GuestLog in

TLDR; This is, for the most part, an enjoyable hack which manages to not let its sometimes questionable level design drag it down.

Art and music are both pretty good, the latter being nes versions of Fusion tracks, which actually works better than i would have expected. Tilesets can be a little repetitive, with every area being mechanical, but the art is well rendered and the palettes manage not to be garish despite their bright colors through clever color theory.

As for level design, this is a bit of a tricky one. while the overall structure of the map is fine it suffers from a couple issues:

• first, and most prominent, rooms or large chunks of rooms are very commonly reused within the same area, which makes for a lot of 'have I been here before?'

This isn't really a negative by itself since that can be interesting in some ways, but it feels very unrestrained with it, and quickly becomes an annoyance Including a map is nice, but it shouldn't be used as a band-aid fix to mask confusingly repetitive rooms. The room designs themselves are sometimes interesting and inspired but mostly very derivative of the original: long vertical shafts after enemy-filled corridors, again and again.

• the game will often have a long corridor with an ability lock at the end of it (a platform requiring high jump to reach, a wall that requires bombs, etc...). While I don't want to dismiss this approach completely, it becomes annoying very fast. have the ability lock early on in a linear path, or the player's time is mostly wasted. The game will also sometimes have an ability lock right behind another one, this is understandable design if one wants to check that the player has two specific abilities before venturing forth, but there are better ways to do it. As it stands, the player remembers an ability lock, goes back to clear it and is instantly disappointed when it doesn't lead to anything but another lock. I believe it's more pertinent to have the two locks be appart while still being both required for the route the designer wishes to block out.

While it seems like I've been very negative, it's only because as a level designer myself I tend to think about level design a lot. This hack is a pretty good time, and I thank the hacker for making it. Without using the map, this took me ~6+1/2 hours, including a bunch of helpless wandering.

The Level design and changes in this hack are top notch for a Metroid 1 Hack, I never felt that lost like I did in OG Metroid. However the hardware cannot support the amount of objects on the screen at time and there is slowdown up the Wazoo around every corner. Like lots of NES games this causes you to be patient but also frustrated. If I could change one thing about this hack it would be reducing enemy count and making up for it with more tricky platforming (which is present in parts). It is expected in boss rooms with all the projectiles but in normal areas it's an annoyance that could have been padded out.

There were also a couple places where I could not figure out how to get to even with a map handy. The difficulty is a bit on the hard-side and I had to use save states often for my own sanity.

I would recommend but only if you love OG Metroid.