- 2 weeks ago
Category
🎈
FunTranscript
00:08Welcome to Mojo Place, and today we're going to look at 21 things you didn't know about
00:12Super Metroid. There are spoilers ahead, so let's get into it.
00:24Before we begin, we publish new content all week long, so be sure to subscribe and ring
00:29the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
00:32Infinite Bomb Jump
00:37Bomb jumping has become a classic Metroid technique, and you can actually use it to fly.
00:43By laying bombs in Morph Ball mode with precise timing, you can use the explosions to blast
00:47yourself into any direction. It's one of the first advanced tricks players learn, and
00:52you'll be using it to reach certain high up areas in the game. However, since you can
00:56keep doing it as you go, it'll even let you fly when done right. And this is the lesser
01:00known Infinite Bomb Jump. It's so hard to do consistently that even the people who know
01:05about it won't do it.
01:12Embarrass Ridley
01:16Most players assume that the opening battle against Ridley on Cirrus Station is a scripted
01:21loss designed to set the plot in motion. While Ridley will always escape with the baby Metroid,
01:26you can actually win the fight if you're skilled enough. By dealing enough damage to Ridley,
01:31you can force him to drop the baby Metroid's container and see him retreat in a panic.
01:39It doesn't change the narrative or affect the story in any way, but you do get to completely
01:44embarrass Ridley, Samus' arch nemesis right from the get-go. Crystal Flash
01:56If you find yourself on the brink of death with no energy tanks left, Samus has a secret emergency
02:02healing ability called the Crystal Flash. So in order to do it, you need at least 10 missiles,
02:0710 super missiles, and 11 powerbombs. With your health below 50 and your reserve tanks empty,
02:13select a powerbomb, drop into a morph ball, and hold the L and R buttons along with down on the
02:19D-pad.
02:19When you press and hold the fire button, Samus restores her health to full at the cost of her ammo.
02:34The wall jump is one of Samus' most versatile tools, but the game is surprisingly quiet about it.
02:40Unlike your missiles or even your beams, you never find an item that unlocks this ability,
02:45it's just something Samus can do from the very start. With that said, there is an Edekun pit at
02:49the bottom of Brinstar, where they'll demonstrate it to you so you can escape.
02:59The thing is, this is an optional area, and it's the only place in the game where wall jumping is
03:04actually mandatory. As a result, many players don't know you can do it right from the start
03:08of the game, or that heck, you can even do it at all. Save the Animals
03:18During the frantic escape from Zeebs at the end of the game, every single second counts.
03:23But if you take a detour back to the room where you first find the bombs, you can do one
03:27last heroic
03:28act. By shooting the wall to the right, you can free the Edekuns and the Decora. If you do this,
03:33you'll see a tiny pixel-sized speck of light flying away from the planet during the final cutscene.
03:41While it might be optional, sure, it's widely considered canon since these creatures reappear
03:46in later Metroid titles. Stand up during the Mother Brain's brain beam.
03:56The final battle against the Mother Brain has a scripted sequence where Samus is brought to her
04:01knees by a devastating brain beam. However, you can't actually break this moment. If you enter the fight
04:07with at least 700 energy and unequip both the Varya and Gravity suits, the math behind the damage
04:12calculation glitches out. Instead of being pinned down, Samus will be able to walk and stand up and
04:18move freely while Mother Brain continues her scripted attack. Heck, you can even walk around and shoot
04:22while the game tries to force you into the defeated animation.
04:31One Shot Dragon
04:32Dragon is one of the more intimidating bosses in the game, both visually and mechanically.
04:44But sneaky players who read the game manual will know that he has a hilarious secret weakness.
04:49In it, the method is a little vague, but what you do is fire at the turrets in the arena,
04:54then let Dragon grab you and fly you around. You can equip the grapple beam and fire it at one
04:58of
04:58the broken turrets. The current will travel through Samus's suit and into Dragon, frying him and taking
05:04him out immediately.
05:13Largest console cartridge.
05:17That's 24 megs worth of weapons, worlds, and weirdos all killers up against.
05:21When Super Metroid was released in 1994, it wasn't just a masterpiece design-wise. It was actually
05:26technically impressive as well. At the time of its launch, it was the largest game ever released on a
05:31Super Nintendo cartridge, weighing in at a then-massive 24 megabits. This extra space was
05:37necessary to accommodate the game's incredibly detailed sprite work, atmospheric sound design,
05:42and the vast interconnected map. It was surpassed only two months after its North American release,
05:47with the release of Super Street Fighter II, which weighed in at 32 megabits.
05:5745 degree shine spark.
06:03The shine spark itself is already a seeker move, and most players that do know of the shine spark
06:08know that you can move Samus horizontally or vertically. You know, the thing is though,
06:13you can actually do a 45 degree diagonal shine spark. You won't be using it much, but this trick
06:18has a very specific application near Samus' gunship. By performing a perfectly timed diagonal shine
06:24spark at the landing site, you can clip through a wall that leads to a series of rooms, which you're
06:29only meant to access later, after returning from the wrecked ship. If you want to get really crazy,
06:34you should try doing a diagonal shine spark mid-air, which is one of the hardest things in any
06:38Metroid game. The var glitch. Now, if you've ever wanted to turn Samus into a god, you should consider
06:49the var glitch. It's relatively simple. It just bypasses the game's restrictions and allows you to
06:54equip every beam type simultaneously, including the incompatible spacer and plasma beams. The result is
07:00what is referred to in the Metroid community as the murder beam or the var glitch. Unfortunately,
07:05you'd become so powerful that you end up putting such a strain on the Super Nintendo's hardware
07:09that it would cause the game to actually crash and glitch. You don't even have to remain in the
07:14same area after firing it, since the beam will leave an invisible hitbox that keeps dealing damage,
07:19instantly taking out any spawning enemies.
07:37Samus Aran is a mix of diverse pop culture influences. While her power suit is pure sci-fi,
07:43her appearance underneath was inspired by two major Hollywood stars. Director Yoshio Sakamoto confirmed
07:49that her look was inspired by Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley from Aliens and Kim Basinger's roles
07:54in films like Nine and a Half Weeks. They wanted to create a character who would be feminine but
07:58never objectified. They even hid her gender and referred to her as a male in the manual to give
08:03the reveal at the end of the original Metroid more weight. Even her name has a surprising origin.
08:08Eren was taken from Edson Arantes do Nascimento. I'm sorry if I butchered that name, I apologize.
08:14But better known as the massive soccer legend Pele.
08:19Mockball
08:25The Mockball, spelled M-A-C-H-B-A-L-L, more commonly referred to as the Mockball, spelled M
08:31-O-C-K-B-A-L-L,
08:33is arguably the most famous tech in the Super Metroid community. It allows Samus to maintain her full
08:38running speed while in the Morph Ball form. So to pull it off, you jump, begin a dash in midair,
08:43and morph just as you hit the ground while holding the Run button. It'll maintain your horizontal
08:48momentum, letting you roll under low passages at high speed, or zip over pit blocks before they
08:53crumble. It's really a physics oversight, but it fits so well into gameplay that it's led many to
08:58believe it might have been a secretly intentional mechanic.
09:06Early Ice Beam
09:13Obtaining the Ice Beam usually requires the Speed Booster to clear descending gates.
09:17But as you can tell by now, we've got various ways of bypassing these sorts of things.
09:22If you want to, you can Mockball across this room and completely forego the need for a Speed Booster,
09:26allowing you to do one of the bigger sequence breaks in the game, if not the biggest.
09:31Obtaining the Ice Beam this early is a huge advantage. Not just because it allows you to
09:35freeze enemies, of course, but because it allows you to sequence break even further.
09:45Early Power Bomb
09:53What really makes Super Metroid fun is how much you can change the game with sequence breaks,
09:58since they allow you to play the game in your own order. Once you know how to get the Ice
10:02Beam early,
10:03it really takes off. In the Red Tower in Brinstar, you can use the Ice Beam to freeze the Rippers
10:08to
10:08help you reach the top. There's a cooler and more difficult way to do this though. You see, you can
10:12actually do a series of frame-perfect wall jumps and just get up that way. The game yet again
10:17unintentionally rewards you for being good at it. Good times.
10:26Blue Suit Samus
10:33The blue suit glitch is very simply put, the coolest Samus can look in Super Metroid. You can only trigger
10:39this in the Dragon boss fight, in which you must get caught in his mucus and then initiate a dash.
10:44By crouching and shine sparking through Dragon's belly, the boss dies instantly, and Samus is left
10:49with a permanent blue aura and a trail of after images. Mechanically, what it's really doing is
10:54allowing you to store the speed boost indefinitely, letting you run incredibly fast, well, that is
10:59you crouch, which turns it into a shine spark. Godzilla
11:15Now, if you thought the roars of Zebes sounded familiar, you've likely watched Godzilla. That's
11:20because the sound team for Super Metroid didn't create all their monster noises from scratch,
11:24but they actually sampled the sound effects directly from classic Godzilla movies. For instance,
11:29the roars of Mother Brain are actually a modified version of Mothra's iconic cry.
11:35Meanwhile, the sounds of both Dragon and Ridley were sampled from Angurius.
11:43Now, it's probably not too much of a reach to assume a lot of the monster designs were inspired
11:47by Godzilla and the kaiju genre as well. The Crocomire.
11:59Crocomire does suffer a relatively gruesome 16-bit death in the acid below his arena, but there's
12:04actually a different way, which most people don't know about. Technically, the boss's tongue is a
12:08separate entity with its own health bar, but it was designed to actually be invincible. You know what
12:13they say though, if it bleeds, we can kill it. At least that's what the person who discovered this was
12:17actually thinking. If you hit the tongue with between 82 and 100 powerbombs, it will actually die.
12:27There's just a few problems with that, such as not even being able to carry that many powerbombs.
12:32So, to pull it all off, you'd either have to use glitches or simply, albeit slowly,
12:37far more powerbombs during the fight itself from Crocomire's projectiles. It's so tedious that this
12:42hidden interaction became an entire speedrunning category. The opening voice.
12:49The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace.
12:56The seemingly synthesized voice that sets the stage for Super Metroid is one of the most crisp
13:01soundbites of its time. It's not actually synthesized though, and it's not from a professional
13:05voice actor either. The lines, the last Metroid is in captivity, the galaxy is at peace, were actually
13:11recorded by Daniel Ausen. Ausen is a legendary figure at Nintendo of America, mostly known for
13:16his work localizing games like The Legend of Zelda and Earthbound. When the development team needed an
13:20English speaker, they simply hit up Ausen because he happened to be in the office at the right time.
13:29Kiko Love
13:36For over two decades, a romantic secret remained hidden in the depths of the Meridia swamp.
13:41Developer Yasuhiko Fuji implemented a tribute to his Zen girlfriend, Kiko,
13:45in their Evir creatures that appear right before the Dragon fight. If you watched their movements
13:49closely, they actually traced the letters Kiko Love in English. Fuji snuck this into the code,
13:54late at night while his colleagues were sleeping, and it was never actually officially documented.
13:58The secret only came to light in 2007 through a Japanese interview book,
14:02and Western fans didn't catch wind of it until an English translation surfaced in 2018.
14:07The Debug Room
14:16If you're struggling with the Golden Torrizo, there's a hidden debug code that turns Samus
14:21into a walking tank. So to activate it, you must hold the A, B, X, and Y button simultaneously while
14:26entering the boss room, but only if the Torrizo hasn't been defeated yet. This grants you a massive
14:32stockpile with seven energy tanks, three reserve tanks, and nearly every item in the game. It also
14:37enables both the spacer and plasma beams at the same time, which is actually a bit of a problem since
14:42it
14:42normally crashes the game. Unused room
14:57Where Super Metroid shines the most is easily its world design, which would go on to inspire
15:02countless other games, and even spawn a whole subgenre. Yet, as good as the developers were at
15:06world design, they still left out some of it during development. There's an early inaccessible room that
15:11never made it to the final version. It was discovered via a hand-drawn map used by Nintendo Power's
15:16game player counselors back in the 90s. In the game, the space this room occupied was replaced by the
15:21acid Chozo room.
15:28So, did any of these Zeeb secrets surprise you? Drop your favorite sequence break in the comments
15:33below and subscribe to MojoPlays for more Metroid content.
Comments