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Luce Seyfarth: 2016-01-20 11:11:17 pm
Luce Seyfarth: 2015-10-01 03:26:23 pm
Luce Seyfarth: 2015-09-29 07:25:56 pm
Luce Seyfarth: 2015-09-29 07:20:19 pm
Luce Seyfarth: 2015-09-29 07:17:10 pm
Well... First off, hello to everyone!

As the title says, I would like to introduce you all to a new hack of Metroid Zero Mission – made by me. After months of on-and-off-work on this project I can finally release the (present) final version of it. The name given is "Metroid Other ZM" – and no, it isn't as linear and plot-driven as a particular other game...

EDIT: As some of you may have experienced, there is some difficulty in finding the correct way in the beginning. I've decided to add a few warnings and hints, because most of the time I am fully aware of the things some might find annoying:

- This is NOT intended for the easily frustrated, or to be easily accessible. You are required to know the original game very well to sometimes make suggestions for finding the correct path. If sometimes searching for more then 5 minutes isn't your thing, then this will likely not be your type of game... unless you look at the solutions first
- This is NOT a hack filled with super difficult bomb jump/ Speed Booster related puzzles at every corner. I've created two or three really hard ones for fans of those, but neither of them are required to finish the game
- Some might call increasing/ decreasing enemy HP/ drop rates "fake difficulty", but I beg to differ. I intended to make enemy encounters more meaningful than they were in ZM, especially because their AI patterns aren't very difficult at all to learn. To deal with them and recover Health/ Missiles, consider the following hints:
1. Bombs are your friends, as they were in the original Metroid. The best example is if you go to Kraid first and encounter an enemy which you might think takes just too long to defeat.
2. Missiles are your friend, too. Just use these sparingly
3. In each of the areas, there are these endlessly spawning, flying enemies. Those don't have lowered drop rates, so you may use them to refill if needed.
4. Not every Enemy is meant to be defeated in order to proceed

- I've gone out of my way to hide some secrets really well. Aside from the early paths in Crateria and Brinstar they are mostly optional. Still, you can find most of them by applying these:
1. Not only bombing walls, but trying to also press against suspicious spots
2. Some hidden ledges can't be power grabbed(!)
3. some destroyable blocks don't show their weakness by bombing, because the foreground obstructs them. These are mostly missile- or bomb-blocks and the only ones required for beating the game can be found pretty widely spread in Ridley
4. Sometimes I've added a tile which allows your shots to pass through, yet can't be traversed even in Morpg Ball form. These are mostly in obvious spots, however
5. There may be blocks who don't show a weakness by bombing them. Try coming back with some Unknown Items/ the Wave Beam

And of course, once you have Power Bombs, you can just use these to find most secrets you missed.
- While there is a lack of familiar powerups early on, that just means to access familiar situations with other tactics most of the time. No Long Beam? You didn't need it in the 15% challenge anyway. No Varia Suit to pass heated rooms? All necessary ones are possible to be traversed with only the starting cap of 99 energy.
The powerups are spread wider apart and some are hidden more well. For example, Long Beam is still found pretty early and can be gotten right after the bombs. Varia Suit can be collected after either visiting Kraid or Ridley and getting an upgrade there. The Screw Attack and therefore all Unknown Items are meant to be collected pretty late, as they are the last items you will probably find.
- There exist fake missile containers etc.. Still, each real powerup is marked correctly on the map, so you shouldn't fall to this too often
- Energy Tanks are not easy to come by. In fact, part of the difficulty lies in visiting either Kraid or Ridley before finding many of them. If you absolutely need them, some can be gotten:
1. Brinstar: Near the fake Energy Tank on the route to Norfair. Try shooting the wall above near the ground above it
2. Brinstar: Try going to the old location of the Varia Suit after getting that
3. Norfair: Near the Kraid <-> Norfair shortcut is a hidden passage. Try going there with Varia Suit and Wave Beam in tow

- Stock up on Ammo before the main boss battles by searching for hidden powerups

The goal of the hack was not to completely redesign every room and map of the game, but rather to make a different, more difficult, yet somewhat similar experience to the original.
To create this I have used all of the following, which I would like to give credit and my honest thanks for:
- The original Metroid Zero Mission(U) ROM by Nintendo
- Double Helix, the Metroid Zero Mission/ Fusion editor written by Interdpth
- A patch which enables the Item Toggle feature, made by Trunaur68
- The (sadly incomplete) RAM and ROM maps of this game posted on Datacrystal, as well as several ARM Opcode sheets used for manual hex editing
- The debug-version of VBA, as well as its normal incarnation

Notable changes that I implemented in the hack:
- Kraid and Ridleys hideouts in particular follow very different paths, requiring to look very carefully at the layout to find the correct ways. Brinstar and Norfair also have a fair share of redesigned pathways and rooms, of course...
- Some Item locations were swapped or otherwise moved. Chozo hint statues no longer exist. Item requirements for beating (certain parts of) the game have also changed. Unknown Items no longer are required (in fact, simply collecting them can take a while... as the Screw Attack, which is now located in Chozodia, is required to get them)
- try looking for some new sequence breaks... like skipping the dreaded Power Grip. Skipping that thing may be very rewarding for the patient...
- of course many minor Items were hidden elsewhere as well
- all enemies have raised attack and hp, while also dropping less stuff. This also accounts for bosses, some of which also have other nasty surprises
- Like the original Metroid, only one of the Ice and Wave (and later Plasma) Beams can be equipped at once. Collecting a certain other powerup may allow for equipping them all at once, though

I may be forgetting something, will add such things later if I remember. There are still more features, but... well, I won't spoil them here.

A video showing some parts of it exists, but... well, for most of the content you'll have to try it yourself. The video can be found here:

Because I momentarily suck at editing graphics data such as the title screen (extracting etc. hasn't been a problem, though) and lack of free time a.t.m. a proper title screen (labeled "Metroid Other ZM") will have to wait for now. Likewise, Chozodia has been edited the less out of all the areas (if you don't count Tourian - but that doesn't have much rooms anyway...), maybe someday I will come around to add more changes there as well.

I have thoroughly testet the hack, but there may be bugs I didn't find, so I am thankful for anyone who finds and tells me of them. I welcome constructive critizism as well – so hopefully many of you are interested in trying this out :)

For anyone interested in trying the hack, I will leave a link to the .ips patch.
You will need a clean Metroid Zero Mission(U) ROM as well as some program like ipsXP to apply the patch.

The patch can be found at romhacking.net: http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2565/
It seems that updates will take a while to be registered there, so as long as that doesn't happen, you can find the current version here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vc8n3fh7iniz9ei/Metroid%20Other%20ZM.zip?dl=0

If you find any bugs/ strange things/ ideas to make this better you can just respond to this post or email me here: lsey@web.de

Thanks for trying ;)
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Luce Seyfarth: 2016-01-20 11:10:31 pm
EDIT:
Latest Version is 3.3, as shown in the video above