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Veteran
by JAM
Release date: July 29, 2010
Forum thread
Author's description:
This hack is very similar to person701's Hard Mode. I've played his hack and had ideas to improve it a bit, but most of them he didn't liked and version 2 of his hack wasn't done, so I decided to make my own more harder version. I've just finished first Prime, so there will be a few features from it.
Well, I'm not a first one and not a last one who've made a hard version of Super Metroid. If I am right, the very first 3 Super Metroid hacks (even before first SMILE) were Hard Version (by Ir0n_BeasT), Extreme Edition (by Dark Knight Kain) and Justin Bailey hack.
The goal is to create a more harder version with ASM changes to better fit the gameplay and do so with small size of patch.
What do you get:
Enemy HP*2
Enemy damage*2
Samus HP/2
Mini-boss HP*4
Spike damage*2
Every Missile upgrade gives you 2 Missiles.
Every Super Missiles upgrade gives you 1 Super Missile.
Every Power Bomb upgrade gives you 1 Power Bomb.
Max Missiles 100
Max Super Missiles 10
Max Power Bombs 10
Max Energy 799
Max Reserve Energy 200
To open pink doors, 5 Missiles are need as usual. Hope that'll make them more useful. Missile pickup will give 1 Missile instead of 2.
Most of sequence breakes are turned to sequence brakes (read: removed). I tried to alter levels minimally and left the same count of items and doors (except a few grey doors more), but prevents player from sequence breaking. Mockball and Wall jump techniques are still there.
NBMB running isn't possible now. Lowest rate to complete the game is 33%, I believe. Perhaps, a little less for a TAS'er, but I doubt.
You still can skip Hi-Jump Boots, Space Jump (if you're lucky), X-Ray Scope and most of beams (except Charge). Screw Attack is skippable, but you have to kill Golden Torizo. Grapple Beam isn't skippable. Just beleive me =)
Boss notes
The hardest boss is Ridley. Both of them. Ceres Ridley is passable after some training. Just standing on door and shooting him will not work. Avoid his tail and fireballs and you'll win. My best result is 287 hits with 12 energy left before he flied away. He wanted to kill me too much, I think =)
Spore Spawn is the strangest boss. You'll have to dry it off.
Golden Torizo is much more dangerous than before. Space Jump is strongly recomended.
To enter sand area in Tourian you'll have to collect enough Super Missiles. Beware of evil sentinels!
What is new:
Timer changes.
Energy drop subroutine when Samus has low health is tweaked.
Alarm subroutine tweaked.
Escape in Metroid style (you'll understand when you see).
And other small ASM changes (unspoiled by now) =)
And before you ask, yes I've passed my own hack with 100% and 03:03. I haven't speedrun too much.
Best escape time from Ceres is 0'03'87, from Zebes is 0'20'43 (with saving animals).