an outbreak of... cholera . , . . ' . . . .. . ' .. ' ... . -- _ ; .. ` `; . -. . .. .----.__.----,.-------.-----------.----------...---------..-----.---------. | | ___|__ __; . ':__ ;;.| .___. .: ;| .. |.'; __.' | | | |___ | ,| .|::. |__| ;:|/` .;:,.\/'| ;..| | | | | |\/| | ___| | . . |..| . .'__;;''|\','_+-.'`\| ' |- | |.. | | | | | |___ |. '. |. | | | |/;\-:.;__./| . | |__|. | |v3.1| | | | |; . | | | |.:'|`._;.; ' |' ' | | `----' `----'--------' `-----' `----' `---;`---------'`-----`----------' ..;. `,-;_;. ` . _ .. . `` ' . ;, . ` ' . . ` . . ` . , * The METROID Story In the year 2000 of the history of the cosmos, representatives from the many different planets in the galaxy established a congress called the Galactic Federation, and an age of prosperity began. A successful exchange of cultures and civilization resulted, and thousands of inter stellar spaceships ferried back and forth between planets. But space- pirates also appeared to attack the spaceships. The Federation Bureau created the Galactic Federation Police , but the pirates' attacks were powerful and it was not easy to catch them in the vastness of space. The Federation Bureau and the Federation Police called together warriors known for their great courage and sent them to do battle with the pirates. These great warriors were called " space hunters. " They received large rewards when they captured pirates, and made their living as space bounty hunters. It is now year 20X5 of the history of the cosmos, and something terrible has happened. Space pirates have attacked a deep-space research spaceship and seized a capsule containing an unknown life- form that had just been discovered on Planet SR388. This life-form is in a state of suspended animation, but can be reactivated and will multiply when exposed to beta rays for 24 hours. It is suspected that the entire civilization of Planet SR388 was destroyed by some unknown person or thing, and there is a strong possibility that the life-form just discovered was the cause of the planet's destruction. To carelessly let it multiply would be extremely dangerous . The Federation researchers had named it "METROID" and were bringing it back to Earth -- when it was stolen by the space pirates ! If METROID is multiplied by the space pirates and then used as a weapon, the entire galactic civilization will be destroyed. After a desperate search, the Federation Police have at last found the pirates' headquarters, the fortress planet Zebes, and launched a general attack. But the pirates' resistance is strong, and the Police have been unable to take the planet. Meanwhile, in a room hidden deep within the center of the fortress, the preparations for multiplying the METROID are progressing steadily. As a last resort, the Federation Police have decided on this strategy: to send a space hunter to penetrate the center of the fortress and destroy the Mother Brain. The space hunter chosen for this mission is Samus Aran. Samus is the greatest of all the space hunters and has successfully completed numerous missions that everyone thought were absolutely impossible. Samus is a cyborg, who's entire body has been surgically strengthened with robotics, giving Samus superpowers. Even the space pirates fear this space suit, which can absorb any enemy's power . But Samus's true form is shrouded in mystery. The planet Zebes is a natural fortress. Its sides are covered with a special kind of stone, and its interior is a complicated maze. On top of that, the pirates have planted devices and booby traps in the maze, and the pirates' eery followers lie in wait around every corner. Samus has now succeeded in penetrazing Zebes. But time is running out. Will Samus be able to destroy the METROID and save the galaxy ? ____________________________________________________________________________ "The METROID Story" copied from "_METROID Instruction Booklet_" (c) 1987, 89 ___________________________ Nintendo of America Inc. _______________________ All characters, objects, and their names are the (tm) trademark (c) copy- righted property of Nintendo of American Inc. , and all images, names, and objects are used without permission. Unpublished work titled "METROID Game Guide" v-3 Copyright 8-11-2001 (c) Gabriel Petrie "Eyenot" This guide is for private and personal use only. It can only be reproduced electronically, and if placed on a web page or site, may be altered as long as this disclaimer and the above copyright notice appear in full. This guide is not to be used for profitable / promotional purposes; this includes being used by publishers of magazines, guides, books, etc. or being incorporated into magazines, etc. in ANY way. This guide was created and is owned by me, Gabriel Petrie _eyenot@cyberspace.org_ _eyenot@lunarsurf.com_ All copyrights and trademarks are acknowledged that are not specifically mentioned in this guide. Please give credit where it is due. The above disclaimer was copied from Kao Megura FAQ Disclaimer style Eyenot's Email: gabriel@arq.net eyenot@lunarsurf.com eyenot@cyberspace.org Please keep this guide available only at GameFAQs.com. They keep the same site name and the same URLs over time, and nobody else seems willing to do that. Nobody else but GameFAQs.com has permission to distribute this document electronically. In the past I've been willing to give permission, but please don't ask unless you are a special interest. For example someone was circulating a petition on the net to keep the next Metroid game a 2d shooter instead of a proposed first-person model. At their site they wanted a lot of Metroid information, including my FAQ, so I agreed. If it's not something cool like that, then please don't ask. If you need a cool FAQ for your new FAQS page or if you're a commercialist capitalist imperialist dog who needs more searchable material to drag people into their advertisement suck zone, then also please do not freaking ask for my permission. Let me just reiterate; I only want GameFAQs to host copies of my FAQs. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS: _________________________ _Section_ ______Title______ top .... Title Screen ........ .... Story of the Game ... above .... Legal Information ... toc .... X-- You Are Here .... 01:01 .... About the Game ...... 01:02 .... About the World ..... 02:00 .... The Cartridge ....... 02:01 .... The Control Pad ..... 03:00 .... Vital Displays ...... 03:01 .... The Ten Items ....... 03:02 .... Enemy Characters .... 04:00 .... Zebes Outline ....... warn .... Information Warning . 04:01 .... Master Map .......... 04:02 .... Brinster Map ........ 04:03 .... Norfair Map ......... 04:04 .... Hideout I Map ....... 04:05 .... Hideout II Map ...... 04:06 .... Tourian Map ......... 04:20 .... What Hidden Map? .... 05:00 .... Tiny Walkthrough .... gloss .... Glossary? thx .... Special Thanks ...... URLs .... Other Site URLs ..... ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 01:01 ABOUT THE GAME _________________________ METROID is a very advanced game compared to many other cartridge games that were out for the Nintendo Entertainment System at the time. In METROID, there is full, smooth scrolling in four directions -- right, left, up, and down. There is also retractable scrolling, meaning that you can move back along a section of the game that you have already passed. By comparison, Super Mario Brothers features full, smooth scrolling in one direction only, to the right of the screen, and the scrolling is not retractable. However, also by comparison, the Metroid world scrolls only in one dimension at a time, either vertically or horizontally. There is no diagonal scrolling or scrolling in both dimensions available in one corridor as there is in Super Mario Brothers 3. The play action is from a flat side-view perspective. The character maintains the center third-squared portion of the screen, and scrolling commences when the character passes this boundary in any direction, unless there is no region to scroll to. The action type is platform-jumper, and the gravity is approximately one screen per second. By comparison, Donkey Kong gravity is approximately one screen every six seconds. The gravity does not change throughout the entire flat-projected region. Each region is divided into one of two bound types. The first type is a scrolling region left-and-right, and the other is a scrolling region up-and-down. ~Passing through almost every door forces scrolling from the one bound type to the other, with the exception being doors into the Chozo Vaults and Ridley's room forcing and holding a horizontal scroll. Each region contains the primary obstacles, which are variously shaped and placed platforms, and the secondary obstacles which are far less numerous and are mobile opponents. Triary obstacles include doorways which require blasting to open and are sometimes keyed to particular blasting items, and pools of water, lava, and acid which deplete the character's life energy. The character, Samus Aran, defeats opponents by firing a missile weapon in a straight line along one of the four cardinal directions; right, left, up, or down. The range of the weapon can be increased from about six spaces away, to the edge of the screen, by collecting an item. Other items add special effects to the weapon including a wave-form pattern about three spaces wide, and the ability to freeze opponents with a shot. The regional map is composed of spaces or "bricks", with each terrain building block and each sprite in the game occupying a space within a square or rectangular area of these spaces. The character occupies an area one space wide by two spaces tall. Most opponent types occupy an area of only one space, while some of the stronger opponents occupy areas of three spaces or more. Passage from one major section of the entire regional map to another requires acquiring abilities implemented through collecting items that increase the character's jumping height, energy level, and ability to sustain more prolonged contact with opponents, as well as the power to destroy Boss opponents that guard the keys to the final regional zone. The game is timed, with the timer offsetting some functions of the areas near to the end of the game, and changing the ending of the game altogether as well as some of the character's attributes in consecutive missions. Game progress is saved using a password retrieval system. Passwords can be retrieved at the end of a character's life, and can be entered just after the title screen of the game for re-entry to the regional zone last occupied by the character, implementing the same items so far accumulated by the character, and setting the timer to the time when death occured. There is also a button sequence that can be used to get the current password at any time. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 01:02 ABOUT THE WORLD _________________________ The surface world of Zebes is largely unknown at the time of Samus's first contact with the planet, though two major subsurface regions, Brinstar and Norfair, are travelled extensively in order to pass to the three secondary regions which are the two Bosses' hideouts and the final domain: Tourian. The subterranian world of Brinstar is a labyrinth of inpenetrable, raw rock surfaces that have given way to some alien refining, and many smooth platforms can be found among the caverns. Some things that look like lichens, shrubs, and other weak plantlike life forms have made their slow way here. Some passages are lined entirely in shiny metals and widgets, and others are adorned only with an occasional chiseled stone cap atop smoothed rock pillars. The next world, deeper still below the planet's surface, is the seething vulcan world of Norfair, a sizzling place where life is much less fair than within Brinstar's cooled confines. Hot lava pools and lava beasts that dwell just underneath their surfaces are primary concerns while traveling Norfair. Aside the raw, virgin vulcan flesh of Norfair there lay great masses of biomineral walls and shafts that grow among and penetrate the hot crevasses of the planet's inner folds. And then there are the Bosses' domains, which are mainly composed of metallic alloys held in place by masonry cut from the surrouding bedrock. Here there grow greener, more lush organisms, and the natural opponents, much stronger than their fellows out in the uncontrolled climates, are stronger, and among their numbers are legions of robotic drones that may do you great damage. Scattered throughout the world are energy-field-bubble doorways of varying durability, that divide the various regions and hide behind them secretly placed items that help you to defeat the creatures who guard them. Not all the world of Zebes that appears to be unreachable, is. There are countless secret paths that you can take to get past walls several screens thick and high, that can lead you to shortcuts and items that will hopefully make defeating the game a breeze. Somewhere at the beginning of it all is the monster in charge of it all: Mother Brain. And the METROIDS, too. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 01:03 ABOUT THIS GUIDE _________________________ I wrote this guide as a tool for people who don't have either the booklet titled "_The Official Nintendo Player's Guide_" (which I have a copy of, first edition,) or the booklet titled "_Metroid Instruction_" (which I also have a copy of, second 'adventure series' edition.) Without these two books the game can take awhile to dawn on the player. I hope to reproduce as much information from these two books as possible, without requiring any graphic or other files besides this one text file. There are already at least one or two "Walkthroughs" for this game, which go into detail about a couple of different paths you can take through the game to complete it in as little time as possible. So, I don't intend to provide a complete walkthrough here. The biggest feature of this guide are the ASCII maps which I have so far seen nothing like from other players, and the illustrations of the Ten Items and the various enemy monsters. The illustrations are just for fun, something I like to do. They can be a little help though. There is also a Game Genie guide out there and a Boss Guide, too, so that takes care of providing Game Genie codes and detailing other ways or other orders in fighting the Bosses. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 02:00 THE CARTRIDGE _________________________ The Nintendo Entertainment System ROM cartridge is in some ways fragile and in other ways is sturdy. If you take care of it properly, you will get a long lifetime of plays out of it. Keep the cartridge clean using a good cleaning solution and implements that do not violate the warning on the cartridge concerning which solutions are safe to use. The METROID ROM cartridge does not contain a battery backup, so after you turn off the power or reset the control deck, all current variables will be lost. There is a password system built into the game to reproduce progress so that you can get through the game in more than one sitting. Two major versions of the METROID ROM were released, the first one being part of Nintendo's Adventure Series. This first cartridge was the uniform grey color plastic, with a label and box featuring a blown-up and drawn-on piece of screen shot from the game itself. I am unsure as to what the instruction booklet looked like, though I suspect it was uniform with other Nintendo-made games at the time, featuring a black color booklet with the same screen shot from the game and icons noting the major features of the game. The METROID title written on the box, the cartridge, and probably the booklet looked like the same font that Super Mario Brothers and Tennis used. The second major release of METROID was in a bright yellow box and label, with a drawing of Samus Aran centered. The cartridge was still the uniform grey color plastic, and the screen shot had been removed. This cartridge may or may not have been advertised as an "adventure series" game. The instruction booklet was also bright yellow, and the contents were unchanged from the original instruction booklet. The METROID title written on the box, the cartridge, and the book was a stylized stencil-like font in italics and all capitals, the M being slightly larger than the other characters. I am almost positive that there are no play differences between the two versions of the game. UPDATE: E-MAIL FROM PC PROGRAMMER CLEARS UP DIFFERENCES DATE: Sat, 11 Aug 2001 17:46:40 UCT Curtis "Quasius" Himel is a PC programmer working on a project called "MetroidC", and he being well acquainted with the workings of the game cleared up my musings on differences between the two versions, and corrected me on several things I had wrong about the scrolling doors and the maps. Before paragraphs that depend on his knowledge, there will be a tilde-mark. ~Between the original release and the yellow-jacket release there is one major difference in the code. The placement of one of the Ice-Beams is changed and the code is different by 1 byte. That is all, and there is no difference in difficulties, AI, or any game play. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 02:01 THE CONTROL PAD _________________________ This is the Nintendo Entertainment System Control Pad. The control pad is composed of a cross- .-----------------------------. shaped piece that controls Directional | _ ::===========:: | functions such as movement and aim; | _| |_ ::-----------:: | the two buttons Select and Start that |[_ o _]::___________:: | mainly affect game options; | |_| ::[SEL] [STA]::(B)(A) | and the A and B buttons that control | ::___________:: | most interactions such as fire and run. `-----------------------------' _ _| |_ Holding left or right on the directional pad makes samus run. [_ o _] Holding up aims the beam weapon up, |_| pressing down rolls Samus into a ball once you have Maru Mari. You cannot aim in a downward direction or in a diagonal direction. [Select] Pressing this button switches the weapon between beam and missile. [Start] Pressing this button pauses the game action and silences the music. (B) Pressing this button shoots the weapon (or sets a bomb curled up.) (A) Pressing this button makes Samus jump, upwards. If you hold towards one direction then press the jump button, you will perform a spinjump. If you have Screw Attack enabled, you can destroy most enemies with a single hit of your spinjump. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 03:00 VITAL DISPLAYS _________________________ The vital displays appear in the upper-left corner of the screen at all times. These symbols and numbers actually represent Samus's life energy level and number of missiles available to fire. When you first begin the game, you will see only a display for the amount of energy you have. This [][][][] the display looks number will decrease if you get hit EN..93 sort of like this by a damaging obstacle, an +% 010 but better. opponent's body or fire, or if you fall into one of the hazards such as lava. When this number hits below zero, you die. More on that later. At first, the energy number (next to the letters EN) can only go up to .-+=----+-. an energy box 99, but later on you will collect (^ |^ E |^^) looks sort of Energy Boxes that allow you to carry `,|,---,|,' like this but up to 100 points more per each box. ==`='===`='== much smaller. If you've every played ZELDA then you could say that these boxes are heart containers, sort of. A box that has full energy points is filled with blue, and a box that you have drained the energy from to fill your primary level with is a hollow, lonely white square. You can collect small red balls that fill your energy level back up and even fill up emptied boxes, more on that later. As you progress through the game, you will also encounter Missile weapons that allow Samus to fire Missile Rockets as well as the usual beam weapon. Missile Rockets carry a much more damaging punch that the beam weapons do, and they will also .:|:. a missile box blast open special doorways that .+. looks sort of the beam weapon cannot. At first, | .:|:. | like this but you will not be able to carry these |"*:|:*"| much smaller. missiles around, but when you collect a missile box you will be able to increase the number of missiles you can carry from 0 to as high as 255 missiles. Pressing the Select button switches your weapon between the Beam or the Missiles. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 03:01 THE TEN ITEMS _________________________ The five sounds deafen the ear , The five colors blind the eye . - Lao Tsu The Ten Items, however, will not strike you deaf or blind. They will actually aid you in your mission. Samus will have a much better chance of annihilating the METROID and Mother Brain, not to mention getting through Zebes, if the Ten Items are collected along the way. " Rooms containing Power Items are hidden somewhere in the fortress Zebes. Find the rooms and hit the crystall ball held by the statue, to make a Power Item appear. " - METROID Instruction Booklet The 10 Items are numbered in the order that I find is fastest and easiest to retrieve them in. Maru Mari is first -- it's right next to where you start. Energy and Missile Boxes are scattered everywhere, and so are not numbered. They are represented on the maps as "M" or "E". .|. The Missile Box will add 5 .----. The Energy Box will add one |_:|:_| more Missile Rockets to the ( ) E |) Energy Box to Samus's power ``"'' number Samus can carry. _|====|_ meter, adding 100 energy. _ ___ /.= `\ 1 Maru Mari allows Samus //'_ `\ 3 The Bombs blast open any (:" ,) to roll up into a ball |` (@) .| obstacle that is not totally \` _,// for narrow passages. [___=__|] solid. Drop when rolled up. _ .-._ .-. /'.. `\ 2 The Long Beam lengthens /; \ / 6 Varia raises Samus's power ( ||__ ) the range of the beams to ("' )( ) of resistance, cutting in \_`^^_/ the edge of the screen. \.ÿ/_ \ half all damage taken. _ `-'_ÿ`-' /', `\ 4 The blue Ice Beam lets /:*:::\ 8 The yellow Wave Beam is ( ' ) Samus freeze the enemies. (:*:::::) the strongest beam, and \. _ ./ Also cancels Wave Beam. \.:::;/ cancels the Ice Beam. ,---, ÿ_ , | /^^7 5 The High Jump Boots give /::/(.\ 7 The lightning-flashing _;-|_7' Samus the power to jump (:(( )).) Screw Attack damages the [___;_| 150% as high as before. \:)/../ enemy during a spinjump. ' ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 03:02 ENEMY CHARACTERS _________________________ These are just a few of the enemy characters, not all of them by any means. The characters below comprise probably HALF of the total number of enemies in the game. However, most enemies are exactly like other enemies, so once you get these ones down you've pretty much got it. -__,,__- Mellow: These creatures can pass through walls. They like to `-=;\/;=-' chase after Samus in groups. `' \_|_/ Zoomer: These are crawling creatures that stick to most of the `(`.')' platforms in Zebes, clinging to the floors, walls, and ceilings. ^`^'^ They come in yellow and red variety, red being tougher. , (x) , Skree: Skree will hang upside down from the ceiling, waiting for |^\V/^| you to get about five spaces away. Then they will drop down and |`,",'| try to drill into Samus. If they hit the ground, they will stick \| |/ into it and explode dangerously. Blue ones are tougher. |^\ .. /^| Rio: Rio will also stick to the ceiling, waiting for Samus to get `-`(`')'-' close. Then it will fly down towards Samus, hovering along the (")`'(") ground until Samus jumps, then it will hit the ceiling again. _.---._ Ripper: The Ripper will fly back and forth, turning when it hits +'7,\_|_;' a wall. Only bombs or missiles will destroy them. _.-'-'"._ Waver: This difficult to draw creature flies back and forth in a -._ _ .-' room in a wavelike pattern, turning when it hits a wall. It will ' '" fly higher or lower, trying to collide with Samus. |\../(, Zeb: I know you can't tell by the illustration, but these are the ) );--' hard-shelled bugs that fly at Samus with their horns forward. (/'|-"| They come in red or yellow form, red being the tougher one. __.._.-. Gamet: This is another flying bug with super-hard shells. These (_ |_.' ones have just one horn, and they try to stick Samus with it. __;,/{ Between the red and the purple ones, the red ones are tougher. `-'`-'` These, like Zeb, fly out of airholes and vents. _, ___. Zebbo: Zebbo actually looks like a three-winged wasp, not like a :')(._Z-. gryphon. The blue ones take only one blast to kill, but those .\'._\,-' yellow ones take two. These also fly up out of air vents. `)-._%-=( Geega: Geega looks more like a deranged pygmy unicorn-dog than [`^;7.`\(' this picture here. It is tough, the brown ones are the stronger `"'`;-=;' member of the species, and it flies up out of airholes and vents. (o) Zeela: Zeela works alot like the Zoomers, crawling around only \(o)|_/ against a surface. They are a little tougher than Zoomers, /_,-,_\ though. Just blast away if you need something from them. _\-|;/_ Nova: This thing looks like somebody's hair caught on fire and is < _._ > running around the surface of the planet. It also works like the `` '' Zoomers, and is about the same strength. _,--,_ Squeept: This creature does nothing but pop in and out of lava =(.--.)= constantly. Only a missile will destroy the purple kind, the <`'> others are invincible. You can freeze these for platforms. .-, ,-. Geruta: This monster attacks from the ceiling and is quick and .-><_><-. powerful. You should use a tactic like fighting Rio, but remember (/(>-<)\) Geruta is faster and more powerful than Rio. .<->. Holtz: Holtz also attacks from the ceiling, and has greater \->'^`<-/ defensive power than Rio or Geruta. Try using a missile instead `-`-'-' of attacking it with your regular beam. _ Side-Hopper: This biomechanical being is one of the tougher .(_). monsters on Zebes. You can either shoot it many times or else .-`>_<'-. just once with a missile. It will bounce from the floor, from |, ` ' ,| the ceiling, and from the walls. _._ Multiviola: These are balls of purple or yellow fire that spin (( _) fast, bouncing off all surfaces. They are also tough, so use a `~ missile if you can. You will usually see many at once. _ Rinka: This is a ring of fire that mother brain breaths through (O) the walls of Tourian. Only three will appear at any time. _.-._ Zeebetite: These are living walls containing bio-energy for the |;o.| mother brain, and you will find them in the last chamber of |;o.| Tourian. You must shoot them with over ten missiles before they ~-.-~ have a chance to regenerate. Once destroyed, they are gone. LIFE FORM DISCOVERED ON PLANET SR388 .- -- -. .'_ ^()/-^`. (._ ^()()-^_.) :')`=,__,='(`; `' `' ~~ `' `' You have direct orders from the galactic federation to destroy these creatures on sight. Leaving even a single Mertido not destroyed could mean the obliteration of the entire galaxy and all life forms. The best way to take them out is to fire with an ice beam as soon as you see one, freeze it, and fire five missiles on it. If one gets on your, it will suck energy right out of your shell. If you activate the Maru Mari and lay bombs, it will let go of you and you will have your chance. Do not attempt to fire on this creature, unless it is frozen or else it will only absorb your attack and use its energies. It looks like a jelly mold and aagghh it sucky on your head ouch! ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 04:00 ZEBES OUTLINE _________________________ _____________________________ _ __________________________ |_ ()B()__________________() | | |______ | ___| |_____________________ | | | ()_____ | | Here There Be METROID | | | | | Brinstar (Rocky Zone) | | ____ | | |___| |______ | | (__ ) Tourian | | ()_() ()_____ _.-'-'"._ | | (_( (Central Base) | | | | | -._ _ .-' | | () | | | | |______ ' '" | |___________________________| | | |_()_____ | __________________________| | _____________ ___________| |_M__S______() ()_________()_| _____________| |__________ | |__ | | |_() | | Norfair (Fire Zone) | ____| |___________________ |______________ ___________| | Mini-Boss Hideout I | _____________| |__________ | | | Mini-Boss Hideout II | |______Kraid_______________| | | |______Ridley_______________| S = Start , M = Maru Mari , B = Bridge " This shows you what the inside of the fortress planet looks like. The Mini-Bosses have their hideouts in Brinstar and Norfair. Find and zap two Mini-Bosses to build the bridge from the corridor that leads into Tourian and get to the Central base containing Mother Brain. Three kinds of gates will block your way. The blue ones open with one blast from your beam; it takes 5 missile blasts to open the red ones and 10 missile blasts to open the other ones. " - METROID Instruction Booklet ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ WARNING !! WARNING !! _________________________ The best thing about a game like METROID is that until you've mastered the map yourself, you might find yourself adventuring over and over, taking hours just to get through one simple spot. It might happen ! That's what made METROID such a Mystical game for me, anyways. The fact that it seemed impassable. Not an impossible game, not by far, since I not only knew that many people had beaten it but also that a close friend or two had mastered the game into a 50-minute spree. METROID seemed impassable, to me, since I relied on no maps to gauge my location or destination, and since so many secret passages are so well hidden. My progress through the game occured mostly at random. If you read any further into this guide, you will encounter information vital to the game's completion. You could discover these secrets, tricks, and strategies on your own, but it will take alot of time. Something strange about the last couple of years is that people seem unwilling to devote large amounts of time to simple hobbies. Notice how easy Super Metroid is compared to METROID ? I beat that game about as easy as snapping my fingers. METROID, however, remains a challenge. See, you'll also encounter my opinions. So read forward at your own risk ! Don't say I didn't warn you. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 04:01 MASTER MAP _________________________ _________________ _ _______________ |^| |v:b:___________: | | |_|6*_________:_|___________________ | | |V| | | | :_______|_|___:_:______M|_|_|E____: | | | | | _________| | | | _________| | | | | | |_|2*_____: | | | |3*_______: | | | | | | |_| |_________________________________| | | | | |_____________| :_: :_________:_:_____:_:____E________:_| | | |_@___________* | | | | | |_____| |_____________|_| | | | | | | | |_|4*___:_| :_|_|M_M__:_| | | | | | | |_________|_|_____|_| |_|M_M_M__: | | |_______________| | | |_:__________M______:v|_:_|4*_|_|_: | |_:&____:_________*_| | |_|_________________|V|___________| | | | | :___|_|__M______:_:___________: | ___________________| | |_:______M|_|M_M__|_|___________:_| |_|1_S____:_:___|E|_:_| ___|7*___:_|_____________________| | | | _______ | :_______:_:___:_:_____|_|5*_____: | | | | :___: | |_:_______:_:_________|_|_____:_| | | | |_| :___: | | |_____________________|E____:_| | | | :v|_:___: | |_:_____:_:_____:_:___|______M__|_| | _________|_|V|_____| | |_| | |8*___:_| | :_________:_| | :____M|_|_: *__M__:_| |_| |_:__M_M|_|___|_:v| | :_________: *_|_|E| _________|__M______:_|_|V|_________ | | _____| |_________| :___:E*___________:_:_:_:_______: | | | | :___: *_______: | |___| |_________________________| | | | | |___| |___|M__: | :___:_:_______: :____M|_________: | | |___|_:___:_:_: |___| | | ___________| |_______________| | |_:_:_*__M______:_:_: | | |_|E*B:_______:_:_______________: | |_:_________:_:_:_| |_:__________M____________________:_| |B*_:___:_|_| |_| E Legend: M = Missile Box E = Energy Box vV = Elevator # = Item (See 03:01, Above) _| = Walls / Passages : = Blue Door * = Red Door @ = Yellow Door B = Boss (Either) b = Monument Bridge & = Mother Brain ^ = The Way Out ?!?! ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 04:02 BRINSTAR MAP _________________________ .-A B C _________________ _ _______________ ./ ./ |v:b:___________: | | |_|6*_________:_|___________________ V | | | :_______|_|___:_:______M|_|_|E____: | D \_Tourian_ | | | | _________| |./ _________| | | | b = Monument Bridge |3________: | |_|2*_____: | | | | | | |_| |_________________________________| | M = Missile Box 2 | :_: :_________:_:_____:_:____E________:_| E = Energy Box 3 | | | | | |_____| | . |_| 1 = Maru Mari | | | | F-. |_|4*___:_| \ 2 = Long Beam | | | |_________|_|_____|_| E 3 = Bomb | | |_:__________M______:v| 4 = Ice Beam | | |_| V 6 = Varia | | \_Norfair_ ___________________| | |_|1_S____:_:___|E|_:_| |_| = Room with "Solid" Walls | | |_| :_: = Room with Blue Doors | | *_* = Room with Red Doors | |_ @_@ = Room with Yellow Doors | :v| v = Elevator |_|V \_Kraid's_Lair_ A : the road to tourian is out and you cannot build it without first destroying the two mini-bosses who are Kraid and Ridley. when you destroy the mini-boss, shooting his statue will raise it up. B : the long horizon corridor with Zeb and Waver requires the bombs to get through. in the small green-brick corridor with the wavers and lava, shooting up lets you through to the room above. you will need to either lure a waver through the small refreshing hole, or else you will need the high jump boots, to get the varia beyond the door. C : in the long corridor after the missile, you will need to shoot into the ceiling to find your way through the walls. use the bombs to propel Samus up and get through the third brick up in the small room with Rio. D : looking up it seems like you will need to use the Ice Beam on those Rippers to get to the top. if you go through from the Gold Column from the left, you won't have to. E : bomb through the floor of the righter chamber containing the wavers and lava here, and you will find the column that leads to the Ice Beam. F : if you manage to get yourself into this bad room, you will need to use your jumping skills and your timing applied to the destructible blocks on the sides of the room. this is a trap, avoid it completely. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 04:03 NORFAIR MAP _________________________ _ |_| = Room with "Solid" Walls |_|___________ :_: = Room with Blue Doors _Brinstar_ | :_|_|M_M__:_| *_* = Room with Red Doors \ | |_|M_M_M__: | @_@ = Room with Yellow Doors V|_:_|4*_|_|_: | v = Elevator _________________|v|___________| | | :___|_|__M______:_:___________: | A |_:______M|_|M_M__|_|___________:_| ./ M = Missile Box 12 ___|7*___:_|_____________________| | E = Energy Box 1 | :_______:_:___:_:_____|_|5*_____: | 4 = Ice Beam . |_:_______:_:_________|_|_____:_| | | 5 = High Jump / | |_____________________|E____:_| | | 7 = Screw Attack B |_:_____:_:_____:_:___|______M__|_| | 8 = Wave Beam |_| .| |8*___:_| | :_________:_| |_| / |_:__M_M|_|. |_:v| C \ V D \_Hide_Out_II_ A : bomb through the purple floor of this column to reach the purple column. go through the first door down on the left for the high jump, and then bomb through the pipe beneath the statue to get to the underworld of norfair. B : fall into the lava at the bottom of the green bubble column and bomb the floor underneath it to reach the column below it. C : after you pass through the eyeball chamber with the big smashed bricks, enter the green bubble corridor and bomb the floor near the right door. D : after the second eyeball chamber, the one with the narrow lava traps, enter the green bubble corridor with the firebreathing seahorse and bomb the leftmost part of the floor. drop down through the passage, down into and through the lava, and into the small green bubble column. go through the door on the left and along the metal corridor to the statue that holds the wave beam. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 04:04 HIDEOUT I MAP _________________________ _______ _Brinstar_ | :___: | M = Missile Box 4 \ | :___: | E = Energy Box 2 ! A -. V|_:___: | B = Kraid ___________|v|_____| | | :____M|_|_: *__M__:_| | :_________: *_|_|E| .-D . | | _____| |_________ / | | | :___: *_______: | B | | | |___| |___|M__: | | |___|_:___:_:_: |___| | |_:_:_*__M______:_:_: | | |_:_________:_:_:_| | . .|B*_:___:_|. / / E \ C F E A : bomb through the purple brick wall at the second brick up B : in this grey brick passage with shrubs, when you see the yellow lava at the bottom of the screen, fall through it. keep to the right. C : this chamber is guarded by the narrow trap in the short column right of the missiles that are by the red door. there is nothing in here useful, you can avoid this corridor completely ? D : the third red door down the first white-stone coulmn is inacessible with normal jumping. you will need either the high-jump boots or the ice beam to get on the ledge near it. fall from the white bricks in the center of the column and hold right. you will land on a ledge beneath the red door and from here, either use a high jump to get to the ledge above, or else freeze the floating red ripper with ice beam and use it as a platform. E : in the column before you enter Kraid's room, there is a geega. there is also a hole through the ceiling. this hole is linked with the closed- off chambers above. they are closed-off for a reason, there is nothing useful up there. you can avoid this corridor completely ? F : Kraid is tough to defeat. he will toss many small boomerangs that bounce and wave at you, and are hard to get around. you must look for a pattern in these boomerangs if you want to get close to kraid. kraid himself is coated with layer of spikes that grow out of his body in your direction. after a little while they will shoot out for you and they do damage you. you must either get to his side that is exposed without spikes and fire missiles, or else find a spot on his body that he has fired his spikes from and shoot for that weak spot. you might use only missiles on kraid, and it will take around 25 direct hits to kill him. you might miss, so you should ready yourself with more missiles than just 25. if you can collect all the missile boxes in his hideout, you will surely have over twenty. along the way to this hideout you most likely gathered at least two or three other missile boxes, so you can expect to have around 40 missiles when you face Kraid. go into this fight with your energy and missiles full, and if you need to refill, there is a column with Geega in it just outside of Kraid's room. since Geega will refresh itself, you can kill it many times until you are full. if you stop the fight with Kraid to leave the room, he might be regenerated when you return. of course, you can use another attack besides missiles but it will take longer. UPDATE: E-MAIL FROM GUIDE READER UNCOVERS HIDDEN ENERGY BOX DATE: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 22:30:40 UCT "Hi. I was reading your excellent NES Metroid guide on gamefaqs and couldn't help noticing you didn't have one energy box location written... I was fighting Kraid today, and in his lair if you fall into the narror pit of lava to the right, there is an energy tank if you shoot the right wall." - Douglas 'Karoz' Wilson Heck yeah there is! I played to verify it, and sure enough there was the box. The Energy Box in Kraid's room is hidden in the right wall, four bricks below the door. This is a precarious perch; you have to stand in the lava, jump, and fire at the first blue block above the grey-metal blocks, to find the Energy Box. Then, get up on Kraid's platform, roll into a ball, and hold right so you fall off the platform and fly smack into the Energy Box. You could try to get this after you kill Kraid, or, you could use it in the middle of the fight to completely re-energize all of your suit's damage points. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 04:05 HIDEOUT II MAP _________________________ B A \. \. ___________ V M = Missile Box 3 _________|__M______:_|_|v|_________ E = Energy Box 2 | :___:E*___________:_:_:_:_______: | B = Ridley | |___| |_________________________| | | :___:_:_______: :____M|_________: | | | ___________| |_______________| | C | |_|E*B:_______:_:_______________: | ./ |_:__________M____________________:_| |_| |_| A : the first missile box is easy to get, fire through the ceiling of the second small green corridor to the left after the elevator. B : the room containing the energy box has a hole in the floor. If you fall through you can get back up through the corridor on the left. C : you might want the missiles from the bottommost horizon chamber which are very easy to get. go far to the left of the second horizon chamber from the bottom of the rightmost column and you will find Ridley. after you destroy Ridley, go through the door on the left go get an energy Box from the wall. Another way to get to Ridley is through the column chamber in the center of the map. You can bomb the floor in the upper room of this chamber and fall down to Ridley's level. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 04:06 TOURIAN _________________________ _Brinstar_ / |^| V | | |v| @ = Yellow Door , 10 Missile Shots | | | | * = Red Door , 5 Missile Shots | | | | & = The Mother Brain , Many Many Missile Shots | | | | ^ = The Way Out ?!?! | | | |_____________ | | |_@___________* | As soon as you enter Tourian, you will be faced | | | | with the terrible Metroid menace. The ONLY way | | | | you should attempt to beat these things is by | |_______________| | freezing them with Ice Beam and shooting them |_:&____:_________*_| with 5 missiles. If you don't freeze them, they will just absorb the blast. If they latch onto Samus or absorb any weapon energy, it will just refresh their energy and you will have to freeze and fire again. If you try to outrun them, you'll definitely fail, I tried it many times. The one good thing about Metroids is that they leave behind energy and missiles that you can use for your benefit. You will need missiles when you enter Mother Brain's chambers. The Zebetites in your way will take more than ten, sometimes fifteen, missile shots to destroy. And if you stop firing on them for even a short period of time, they will refresh themselves. Once you destroy them, however, they are history. This means you might have to go back out and destroy more Metroid in order to get your missile supply back up. As far as Mother Brain, she is not so difficult but the Rinky fire rings she breaths through the walls are. They will head right for your location when they appear, and you will have to move out of the way or else get hit. There can only be three Rinkas on the screen at once, so you should freeze all three of them and then stand on the opening left by the Zebetite nearest the brain and fire into the glass enclosure. If the Rinkas star to thaw, freeze them again. They will survive through two freezes before they die and three fresh ones appear. If you want to try just killing the Rinka and clearing them out of your way, you are crazy but go ahead and use your spin attack to wipe them out. Just be careful of both the lava and the nearby rotating guns that will also work against your energy level. You will know the Brain is destroyed when you see it start to shake. As far as whether or not the Mother Brain will regenerate itself if you leave to fill up your energy and missiles on the Metroids, I don't know. I haven't had to try it. :) ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 04:20 WHAT HIDDEN MAP? _________________________ Sometimes referred to as "The Secret World" or "Secret Levels", there are some places in Metroid that are not necessary elements of the game and appear to many people to be a hidden world of their own. This is not entirely the best description of the nature of these hidden areas. See the map itself is just a series of "bytes", or six-bit chunks of data. Each of these chunks gives the information about a particular room. The scrolling of a column chamber is up-and-down. It cannot scroll left-and-right at all, and if the player tries to go through to the right or left (which is usually impossible) they will just wrap around from the one side of the screen to the other infinitely. The scrolling of a horizon chamber is left-and-right, and cannot go up-and-down at all. If the player tries go through the floor or the ceiling, they will hit a bar of invisible "lava". The section at the very bottom of the screen in a left-and-right scrolling chamber is a special location that sucks Samus's energy, which you know if you have ever stood inside some lava. But it's not the graphics of the lava itself that create the effect of sapping your energy, it's actually that location at the bottom of the screen that does it. ~And, at all screens that contain lava for you to stand in, there is a row of blocks running all the way along the top of the screen. These keep you from falling through the ceiling. And, normally, in a column chambers, there are blocks on the right and left walls to keep you from walking around in a loop through the sides of the screen. Now, I mentioned that room data. This data contains the actual location of the blocks and enemies located in each room of the game. Not every single block is represented in every room by its own character, but clumps of blocks (and enemies) are represented by one character and the rest of the blocks form around those based on the makeup of the clumps and enemies found at another location in the program. If you ever notice a repetition of large groups of blocks on the game (which would be hard to perceive, because the programmers did well to preserve continuity without repetition,) then you will understand what I mean about clumps of blocks. All those repeating clumps are only signified by one foundation block, and the rest are assumed to fit in around that. Each room also has a set number of available sprites; sprites can serve as the place-holders for the foundation blocks of either clumps of blocks or for enemies. The sprites are also ordained from 0 to something like that 10th Sprite. ~Two or more overlapping clumps completely overwrite the blocks surrounding each other from least sprite to highest. ~When you pass through a door in a chamber, into another chamber, this will almost always switch the type of processing for the rooms you go into from column to horizon, or from horizon to column. If you are in a column and go through a door, you will usually end up in a horizon chamber. And if you are in a horizon and go through a door, you will usually end up in a column chamber. That's just the way the doors work. The exception are doors that force a horizontal scroll, and these are located at the entrances to Chozo Vaults and Ridley's room. There is nothing in any room's information that says whether or not the room is actually part of a column or horizon chamber, it's just data about the placement of clumps of blocks and enemies and such, which are held in place by the sprites, of which there are a set number in any room. So. Let's say you use some trick to pass through a floor! There are some Game Genie codes that will allow you to do this, and there is also the door-wall trick. Let's say you use this trick in a horizon chamber, or right-and-left scrolling room. What will happen is you will first hit a bar of stuff that saps your energy like the lava does. Then your character will hit the ceiling ! You can keep working through the floor at this point, and eventually you will wrap around bottom-to-top and fall through the ceiling. Let's say you use this trick in a column chamber, or up-and-down scrolling room. You will probably work your way through a thick screenfull of nothing but solid bricks. Then, chances are you will pop through the ceiling of a room. It could be any room, and since there are more side-to-side scrolling sections of the game than there are up-and-down sections, it's most likely you will fall into a room that is designed for side-to-side scrolling. Thing is, you fell into this room from a vertical chamber, so the last instruction to the game for scrolling was for column scrolling, up and down! So the game thinks you are still in a column chamber, even though it is reading in information originally intended for a horizon chamber's room. Chances are, there won't be bricks on the sides of the screen keeping you from walking straight through one edge of the screen and walking around out of the other. If you encounter a doorway in any of these odd rooms, the glitching will not end. In fact it might just get worse. So, all the secret world is, is the game processing sections of itself not meant to be rooms, doing it as if they ARE rooms. And that's all. Because of all this, I won't be going into great detail about the hidden rooms themselves. They don't go anywhere in particular, just to other rooms in the same dungeon. The best way I can describe these areas is "Ghosts in the Machine". So that clears all that up. I hope. Oh, well, actually something I wasn't sure of the last time I wrote this but I have been sure of since (it's been a year) is that there are two bytes of code in the game that point to room data that isn't used anywhere else in the game, and those two bytes are in locations unaccessible to normal game play. I've seen the rooms, they are real, and that about sums up the hidden world. There are lots of documents on the web that tell you exactly how to get to them. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 05:00 TINY WALKTHROUGH _________________________ This walkthrough is not intended to be a full dialogue of every turn you need to take to get through Metroid. It will tell you how to reach some of the more secretive places like the Wave Beam location or the Hide Out II. I will also give you some very basic strategy on how to choose your destinations wisely in order to save time, but not much on that. Looking at the maps and thinking about how everything is set up should provide you with all the strategy you need. I will tell you right now that I find I can cut alot of time from the game if I kill Ridley before Kraid, but that is a little odd to many people who are used to going through "Hide-Out I" before "Hide-Out II". ___________________| | Samus will start off where the "S" is on the |_|1_S____:_:___|E|_:_| map. To there left you can see a map of a | | |_| small section from Brinstar -- this is the | | corridor that you will start in. First thing you should do is acquire Maru Mari which is the ability to roll up into a little ball. From Start, head directly left and hop up over the stairlike obstacle, then fall down from the top and land on the shiny ball below. You will collect the Maru Mari and listen to some organ music. Be careful because there might be a yellow Zoomer nearby and at this point, these things can do you a nasty 2 points of damage. Now head back to the right. Notice you can't jump back up over the obstacle the way you came ? You will have to utilize Maru Mari at this point by pressing Down on the control pad. Samus will roll up into a little ball, and you can press Right to roll underneath the narrow passage underneath the obstacle. Notice that pressing Jump (a) whil you are in Maru Mari will pop you out of it. Also, pressing Up will pop you out. Now, head to the right being careful of the Zoomers and Skrees nearby. Shoot open the blue _________________| | doors in your way (":" on the map) and keep |___>_>_:_:_>_|E|_:_| heading right. Notice that there is a column | | |_| chamber with some cracked bricks in it ? Those are bricks that can be destroyed using Bombs. You don't have bombs right now so keep going right. Keep bewaring the Zoomers and Skrees. Use Maru Mari to get under the narrow passage under the huge growth coming from the ceiling. Ignore the "E" on the map (an energy tank) because you can't reach it right now. Keep going right and shoot through another blue door and enter a column chamber. This is probably the tallest column chamber in the game. Remember it by its color -- other chambers are other colors but this is the huge tall blue one. | | Now head upwards through the chamber until you get to the first door : | on your right. Watch out for yellow and red Zoomers, the red ones are | |_ tougher. And watch out for the indestructable yellow Rippers and |>:_> their not-so-indestructable (you can use a missile if you had some) | | red cousins. When you reach the first door on your right, shoot it | | open and head through the spacey passageway to the right. Now you |^| should find yourself in the yellow column chamber. The _ | | yellow (or Gold) column chamber has only one exit out of | | | | it to the left and three to the right. For now, you want | : |^| to drop all the way down to the bottom door on the right | | _| | and blast through it. You will enter a gold horizon | | _:_| chamber with Skree and Zeb in it. Watch out for Zeb, it | | |_| will fly up out of a red pipe in the ground and come right _| | at you. You can either stay still and shoot it when it is >_:v: near or jump high or roll up to distract it. As long as the item | | generated by a Zeb is still around, another Zeb won't come from | | that pipe. Keep going right and you will soon get your first box |v|_ of missiles. 5 of them. You might be thinking you are supposed to |_:_> keep going right, but don't do that. Now turn back and go left |_| until you get to the gold column again. You have alot of choices at this point, and by just looking at the map you can see where various things are located and how you can get to them. The tricky part is, you can't just go straight for one of the items and expect to actually get to it. Some of the column passages require bombs or the ice beam to get through, as you've seen already. I am just going to give you terse instructions on which item to head for next, and when there is a tight spot or a place where a particular strategy is needed or useful, I will be more verbose. Long Beam: You are real close to it already so might as well pick it up. Go left out of the gold column and back to the blue one. Head up and go through the first door on your left. Make sure you keep all 5 missiles on you, you will need them to break the red door that is in your way. This means you will have to take out the large enemies on the ceiling with your little gun. You can do it, just take your time and make sure you don't have one chasing you while another one is blocking your way. If one is hovering along the floor towards you, jump up and it will head back for the ceiling again. Get the long beam and now your cannon fire will not stop until it hits something. Bombs: Now head for those bombs. Go to the blue column, through the only door on the right and into the gold column. Go straight through the middle door on the right and keep going right past Zoomer and Skree, through all the doors in your way. Eventually you will find an Energy Tank ("E" on map) in this long horizon chamber. Go through the last door on the right and into the much smaller Gold Column. I will refer to this as Gold Column II through the rest of the walkthrough. Oh, I almost forgot, while you are doing all this don't drop into the yellow acid because it will quickly eat away at your energy. You must be patient with the stuff, if you try to jump out too quickly you may not be able to jump high enough to get out. Let yourself settle into the stuff and then try jumping and you will get the height you need. If you want to find a shorter platform to jump onto, then dont' just walk through the lava -- move through it in a series of short jumps which will keep you out of the lava except for a few points of energy at a time, and you will also move faster. Bombs: Now from Gold Column II, go up to the middle door on the left and go left until you reach the red door. You better have 5 missiles to blast this open with. Collect the Bomb. Now if you activate Maru Mari and press the Fire (B) button, you will drop these little red circles that blow up after a few game-seconds. These are your bombs, and you should use them to destroy anything that's on the ground near you. You can also use bombs to get up into the air as an alternative to jumping. It's hard to perfect the technique, but if you drop a bomb and sit on it, the explosion will push you up into the air. If you activate Maru Mari, drop two bombs a second apart, and one will push you up in the air. While in the air, drop another bomb, then while you are falling the second bomb will explode and push you up again. While you are in the air, the bomb you dropped mid-air a second ago will explode and will push you up even further. If you can perfect this process, you can theoretically use your bombs to reach any height of any column chamber. Ice Beam: You might notice that it's nearly impossible to get up through Gold Column II. There's some Rippers floating around in space up there but what lies beyond seems unreachable. That is why you need the Ice Beam. Drop down through Column II to the bottom door on the left and head all the way back through the first blue door you reach. Stop! In this chamber with two Wavers in it, first kill both wavers. You will be able to kill the waver under the floor with your bombs. Keep trying... keep trying... takes awhile... anyways, lay bombs all over the floor and while you're trying to kill that waver, you will blow a hole in the floor. Drop through this hole into A Little Gold Column and head through the blue door on the left. Don't you waste your missiles in here, you will need 5 of them when you reach the red door. How you take care of these little flittering bugs is your business, I usually get near them and fire. Go through the red door on the left, get your Ice Beam. Ta Daa ! Now when you shoot something it will be frozen for awhile, just awhile, but long enough for you to stand on it and use it as a platform to reach high places. Every time you freeze and unfreeze something, it takes a hit of damage from the normal beam. If you are refreezing your opponents to get them in the right position, eventually they will be destroyed (unless they are not able to be destroyed by your normal beam.) At this point there are, once again, many different places you could try to go to. With Bombs and the Ice Beam, there are few places that you cannot reach. However, you will want to get the high-jump boots which will make it alot easier to reach some things that the Ice Beam would take a long time to make platforms for. High Jump: You will need to enter norfair if you want the High Jump. High Jump makes it easier to reach some other items in the game, and not only does the High Jump make it easier to beat the mini-bosses, these other items you can collect make it easier as well. So head to Norfair, and take the first door on the Right. At the top of this column is a series of rooms that contain five seperate missile boxes (!!!) and the other location of the Ice Beam. The high jump is in the other direction, however. Go down to the bottom of the column and bomb through the floor. Fall to the left and take the first door on your left. The High Jump boots will be in here. Screw Attack: If you also want to acquire the Screw Attack which will be your most powerful attacks against normal creatures in the game, then bomb underneath the High Jump item statue and pop out on the left side. Keep going left until you get to a small chamber of green stuff. You can shoot up through the wall here to reach the Screw Attack. Wave Beam: The Wave Beam carries about twice the strength of your normal beam and also attacks in a rotating wave pattern. This is a useful weapon for defeating the minibosses, so go for it. From the location where you shoot through the ceiling to get the Screw Attack, keep going left to another green column chamber. Fall to the bottom and drop into the lava there. Bomb through the floor, and fall through the green chamber below it. Take the one door on the right and stay to the right. Pass through the eyeball horizon chamber, and enter a small green corridor. If you bomb through this floor near the right door, you will be able to reach some more missiles below. Through the right door here, go through another eyeball horizon chamber and into another small green corridor. Blow up the leftmost part of this floor and drop through the tiny passageway and then through the lava. This, by the way, is my favorite room in the entire game. At the bottom of this column, go through the one door on the left to earn your Wave Beam. Back up in the small green corridor, if you go right you will be able to collect another missile. Bomb through the large green wall that is in your way. Let's see now you have the Bombs, the High Jump, either the Ice Beam or the Wave Beam, and some missiles. Oh yeah don't dare pass up that Screw Attack, it is too powerful a weapon to do without. Since you have the High Jump, there are some places you will already be able to reach so you could go with the Wave Beam. However there are also some places where it would be useful to have both the Ice Beam and the High Jump, such as the Energy Box closest to the beginning of the game. If you want to get this Energy Box on your way back through Brinstar to the earlier chambers of the game, then bring the Ice Beam with you. Just remember it will be a long trip away from the Wave Beam, and time is everything. If you take the Ice Beam with you only to go back and change it for the Wave Beam again, you will end up wasting alot of time for just one energy box. To tell you the truth, I personally find that Ridley is tons easier than Kraid to destroy, and I prefer to go for Hideout II before Hideout I. This means that you could just go through Norfair, Hideout II, kill Ridley with your Wave Beam and Missiles, then go back through Norfair, catch the second Ice Beam that is at the top of the map, back through Brinstar, on the way there get the Energy Box, then kill Kraid. Sounds like a Plan. This is the corridor that contains this oh so _________________| | important Energy Box. Activate Maru Mari to get under |_______:_:___|E|_:_| the growth of stuff hanging from the ceiling, and | | |_| then look up. Shoot at the second brick from the left of the growth, and an Energy Box will be revealed. There should be a Skree near here, so use your Ice Beam to freeze it in a good location that you can reach from the floor with your High Jump. Then jump up and grab the Energy Box. Ta-da. Alot of effort for 100 more units of Energy, and you can easily imagine that it will take you almost another half hour to an hour, just to go back now and change your Ice Beam for the Wave Beam. That's up to you, of course, but like I said time is everything. Well that about does it. There's not much more that you need help on, the maps should solve everything. Have a good day. ____________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________ GLOSSARY _________________________________ "Chozo Vault" n.: The creepy place with the statue that holds the powerup. "Metroid" n.: 1. This translucent thing that sucks on your upper body. 2. A game. "Powerup" n.: Get the powerup and win the game. "Ridley" ppn.: The boss of Norfair, or a movie director. "Kraid" ppn.: The boss of Brinstar, or a jelly doughnut. "Zelda" ppn.: Zelda is not in this game. ____________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________ SPECIAL THANKS _____________________________ Lots of people informed me all year long, 2001, that I had all these odd spellings of "Metroid" around the guide. That was an in-joke. The only thing different from v3~v3.1 are spellings and some grammatical errors. Somebody sent me an email 12-24-01 about a bug that hit them outside Kraid's room where every missle they collected gave them even more missiles than the last one, and that it put them over their limit of 40 missiles way up into 150. How strange. Well the missiles weren't showing up anyplace special, they came out of one of those psychotic bees, so I don't know how to explain it. Please kill Kraid a lot, to raise the probability of this glitch occuring again, and if you notice anything like that, drop me a line. Curtis 'Quasius' Himel explained the differences in Metroid version releases and the difficulty-setting phenomenon that occurs in other cartridges. He also corrected me on several things I had wrong about the scrolling doors, and block placements, 8-11-2001. Thanks, Quasius! Douglas 'Karoz' Wilson showed me where the hidden Energy Box is in Kraid's room, 8-22-2000, and prompted me to begin another version of the guide. Thanks, Karoz! EVERLASTING THANKS TO: The Nintendo Player's Guide! The CheatZilla server ! Nintendo Of America ! David Wonn! Last, but very far from least, the two servers GameFAQs and GameSages! Extra special thanks go to the Cyberspace.Org server which holds my nintendo cart collection list and links site for free, and to Lunar Surf Solutions which holds megabytes more of data than that for my home pages, and to ARQ Internet Service Providers who make net access affordable and friendly even when I bust into their offices ranting about nonsense. ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ OTHER URLs _________________________ I removed some site URLs because they changed every freakin' month, and I got sick of keeping track. I have to go back and change my NES page every time they do that, because I have this thing about reliability. Everybody left should still be where I say they are. THE METROID DATABASE ! www.classicgaming.com/mdb/metroid.html GameFAQs server website www.gamefaqs.com GameSages server website www.sages.ign.com Nintendo Of America www.nintendo.com they dropped their NES hint database, man i dunno David Wonn davidwonn.turokcave.com CheatZilla game server www.cheatzilla.com Eyenot's NES ROM-Cart Collection List And Links Site www.cyberspace.org/~eyenot Eyenot's home pages www.lunarsurf.com/~eyenot - eyenot TIME B0MB SET GET 0UT FAST! TIME 759 ____________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________ 00:00 _________________________ "METROID Game Guide" (c) 08-11-2001 Gabriel Petrie "Eyenot" i will continue to work on future versinos weeoww El Dante Por Favor Ya!