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SkippyJr
2005-12-14 04:15:51 pm
The images here come from the Nintendo Fun Club News (official NoA release and precurser to Nintendo Power) and from The Official Nintendo Player's Guide (copyright 1987).

Tips & Tricks, Fun Club News, Vol. 1, No. 4, Winter 1987

 
(The images are too large for the 56K people, open up the links)
Click the above images or here: First Page, and Second Page  (For archival purposes, insane size and quality: First Page 7.8MB, and Second Page 2.1MB)

Note that it is obvious that the Door Jump technique is being used to reach Varia early.

Rapid fire seems to give twice the firing rate - once for pressing Select, and once for depressing it.  Having LongBeam hurts it because you can only have three shots on screen at a time.  If you are in close quarters with an enemy/wall, it works just fine.  Works well with Ice Beam as well (didn't test Wave without LB).  If you use up all of your missiles, it also works.

The Official Nintendo Player's Guide, copyright 1987

This is part of a numbered walkthrough for the first part of the game.  This does occur after obtaining Highjump however.

Nintendo Fun Club News, Vol 2, No. 5, Feb/March 1988  (Archival version: Image 180KB)

This is the very note mentioned on MdB's Metroid Secret World page.

Not scanned:
Anything possibly in Issue 1 or 2 (which are hard to come by).
First reference to the Door Jump (Vol. 1 No. 3).
Reference to the Door Jump being used to go down rather than up (Vol. 2 No. 7).
Fighting Ridly with no damage by letting the door close around you (Vol. 1 No. 5).
2 page ad/review (Vol. 1 No. 3).
2 page "Metroid for Masters Only" which was crappy (Ice Beam! Screw Attack! etc) (Vol. 2 No. 7)
Various obvious tricks/small artwork/fan reviews/jokes.

A Samus Halloween costume and Metroid Art Contest results are in the Arts section:
http://www.metroid2002.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4279

Metroid jokes from the Fun Club newsletter:
Q: What does a Metroid do when Samus hurts him?
A: He goes crying to his Mother Brain.

Q: If athletes get athletes foot, what does Samus Aran get?
A: Missile Toe!

I hope you have been delighted, amused, and even humbled by what was done back when you were most likely not yet potty-trained (or even born!). :)  Nintendo Power really got rid of the abuse-the-game loving attitude which the Fan Club newsletter had.
Thread title: 
nate
2005-12-14 04:25:45 pm
this is totally going to expose me as the language geek i am, but the best part of that for me was how they decided to translate the enemy name "waver" as a proper name, resulting in no determiner ("chased waver", "freeze waver"). this had actually occurred to me while i was working on translating the super metroid manual, but at that time i had never seen it done. great find.
arkarian
2005-12-14 05:11:28 pm
red chamber dream
I love how nonchalantly they talk about this stuff, as if it were intended in the game.
Red Scarlet
2005-12-14 05:17:05 pm
I('d) like to watch (some MP3 runs)
Wasn't it "Nintendo Fun Club"?
SkippyJr
2005-12-14 05:42:55 pm
Yikes!  Changed the "Fan"'s to "Fun"'s.  Thanks.

Another example of a noun becoming a proper noun in the Player's Guide is: "Metroid is a very persistent enemy."

Hopefully it doesn't read like a WALL OF TEXT.  The most amazing part is in the linked images for Tips & Tricks (which I hope isn't being skipped over).  Early Tourian, Bomb jump boost, Door jump for early Varia, and a *new* technique (rapid fire).
Red Scarlet
2005-12-14 08:36:59 pm
I('d) like to watch (some MP3 runs)
Does the 'rapid fire' thing work (select + b method)?



THROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW
SkippyJr
2005-12-14 09:13:16 pm
Err, yes it does.  In the original post I documented how well it works.  2 shots for every press of the select button - one for pressing and one for releasing.

If you saw the page, it only works *without* missiles.  With missiles makes Samus look like a dufus.  So no fast Zeebitites :(
Red Scarlet
2005-12-14 09:43:48 pm
I('d) like to watch (some MP3 runs)
Oh.  I had just never heard of it so...  :o
Yoshi348
2005-12-14 10:32:01 pm
PAGE BREAKER
Ready and willing.
Probably because of the no missles part. Although that might be slightly useful on bosses... then again, might not.
JaggerG
2005-12-15 07:11:33 am
Shifty Leader
That M2k2 guy
In at least the GBA ported version, you can press left or right to fire rapidly. I use it when refilling energy in the bridge before Kraid. It was annoying when I didn't know what was going on and enemies kept unfreezing when I tried to freeze them.

EDIT: And yoshi, I think you might be right...it would be really useful on Ridley! somehow I didn't think of it when fighting him. Maybe I was too busy dodging slow moving bouncing fireballs of d00m....
Red Scarlet
2005-12-15 10:55:46 am
I('d) like to watch (some MP3 runs)
Well, do you regularly get to him with no missiles picked up? I don't know if you HAVE missiles but none in stock if it would work still.
SkippyJr
2005-12-15 11:59:43 am
It works if you have never picked up missiles.  It works if you have picked up missiles and have 000 (i.e. used them all up).

I made a silly video showing the difference between shooting fast and rapid fire.  Also showed is how it works well with jumping too. :)  (Prime unlockable as my capture device doesn't do RF).

Might be a good technique for: Ridley (especially), climbing the first Brinstar shaft, refilling missiles off of Rios and Zoomers after Bombs and Ice Beam.

Boss Tricks: Ridley  If you let the blue door close around you, then you are invulnerable.  I tried recording this and a fast Ridley kill with rapid fire, but I keep dying when trying to record (computer =/= TV).

Further historical funny:  In both the Nintendo Player's Guide and Top Secret Passwords, Ridley comes before Kraid.

Maybe this is a good place to ask a question:  Although Metroid is widely said to have been released in NA in 1986, why is the manual copyrighted 1987?
JaggerG
2005-12-15 12:03:39 pm
Shifty Leader
That M2k2 guy
In a two item run, clearly no...but in a normal run I try to have as many of my five missiles equipped when facing it. replacing select with left should work, though. I've rapid tapped left or right before to shoot faster than normal, because IIRC, it shoots once when you press it and once when you release it. Two shots for each tap is a good rate, IMO. If you can get into a position in which you're stopped by frozen fireballs but shooting between them (or over them), you don't have to worry about walking into Ridley itself. when you can stand on a fireball in that position, it tends to be the one in which Ridley is always in the shotline, as well. That can save at LEAST a few seconds! >_>
LifeMega
2005-12-15 01:00:03 pm
Quote from SkippyJr:
Further historical funny:  In both the Nintendo Player's Guide and Top Secret Passwords, Ridley comes before Kraid.
Also in Nintendo Power #27. That issue has an article on Metroid, and also explains how to enter the secret worlds.
Starblade
2005-12-16 08:42:03 am
Samus looks sort of like Mega Man in the one picture.  :?

Just a random comment. Carry on.
Zeke
2005-12-16 09:24:15 am
Time bomb set get out fast!
Quote from SkippyJr:
Q: If athletes get athletes foot, what does Samus Aran get?
A: Missile Toe!


Dude!  I remember that -- and now I remember how I remember it.  I read the Metroid article when a kid in my Grade 3 class brought it in.  I was fascinated, but I didn't even get to see a NES very often until I bought my own as an adult, so it was a moot point.  Man, haven't thought about that in years.
SkippyJr
2005-12-17 12:52:46 pm
That was actually issue #29, LifeMega.  I can't believe I missed that blurb.

More history dreadging, more stuff.

I found Nintendo Fun Club Newsletter Vol. 1 No. 2 (Summer 1987).  For Metroid it says ... that it is comming soon!  That means that the game came out in North America sometime in the second half of 1987 (most likely around late summer/early fall).  (The fall issue (No. 3) says "available now" and even has tips (see first post) and the winter issue (No. 4) has reader reviews.)  This jives with the instruction booklet being copyright 1987, and with the release date listed in NP #29.  GameFAQs and SCU have it wrong!

It was being broken wide open just as quickly as Amasawa, Banks, kip, and co. were doing with Prime. :)

Although the Ice Beam + Waver method for Varia was in The Official Nintendo Player's Guide, they did collect Highjump beforehand.  Although we may assume that people were doing it without HJ, I was happy to find a reference where that was explicitly taking place.  Game Player's Encyclopedia of Nintendo Games (copyright 1990) shows Varia -> Kraid -> HighJump -> Ridley.  The number of Energy Tanks grows, confiming that early Varia is taking place.

Anybody know the history of "JUSTIN BAILEY"?  The earliest refrence so far is Nindendo Power #29 (Oct '91), but it goes back to at least '89/'90.  A poster in a  SlashDot thread claims that "bailey" is slang for bikini in Britian, what sayeth the locals?  It is as if somebody luckally hit uppon "just in bailey" trying to access the "second quest" so-to-speak.
Hejira
2005-12-17 08:26:06 pm
I heard it was an Australian term for a bikini. Never actually come across it, m'self.

There is the possibility of a bunch of people putting in their own names to see how the game would turn out, and one of those people turned out to have the name of Justin Bailey.
rain
2005-12-17 08:32:05 pm
It could be australian, they have odd slang (in my view) for alot of simple things.
RT-55J
2005-12-17 08:47:58 pm
Armor Guardian
The Justin Bailey password is merely a coincedence, nothing more.
nate
2005-12-17 08:58:48 pm
they're speculating on how it was originally discovered by humans.
SkippyJr
2005-12-17 09:05:35 pm
Of course it is just a coincidence.  The "NARPAS SWORD" password is the only real cheat code built into the game.  I was just curious if anyone had insight into how in the world anyone could have found that great coincidence of a password.  The references which have had it offer no information on its history.

EDIT: Drat, nate beat me too it by a mile.  I gotta learn to type faster. :)
JaggerG
2005-12-18 09:55:21 pm
Shifty Leader
That M2k2 guy
Quote from SkippyJr:
EDIT: Drat, nate beat me too it by a mile.  I gotta learn to type faster. :)

Try not to sacrifice efficiency for speed. :P

It might be possible that a coder leaked the pw unofficially.
Hejira
2005-12-19 02:45:06 am
Quote from rain:
It could be australian, they have odd slang (in my view) for alot of simple things.


Uh...

Quote from Hejira:
Never actually come across it, m'self.


*goes off to change location details*

It sort of makes one wonder how many Justin Baileys there are in the world, and how many of them are under the age of 18.