Metroid: Giving it to Mother Brain
All Over Again
Just about everyone and their mother has played the NES version of
Metroid at some point. Just about everyone and their mother has figured
out that Samus is revealed to be a woman as the game ends. (And if I have
just ruined the surprise for you, it’s been over ten years since it was
released so it’s your own fault you live in a cave.) But what everyone
DOESN’T know is that there are two – yes TWO – ways to keep the game
interesting long after it’s been completed and dumped off at the GameStop.
The first method is password hacking. I’m sure you’ve heard of (and
probably used) the infamous JUSTIN BAILEY and 999999 KKKKKK codes. But did
you also know that the following codes also work?
-Come- --To-- -Butt- HeadJY
Super- Smash- Bros—Mele3y
-Game- -Cube- -oWnZ- All-jj
-Fuck- -Off-- -Ass-- Hole3u
(Yes, even that last one works. Well, sort of. Go try it yourself!)
Now how the heck do those codes work? Well, according to a password
generator I found, the explanation is as follows:
“First, the 24 6-bit characters of the password string are converted
to 18 8-bit values. The last (18th) byte is the password checksum. It's
the lowest byte of the sum of the 16 first bytes of the (decrypted)
password. The 17th byte is the decryption value, which is the number of
times to rotate the password data (the first 16 bytes) left. Note that the
bits are rotated from one byte to another (not just within the same byte),
so the password data should be treated as one big 128-bit value. Once the
password has been decrypted, the checksum is recalculated and is compared
to the original checksum. If the two values match, the game will proceed
to load, and acknowledge the password data.”
Um, sure. If you can figure out what the hell he’s talking about then
go ahead and start making your own passwords. Or, if you’re a bit dim like
myself, just download the automatic generator here:
http://metroid.retrofaction.com/metroid/ The best part about the
generator is that you can either custom-design a code with the abilities
you want or you can just type in something obnoxious and see if it works.
The next method for keeping Metroid interesting, and the coolest, is
what is known as “sequence breaking.” Normally you have to play the game
in a kind of “pattern”…you can’t access certain areas without getting a
certain item or beating a boss first. Therefore, you’re pretty limited in
where you can go and there’s not much room for exploring. However, Metroid
contains a glitch, a glitch so huge that you can literally walk through
walls and can pretty much finish the game in approximately ten minutes or
so. Not only that, but there are – believe it or not – several “hidden
areas” contained in the game which can only be accessed by using this
glitch.
The glitch works like this: Shoot a blue wall then walk into it, but
do NOT go through. If you’re standing in the right place the door will
instead close around you, trapping you within. (This takes some practice,
so don’t get frustrated if you don’t get it to work right away.) Now the
fun stuff begins. Quickly push up and down on the pad and you’ll notice
that the screen starts to scroll. Samus is, if you can’t see her, starts
climbing upwards towards and off the top of the screen and reappears at
the bottom. This trick can be used to drop through floors and climb
through ceilings. If you have a map handy you can zip through the game
without any time lost at all. One of the earliest places you can use this
trick is right at the start of the game. Go get the Morph Ball and go
right. Go through the door. Normally this is the area where you have to
use bombs in order to get to Kraid’s lair, but with this glitch you don’t
have to. Get trapped in the door on the right, use the trick, and * POOF *
you’ll appear under the floor and can go straight to Kraid without ever
having to get the bombs!
Oh yeah, I almost forgot…remember when I said something about “hidden
areas” in the game? Well, they do indeed exist, but you have to use the
“wall climb” glitch above to get there. Apparently the programmers had
left some excess code in the game and instead of deleting it they just
made the areas inaccessible. However, keep in mind that there’s nothing
exciting in these areas…no super power-ups, no hidden characters, nothing
like that. They’re just sitting there empty, but you can still explore
them (although some places can get pretty glitchy). A full detailed guide
about these areas can be found here:
http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/nes/file/metroid.txt
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