Pro Tip of the Day - super metroid

Pro tip: Draygon is a pushover in Super Metroid

Will — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:48:07 +0000

In the watery part of Super Metroid, you eventually come across a giant sea creature called 'Draygon' that you have to defeat to proceed. He's usually pretty tough to take down... unless...

All over his room are these turrets that shoot at you during the battle.

Which you can (and should) shoot with a couple of missiles to break them, which turns them into little electrical hazards.

Then, let ol' Dray pick you up and start swimming around the room (you'll get hit a couple of times, but it's worth it)

He's start swimming in wider and wider circles (as long as you don't break free) and will eventually take you within grappling range of those busted turrets. Which you should totally do.

Which will hurt a little bit, but the current mostly gets passed on to Draygon and kills him in pretty short order.

And you hardly had to do anything. It's win-win!

Pro tip: Super Metroid: Bomb jumping

Will — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:24:27 +0000

In Super Metroid, you slowly get all these abilities to trick out your bounty hunter's abilities as she hunts down and destroys space pirates and energy-sucking globs of goo.

One of the hallmarks of the series is that there are little prizes hidden in all kinds of nooks and crannies that are steadily more accessible as you find more and more goodies.

One of the things you find early on is the morph ball.

And bombs that you can use when rolled in a ball.

The bombs have the added effect that they bump you slightly up (or slightly to the side if you're not directly on top of them).

Now, it's tough to get the timing right, but if you set a bomb so that you bounce up a little, and then set another in such a way that it explodes right before you fall all the way back down, then you bounce a little bit higher.

Keep on placing bombs and bouncing up higher until you get to someplace that you maybe weren't supposed to be yet. Who knows what you might find.

Pro tip: Eat some super bombs

Will — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:00:00 +0000

Super Metroid is a game full of little complexities and mysteries. For instance, let the game sit on the title screen for a couple minutes and you'll get some hints. Pretty nice of the developers to put that in, I think. The hints are pretty mundane, though, until you see this scene:

It's kind of hard to see what's going on in that picture, but the gist of it is this: Samus is low on energy, curls into a ball, sets off a Super Bomb, then gets cloaked in a mysterious light and begins regenerating health.

How do you actually do it? Great question!

First, you have to grievously injure Samus. Get her health down to below 50 with no reserve tanks. We're talking the direst of straits.

Then select your Super Bombs, making sure you have around 11 of them, and 10 Super Missiles, and 10 Regular Missiles. Highlight your Super bombs, curl into a ball (press Down). Hold L, R, and Down, then also press and hold the Fire button.

Done right, your bounty hunter will be cloaked in a mystical veil where she will somehow consume her weapons and convert them into energies. And, yeah, she'll be low on armaments, but she'll be high on life points, which is a pretty good trade-off, right?