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I got myself a SNES Classic a few months back, and I've been modding it so that I can play all my old games that I have in cartridge form. This hack piqued my interest when I saw the reviews for it.

Everything is different, but it keeps that Metroid feel... instead of Samus being this all-powerful bounty hunter running and gunning through Zebes, you find yourself checking your surroundings and traversing with care.

You find yourself staring at an obstacle knowing exactly what you need to pass it, but don't have the tool necessary to proceed forward. It's that fact that drives you to plunge deeper and deeper into the planet.

This game is amazing. I highly recommend it to any old school 2D platform gamer. The game does have its quirks here and there (first part of Norfair comes to mind... it burns!!) but overwise, download this hack!

Pros:

• Beautiful recreation of the world
• Not a pixel perfect game; it doesn't require quick saves and reloads to complete
• Weapons are remixed in a way that makes it feel more like Metroid Prime than Super Metroid
• Game feels more like a survival horror/exploration game now more than ever!

Cons:

• That Norfair hell run... WTF. This is the biggest gripe I have for this entire game. It's not "inexperienced player" friendly. The save stations throughout help a ton, though.
• The escape after killing Mother Brain is so long. And don't waste your missiles when you get them during this run! Else it is GAME OVER.

Notes:

• Metroids. Do NOT let one of these suckers latch onto you. Game over in seconds.

TL;DR: Worth a play through if you've beaten Super Metroid a few times and want more of a challenge. Not recommended to new players. 9/10!

So I thought I would add my 2 cents on this hack. I've noticed people seem to either love or hate this hack. I for one happen to like it quite a lot though it took me several times to finish it. I'll give my opinion on several things...

THE MAP: It's HUGE! I've played the original many many times but the game after a while always felt so short. This hack vastly increases the playtime by about 2-3 times the original's, allowing for a longer adventure if you're into that kinda thing. One thing I'll recommend, however, is that you pick up one of the maps online that details locations of items and such. While I'm sure plenty would rather not spoil the surprise of where items are located, it does provide a great help in at least giving potential directions on where to go....cause you're likely to get lost a LOT. Otherwise, I felt it was nice to greatly expand the map. I noticed some people complain about the lack of the Wrecked Ship, but personally....this hack is big enough without it.

THE PHYSICS: This is likely to catch people off guard right off the bat, like it did me. Samus drops a LOT faster and a lot more care is needed to get where you need to go in some instances. This is a point I'm....feeling mixed about. It takes some getting used to, for sure, but even then, I still had many times where more precise jumps needed to be made, such as the escape from Tourian, and I overshot or undershot platforms far too easily. And it seemed to translate over to the Space Jump as well, as there were plenty of times that the Space Jump seemed to just "fail" and not work so well. It's a mixed bag, but you take it as it is. One thing I didn't care for was that the ability to retain your speed boost by shinesparking into slopes like in Fusion or Zero Mission was added in but there wasn't any real indication that this is possible and it's not particularly easy to do either. This could be due to the fact that speed boosting in Super is kinda new and jerky for its time, but it's still a difficult maneuver that shouldn't be as hard as it is. I had to slow my emulator down in order to perform many of the feats required to get hidden items.

DIFFICULTY: Holy CRAP is this hard! At the beginning, enemies will seem to vastly overpower you, especially enemies that were made to be resistant to regular Power Beam shots. Great care is needed when exploring as not only are enemies difficult but the environment is also deadlier. I think this as well takes some getting used to, but in the long run, I never felt like the game was too unfair. The Heat Run in Norfair, though nail-bitingly hard, is still reasonably manageable if you figure it out and not panic. In the end, I felt that this hack was hard, but not anger inducing, though your opinion may vary. The escape from Norfair is panic-inducing though, given one change that did not happen in the original, and it takes quite a while to get away. But I still think it was very well pulled off.

In the end, I think this is a great and worthy hack to play that doesn't change the original story or anything, simply redoing the story we know and love and making some aspects better.

My rating: 9.7/10 It's a great game, one everyone should at least give a try. The game is pretty hard, but you learn as you go. The physics changes, however, as well as the need for some....rather lengthy runs through multiple rooms in order to get items, is fairly off-putting in some cases, however.

Personally, this was not the hack for me. I did end up finishing it and spent nearly 24 hours by the in-game clock (so probably more like 40 total). I'll do a simple pros and cons list to explain:

Pros:

- Huge, well-built world

- Dynamic amount of ammo in an expansion highlights the usefulness of extra exploration at all levels

- Great overall feel

- Most secrets were hard but not ridiculous to find

Cons (In order of hatred, from least to most):

- A few secrets are just plain ridiculous, requiring constant repetition of annoying tasks for multiple ROOMS before getting your lone power bomb. These are, however, obviously not required. They just piss off the completionist in me.

- The X-Ray scope only detects some blocks that aren't blocks. This makes finding several secrets incredibly tedious and annoying, including a few required ones.

- 3 bomb limit with recharge timer

- The Metroids in Tourian and the final escape sequence (as a whole) just made me want to kill someone.

- Unless you're a god at the shinespark, there is no possibility of sequence breaking (and that's only for early screw attack)

- Change in gravity. Novel at first, not-terribly-annoying for a while, but in the late game this probably had me spending 10 of those hours screaming and throwing things at walls. It makes ibj virtually impossible, wall jumping is a MASSIVE pain in the ass, single-wall wall jumping is virtually impossible (pre-high jump boots), Space jump when not under water is very inconsistent (though to be fair I seem to recall the original having some of that problem), and Miridia quicksand is a death sentence.

So yeah. Looking at it purely objectively, from a person that might want to relearn everything about the game and have most of the mechanics be FAR harder, I'd give it a 4 star rating. For all the sane people out there, I give it a 2.

Everyone in the Super Metroid hacking community knows of Redesign. It is the single most important Super Metroid hack out right now. Whether or not you like what has changed, you should at least try it out and see what it is all about.

The good: Redesign is a complete overhaul of the original in many ways. The explorable map is much bigger. The physics are very different. The world is punishing. There are even new items. Most importantly, it is the best designed hack I've seen. It looks very much like you would imagine the original would, so it isn't hard to describe it as a sequel.

The bad: The enemies deal a lot of damage. The physics are very different. It is a very hard and unforgiving hack. There is a forced heat run. (Which means taking damage from heat without Varia Suit.) A serious challenge.

Whether the good outweighs the bad is in the player's opinion. There are people who love Redesign, and those who hate it. Personally I don't like the physics. If it had kept the same physics as Super Metroid I would probably have this as one of my top hacks ever played. Despite that I still suggest you play it and find out for yourself, as I said earlier some love the changes, and it is an important hack when it comes to Super Metroid. Plus, it is probably the best designed Super Metroid hack around still. It is very difficult. There is no getting around that, and the heat run is often the cause of a lot of pain and agony. Despite that, despite my dislike of the new physics, I still recommend this hack. It is simply one you must be acquainted with in some form.

I would not recommend Super Metroid: Redesign.

While I did have a lot of fun playing this game in spurts, Redesign has a handful of fatal flaws that ultimately kept me from fully appreciating its better qualities. The flaws are there in the original Super Metroid too, only in much less noticeable proportions. The first flaw is what I like to call 'ammo hunting'.

The following is a scenario that played out for me at LEAST 10-15 times throughout my play-through.. and I honestly don't know why no one else has mentioned this; maybe I'm just REALLY unlucky, I don't know:

I come across a power bomb obstacle with no power bombs in my arsenal. I have to backtrack MULTIPLE rooms, sometimes to the previous MAP, to find an enemy that drops power bombs (few enemies actually drop power bombs), then I have to spend 10+ minutes re-entering that room and killing that enemy OVER and OVER again until it drops a power bomb. And the catch is, it is incredibly unlikely for any given enemy to drop a power bomb, unless Samus is at 100% health, with a full supply of missiles (I'm fairly certain that power bombs are prioritized as the LAST thing to drop, after missiles and energy pickups cannot be dropped). Otherwise, 9 out of 10 times, an enemy will drop those bothersome 5% energy pickups... (And Samus is almost NEVER at 100% health, because this game is so challenging!).. So unless you want to backtrack to the ship, or to the last "respawning flyers" point (you know, those rooms where the flying enemies come out of the ground in groups of 5 or 6, making it easy to recharge ammo, ALTHOUGH THESE POINTS ARE FEW AND FAR IN BETWEEN), you will have to re enter a room OVER and OVER and OVER again, recharging your health first with those 5% pickups and an OCCASIONAL 20% pickup, then your missiles, THEN, and only then is there any resemblance of a possibility that a power bomb will be dropped... Once a power bomb is gathered, head back to the power bomb obstacle, provided you don't fall into a 'trap' on the way (I will talk more on this in a second), and remove the obstacle, crossing your fingers and hoping that there won't be an identical PB obstacle in the very next room...

The other thing that bothered me about SM:R, though to a much lesser extent, is what I like to call...

'TRAPS'

They are EVERYWHERE in SM:R.. ESPECIALLY in norfair... If you fall into the lava, which you will MANY times, you will NOT be getting out. You may as well load your last save state and start over again (using save states is a MUST for this game, as it rivals the first metroid game in its lack of forgiveness). Also, running is probably not a good idea in SM:R.. you may run into an enemy that does an INSANE amount of damage on contact; you may run straight into a thorn pit, or you may run into more of that lava! Keep those F1 save states ready, you're gonna need them..

Aside from this, SM:R is a well designed rom hack of a VERY well designed video game that I have beaten 5+ times, a couple times under two hours (so no one can say I am a metroid newb, I've beaten every metroid game except for Other M, Pinball, Prime 3, and Prime Hunters...)

If you're trying to decide between this and SM:Legacy, GO FOR LEGACY. It is the better super metroid rom hack BY FAR.

I've been a big Metroid fan since I got my NES over two decades ago, and played Super Metroid nearly fifteen times over the years. I haven't really gotten into ROM hacks, but figured I'd give one of the Super Metroid hacks a try. I've been blown away by the quality of this. I was also concerned that this might only work on emulators, as it involves some programming changes, but this ran virtually flawlessly on my SNES.

This remake completely redoes the world, packing the maps with almost twice as many corridors. Gravity has been altered, a welcome change that I adjusted to fairly quickly. There are several small programming changes, adding some new items and things you can do. There are new puzzles and little rehash of those from the original. Rooms are well-designed, and have a consistent feel to them. Some of the more ambient music tracks were put to good use.

Unfortunately there are a few areas where I had to use save states due to difficulty. And then there's Tourian, where Metroids respawn every few seconds, and it's much harder to get them off than in the original. Now that I've spent about 20 hours beating it, I can say that the problems were overall minor, and I want to play through it again already.

I am a person who grew up playing the original Super Metroid, and because of this, I have a large amount of love for the game. When I discovered Super Metroid: Redesign, I was extremely excited to begin playing what was called "a total overhaul of Super Metroid". The game has a few major differences, as detailed in the readme. The heavier gravity affects the speed with which you can move, increasing it in both falling and general movement. Many Super Metroid players have mastered wall-jumping, which is great. However, they will have to relearn the timing with which they do it. Wall-jumping is a little more forgiving on this game, but the timing change will require some getting used to. Some comfort with wall jumping is advised, as many areas require wall jumping to traverse. Enemy health is increased, making even weak enemies a threat.

It is clear the amount of time Drewseph put into this hack. He took what he loved about Super Metroid and added what he thought was important. This game requires a large amount of exploration, and the X-Ray scope is a must if you want to gather all the power-ups. The world of Zebes has been increased in size, which has been criticized because of the amount of traveling you have to do. In some parts of the game, you must travel across almost the entire planet. While my opinion is that it allows you to gather as many power-ups as you can, others find it to be tedious. No room is left unchanged, except Ceres Station.

All in all, I rate this game as one of my favorite Rom hacks, if not one of my favorite games. The great thing about this game is it stands on its own. While skills from Super Metroid are highly advised, they are not required. This game can be viewed as a sequel, as a Rom hack, or as a completely different game. One look at the game and I was hooked.

A word of warning though; it has been said by Drewseph himself (during a Let's Play video of Redesign which Drewseph was a guest in, answering questions and providing insight to the game, found at http://tinyurl.com/ntjhwa) that there are only two emotions toward this hack. Players either love it, or they hate it. There is no middle ground. I am on the love side, but that does not mean everyone will be.

I recommend this game to anyone who wants an all new adventure to guide Samus through. Anyone who loves Super Metroid should check this Rom hack out, because it breathes new life into the game.

Super Metroid: Redesign features some impressive editing skills by using the existing graphics to make more interesting environments, however the biggest weakness is the shear size of these environments. I found it tedious to spend the first 20 minutes navigating the same area just to locate the Morph Ball. Enemies now take several hits to kill, which does make it more difficult, but the large number of these enemies makes moving from area to area too frustrating. Once I reached the plant mini boss, the battle area was so small that when the creature opened up, I got pinned to the wall and perished rather quickly. I would suggest giving this a try to see the skillful editing, but as a game, it's as unforgiving as the original NES Metroid was.