The Gamer's Quarter

[aderack]

Westacular: Having just played Super Metroid ... well. It's controls were sloppy because it suddenly has all these buttons ... but at the same time, for the way it controls, the SNES didn't have ENOUGH buttons.

Aderack: That's an interesting point.

Westacular: There's a single item select that cycles through missile / super missile / super bomb / grapple / x-ray.
To use the x-ray visor, you select the item ... then hit the dash button.
Dashing, which should have been automatic or triggered by a double-tap on the d-pad, but I guess that hadn't been invented yet.

Aderack: Something about the SNES -- the shoulder buttons were really designed for camera control; to rotate mode 7 fields. Yet they didn't often serve that function. It was only years later that it became clear how useful shoulder buttons were for state-shifting.
Something you grab instead of pressing.
Double-tapping existed on the NES, I'm pretty sure... though all the examples I'm coming up with are on the Genesis.
River City Ransom!

Westacular: OK. I guess Nintendo just had Mario on the mind then.
Zero Mission gets the controls just right, but eliminates the x-ray (instead giving that functionality to a super bomb blast) and grapple (which it could have controlled as a third item in the missile / super missile toggle)

Aderack: That is a point: the more elegant you make your controls, the more room you make for other controls.

Westacular: And tightens the directional controls enough that only one diagonal aiming button was needed.

Aderack: Yeah, Fusion did that too. And really, that's all you need.
Though there's something to be said for the missile toggling versus holding.

Westacular: Yeah, Fusion's controls were essentially the same; the items in ZM just make for a clearer comparison.
Yeah.

Aderack: Enhances a different sense of pace.
The X-ray visor really should have had its own face button.

Westacular: It comes down to a question of choosing when it's appropriate to make something
* fully modal
* somewhat modal (hold a toggle)
* or it's own control.
The visor could have, if dashing had been automatic.

Aderack: Right. I like the double-tapping idea. I hadn't considered that.
It certainly fits.
Sort of surprised it's not been used in the series.

Aderack: So okay.
* Shot: X;
* Jump: A;
* Dash: B;
* Item Select: SELECT;
* Item Cancel: Y;
* Angle Up: R;
* Angle Down: L
Man, if that's not sprawl.
What does "item cancel" do again?

Westacular: Item cancel just deselects any item.
Rather than having to cycle to that position.

Aderack: So:
* shoot on B;
* jump on A;
* double-tap to run;
* left trigger for diagonaiming;
* select for missile toggle;
* X for x-ray (ha).
That leaves Y and R...

Aderack: Basically, yeah, two extra buttons = modified GBA control scheme.
Ah. Well, if all you've got is the missile and super missile to toggle...

Westacular: Grapple.

Aderack: Right.
I'm thinking that's a beam.
Y could be used to toggle beam weapons.
Though they stack, don't they, in Super.

Westacular: They do, but not grapple, which is its own function.

Aderack: Right.

Westacular: So it's better lumped in with missiles or given its own button.

Aderack: Well, it's a grabbing function, right?
And the R button is left unassigned.

Westacular: Yeah.

Aderack: That would also leave the face buttons for jumping and shooting.

Westacular: Yeah.

Aderack: I recall some trouble grappling, jumping, and shooting all together.
Required a lot of juggling.

Westacular: Because to do that you have to either be shooting with the grapple, or unselect it
I like the R = grapple idea. That makes sense and lets you actually do other things at the same time.

Aderack: Hell, you can dangle and use the X-ray.

Westacular: OH, I just remembered: ZM essentially substituted a cliff-grip function for the grapple.

Aderack: Oh, right.

Westacular: Which is something that needs no button.

Aderack: The Y button could still be used to toggle beams. Seems sort of useful, not having to boot up the menu if you want to play around.
And it mirrors the missile toggle.
Yeah, I'm looking at a (european) SNES controller now.



That scheme would have been so much more comfortable.
Man. I think I would enjoy Super Metroid so much more this way.
I wonder how hard it would be to hack the ROM.
I imagine someone out there could do it.

Westacular: Probably.

Aderack: It's not just remapping, so it'd be a little tricky.
Seems like it wouldn't be that hard, though.
Assuming everything was compartmentalized enough.
It'd just be some rewiring.
Yeah, pretty much like rewiring and entertainment system.

Westacular: The game does let you remap already. You just can't actually fix anything that way.

Aderack: Yeah, exactly.
Since this isn't really about mapping. Though the default mapping is also a little odd.
Well, it is about mapping.
Just... it's more complex than button reassignment.
Something else this control scheme does is it modularizes the button sprawl. You start with basically the same old controls -- walk around, shoot, jump -- assigned to the same buttons. The only new concept is diagonal aiming with the L button.
Then as you get extra power-ups, the functions begin to logically spread.
Select toggles, as before.
Now you can toggle beams, though, as well! Or stack them. Logical extension.
On the next button over, between the shooting button and the missile toggle button.
Now all of the lower buttons are filled. It's just the upper-right corner left bare.
The X and R buttons.
And likewise, all of the functions so far are familiar.
Running gets lumped onto movement, so it barely feels different.
Then the X-ray -- the one of the most passive and incidental functions, and also one of the newest concepts, gets placed on the most out-of-the-way face button.
Which is also, uh, well-labeled.
And the grapple takes up the other shoulder button -- a flavor of button which is itself kind of new.
It's got to do with actions, so it's on the half of the pad with the action buttons -- compared with the aiming, which is on the half of the pad with the movement buttons.
So it starts off incredibly familiar and easy to comprehend, then fills itself in.
In about the same way the player would fill himself in on the added buttons and functions.
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[Harveyjames]

I've always thought the Metroid games were no fucking fun to control.

[aderack]

Yeah, the GBA ones and (for my tastes) Prime are the only games that actually feel good to play. Though I adore Return of Samus, its mushiness is probably the one huge area that could use some refinement.
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[Shapermc]

Yeah, I was going to say that both GBA games are FANTASTIC to control. It makes me believe that any of them could be. I'd love to see a hack for Super Metroid that made it control like the GBA games.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[sediment]

compared to super metroid, metroid II really is a dream to control.

I like the scheme you guys came up with.
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[Harveyjames]

[Swimmy]

Double-tapping to run is fairly inelegant, especially in a game with short side-alternating platforms like Super Metroid. This is one reason I couldn't do much in Circle of the Moon. It should be automatic. There's no point in the game you don't want to be running, and no reason to inhibit your running except to occupy your thumb. I say this as someone with a pretty intimate knowledge of the game--a speedrunner, though that may taint my perspective.

The simplest and most obvious changes would be:

Automatic run
Confine diagonal aiming to one button (L or R)
Allow weapon-changing on the fly (L or R)

This last one is important. Stopping to change weapons is cumbersome, especially in the heat of battle when you sometimes need to run to the other side of the room before turning around and popping out a missile.

There are no points where you really need to be grappling on the fly. You always have time to stop and patiently angle the beam. (The only place in the game where you do need to grapple while moving is much easier handled by walljumps or freeze-beaming enemies anyway.) I think the second state-shift button is too valuable to be sacrificed for something as poorly-implemented and useless as the grapple beam.

But by far the most useful change would be automatic run.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[sediment]

they mean double-tapping to initiate Super Dash qualities of run.

like... shinespark shit, man.
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[Shapermc]

[Swimmy]

[D-A-I-S]

Posting simply to say I still can't bring myself to appreciate this complaint, either about Super Metroid or about the SNES control pad.

[WarpZone]

I love Super Metroid, but I think most of these complaints are irrefutable.

There should be no weapon cycling. It was innocent enough in the first two games - missiles were flicked on and off like a light switch - but Super stretched that into a menu. It's too much housekeeping, particularly during a tense, fast boss. The little things still throw me off, like when the cycle skips over a depleted weapon.

I like some of the initial suggestions, but I'd agree with Swimmy that R would be more valuable as a missile shift than grapple beam. The select button could toggle Super Missiles, but I'd rather just see them go. All they do is throw up some green doors early on and encourage more menu fumbling during a boss.

Dashing -- I'm not sure. I like how holding an entire button suggests the extra physical assertion of running, that meaty sense of ham-fisted strength from Super Mario Bros. But the thing is, that's all you had to worry about in that game. Just A and B, used separately or in conjunction. In Super Metroid, the 'home buttons' are jump and fire, not jump and run, so either your thumb is switching between each pair or regarding run as a very isolated action. And indeed, it isn't used much by a first-time player, and more for convenience than skill, so double-tapping might be a decent trade for another free button.

[Harveyjames]

You just reminded me, it's during boss battles that you truly realise how little fun it is to move Samus around. This is why people feel like they have to make games like Knytt Stories. There's not really any similarly popular homebrew take-off of Mario, because Mario got it right first time. Metroid, not so much.

[Swimmy]

A lot of people seem to hate the super missiles / power bombs. I can see them as bloat, but I only get annoyed with them in conjunction with cycling through to the grapple beam. In fact, I usually don't even get the grapple beam until the end, it annoys me so much. (There are only two places in the game you need to exercise a glitch to skip a grappling section. All the others can be avoided through normal walljumping, enemy freezing, or shinesparking.)

As for the running problem, Metroid could also take the late Mega Man X route and add an autocharge option in the menu, leaving your thumb free to focus on running and jumping, but I still think autorun would be better.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[sediment]

the problem with autorun, for me at least, is that i'd have to lay off my movement every few seconds when absolutely sure i don't want to shinespark. even if it's ten-second stretches, every now and then i can guarantee i'd slip and shine my way into lava or something. (this might be because i really like to play tough video games after a couple glasses of wine.)

on the other hand, in many/most areas i don't think i'd mind autorunning into a shinespark, since... y'know, it destroys most enemies. between shinespark and the screw attack, by the end of the game i usually start playing metroid like a really awesome high-tech non-furry version of sonic.
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[D-A-I-S]

Would it be out of line to suggest, as a tangent, that things like autorun and autocharge and even stuff like the FFXII combat system start to dip a little into the hypocritical when they are celebrated by those who condemn cutscenes?

(I'm rather tired right now and my disagreeing with this thread without an argument to back myself up makes me want to start something)

[Scratchmonkey]

Man, not really. A different kind of control, a more abstracted kind of control, even an automated kind of control, is not the same as a lack of control.

Or, to put it another way, the way Half-Life 2 handles exposition is significant compared to your standard cutscene even if there isn't much a of a difference in the end result.

[D-A-I-S]

Okay, yeah, nevermind. I thought I had a point somewhere in my head but I guess I don't.

[extrabastardformula]

[Swimmy]

[Six]

It's been a while since I've played Super Metroid, but I guess that's fair enough. Come to think of it, players who found themselves shinesparking could always toggle the speed booster in the status menu as necessary, anyway.

Incidentally, is there any reason behind having to hold B to run in Super Mario Bros.?

[Ethoscapade]

balance.

[aderack]

Tilt sensors weren't yet in use?
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