Talk:Metroid

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The Justin Bailey stuff was moved here in accordance with the users' consensus. — Nathanlarson32767 (Talk) 02:57, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Box Art

The box art scan provided for this article seems a bit lossy. Could someone possibly provide something higher quality? It's not a big issue, but I'm sure there are bound to be better scans somewhere on the internet. grendale 03:58, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

The above request is from a previous account. (which I no longer use) I went ahead and uploaded the "classic" re-release box art, as I felt that it was an overall better representation of the game, and is naturally higher quality than the original generic design. Is this okay with everyone? Grendel 00:10, 3 July 2006 (UTC)


i dissagree with this new box scan, i want the good old box scan back on just to give that nostalgia feel to you which I really like to have. i would be really happy if someone would do that. 86.142.18.50 22:42, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll revert it back to the old one, if the new one is a problem. I would like to know what some of the other users think about this, though. Grendel 22:57, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

you dont have to remove the new box scan, i quite like it, i just want the good old box scan on here too. is that ok? 86.142.18.50 23:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, we can't really have two different boxarts. The reason why I replaced it in the first place was actually because of the lossy quality and box wearing. If someone can find a higher quality version of the classic boxart, then I have no problem using it instead. Grendel 00:20, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
I have to agree. The new box art doesn't have the "dog earing" the old box does- it looks more professional. Ex-Nintendo Employee 01:37, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

oh come on! i really want to see the old box scan again. you can put it at the bottom of the article at least! pretty please with a cherry on the top? 86.141.157.229 23:21, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] See also

See also Talk:Metroid series

[edit] Code

I tried the NARPAS SWORD0 000000 000000 code; it works pretty well. Not that I need it, of course.. Rad Racer 20:34, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] link thought

here's a link i thought could be interesting to include: http://www.classicgaming.com/mdb/m1/lvldata.htm Martschink 10:08, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Justin Bailey a fluke?

The password [Justin Bailey] is now regarded as a total fluke, with no special meaning.

I can buy the explanation that it's a valid password that passes the checksum test, but why would this be the only known code to give Samus a special sprite set? Is this really the consensus on the Justin Bailey code? - furrykef (Talk at me) 10:45, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually, it's not the only code that gives armorless Samus! Try using "000000 000020 000000 000020" - this will start the game with armorless Samus, from the beginning of Brinstar with no powerups whatsoever, while JUSTIN BAILEY gives Samus some powerups and starts from Norfair (I think). --Wwwwolf 12:11, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Not only that, but sometimes you can use the JUSTIN BAILEY password, beat Mother Brain in a short amount of time, and still end with the WORST ending (Samus turns away in shame). I suspect this is because the code gives you a very poor mission time (several hours) but if you play long enough, it rolls over like an odometer to a mission time of 0. Then you are able to complete the game and get the best ending. Any confirmation of that? Rad Racer | Talk 22:54, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Is there a difference between JUSTIN BAILEY ------ ------ and Justin Bailey with spaces? Sun Chips 13:28, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The Justin Bailey password doesn't "give Samus a special sprite". Armorless Samus can be accessed normally by clearing the game under three hours. So half of the working passwords could feature Samus without her suit. --Dez26

[edit] Armorless Samus is part of the game.

If you finish the game in the time required to get the "Bikini Ending", when you press Start after "The End" appears, the game will start back from Brinstar and Samus will be armorless.

Note that in this case Samus hair will be brown, this is because the JUSTIN BAILEY password gives you the Varia suit, which makes Samus hair green instead. In both cases though, Samus will turn into a blonde (yellow hair) if you activate missiles.

Since the Samus sprite set parameter is only one bit out of the 132 data bits used in the first 22 letters of a Metroid password, it means that there is an equal number of possible passwords for both states. That proves that the JUSTIN BAILEY ------ password is far from being special in itself, aside from having a meaning to us humans.

Actually, Samus's hair will be green is you previously completed the game with the Varia, since restarting a game, regardless of if you unlocked Armorless Samus or not, keeps every items you had when you completed the game the first time, aside from missiles and energy tanks. This is why most Metroid gamers aren't used to see Samus with brown hair. --Dez26

[edit] Gunpei Yokoi was not "Metroid's Designer"

Gunpei Yokoi was not "Metroid's designer", he was the producer, the scenario and ideas for the original Metroid were mainly from Makoto Kanoh who also worked on most of it's sequels, for example Kanoh directed Metroid: Zero Mission. Hiroji Kiyotake was responsible for the characters design in the original Metroid. He's listed as "Samus original designer" in the Super Metroid credits.

Though Yokoi was the inspiration and probably had a great influence on the overall concept of the game and sometimes even little details, but saying that he designed Metroid is like saying that Steve Jobs designed the first Macintosh

I really don't wan't to discredit Yokoi's contribution to the game, but I feel some people are under the illusion that Gunpei Yokoi "invented" the whole game and that the rest of the team only programmed and drew what Yokoi wanted. He did invent many great things at Nintendo, like the original D-Pad and the GameBoy to name a few, but Metroid was not one of his inventions.

I suggest you take a look at game designer. A brief quote: "A video or computer game designer develops the layout, concept and gameplay: the game design of a video or computer game." Perhaps Makoto Kanoh can share credit with Yokoi, but character design is not really relevant to this. I don't know about the Mac, but I would create Jobs and Wozniak with designing the Apple I, using design in this sense. Andre (talk) 14:28, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Makoto Kanoh is listed as both "Assistant Director" to Yoshio Sakamoto and as "Scenario Designer" for the game Metroid according to n-sider.com [1] which is based on the official Nintendo credits, not those built in the game. I guess that Yoshio Sakamoto as a the director should share the Game Designer title too, and he worked on just about every other Metroid games including Metroid Prime. Maybe it's easier to say that Gunpei Yokoi was Metroid's original designer, but that doesn't make it true.

[edit] Metroid's Hidden Worlds

The Hidden Worlds of Metroid should be discussed. This is the mapping glitch where with a lot of time and skill or some handy codes, you can get above the elevator or a few other sections and explore the Hidden Worlds. These are basically just projections of one of the 5 areas of Zebes onto the rest of the map (the other 4 areas). There's a good technical explanation online detailing precisely how it happens. As brief as I can explain it, think of the game as having 5 map layers, one for each region. If you get from one section to another without using elevators, you'll find yourself in a continuation of the section you came from. The rooms will seem very strange, like a random mess. Some rooms are complete gibberish and look like nothing found in the game. Basically, the game has this one hexadecimal map and there are numbers like 00, 1A, 12, etc written on it. The game has 5 rooms for file 1A. If there is no room under that file number in the area, a room filled with fragments of the area (gibberish) will appear.

The map of the game's rooms on the ROM can be found here. This page also explains how the game arranges data too. http://www.classicgaming.com/Mdb/m1/lvldata.htm

This page has the technical details of how the Hidden Worlds can occur. http://www.classicgaming.com/mDb/m1/met-map.txt

I can talk more about the strange properties of the Hidden Worlds at a later time. I'm trying to get a FAQ on it posted on Gamefaqs.

I can also provide a few pictures for a section on the Hidden Worlds whenever it gets created.

Most of the hidden worlds lead to situations where you have to reset the NES, don't they? (E.g. you go through a door and then you are stuck and can't move). 24.54.208.177 06:23, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
When you get stuck, there's a way to restart without hitting reset. Pause the game, then on controller 2, hold Up and press A. This will bring you to the password screen, and you can then restart at the beginning of the world you were into.

[edit] Problems in the plot section

The plot section mostly contains information about later games in the series. Should this just be outright cut?

Additionally, the intro contains the line "Only the manual for the original NES game provided details on Samus' background, and, as mentioned above, most were intentionally misleading." However, that information is not mentioned above that I can see. ^_^

Yes, for some reason the plot section tries to cover everything except the first game. IMO, the Plot section should be scrapped and replaced with a Gameplay section, with a short paragraph explaining the game's lack of plot and a link to Zero Mission. --Poiuyt Man talk 08:44, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Plot section has been scrapped; there was already a plot summary in the opening paragraphs, anyway. Whether you add that Gameplay section or not's up to you. --Shadow Hog 13:27, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Updated the Story

I updated the story on this page to make it a bit more in detail and put the history of this game's actual story in it...If any one has anything more to add/remove, feel free to! --Yahweh 3 July 2005 22:59 (UTC)

It probably needs to be condensed and summarized. Currently, it's too close to the manual text and might be considered plagiarization. --Poiuyt Man talk 23:04, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

I've changed the story's wording enough so that it would not be considered plagiarism, though one of these days I may come down and change a bit more of it, though I do not feel that it is necessary. As for whether it should be condensed/summarized, I don't think that is necessary as the story of "Metroid" is a really great one and I think every one should know it, so we ought to keep it here, though we could edit some things here, and I may do so sometime when I have a bit more time to do so. --Yahweh 04:45, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Metroid: Zero Mission's relation to Metroid

There is a poll at the bottom of Talk:Metroid: Zero Mission, regarding whether Metroid: Zero Mission should be considered to be a re-telling/remake or prequel of Metroid. Please vote to help us establish a consensus. --Poiuyt Man talk 05:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Two Other Metroid Passwords

  • 999999 999999 KKKKKK KKKKKK - This was the first Metroid password I've seen published (on a Gamepro Magazine, back in 198x) which allowed the user to play with Samus without hever armor suit.
  • 2m-?-- <forgot-the-rest> - This was the first Metroid password I've seen published (also on a Gamepro Magazine, back in 198x) which was quite close to Mother Brain and with all powerups.

[edit] Recently added link

Somebody just added a link to what is purportedly the disassembled machine code for Metroid (I assume the NES version). Should this be deleted as a copyright violation, or is it allowed since it's on an external site? —David Wahler (talk) 03:32, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wall Jump Technique

I spent hours as a kid trying to figure out the new special world you get to if you use the wall-door technique. This deserves mention on the page. Did anyone ever get anywhere on it? In Ridley's lair, you got jump up through the wall, it'd take about five minutes, and find this really weird and buggy place. Can we mention that? Is that what article 6 is about? JamieJones 04:17, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

I definately agree! There is even an explanation to why the "secret worlds" exist. When I get the time I'll add this. Buzda 07:34, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind, someone already took care of it :D Buzda 04:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Persistence

This game, along with the rest of the series, is also notable for its blending of various genres superimposed onto a persistent world model of play.

I'm puzzled as to what about Metroid suggests a "persistent world". - furrykef (Talk at me) 12:51, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I was about to say the same thing. According to the linked article, a "persistant world" describes the gameplay world of an MMORPG or a game like Animal Crossing, in which events take place and the world changes even when the player is not playing. When you return to a Metroid game, it picks up at your save point as if you never stopped playing, nothing having changed in your absence. So "persistant world" does not apply. I'd change it, but I don't know what to change it to. Herald Alberich (Sorry, I don't have a userpage as of yet) 8:28, 12 June 2006
Whether the world changes when the game is not played, or even turned off, is completely irrelevant. The defining feature of a persistent world is that the state of the entire world is retained during play and also in save-games. For a multiplayer-game this means, for example, if one player enters a dungeon and kills all monsters in it, they will remain dead, no matter which player enters the same dungeon at a later time, and when. One side-effect of this is that in a multiplayer game, of course the world can change while you are away; at least when other players cause changes. This is irrelevant to singleplayer games. Doom, Sim City, and Dune are all completely persistent, for example. A game like Prince of Persia or even Space Invaders, which keeps track of everything within a level and only lets you save/reload/restart the game between levels, could be said to be persistent in a trivial way, but this is purely academic; how you view this issue simply doesn't matter in terms of game-play. The state that Metroid keeps track of, however, is not much more than what is stored in a password. You could say Metroid's world is persistent in a way, because while defeated mobs reappear when you re-enter the same 'room' a second time, they might not be the same ones you defeated earlier, but entirely new ones, who just happen to behave exactly like the previous ones. However, this is a very big stretch. From the point of view of a player, Metroid's world is not any more persistent than Super Mario Land on the Game Boy. The difference is that Metroid is not compartmentalized into levels, but largely one big, interconnected world, which you can explore in a non-linear way, including backtracking. -- Nex, 9 December 2006 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.235.241.220 (talk) 16:55, 9 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Inspiration for metroid

Metroid was inspired by the labyrinth esque design of the tokyo metro subway system. The name was made by combining Metro and Android.

Everything I've read is that Gumpei wanted to design a game based around the movie "Aliens", with Metroid II even moreso. Do you have a reference link to support your claim? Ex-Nintendo Employee 02:54, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NARPAS SWORD

I'm pretty sure the discovery of the NAR password was originally published in "Tips & Tricks" magazine issue #100, or at least that was what the magazine claimed. If that's true, it would be great to note that in the article. I don't have the magazine anymore, though, and I don't remember if they actually claimed that.. so does anyone out there still have "Tips & Tricks" issue #100? --G4rfunkel 17:08, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


The article claims that the NAR password is filled with zeros. If I remember correctly all that was needed was "NARPAS SWORD". Anything else you entered after that was irrelevant. In fact I think you could simplty hit the Start button immediately after entering "NARPAS SWORD". I dont have the cartridge any longer to confirm this. Could someone with the game check that out? thanks GarrettJL 01:47, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

(reply) according to http://games.technoplaza.net/mpg/password.txt, you need 5 zeroes after NARPAS SWORD, and the last 8 characters could be anything you wanted. ----Steve 02:22, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
That is correct. Unlike other random Metroid passwords like JUSTIN BAILEY, NAR PASSWORD was a hard-coded, special debug password. Since it was designed as such, it doesn't have to follow the same coding conventions that other passwords do. Ex-Nintendo Employee 08:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah! I see in that txt link that "Blanks are interpreted as 0's" by the password entry. So then it stands any number of zeros at the end would still work. I guess we always just hit start in my neighborhood. And thanks Steve, that link finally settled a great mystery to me as a kid; while randomly entering codes I once stumbled upon a password that gave you the icebeam but with the wavebeam's 8x8 graphic. Now I see that I had simply turned on both bits at once. ;O) GarrettJL 04:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Great reference article!

Nintendo Wii Europe did a large retrospective on the whole series http://www.wiieurope.com/article-38.html Judgesurreal777 06:20, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Xenomorph (Metroid)

There was a recommendation on the article to merge Xenomorph (Metroid) into this article, however the Xenomorph entry refers only to Metroid Prime Hunters, so I've removed the recommendation. (I just created the article as a redirect from Metroid Xenomorphs). 18:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

so then are you saying it should be merged to Creatures in Metroid Prime 2, Metroid Prime Hunters, and Metroid Prime 3? Sparsefarce 19:01, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
That would certainly be more logical. 21:38, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
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