Streaming: Metroid Super ZeroMission

HAY GUYS, more streaming will be happening tonight in a little bit. Sorry for the short notice.

For anyone wondering what the heck Metroid Super ZeroMission is, it's a ROM hack of Super Metroid. Basically, it's an alternate version of Metroid: Zero Mission using the Super Metroid game engine. You can find more info here, as well as a link to the IPS patch for the game if you'd like to try it yourself.

As usual, I'll sign into Skype and let people know in chat before I start. You can watch the stream on my Twitch TV channel. (Justin.tv's gaming channels, including mine, got moved to their own site, but everything still works the same as before).

Edit: Game's finally over after much raging at dumb level design. How people could possibly think this is better than Super Metroid or even the original Zero Mission, I have no idea.

Look out for my streams of Final Fantasy VI Advance next. I won't be announcing them here since I'll just be playing it whenever I feel like instead of getting people together on Skype every time. I recommend following me on Twitch TV so you can get e-mail notifications when I start streaming if you want to keep up with them.

Super Metroid - Phantoon - No damage

Well now, I never thought I'd care enough to make this fight happen with no damage but here it is. Since all the previous strategies I'd come up with required a large amount of luck to pull off no damage with, I never cared to spend the time replaying it over and over again until I got a perfect fight. (Also, I just don't like this battle; I was willing to spend over six hours on Ridley because it was a fun fight and entirely skill-based but this one is rather boring.) Some recent comments on my other two Phantoon videos, though, got me thinking about different strategies for the fight. Thus, after a few hours of pondering, testing, and practice, I ended up with this video.

The main difference between this video and my previous one is how I deal with Phantoon instantly appearing after being invisible. There's no way to predict where Phantoon will appear, which means no way to avoid it if it happens to appear on top of you. This was the big sticking point that kept me from pulling off no damage before.

Now, the main tip I've seen for avoiding Phantoon's instant appearances is to keep moving. This advice is worthless, however, because without being able to predict where Phantoon will appear it's just as likely you'll run into Phantoon appearing in front of you as you are to avoid Phantoon appearing where you moved from. I'm not sure why people think this is a good idea because I've tried it and the number of hits and dodges were pretty much the same as standing motionless.

A tip that actually makes sense, on the other hand, is to minimize the area where you can be hit by making yourself smaller – you can do this by rolling into a ball. Assuming Phantoon's appearance location is completely random, taking up one third the space while morphed into a ball would result in getting hit a third as often. I tested this idea and found that it works very well; while morphed into a ball, only very, very rarely did Phantoon appear low enough in the room to hit me.

So, having found a viable strategy, I gained the motivation to sit and practice enough to pull off a no damage fight. There was still some luck involved, since there are still situations where Phantoon can trap you with too many flames to avoid, but little enough to be tolerable.

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Phantoon beaten without taking damage. Played in real time on Snes9x v1.43+.

Phantoon is the hardest boss in the game to avoid damage on due to the amount of luck required to avoid some of its attacks. The strategy shown in this video minimizes your chances of getting trapped by unavoidable hits but it's still not entirely consistent.

Phantoon's normal attack pattern is fairly simple: It will drop flames for a bit while visible, then open its eye -- during which time it's vulnerable to attack -- while sending out a ring of flames around itself. After that, Phantoon will be invisible while dropping flames until it appears with its eye open, along with a line of flames that will drop from the ceiling. Phantoon will continue appearing with lines of flames until it's damaged, at which point its attacks will reset to the start of the pattern.

Now, the first thing you need to know is that the flames Phantoon drops from its closed eye won't hurt you until they've touched the ground or a wall. And the second thing you need to know is that you can use the Charge Beam to pass through all its flames unharmed. Simply charge up a beam shot and spin jump through them. This will save you from vast amounts of damage.

It's also important to know how Phantoon will react to certain attacks. If you hit it with a super missile it will cause Phantoon to appear at the top of the room and send eight waves of flames down at you, but these are easy to avoid by using the Charge Beam. If you hit Phantoon with a charged Ice/Wave/Spazer Beam shot, it will immediately disappear. If you hit Phantoon with a charged beam shot with only one or two of the other beams equipped, or with a missile, Phantoon will fly around the room for a bit, during which time it will be vulnerable to attack but will also damage you if it runs into you. Afterwards, Phantoon will always restart its attacks from the beginning of the pattern.

Super Metroid - Phantoon (Charge Beam)

I took a break from the LttP walkthrough to slap down the idiots in my original Phantoon video's comments. I've always been well aware that using super missiles is slower than charged beam shots but apparently people think they're hot shit when they point out the obvious. So I decided to make this video showing the faster method and see if they'll shut up about it already.

I hope to get the Lv2 Swamp Palace video done either later tonight or tomorrow.

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Super Metroid - Phantoon (Charge Beam)

Video response to: Super Metroid - Phantoon (Super Missile)

Phantoon beaten using the beam swap method. Played in real time on Snes9x v1.43+.

This is the faster but more damaging method of fighting Phantoon. Unlike using super missiles, charged beam shots and missiles won't make Phantoon throw waves of flames at you. Here's the damage breakdown, courtesy of Foxhound3857's FAQ on GameFAQs:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/snes/file/588741/39375

Damage values vs. Phantoon (2,500 HP)
Missile: 100
Charged ice/spazer: 180
Charged wave/spazer: 210
Charged ice/wave/spazer: 300
Super Missile: 600

If you hit Phantoon with a charged ice/wave/spazer shot it will disappear immediately. However, if you use charged wave/spazer, Phantoon will fly around the room and allow you to hit it with two more charged shots. Swapping in ice/wave/spazer for the third shot won't make Phantoon disappear any sooner but will allow you to do more damage.

In this video I swap in the Ice Beam only once and then finish it off with a super missile at the end to save time.

1st round: wave/spazer x2, ice/wave/spazer (720)
2nd round: wave/spazer x3 (630)
3rd round: wave/spazer x3 (630)
4th round: super missile (600)
Total: 2,580

Super Metroid 100% Walkthrough

If you haven't checked out the Game Videos link in the introduction, it goes to my YouTube channel where I post video walkthroughs for my favorite games. A lot of them are boss videos, where I show strategies for beating bosses and explain everything in the video description, but my latest project was a full game walkthrough for Super Metroid.

Super Metroid - 100% Walkthrough - Part 11 of 14

[View Full Playlist]

The walkthrough was a lot of fun to make (even if I did go through hell with my PC crashing and burning twice in the process) and I'm really happy with how it turned out so I thought I'd share it again here even though I already posted about it on myOtaku. Unfortunately, embedding playlists doesn't work (consider this a feature request if anyone of importance happens to read this) so I've put up my favorite segment of it and a link to the playlist page. In the video descriptions I wrote up notes to explain the various tips and tricks I use, which are time stamped to match where they're shown in the videos.

In the future I also plan on making posts here whenever I add new videos to my YouTube channel. I'm not sure what my next project will be yet, especially with Super Smash Bros. Brawl releasing tomorrow (it will no doubt devour all of my gaming time for a while to come), but I've been thinking of doing dungeon walkthroughs for a Zelda game next.

Also, if anyone needs help in any of the games I have videos for on my YouTube channel (or any Zelda game for that matter), feel free to post questions either here or there and I'll answer as best I can. I always enjoy helping people out with games.

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