Thoughts on Redesigned

Medium: Videogame
Rating: T (Pixel corpses, violence)
Platform: SNES (Emulator)

Saying classic Nintendo games are 'hard' is like saying that water is wet. They were produced during a time when arcades were chic; it wasn't uncommon back then to spend $10 in quarters to play a game and only get halfway through before the difficulty got too much for a player, and it was expected for games on a home console to be very hard to mimic the success of their arcade counterparts.

However, as we made a transition from arcades to home consoles, things changed. Games got easier and more accessible to new players, but it didn't happen all at once. We hit a peak of perfection sometime around the SNES era, though titles for that system tended to wax very bland. Super Mario World, Super Battleship, everything was 'super'. But that's not to say that these games were bad.  Super Mario World is the quintessential platformer, still heralded today as one of the greatest games ever made. I even found it available for play in a hotel I stayed in once (though, sadly, the longer you played the more you got charged to your final bill, so I had to pass). Another game was produced during this time- 1993, to be precise, and while it didn't have as much recognition as Mario got, it was no less Super: Metroid 3.

The Metroid series has always been about exploration; even from the first game, your goal was to go around collecting powerups that would allow you to advance further in the game and beat the occasional boss, on your quest to enter Tourian and destroy the Metroid menace that threatened the galaxy. Super Metroid sees the bounty hunter Samus returning to Planet Zebes to foil the plans of the Space Pirates and recover a Metroid hatchling that was stolen- the last in the galaxy, to be precise, and it does its best to pay tribute to the previous games in the series- There's a section of the game where you run backwards through the escape sequence of the first game, as well as other rooms and enemies that make their reappearance, making for a journey that is both a trip down memory lane, and a fresh experience, at the same time. The series as a whole has always struck an excellent balance- It frequently threw rooms and items at you that you might not be able to get at yet, but by returning with a new powerup, it became possible to pick them up and advance even further in the game. This encouraged players to go back and explore areas they'd already been to, as well as broke the whole "constantly running right" mindset that most game designers had set themselves into. It also helped spawn the term "Metroidvania", a genre named because it stood apart from every other platform game out there. The other half of that is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. We'll cover that another time.

Super Metroid took this excellent balance and ran with it, by introducing new powerups (like the vastly powerful Super Missile, screen-clearing Power Bomb, unique Grappling Beam, and the disappointingly mundane yet extremely useful Hi-Jump Boots), and building upon the principles of the last two games, delivering a perfect mix of combat and exploration that was neither too hard nor too easy, challenging new players as well as delighting veterans with its shiny newness. Unfortunately, if you spent enough time replaying it, the game became disappointingly easy as you came to memorize the locations of every item and tricks to get at them early.

Super Metroid: Redesigned is a hack that does away with that problem, taking the original Super Metroid and completely flipping it on its head. It changes every single room in the labyrinthine cave system underneath Zebes, completely revamping the layout of every single room, switching around item locations and enemy placements, and generally making the game very hard. By which I mean, both bastardously difficult and completely fair at the same time. The creator of the hack has placed enough enemy generators around that you can camp in front of one for two minutes to get all your health and pickups back and be on your merry way- and if you die after that, then it's completely your fault for not being careful enough. Not that he hasn't done things with the game that aren't sadistic- For example, there is an item called the Varia Suit which protects Samus from the intense heat in an area called Norfair. Usually, you would get the Varia Suit after beating the boss monster Kraid, but in this case he has chosen to make it inaccessible without first retrieving the Ice Beam weapon. And where do you get the Ice Beam? Norfair, naturally. Which means you have to make a mad dash, unprotected, through a volcanic cave, while the heat cooks you alive in your suit, rapidly depleting your health, to get a pickup that lets you get the pickup that lets you protect yourself.

This section of the game has been dis-affectionately named "Hell's Run" by the hack's player base. I think this is perfectly appropriate.

The creator has also seen fit to include new things as well, such as a door that can only be opened by slamming it with either 25 Missiles or 5 Super Missiles, a construct that changes the direction your weaponry is going (I see bounce puzzles ahead, and it frightens me so much), and slightly altered game mechanics; instead of starting out with the Wall Jump move, now you have to find it as a powerup, which is something that is frustrating, but acceptable. On the flipside, this means new powers as well, which makes me hopeful that he's included mechanics from the newer titles in the Metroid series.

The difficulty is something I feel I have to comment positively about. Yes, it's very hard. But with the fact that 9 times out of 10 the player's death is the player's fault, I can't help but feel that this is a good thing. Anybody can get pissed at a game for being unfair, but the fact that Redesigned is completely fair is a point in its favor. It forces the player to say, "Okay, I shouldn't have done that", and challenges them to try again, applying what they learned to overcome the obstacles presented. That is good game design, and overcoming the challenge is extremely satisfying.

The hack is very well designed, and I would recommend it for more hardcore players. Newbies should stick with the original Super Metroid, which is just as amazing and a great introduction into games of this type.

Score: 9/10
Pass/Fail: Pass