Metroid: Crocomire's Last Stand

Hack description

Galactic civilization is at an end. After successfully carrying out her mission to wipe out the Metroids on planet SR-388, legendary bounty hunter Samus Aran was attacked by the mysterious gelatinous lifeform known as " X " which the Metroids had been specifically designed to hunt by their creators, the Chozo. The parasite made quick work of her and the bounty hunter dropped dead minutes later, while a nigh-identical copy of her formed from the parasite, the SA-X...

The SA-X would take over Samus's ship and, together with a few other X parasites, leave the planet to take over the galaxy with their power to easily kill and then mimic their prey. Over the next few months, both the Galactic Federation and Space Pirates would quickly be overwhelmed by the ever-growing parasitic lifeforms, with all of them becoming nothing but mutated copies. All of them? No! On the faraway Planet Nebov, a small group of indomitable Space Pirates still held out against the invaders, consisting of Kraid, Ridley and Crocomire, who had been sent there shortly before the X attacked Zebes to build a secondary Metroid Breeding Program in order to potentially find a vaccine to the virus. Multiple tests were conducted and the Space Pirates leaders managed to find Vaccine "Metroid", and injected it into the planet's inhabitants in order to make them immune to the X and be able to rebuild an army to eventually take down the parasites.

The vaccine proved to be successful, and even the strongest of the X mimics were unable to take over the planet, while its inhabitants lived a somewhat normal life, even having Crocomire hosting a live Metroidvania gameshow with the Zebesians as contestants! So now, as a last-ditch effort, the X hivemind is sending you, Samus Aran-X to take down the last obstacles to complete X domination.

Your objective is clear: MERCILESS EXTERMINATION.

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METROID: CROCOMIRE's LAST STAND is Roebloz's second Metroid: Zero Mission hack, this time starring the X parasite mimic SA-X in an alternate timeline where Samus encountered an X instead of The Baby at the end of Metroid II: Return of Samus, taking down the last of the Space Pirates for complete galactic domination of the X!

The hack redesigns the whole map and has quite a few new tilesets, (Mostly from Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion) granting a brand-new experience that feels quite close to Super Metroid. The goal is to terminate Crocomire in the Dissolvery, which is locked behind 4 Security Locks, (Similar to Fusion) however one unique thing that this ROM hack does it that you have a great choice of which order you want to do things in. You could get Space Jump before even touching the Varia Suit, get the Plasma Beam as your second beam upgrade, everything is possible if you're clever enough.

The major items also move around during a "CORE-X" playthrough, (This game's equivalent to Hard Mode) granting even greater replay value, especially to get those nice ending pictures. And yes indeed, the player sprites have been changed to those of the SA-X from Fusion, making the hack the second one to ever have custom Samus graphics in Zero Mission. The length of the hack is pretty short, (Around 2 hours) but going through all the endings and exploring the different paths of every difficulty could more than quadruple that. A full map is included with the download, with two different styles (And two different ones to reflect the changes in Hard Mode)

There are also other various ASM tweaks thanks to the talented ASM hackers of Metroid Construction, such as the Crocomire final boss being very close to Super Metroid's, and the Fusion beams being ported back into Zero Mission.

So if you are looking for a refreshing Zero Mission hack with a Super Metroid vibe, (Including music, as it is pretty much exclusively Super Metroid music ports) a surprisingly dark story despite the lighthearted gameplay, METROID: CROCOMIRE's LAST STAND is for you!

-//UPDATE LOG//-
v0.99.2: Nerfed Space Pirate damage, fixed many spriteset conflict issues (but not all)
v0.99.3: Fixed one-way L4 door in Aqua Abyss leading to an unintended sequence break. Also fixed out of reach map tile and unobtainable missile tank, as well as made the way to the Wide Beam more obvious. (Rather than needing to shoot the extending robot with the Charge Beam, it disappears once Charge Beam is obtained)
v1.0.0: Various graphical and clipdata issues were fixed, and Stokes (Mini-Crocos) were added in the Dissolvery.

Contributor	Type of contribution	Description
Roebloz	Hacking	Level design, graphic importing, music importing, original idea, story...
yohann	Hacking	ASM importing, making the entire Samus sprite replacement patch.
jasinchen	Original Hacking	Remastered Crocomire ASM patch
raygun	Original Hacking	Fusion Beams port ASM patch

Reviews

Large hack that is fun but also becomes a bit cumbersome and tedious	ShadowN64	2024-05-15	Version 1.0.0
It was big and sprawling and this was both a good and a bad thing. Navigating from one area of the map to another became a real pain because certain ways are blocked off even though it doesn't show on the map (there is also no clear indication of what exit leads to an entrance on another map). Then there were numerous areas that I discovered accidentally that I needed to come back to but there was nothing on the map to show where it was, leading to much aimless wandering trying to find it again. It was somewhat non-linear and I may have gotten things out of the intended order which made it harder on myself. I also found it to be a bit glitchy: e.g., I had to try the escape sequence three times because my gravity suit suddenly stopped working and I couldn't space jump under water, leaving me completely stuck. With all that, I did have a good time. Took about 5 hours to get 90% completion.

Challenging, Fun and Interest at the same time	KImmie	2023-11-28	Version 1.0.0
At first, and for a LONG time I decided NOT to play this hack just because of the name. Today I finally said ("$&#* it. I'll give it a go.") I'm happy I changed my mind because THIS HACK IS THE @%*%. A completely new world with new areas. Not a (SAME OLD THING) type of hack that deters. I really that, when you follow the PROPER path, you get two powerful items early. This is NOT one of those Castlevania/Clock Tower difficult hack, but you MUST take your time as you advance because the beasties are EVERYWHERE. Like I said in the discription. CHALLENGING, FUN, INTERESTING. At the same time. Very good job making this. You have RESTORED my Faith in Metroid Zero Mission.

Solid and fun	nin10doadict	2023-11-02	Version 1.0.0
This is a nice full length hack that even brings some new things to the table. It does have a few minor issues, mainly graphical in nature. The player sprite does some weird things when using a map room. Some enemy sprites get bugged up when you activate a text box in the same room as them (such as by saving with your ship or collecting an item.) Some blocks are placed on the ground right next to ramps, so if you walk down the ramp toward the block you can clip into the block. At one point I tried to space jump up a shaft that is supposed to be a one-way exit you fall through, and the screen scrolling glitched up. Despite these small issues, the game was fun to play and explore. The story was neat, and having a few rooms where text would appear showing what the player character was thinking was cool (even if the text was kinda silly sometimes.) The music ports from Super Metroid were well done (though they seemed a little loud at points.) I very much appreciate including a full-game detailed map with the patch, as the critical path can be well hidden, and I did get lost a few times. Apparently the locations of certain items are swapped around on Hard mode, which forces you to take a more complex path on top of the usual difficulties of Hard mode. Cool idea! Overall, a good hack, definitely worth playing.

30 Minutes in... Love it already!	justaicon	2023-09-25	Version 0.993
I just started playing this not even an hour ago, and I can already say it's a work of art. There's not much for me to say for now, but the music reminds me of Zelda Four Swords where it sounds just a tiny bit muffled, but I'm happy that they made it sound like the real thing. Really impressed to see creative people recently going fully tapped into Zero Mission ROM hacking.

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