#misc_

It seems that the dark suit was originally designed to match Amorbis. (Or vice versa.) Makes more sense now why Amorbis gives you i-

I might be jumping the gun, but just in case, I've made a Wordpress backup of this blog. (It's mostly for me tbh.)

If you'd like to backup your own blog... Importing your posts into Wordpress is easy, finding a theme that actually displays them is... not. Still, it's something.

Prime

I don’t know when you would ever see this normally, but the elevators in West/East Towers (access to Control Tower, the outdoor arena area) have a rather elaborate full mechanism underneath.

Rain only appears in a cube around Samus. This is a metaphor for her life.

For some reason there is collision information at the bottom of Impact Crater - but only the version surrounding the Artifact Temple room specifically. It’s not terrifically accurate to the visual geometry - the ball is rolling quite a bit above the “ground” - but it’s still there... For some reason.............

I'm a little endeared with how Space Pirates look like a completely different species in each game with no explanation whatsoever. Anyway, the ones in Prime have these almost invisible lines of orange hairs on the limbs, which is very charmingly buggy.

Also, this one was kind enough to stand still for a height comparison. (Their AI doesn’t handle noclipping very well - often they just don’t attack when approached from the air.)

...

I spoke a bit ago about Metroid Prime’s additional eyes, which are not very easy to see in game.

They’re actually rolled back into her carapace in the intro cutscene before the fight, so it’s not surprising that you don’t really notice them.

After said intro cutscene, she is fully spawned in the room below and idle animating with no weapons systems active. Kind of a look, honestly.

Back to the eyes. Even if you saw the eyes, you would almost certainly not notice this behavior, but... They’re actually programmed to follow the player’s position exactly. The camera may be down here, but Samus is still in the room above and to the right, so that’s... where they’re looking..............

In later parts of the fight Metroid Prime uses this “tractor beam” attack, which actually emanates from the front two eyes. Somehow, I’m getting Gritty vibes.

...Impact Crater in general has always felt a little rushed to me, like it was thrown together last minute to just finish the damn game. (The boss rooms in particular are... hmm.) I still love it, though.

And there’s still all kinds of details, like these transparent areas with ... creatures? Swimming in them?? In concept art they’re mentioned as protozoans.

Let’s noclip in. They look like microbes or plankton. But big!

In a possible nod to these guys, the core access rooms in Corruption’s Leviathan Seeds have these floating clouds of similar creatures (labeled as “Phazon Cells” in game data). (Well, maybe less a nod and more a flex, really, especially when you consider that these games came out less than 5 years apart.)

Echoes

While I was cleaning up, I found the first of these screenshots I took:

Yeah.

Anyways,

Ingclaw butt.

Absurdly detailed Amorbis butthole. Why?

You ever remember you can bring up a nice, rotateable model in an short idle animation in the Logbook? Cause. You sure can do that in 2 and 3. OK.

Each of Dark Amorbis’ segments is separated by a bright red disc.

Part of the Spider Guardian’s model clips through its head on one side - you can see a little speck of bright red, plus some hairs. Or rather, the outer shell is accidentally concave...?

This only applies in this “swimming”/damage animation - it looks fine when rolling around. Probably just has a vertex off or something. You can’t see it in the fight. It’s fine.

Also, it’s perfectly possible to hit it with gun.

However, only the normal Power Beam shot actually deals damage - other weapons only stun it.

Additionally, while you technically can kill it this way, the normal death cutscene won’t play afterwards. That cutscene is what’s actually responsible for spawning the Spider Ball upgrade, so... No Spider Ball. Kind of defeats the purpose of defeating it, really. You still get a purple credit in Trilogy, at least.

Regular pillbugs have gorgeous spiral undersides.

Echoes’ troopers were less cooperative. They appear to be... big...?

That round thing in her chest (heart?) is visibly beating. Seems like a design flaw, but I guess that’s why this one isn’t a commando.

Speaking of which, these ones aren’t programmed to attack. They’re also quite a bit bigger.

I have invulnerability on when taking photos. Normally, enemy attacks just fizzle out when they land.

However, Quadraxis’ Annihilator shots bounce off of invulnerable entities. This trait is shared with Samus’ weaponry (you’ve probably seen this behavior with doors, or with largely-invulnerable enemies like Quadraxis itself). Maybe its attacks use the same code? Sadly, I can’t seem to get it to aim at the Annihilator door to the temple access.

Sort of an aside, but I feel like we’re missing out on beam deflection puzzles. Bouncing shots off things is fun [citation needed], and it was clearly already possible in the Prime engine... and in Super Metroid, too, weirdly enough. But I guess it’s just never occurred to anyone to use deflection for puzzles? Or maybe that kind of mechanic was deemed too spatially challenging for an all-ages series. It’s never too late though! (I think some SM hacks use it, at least...)

Corruption

Planets, while lovely-looking, aren’t actually spheres. They’re made up of lots of mostly-flat layers...

One time I fucked up the event flags in this game so hard that Unit 217 disappeared. Please use noclip responsibly.

This is where where the umbilical cord of a Leviathan core attaches to the seed. Looks like sliced roast beef.

On Bryyo, in the North and South Jungle Hall rooms (here and here), there is collision information and even some texturing on otherwise inaccessible areas.

Maybe these bits were meant to be accessible at some point...? You can easily jump up to the grates from the bulkhead, you just can’t get up to the bulkhead normally.

The wind turbines (there’s one in the background here) match the Space Pirate design from Echoes.

There’s some weirdass jittery floating things in the Bryyo jungle atmosphere, too. They don’t seem destructible or aggressive. I can’t find anything else about them, though.

Edit: According to @ bearborg, they’re labeled as spores ingame. Probably from the fungi!

Going to upgrade the weird butthole count in this trilogy to “two” with the Korakk Beast here. Sorry.

By the time you fight him, Rundas’ whole body is visibly laced with Phazon hyphae. But there’s even some clustered growths behind his "face”, underneath the PED. I think if you get close enough to him to see these, you probably have other things to worry about... Poor guy though.

The Berserker Lord’s beautiful face, with the distinct horizontal row of eyes confirming that is a heavily modified Urtraghian Space Pirate. Same goes for the Knight, it’s just easier to see with Phazon all over it. I just... really was not sure.

Another “you probably have bigger things to worry about” detail, this spike-filled area in 313′s brain. It’s almost like a sub-brain? Looks uncomfortable.

I tried to get a nice aesthetic shot of the opening cutscene for the Mogenar fight. At first glance, I thought this looked nice. However, upon closer inspection...

Is Samus... hovering?

Yep. The ground is well out of frame in the actual cutscene, so you’d never be able to tell.

If the interest catches me again, I'll do more. If not, then hey, it's not like the posts are going anywhere.

I have no interest in Metroid Prime Remastered or future remastered versions. However, digitalfrontiers and zovis have taken some great screenshots, so if you're interested in that maybe check out their tags. Happy to give a promo if you're doing anything similar!

Thanks again to @ bearborg for various corrections and additions!

If you enjoy these posts, then you might enjoy this thread of what didn’t make it into the games.

I’m personally fond of this scrapped cutscene from Corruption, likely from the prologue sequence:

Sadly a lot of the links are broken or only half-working, including the video version of the above.

Prime

In Magma Pool in Chozo Ruins...

...there’s a fair bit of unnecessary detail underneath the opaque magma. Morph Ball for scale. Maybe the room was initially modeled empty, and then the lava was added later...?

Edit: The room was originally filled with water!

This actually tracks well with the water present in the adjacent Meditation Fountain and nearby Ruined Fountain. Either way, it does seem like it was switched to lava later in development, probably for gameplay reasons.

There are also non-interactable fish present in the water, labeled Chomper Fish. More on those later.

You don’t really need Thermal Visor on for most of the game, but I do recommend flicking it on every now and then, because it’s quite well-considered. For instance, the beetles hiding underground (this is from this halfpipe) show up as warm spots. (The icy beetles in Phendrana do not - I guess those ones are cold-blooded?)

In the room in the Phendrana lab where you encounter the first actual Metroid of the game, there are displays on the wall featuring diagrams of Hunter Metroids.

Specifically, it’s edited versions of the righthand piece of concept artwork. Cute foreshadowing, going with scans in the same lab which mention Hunter Metroids by name but don’t describe them.

In Chamber Access, which you pass through leaving after getting Gravity Suit, there’s a frozen pool in the floor, and...

Inside the pool are dead fish - the same model as the fish in the unused version of Magma Pool. It’s not like they’re invisible from above, but pretty hard to notice or appreciate.

Not something I found, but apparently there’s even one in the lab. Someone must have really liked this fish.

Echoes

Collapsed Tunnel in Temple Grounds.

The main tunnel is... collapsed... so you only ever go through the smaller tunnel to the side.

But the main tunnel is in fact fully modeled, since you can see it through the gaps in the rocks. It’s... there’s really nothing interesting in here, it’s just a tunnel...

I do have to wonder if at some point the blockage was going to be Power Bombable, so you could pass through easily in lategame. Power Bombing that corpse would probably bother people though...

Invisible detail inside Samus’ gun. Not invisible, just used in idle animations! Same goes for the equivalent in Prime 1. I don’t stand still very often, apparently.

Poke.

Corruption

I’ve taken this screenshot at native resolution, while standing on the ground. Can you spot what I’m about to talk about?

(For further effect, imagine the game is also being displayed through a component video cable, which is plugged into a CRT, which is several feet away from you.)

...

...

...If you guessed “those tiny light dots in the distance that look like dirt on the screen” ... you’re right! Computer, enhance.

That’s better. This is another one of Corruption’s fish “““birds”””, the Vaporwing. They’re basically unnoticeable when playing normally - it doesn’t help that they’re basically only found in this room, Arrival Station. I had read about them but had never been able to notice them when playing normally.

Vaporwings kind of look like Rinkas (the ring enemies in Tourian/CU chambers), but unused logbook data states they were designed as pets. I think they’re cute!

Some more fun Skytown tricks. This tram (to West Skytown) appears to extend far into the distance,

But it just extends really far out (stretching as well) and then the textures fade out to transparency. Looks great though!

Also all the pods in the distance are flat images.

There are a couple Reptilicus skeletons in the entranceway to Bryyo Ice, as well as in Bryyo Ice proper (in the appropriately named Imperial Crypt). They’re pretty detailed in a way that looks like the artist used an actual reference, likely some kind of dinosaur.

This prisoner has slightly more bones than the other one (or the dead emperors), so I’ll look at him.

Skull, replete with three eye sockets.

You know, because Reptilicus have three eyes. Something which I definitely noticed. The middle eyesocket is pretty small, so it might be a parietal eye? Unclear.

Otherwise resembles a relatively anthropomorphic dinosaur. (I’d love to be more specific, but like... I’m not qualified.) Those teeth would be great for catching things but too long and pointy for chewing. All chunks diet!

The whole “four arms” thing has somewhat more consideration put into it than you’d expect, with two sets of scapulas and a four-pronged collarbone. The lack of a sternum is consistent with dinosaur anatomy, as is the ribcage extending all the way down to the hipbones.

What I mistook for gonads last time was probably this bone, which can sort of... jut out in a way which looks funny. To mammals.

Detailed spinny plinth for the portal, because... because??? When would any normal person ever look at this. Why isn’t it just a flat texture. Give it up for whoever did this.

Two things about this screenshot:

1. While most enemies are represented by just a single orange dot in the radar in the upper left, Omega Ridley has a fully-animated Ridley-shaped array of dots. It really helps with figuring out what he’s doing during his flying phase.

2. There’s no lock on the doors in the Leviathan seeds. So if you could get up there... then you can just leave! Just walk out! If it sucks, hit da bricks!!!

Leaving and coming back seems to restore the boss’s health though.

This attack is just really silly-looking.

Hunters

I’ve somehow managed to bludgeon Desmume into sort of doing most of what I want, thanks to its layer-hiding features and this deeply crusty Lua script. (No insult to the author - I’m grateful for anything, really.) So, numerous issues aside, now I can get accurate fog, lighting, etc.

If you or anyone you know is versed in DS game hax, please get in touch, since I could use some help making Hunters display correctly in custom aspect ratios. 4:3 is usually fine though.

While obviously I’ve improved the resolution, Desmume also has the option to use “texture smoothing”, i.e. applying a filter to textures. The difference is more noticeable in textures that are up close, where you can really smell the pixels.

Smooth is possibly how the game was intended to look in 2004 (based on renders by the game’s environment artists), and it would match the other Prime games more. However it’s 2022 and I feel that the Quake 1 look is what’s won out aesthetically. It’s not a huge difference either way though.

There was a pretty decent 3rd person mode hack included with the cheat database I downloaded.

Full range of motion. The low-poly models in this game are really charming and surprisingly faithful to the series aesthetic. I’m really glad there weren’t any other DS line Metroid games that tried to do like, a weird chibi thing instead! 😂😂😂

...I’m reluctant to give too much kudos, though, since the lead character artist also made a version with... a very “breasty” breastplate.

Wow! I hate it!

THANKFULLY this model is not present in game data. These turnarounds (and a couple other renders) were uploaded to the artist’s now-defunct personal website.

In the regular first person mode Samus is just a gun, as usual.

A fun performance-saving trick: Hunters tries really hard to only render what the player can see, such as just the small sliver of the area you can see through doorways, openings, etc. (By no means a technique unique to this game.)

It does get weird when the camera is offset from the player though, which limits what I can do quite a bit.

On Alinos, there’s this extremely tempting “Hole”. It has a health restore in it! Surely nothing bad would happen if you went in it! (This is exactly how I approached it on first playthrough.)

The “Hole” contains a massive, labyrinthine pit of hot acid.

For scale, Samus. The hurt noise plays the entire time you navigate this room.

...I kinda just wanted to get a full view of it...

In another one of Hunters’ finer moments, you are forced to take a slow-moving platform across Arcterra’s long and winding Drip Moat, briefly turning the game into a very dull rail shooter.

However, after cheating my way out of the platform’s iron grip... yeah, the lip around the edge of the moat is totally standable.

The morph ball’s rolling animations don’t seem to work, but otherwise it's fine. So... that’s great.

Other M

For better or worse, it won’t happen again.

Mostly for technical reasons - apparently I’m not authorized to remove the HUD, even using Dolphin’s texture replacement features, so it’s not exactly fun as a photo simulator. (Having beaten it, I can say it’s not particularly fun as a regular video game either.)

Edit: It appears it is possible to remove the HUD via Dolphin’s graphics mod feature, proving once again that Dolphin is the most powerful emulator on earth. Still not happening again. Probably.