the next letter sometimes. Maybe you could improve this if you stored partial variants of "Presents" with different letters missing, or if you automated this process with a Variable Width Font system.
When the text disappears, it does so one tile per frame, which is fine, but inaccurate to metroid fusion. The text should have disappeared all at once, maybe using v-blank to clear it, or multiple h-blanks in a row, whatever you prefer.
Same applies to the "METROID 4" text.

The BSL vessel then appears on screen, it's quite faithfully reproduced, but there are some artefacts of downscaling the sprite, such as the diagonal seam to the left of the logo being missing. The orange accents also blend in with the shadows.
It scrolls in with a weird movement pattern, looking at it frame-by-frame. Probably a symptom of using unconventional and instructions such as `and $06` and `and $0B` on the frame counter to check whether to scroll by a pixel.
As it scrolls further on screen, updates to the BSL vessel's tilemap are done by turning off the screen to replace the tilemap. This produces a noticeable white flash while this is occuring, which distracts from the cutscene. This could be solved if the tilemap was updated gradually as the screen scrolled, much like during metroid 2's gameplay.
Nice solution to loop the BSL vessel, while having a non-256 px wide tilemap.

Overall, this tech demo is a nice application of LOO-E's skill with the M2 disasm. But he pranked me with this so i wont spare him any nitpicks.