Super Metroid

Super Metroid
Also known as: Metroid 3 (intro) Developer: Nintendo R&D1 Publisher: Nintendo Platform: SNES Released in JP: March 19, 1994 Released in US: April 18, 1994 Released in EU: July 28, 1994 This game has unused areas. This game has a hidden developer message. This game has unused enemies. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused music. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden level select. This game has regional differences. This game has anti-piracy features. This game has a prerelease article This game has a notes page This game has a Data Crystal page

Super Metroid is the third entry in the series, and considered by many to be the pinnacle. The game features impressive 16-bit graphics, a moody soundtrack perfect for the isolated feeling of Planet Zebes, and plenty of hours of gameplay to be found as you explore deeper and deeper into the planet, unlocking the mysteries within as you search for the Last Metroid and Ridley.

To do: Discuss the off states of Wrecked Ship rooms not accessible while the Wrecked Ship is off. There's a test version of the item collection theme in the SPC set. Developer's hand-drawn map layout (features a cut room) Older dev map, a bit better quality image than the one above - archive.org link. If the game is paused/map is opened in Ceres Station, the area name will be displayed as COLONY. Pausing isn't possible at Ceres Station, so this cannot be seen. The keiko love message and its unused data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bur6l8w5B4Y

Sub-Pages

Prerelease Info

Notes

Debug Mode

Pro Action Replay code 808004FF enables a whole mess of debugging features. In addition to selecting which region of the planet to start in, you can also pick a spot within that region using Select on Controller 2. (As a side effect of this, having the code active while launching a new game will skip the game's introduction and start the player on Zebes rather than Ceres Station.)

Various debugging features can be unlocked during normal gameplay via button combos on Controller 1:

• Holding Select + L and pressing X will open a sprite tile viewer. The first page show the enemy tiles.
  • Holding Select + L and pressing A will cycle through the loaded enemy palettes.
  • Holding Select + L and pressing X again will bring up the second page, which shows non-enemy sprite tiles in a fixed palette.
    • Holding Select + L and pressing X a third time will exit the sprite viewer.

• Holding Select + L and pressing A will open a palette viewer. The first page shows the sprite palettes.
  • Holding Select + L and pressing A again will bring up the second page, which shows the background palettes (note: this overwrites the sprite palettes and sprite tiles).
    • Holding Select + L and pressing A a third time will exit the palette viewer.

• Hold Select + R and press A to toggle Layer 3 (HUD, liquids/fogs).
• Hold Select + L and press Y to toggle spare CPU display (turns down screen brightness when processing for the current frame has finished).
• Hold Select + R and press B to set Missiles, Super Missiles, and Power Bombs to 0. Press B again to undo.
  • PAL exclusive: In this mode, Missile and Super Missile count shows position of Samus in Morph Ball.
• PAL exclusive: Hold Select + L and press B to get lots of health and ammo plus all equipment, along with switching to the next beam configuration (this never enables Spazer + Plasma).

The standard Select + Start + L + R reset combo is enabled.

On Controller 2:

• Start - Debug game over menu. Save and reset, or (likely) crash.
• A - Toggle sprite interactions (enemies/projectile/Samus collision, bomb jumps).
• L - Toggle frozen time for enemies.
• Hold L + R and press A whilst Samus is facing forward (e.g. using the ship, using an elevator, acquiring a suit upgrade) to enable uber invincibility (press L and A again to disable their respective effects, and R twice to exit the enemy debugger).

Select brings up the enemy allocation viewer (needs the debugger font). It shows you which palette index each enemy in the enemy set uses and the total number of rows of tiles in VRAM used by the enemies collectively.

• Select exits the enemy allocation viewer.

R starts the enemy debugger (which loads the enemy debugger font). The first tool is the enemy mover; it shows you the enemy's RAM index, name, position, HP, and the enemy set name.

• D-Pad moves the selected enemy, X + D-Pad moves the enemy faster.
• Select selects the next enemy, B + Select selects the previous enemy.
• A teleports the enemy to Samus' right.

Pressing R again brings you to the enemy spawn data editor. It allows you to edit the enemy's position (PosX/PosY), initialization parameter (Pose), properties (Swt) and general purpose parameters (Opt).

• D-Pad moves the text cursor.
• X increments the selected digit.
• B decrements the selected digit.
• A sets the spawn position to the enemy's current position.
• Select respawns the enemy with the new spawn data.
• R exits the enemy debugger.

Pressing L brings you to the enemy spawner. It allows you to spawn an enemy from the current room's enemy set, using a predefined enemy population entry, to the previously specified spawn position.

• Down selected the next enemy set entry.
• L spawns the enemy and exits the enemy debugger.
• B + L spawns the enemy only if it has a name, and exits the enemy debugger.
• R exits the enemy debugger.

(Source: deskjockey_, Jathys' site, Kejardon)

Extended Enemy Debugger

B495D6EE activates the Extended Enemy Debugger.

This will make pressing R in the enemy spawner take you to the enemy RAM viewer, rather than exit. Here, you can view 6 pages of enemy RAM variables. Press R to move to the next page. After the last page, you'll be dumped into the enemy allocation viewer.

(Source: deskjockey_, Jathys' site, Kejardon)

Miscellaneous Debugging Enablers

• 808000FF - Bypass country and NTSC/PAL check.
• 808002FF - Enable the demo recorder. PAL exclusive. It tries to record the current button presses, button holds, Samus' X/Y position, and the X/Y position of the top-left corner of the visible area. Unfortunately, it does nothing due to the fact that it tries to write these values to ROM (which would have worked fine on Nintendo's development systems, but not on the SNES alone).
• 808006FF - Lets X on Controller 2 toggle scrolling on and off. Pretty annoying. You have to use this with the main debug code (which enables reading of Controller 2) in order for this to work.
• 808008FF - Disables audio. Start up with this code and you'll crash when you go through a door (due to waiting for music to be transferred to APU). Turn the code on during gameplay and the music won't change.

There's a lot of other little debugging and development features hiding throughout the game's code. For example:

• A2AAF000 - Hold B on Controller 2 to make Samus' ship lift off when you enter it.
• 84B33360 - Display scrolling trigger extensions.
• 84B36660 - Display scrolling triggers.

(Source: deskjockey_, Jathys' site, Kejardon)

Golden Torizo Debug Cheat

This strange little hidden code somehow remained undiscovered until late 2010.

Open the door to Golden Torizo's boss fight room (he should still be alive), then hold A + B + X + Y and enter. Keep these buttons held until the room finishes loading. There is a catch, however: once you let go of the fire button, the game will freeze due to two of the beams being incompatible, but being forcibly enabled by the code. As such, you can enter this room while in Morph Ball mode to avoid freezing the game or just be lucky on how you let go of the fire button.

This will reset your inventory to 700 Energy, 300 Reserve Energy, 100 Missiles, 20 Super Missiles, 20 Power Bombs, all beams equipped (remember to disable at least one of the bottom two), and all items except Screw Attack.

(Source: JAM)

Piracy Warning

US/Japan	Europe

There are two anti-piracy tests that are performed on boot/reset: the region check and the SRAM mapping check.

The region check tests whether the region reported by the game header ($00:FFD9) is the same as the region reported by the SNES PPU ($213F). Unlike the SRAM mapping check, this check does not delete the SRAM on failure.

The SRAM mapping check first copies the 8KiB SRAM at $700000 copied to WRAM for backup. Then this SRAM area is erased. An incrementing series of values ($0000, $0001, $0002,... $0FFF) is written to the $702000..3FFF area, which on the real cart is a mirror of the 8KiB of SRAM. Finally, it reads back the 8KiB of SRAM from $700000 and asserts that the incrementing values have been written. If they match, the program restores the WRAM backup to SRAM and continues to boot as usual. On extension devices or copy devices/cartridges that have more SRAM or the two 8KiB areas aren't mirrored, the above assertion fails and the anti-piracy message is triggered, leaving the SRAM erased as a result.

Use the code 8086C201 before the game starts up to see this message from Nintendo. This can sometimes appear without an Action Replay on a real cartridge, likely due to connection problems between the cartridge and the SNES.

Hidden Message

Present near the beginning of the ROM at 0xFF00:

 Special thanks 
       2        
  Genji Kubota  
       &        
all debug staff.

It is not known whether this line can be displayed in-game. It seems to simply be something added by a programmer as gratitude toward the debug team.

Unused Sprites

To do: Get high-quality videos of all these.

There are a few unused sprites in the game, most of which are in working or mostly-working states. With a little configuration using SMILE (Super Metroid Integrated Level Editor), you can add them into the game with ease.

Bang

One of the strangest enemies in the game, and likely unused due to how potentially deadly it is. With effort, one can get a Bang working in a room.

Bang will float around the room until attacked, at which point it will flash and grow larger. After a certain number of hits, Bang will explode, killing itself - but at the same time, unleashing all of the damage dealt to it back at you. At later areas of the game where your beam is quite deadly, getting hit by the backlash from a Bang can be near-fatal.

Luckily, Bang's explosive burst does not track you, and usually a simple Morph Ball evasion is enough to avoid getting hit.

Reflec

An enemy that has the ability to reflect your shots back at you, or if positioned at an angle, can be used to angle shots. Its usage was first widely realized in the hack Super Metroid Redesign, in a room where the player had to reflect a Missile through a series of Reflecs to extend a bridge. Shots reflected by a Reflec can damage the player. Reflec is fully programmed and can be set to appear in eight different orientations, one for each cardinal and intermediate compass direction.

Considering what a strange enemy Reflec is, it's not hard to guess why it wasn't used. There's no real situation in the game where it would have been useful, though as a puzzle element it could have been well-implemented. In-game, it is loaded in RAM in two areas: the vertical chasm in Lower Norfair before the series of rooms leading to Ridley, and the Energy Tank room after Kraid.

Stoke

Looks to be a miniature Crocomire, which has led to some calling it a baby Crocomire. Stoke is mostly finished: it has basic movement and collision detection, but doesn't always function properly. It uses a palette unlike Crocomire's, despite having a distinctly similar appearance. With a bit of effort, one can restore this red palette.

In-game, Stokes are loaded in the Crateria room with a small Morph Ball tunnel that requires the Morph Ball Bombs and leads to a Missile Pack. They do not use the correct palette in this room, oddly.

It's unknown why Stoke wasn't finished. Perhaps they simply couldn't think of a reason or place to use one?

Mouth Creature

These sprites are loaded in alongside the rest of Mother Brain's sprites. The purpose of these sprites are completely unknown, and they have no programming.

Shaktool Attack

Shaktool has a disabled attack spawned by an unused AI. The unused AI can be enabled by Game Genie code AADE2D21, the attack enabled by AAD99FEA.

Unused Palettes

"Red Crateria"

An unused palette set with the same tiles as normal Crateria, but featuring a rather bright red palette instead. It looks as though it may have been intended at one time to be a palette for the escape sequence, but considering that the escape only has the player outdoors in one room (the landing site), it was probably deemed unnecessary.

Another reason may have been that during the escape, palette effects are overlaid on the normal Crateria set, giving an effect similar to Red Crateria but with a more urgent feel. In fact, trying to use Red Crateria in conjunction with the palette effects will force Crateria to use the normal palette, as the effects appear to be hardcoded to that palette.

"Black Brinstar"

The red Brinstar tilesets include the tiles used in Brinstar and Kraid's hideout. The tileset is later (or earlier, depending on how you look at it) used before the statue room at the entrance to Tourian. Unlike Kraid's region, however, it uses another palette set and is blue. In this set, there is a palette for the red Brinstar tiles as well, giving them a black and yellow appearance.

Black Brinstar is not used anywhere in-game, though some theorize that it was planned to be used in the room before the X-Ray Visor, as it uses the fireflies that make the room darker when shot.

Unused Tiletype

A cluster of Half-Ripper tiles shown in SMILE.

There's one unused tiletype in the game. It doesn't truly have a name, and to call it what it does would result in more of a long description than a name. Instead, the name is derived from the image that SMILE uses to designate the tiletype in usage: a 16×16 picture of half a Ripper enemy overlaid against a black rectangle.

The Half-Ripper tiletype is unique in that it does not allow enemies or shots to penetrate it. Only Samus may pass through the tiles. This means that the tiletype is especially good for hiding secret passageways in rooms with wall-crawling enemies such as Zoomers, Zeelas, or Novas.

Wave Beam shots will still pass through the Half-Ripper tiletype. The tiletype is not revealed when using the X-Ray Visor.

It's unknown why the Half-Ripper tiletype was not used in the game, as the coding behind it is totally complete. Perhaps it was decided to be too cheap a tactic for hiding items, as the only way to discover a passage concealed by the tiles is to physically run into it.

Unused Tiles

Crateria Tileset

The Crateria tileset comes packed with several unused tiles that could fit in with the other bridge tiles outside the Wrecked Ship; the palette used for those tiles even matches the unused ones.

Also in Crateria's tileset are copies of certain background tiles, although unlike the originals they feature the letter "P" drawn over them. While the tiles are unused in the game itself, they are used in the tile table. This suggests that they were used for testing, only to be replaced before release.

Tourian Tileset

Some blue platforms, not unlike the ones found in the original game's Tourian. These have proper data in the tile table, and as such can be placed in-game.

Long Beam

A menu graphic for the Long Beam, the only upgrade from the first Metroid to not return in Super Metroid. In the final game, Samus starts off with a beam range that would render the item unnecessary.

Unused Title

An early title screen, simply saying "4 METROID" (though the "4" is likely just an error). This may have been a placeholder during development.

Unseen Eye Tracker

At the start of the game, Samus enters a deserted Planet Zebes with very few signs of life. However, proof that something odd is happening behind the scenes can be witnessed in the form of two camera-like machines, which shine a harmless spotlight on Samus when she gets near them. The first one of those "eye trackers" is found right beside the Morphing Ball pedestal, and the second optional one is found atop the rock formation leading to the second Missile Pack. However, a third tracker is programmed to appear in the Chozo statue room near the start of Zebes, being placed behind the statue sprite, giving the impression that the statue itself is scanning Samus.

The only issue is that the trackers have long since disappeared by the time Samus gets access to that room. Indeed, the room preceding it has its path blocked by rocks, with bombs being required to continue forward. Thus, it's possible that this room was originally accessible at the very start of the game. This would be supported by the fact that the game even intentionally disables the Missile Pack normally held by the statue.

(Source: GoldenChorizoCode)

Unused Rooms

To do: The old Tourian escape room when entering from the bottom-left door prior to the escape sequence has a bunch of palette FX and has rising lava (instead of acid).

Lower Norfair Edge

A small one-screen room in lower Norfair that uses the Lower Norfair tileset. It looks as though it would likely have been part of a bigger room, considering it seems to be the top of a vertical shaft. Some claim that this room was originally the start of the room with the rising acid, but that room is located 104 bytes away, making room for four rooms between this one and the one with the rising acid.

Another thing to note is that the room either lacks door data leading out, or it's simply corrupted.

Debug/Tiletype Testing Room

A large 6×2-screen room that was likely used by developers to test the various game tiletype and BTS interactions. Normally inaccessible, SMILE can be used to set up doors to connect to the room, or in newer SMILE versions use the test room feature to spawn Samus directly into the room. Its Room ID in SMILE is 7E82C.

The room consists of various sections, each devoted to different types of testing:

• The upper-left and middle have testing grounds for non-respawning and respawning 1×1, 1×2, 2×1, and 2×2 Crumble and Bomb blocks.
• Further down, the Missile graphics are actually Shot blocks and are tests for (non-)respawning Shot blocks.
• A bit to the left of the Missile tiles are rows of Crumble blocks, likely used as testing grounds for dashing and Speed Booster, since it's possible to dash over Crumble blocks.
• The bottom middle has tests for Speed Booster, as there are columns of Bomb and Speed Booster blocks set up. In the bottom-right are more Shot block tests. Along the bottom row are tests for the half-height tiles.
• In the upper right, there are tests for the oddly-shaped solid tiles that are prevalent in the bubble rooms of Norfair. Also in the upper right are tests for (non-)respawning Power Bomb blocks, Super Missile blocks, and Crumbling Grapple points.

Suspiciously absent are tests of the various sloped tiles. At one point, they may have been a part of the room, but could have been removed to make way for the tests currently in the room.

• 

  Debug room with SMILE tiletype overlays.

• 

  Debug room without SMILE tiletype overlays.

Unused Level Data

Unused Golden Chozo Room

An unused (possibly original) version of room $B1E5, level data pointer is $C8:CDA9. Likely an earlier version of the room, this version of the room can be seen in the hand-drawn Developers' Map and is one of the few rooms to differ from the final game significantly in that map.

Unused Shaktool Room

An unused version of room $D8C5, level data pointer is $CD:8404.

Unused Recharge Room

An unused recharge room, level data pointer is $CE:A503.

Debug Game Over Menu

Using Game Genie code 8E67-C0DF or Pro Action Replay code 9009981D and starting or continuing a game will send the player to an unusual menu that displays the text "GAME QUIT WOULD YOU PLAY? END CONTINUE". Selecting "End" will kick the player to the title screen, while selecting "Continue" will send the player back to where they were before the menu appeared, but with some glitched graphics.

Of note is that the menu colors the item icons red and makes the HUD text use a different font never seen in regular gameplay.

(Source: Abystus' "Super Metroid" PAR codes topic on GSCentral and the Metroid Wiki)

Unused Item PLM States

All collectable items can appear in three states: normal, hidden (requiring destroying an invisible block to reveal; used to hide items in walls, for instance), and encased in a glowing ball held by a Chozo Statue. However, some items never have some of these states used.

In the table below, Yes indicates that the state is used and No indicates that the state is unused.

Item	Normal	Hidden	Chozo
Morph Ball	Yes	No	No
Bomb	No	No	Yes
Charge Beam	No	No	Yes
Spazer	No	No	Yes
Varia Suit	No	No	Yes
Hi-Jump Boots	No	No	Yes
Speed Booster	No	No	Yes
Wave Beam	No	No	Yes
Grapple Beam	No	No	Yes
Gravity Suit	No	No	Yes
Space Jump	No	No	Yes
Spring Ball	No	No	Yes
Plasma Beam	No	No	Yes
Ice Beam	No	No	Yes
Screw Attack	No	No	Yes
X-Ray Scope	No	No	Yes
Missile	Yes	Yes	Yes
Super Missile	Yes	Yes	Yes
Power Bomb	Yes	No	Yes
Energy Tank	Yes	Yes	No
Reserve Tank	No	No	Yes

See the Notes page for more technical info.

(Source: andlabs, using research published in the source code of Dessyreqt's item randomizer)

Unused Audio

A sample rip of the ROM revealed two unused voice recordings, one of a man groaning and another one of a woman moaning.

Unknown Male Voice

A man groaning as if he's just been shot. Perhaps an earlier version of the game's intro would have shown the scientists at Ceres being killed?

Unknown Female Voice

The recording quality isn't great, and like other samples in the ROM (e.g. "The last Metroid is in captivity") the pitch and speed sound as if they're at a lower rate than they were intended to be played. But when edited for pitch and speed...

Unknown Female Voice (speed & pitch "correction" edit)

...it becomes apparent that this voice was sampled in Samus Aran's Final Cry, the Game Over jingle for Super Metroid. However, it cannot be heard in-game outside this track, and it is unknown whether it was ever intended to be heard more clearly.

In a 1994 staff interview that appeared in the game's official Japanese strategy guide, Kenji Yamamoto, one of the composers, had this to say about an unused "death cry" recording made by Minako Hamano, the game's other composer, to be used when Samus dies:

Yamamoto: We used the voice more carefully. When she dies, Hamano did the voice, but it sounded too sexual so we couldn't use it.

Hamano: When we sampled in front of the mic, I spoke a number of times. I wasn't any good and completely failed.

Yamamoto: I have to say it was a failure. (Laughs)

Sakamoto: I have a special version of the ROM with that in there. (Laughs)

Regional Differences

Japan/North America	Europe/Australia

In every version of the game, the base language is English. Hence, the menus, cutscene text, HUD, location names and item-related messages are displayed in English worldwide.

In addition to the English base text, all versions offer different-language subtitles for some cutscene text and location names (the other elements have no subtitles, and even the cutscene subtitles offered are rather incomplete when compared to the English text).

The Japanese and North American (US and Canadian) releases have the options "English text" (English base text without subtitles) and "Japanese text （日本語字幕スーパー）" (English base text with Japanese subtitles).

The European (UK, German, French/Benelux, Italian, Spanish and Scandinavian) and Australian releases have the options "German text" and "French text". One of these is activated by default, meaning that the subtitles under the English base text cannot be turned off in these versions.