Super Metroid Glitch Tutorial - Get Near-Infinite Ammo
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ส.ค. 2021
- In this video tutorial, I explain how to perform a difficult glitch in Super Metroid that grants Samus a near-infinite amount of Missiles and Super Missiles. This glitch is commonly referred to as the “Draygon ammo underflow.” You can see this glitch performed in “14% Chargeless” speedruns. The glitch takes advantage of the way the game was programmed in such a way that you essentially “trick” the Crystal Flash into draining more ammunition than Samus actually has. I go into more of the technical details in the video. I hope you enjoy!
As mentioned in the video, if you want to see a better quality image that shows the frame in which you should lay a Power Bomb to initiate the Crystal Flash, head here: wiki.supermetroid.run/images/...
Thanks for watching, everyone! Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. - เกม
After your third eye video was blessed by the algorithm, I checked out your channel to see if you had any other videos like it, and you did! I enjoyed watching them, and I really look forward to future videos.
Literally the same!!!
Ya me too lol
Same, must be all the Oats, Zoast, and Zeni videos I’ve been watching
Same here, bless the TH-cam gods for the algorithm. These videos are badass 🔥👍🏻
Same story, here! 🖖😀
At 4:38 it is mentioned that saving and reloading the savefile or making Samus die are the only ways in which the so-called perma-goo state of Samus can be removed, but this is false in a manner which would be relevant for speedruns, since actually by destroying a Draygon turret's projectile with a Power Bomb explosion (which simulates the destruction of a to Samus attached goo projectile), the perma-goo state is undone as well.
Also it may be relevant to mention that while Draygon carries Samus, only alternating direction button presses increment the value of the memory address that is responsible for making Draygon release Samus from a grab once it reaches 60, so that consecutively repeated presses of the same direction button still just increment this counter by 1 and not once for each such button press.
The reason why underflown Power Bombs initially don't explode is that the game considers the Power Bomb ammunition counter to be a signed memory address value (rather than unsigned), such that the Power Bomb count within the range inclusively from 0 to (65536/2) - 1 = 32767 is considered positive and the value range from 32768 to 65535 is considered negative (but with 65535 interpreted as being equal to -1, and so forth with lower values, and with 32768 interpreted as being equal to -32768), and if one were to lay enough Power Bombs to get their count out of the by the game as negative considered higher value range (though technically, laying a Power Bomb already works once that counter reached 32768), they would eventually start working again.
It is weird that the code prevents laying a p-bomb, but still counts it as used.
And that does not explain the limit mentioned of 5 per room entered.
This is not just "How to". This is a documentary of "How to", explained in great details.
It's amazing how many glitches have been found in this game over the years, considering how rock solid it feels to the casual player.
I remember using the crystal flash and I didn't realize that it was so technical. Thank you so much for that beautiful bit of info
I'm a sucker for channels that explain things I never knew in games I've been playing for 20 years. Seriously, keep up the great work!
You can actually do this glitch during the mother brain fight as well, if you crystal flash right berore she hits you with the rainbow beam
It's also not as precise that way
Hey Marco Icaza, I'm glad you brought this up! You're exactly right. Although it is easier to pull off overall, that method has a couple of drawbacks.
For one, you'll get near-infinite ammo of one or two types, and which one(s) underflow depends on when the rainbow beam connects during the crystal flash. If you, say, specifically want near-infinite Super Missiles, you do have to be sure to time the crystal flash accordingly (though it's not anywhere near frame-perfect). It's also harder than it sounds, during that fight, to meet all the conditions required for a crystal flash at just the right moment - though, certainly do-able. :)
Second (and this is the main reason I didn't make a video about the Mother Brain method), the near-infinite ammo you acquire from this trick can only be used for the remainder of the Mother Brain fight and the 3-minute escape. Unless, you do one of 2 things, which would add difficulty to the trick: (1) Find a setup to use Spacetime Beam to escape to the right with your near-infinite ammo, then save and reset (which would take away Missiles but allow you to keep Supers). Or, (2) escape the escape sequence by utilizing X-ray climbing and out-of-bounds navigation in the room with your ship, before the timer runs out - it's difficult, but possible.
All that said, I'm very glad you mentioned this, for anyone who wants to try a somewhat easier method to underflow ammo themselves. :) Cheers! Thanks for watching and commenting. :)
I remember learning about the MB version by watching Dessyreqt's GDQ run like 8 years ago.
Interesting! Never knew about this trick. Love that this channel exposes niche tech. Pretty rough that it's frame perfect.
Hey, i Derp, thanks so much! Yeah, I feel like this is a lesser-known glitch among the SM community at large, which is why I made this video.
It's definitely tricky to pull off, but at least it only takes 1 frame-perfect input... Unlike "taco tank," which is triple-frame-perfect with a 50/50 chance of failing even if your execution is perfect. :) I always try to think on the bright side lol.
You got me curious, so I checked it out! The power bomb code has *two* checks, not the one check of the (super) missile code. Both functions check if the value is zero first and abort if so. If not, decrement the value. The power bomb code then has a SECOND check, though, to see if the new value is negative, and if so, once again abort - but it never changes the value back.
Dunno what's up with the 5-bomb limit, though. I see the behavior, but I'm not quite interested enough to track that one down 😂
So, the most power bombs you can USEFULLY carry is "only" 32768; 0x8000 passes the nonzero check, decrement by 1, and then 0x7FFF is positive. Weird!
Your videos are fun. Subscribed 😊
Dang, that's so interesting! Thank you so much for looking into that and letting us all know! So glad I finally understand the "mechanics" behind that. :) And thanks so much for subscribing as well!!
@@GoldenChorizoCode hey so that means its worth getting power bombs now just set up something to automatically lay them for you until you get below 32,000.
Pedantic note: Rolling over from FF to 00 or from 00 to FF are both called "overflow." "Underflow" is actually a different, unrelated term.
That aside, very nice video. It's odd that they chose to store the missiles and super missiles as 16 bit values when the maximum number you can get of either (during normal gameplay) would each fit in an 8 bit value.
Hey, SlimX! :) You're absolutely right, and I'm glad you mentioned the overflow vs underflow thing. For this video, I chose to call it an "underflow" simply because in the Super Metroid community, this trick is commonly called the "Draygon Ammo Underflow," as seen here: wiki.supermetroid.run/14%25_Chargeless. But like you said, for all you future programmers out there, this is technically still an overflow. ;)
It really is odd that they chose to allocate 16 bits for each of the ammo counts... I don't know what the developers' thought process was. Perhaps they just had extra memory to spare, or (for whatever reason) they wanted to make the ammo counts signed values (2's complement), in which case 8 bits would only allow for positive ammo counts up to 127.
@@GoldenChorizoCodeI'm not sure, but i believe this is caused by the ammo being stored as a "long double"
Basically, it allows for very high precision in the amounts, in case you ever go into the decimals for some reason (This could probably be useful in case you wanna decrease something constantly without taking away one every frame)
A long double howeve, is always stored as 16 bits, so i think that's why.
I watched that Third Eye video and decided to check out the other videos, these are neat! If I had any complaint, they're a bit quiet--I had to basically crank up my entire PC sound to hear consistently; increasing the audio would definitely make these videos much more accessible! Even still, this is a SUPER cool video!
Very cool exploit.
You have to wonder who the people are that managed to find these kinds of tricks :)
When it comes to underflow or overflow types of glitches in general, the folks that typically discover these for various games are glitch hunters & so-called TASers (tool-assisted superplayers). But for Super Metroid in particular, past the old times during which Kejardon & a small variety of former Super Metroid TASers made up the majority of glitch discovery pioneers back then, within the last 8 years, myself and Sniq have championed further glitch research and development, and as part of this, Sniq discovered this Draygon ammunition underflow glitch.
Wow, your channel is pretty much one of my new favorites. Another great video on my favorite SNES game!
Loved the video! Keep the great work!
Thanks so much, Helena Quintanilla! :)
Damn this is some quality content and really well explained
your vids are *amazing* , you deserve to have 100x more subs than you have rn
Hoping the algorithm continues to bless this channel so you can keep sharing your passion for this great game.
Bork bork, thank you so much for saying that. :) I really appreciate it!
Amazing how many of the coolest glitches involve Draygon in some way.
Cool video! Thanks for the tip!
You explain this glitch very well
Thank you, Kerstin, I appreciate that. :)
cool trick. cheered me up tonight. cheers bro.
Thanks, G. Heinz, I'm glad it cheered ya up. :) Cheers.
I want crystal flash in more metroid games.
BTW new sub!
Very Cool, thanks!
This is another very good one!
Thanks, Ace Humpty! Glad you enjoyed it. :)
Your videos are so good keep it up.
Thank you, Devonodev!! :)
Its magical has these classic OLD games still have secrets to give up to the persevered players !!! GOTTA LOVE THEM ALL !!
Awesome explanation! Will definitely try this.
As a kid, I was tricked by Mike Z’s glitches trying to reset the game by shinesparking through the top 4 pixels of the missiles on the way to wrecked ship.
I wasted so much time on this thinking I wasn’t skilled enough, until many years later I read on gamefaqs that missles were the same pixel width regardless of height and I learned the TRUE reset glitch with space time which is awesome.
So it’s great to actually see a video showing and explaining glitches, too bad it wasn’t known in the 90s!
Thanks for your great explanation and content, subbed and I look forward to your next videos!
Thanks so much for the kind words! And good luck attempting this glitch! Let me know if you have any questions. :) And ugh, don't even get me started on that Mike Z "glitch"... 😒
This video should be called "How to get ▓36 missiles in Super Metroid".
Haha, nice. 😂
Pretty awesome channel.
Thanks so much, Commander Vile! :)
Imagine having to recharge that all lmao
Thats very cool!
I learned the electrocute Dragon with the grapple beam from Nintendo Powers Players guide. My cuzzo had gotten an extra copy when his got shipped. He sent it to my brother and I and we got sooooo excited about the game from reading the guide... we ended up getting it!
Which 2 poor kids getting a game that wasnt on a holiday! RARE!!!
It was rad though and just like SOTN....
It's one of my all time faves
I'm still kind of perplexed how we haven't had a Metroid game that looks as good as Super Metroid. AM2R and Fusion etc have their charm, but the sheer style of super metroid insane. But that's what Triple AAA looked like back in the day.
Makes me wonder why they stored ammo counts as two bytes when missiles top out at 250, and supers and power bombs top out at 50. A single byte can read up to 255.
You are very under rated you very good
I went from ive never heard of you to I’m turning the bell on in under half an hour
Haha! Thanks so much, TheRewisFiles. :)
Nice trick
I wonder what happens when one overflows the maximum capacity. Would be possible normally through resetting the world a lot, but I'd imagine just using a memory or saveeditor would be more timeeffective.
Also, it could be that the game still considers the glitched powerbombs spawned and because they aren't, it never actually deallocates whatever memoryslot the bomb was put in. The weird part is having 5 powerbomb-slots when one has a softlimit of 1. I wonder if these specific slots are used for other things too, assuming I am indeed correct with my theory. .
I ended up checking the code out - I thought the same thing, but it turns out there are no actual "phantom power bombs" or anything like that. It's just that, for power bombs, the check for whether you have any happens _after_ it decrements your ammo capacity, in some cases. I didn't bother to track down the code responsible for the 5-shot limit, but I'd guess it's an integer intended to track number of bombs on the field; when you press Fire in morph ball form, the counter ticks up, and when a bomb explodes, it ticks down. No bomb = no explosion = no tick down, until the counter gets reset. A fun test you could try would be, in an unglitched game where you have unlocked power bombs but your ammo counter is at zero, try "laying" five power bombs and see if that blocks your normal bombs too.
I can tell you what would *probably* happen if you overflowed the capacity, though. You'd go from 32,767 max missiles/bombs to -32,768, at which point:
- you'd have trouble picking up ammo. Not sure what the limits are, but I'd guess that if your current ammo is at least 32,768 less than your max (like say if your max was 32,768 and you had 0 ammo) it wouldn't let you pick any up.
- an ammo refill would set you back to max as expected, though.
- you wouldn't be able to Crystal Flash unless you used enough ammo to bring you back around to positive numbers.
- in practice, you could hold 32,768 power bombs or 65,535 (super) missiles. Any power bombs past the 32,768th would have to get wasted as "phantom bombs", but it *does* work - as soon as your ammo remaining drops to 32,768, the next power bomb will be a real one.
i have a theory related to the 5 power bombs/room
like in the NES metroid, you can only shoot a few bullets. 7, in case of super metroid. this also applies to missles and super missles. now guess what could be causing you to be only able to use 5 glitched power bombs per room :)
They're there, but just invisible and don't explode, right?
@@Flinxmin yup. thats my theory
Memory address conflicts are fun
Awesome
Real fun stuff
How did someone even find this?!
14:54 at first glance it looks the same but if you pause it and look closely at it it has different positions of draygons head
Well... 65535 is (256*256 - 1), an standard limit in many cases instead 256 (in some other cases is 32768 - 1). Not sure if this was applied normally on 16bit games but modern ones have it.
Wow….my head is now spinning.
I wonder if this could have any impact on Any% speedruns, but I doubt the time saved from having infinite Super Missiles to use any poor enemy in the way and for boss fights would outweigh the time lost from actually performing the glitch considering Draygon usually gets instantly annihilated by Shinespark the moment it appears on screen. Neat to know it's used in 14% Chargeless though, even if I've literally never heard about the category until now.
7:03 Draygon pog
I dunno why YT keeps wiping out my comments, so I type it in again. @@UC-iTtqTPKoNCuEdEYBABRyQ,
Super-Bomb underflow behavior reminds me of moment when I messed with Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus memory table. This game has similar to SB's nature utility - Combustive Farts - which operates with three individual counters and the math done between them. First, there's an invisible "Factual (or Inventory)" Ammo, then raw counter from the HUD that reflects Factual, and an 1-byte counter that keeps tracking of CF already spawned on screen and "primed".
If Factual Ammo value overflows bounds allowed by code's math, the calculations fail and Tracker stays at "0", producing no CF, nor even rendering animation of green fumes. It can be bypassed by freezing Tracker value at "1", granting usage of CF as long as FA>0. Game simply disposes of CF code in player inventory when FA hits "0".
So I suspect Super Metroid's SB in particular operates under the same complex ammo subtraction conditions.
Great Chanel and video, now i have to try fight mother brain with this glitch, after all you can kill her with missiles after the baby appear, so maybe before too?
Hey, frikyjai, thank you! :) You can definitely fight Mother Brain after performing this glitch - however, an interesting quirk of having "near-infinite" Missiles/Super Missiles is that Mother Brain's "rainbow beam" will instantly drain your Missiles/Super Missiles to 0 when it hits Samus. So, for the final phase of the fight, you'll have to use Hyper Beam, as usual. :)
@@GoldenChorizoCode i killed her with missiles i get all of them in the game and only use super and charge combo in the first stage of the fight that let me between 20 and 50 missiles after the baby (I also turn off varia and gravity before the beam hit samus) and in the final blow i use missiles.
I wonder if there is some value, some number of power bombs above which they start to behave in the odd ways described here...
maybe its like some spells in skyrim once there numbers get to high they just turn off granted that only happens if you are using glitches to boost your spell damage to crazy levels or using a mod that changes the scaling of spells
but i wounder if there kind of the same or at least close as it only happens with crazy big numbers that you would never need like in metroid and just like this glitch some spells still work even thought the number is a bit crazy
you can use an emulator and a RAM editor to find out the exact value if you want
Is there a way to get unlimited health? I ask because I want to see if someone can beat Mother Brain without the baby Metroid dying?
I’ve tried so many times to save the Metroid, but never successfully did😭
There's no way to get truly unlimited health/energy without cheat codes or hacks, but you can get an insanely large amount of energy by using the Spacetime Beam - stay tuned for my next video. ;)
Unfortunately, no matter how much energy you have, it's impossible to defeat Mother Brain without the Baby dying. You can get Mother Brain down to zero health, no problem. But she won't actually die until she kills the Baby. Just how the game was programmed. :(
@@GoldenChorizoCode aw man
How on earth did you find this?
So you came up with a much more complex, much less risky version of what I've been doing before I got it on Switch. There is another way to get this, plus a ridiculous amount of Energy Tanks. It requires you to Save, but wait a few minutes before pressing any buttons to get rid of "SAVE COMPLETE". This will freeze the game, in which case you turn it off and back on (have not tested Resetting yet). It's a Roulette, though, so be careful how you go about it. The longer you wait, the stronger you may get, but the chances are also higher that the game will get increasingly buggy. There were a few times I died the moment I grabbed Energy, and worse, the moment I Loaded. One time, I was stuck in this room with my Ship in the middle. The room had no walls, ceiling, or floor, yet it had corners. Worst Case Scenario: All Save Data Deleted. This is most recommended just before the Battle against Phantoon, when you have access to all five Sub-Weapons and Hunter Tools. Missile, Super-Missile, Power-Bomb, Grapple Beam, and X-Ray Scope. Once the Save Glitch is performed, do not try to repeat it on the same File (unless you Delete it), DO NOT Replenish Missiles at a Missile Recharge Station, and most importantly, DO NOT SAVE AT YOUR SHIP. No reward for repeating the Glitch on the same File, and it will more than likely Delete All Save Data. Missiles will be Reset to the number they were at before the Save Glitch was performed if Replenished at a Missile Recharge Station. Saving at the Ship will not only Reset the three Sub-Weapons, but you will have so many Energy/Reserve Tanks, you may find yourself stuck there for hours. The number your MAX Energy displays will more than likely not be 99. In most cases, it's 49. Thankfully, you can still Replenish Energy at the Energy Recharge Station, unless your Roulette lands you with Death-On-Heal. The Save Glitch is pretty wonky altogether. Great risk, great reward type of deal. I have never tried this on the Switch or Wii-U, but I can confirm SNES and FC-Twin.
What happens if you pick up a missile tank after the glitch? Will it reset like in Samus' ship?
That's a great question! I don't think that would reset your Missile count like the ship does, because picking up a Missile pack doesn't automatically fill your Missiles to their new max (like Energy Tanks do) - it just increases your max capacity and your current count by 5. So, as long as those 5 new Missiles don't push you over the 65,535 limit, there shouldn't be a problem. :)
@@GoldenChorizoCode That makes sense, thanks for the info. I find things like these really interesting!
@@dr.mexico9265 No problem! I do, too.
Does this work on native hardware or is it only romhacks and emulators?
It works on native hardware. This is footage of me using an original SNES console and Super Metroid cartridge, both of which were purchased in the US in the '90s.
It's 65535 cause 2^16 is 65536, and well, it's 16-bit. 65536 is actually my favourite number - cause it's 2^ _16_ , it's also 2^2^2^2.
I'm not sure if I could pull it off but I would like you to confirm if one can SAVE their crazy numbers of missiles or not. If yes, I may attempt it.
Yup, you can save your insane number of missiles! :)
@@GoldenChorizoCode Thanks!
plot twist:zebes is a living being
remember do a speed run of this when i had the original SNES beat the game in 9 minutes.
Niceeee, my best time thus far is 12 minutes! ;)
@@GoldenChorizoCode i had pl ayed so many times i had each item memories in the area and which bosses weak spot to aim for and attack pattern too
That's a really strange algorithm, to set a new value to 10 and decrement it to modify the missile counts. I would think to set the value to 10 less than the displayed value and then tick the displayed value down once per tick until it matches (while display_value > actual_value: decrement display_value, tick). I can only imagine that the missile count is decremented immediately once the countdown starts, and that ticking value is added to the missile value to get the display value, because otherwise it makes no sense how that would work programmatically. But then it's not only modifying the display value, so maybe your explanation is incomplete and only accounts for when the starting missile count is exactly 10.
100th sub
btw nice fricking content
Hey Hemdog, thanks so much for subscribing! Very much appreciated. :)
Goo
Poor Draygon. Grab Samus with a grapple beam, she gets cooked to death. Grab Samus with powerbombs, and Samus becomes an ineffable demigod and subsequently purges her from existence.
Haha... Personally, I feel more sorry for Crocomire and (especially) Spore Spawn. Poor SS is hardly ever seen these days... 🥺
Cool to know.. don't think I got the perseverance and skills to accomplish this..
As pointless as it would be. I wonder if crystal flash is in dread, and no one has triggered it yet.
It's neat but game genie is quicker ;)
Haha! Fair. Quicker, but less satisfying and less interesting. In my opinion. ;)
Is Draygon actually female in the canon?! I thought that thing was male!
To be honest, I don't know for sure... I was initially planning to use "he/him." But then, I noticed that the Draygon page on the Super Metroid Speedrun Wiki consistently used "she/her". The writers of that Wiki *really* know their stuff, so I went with it. :)
@@GoldenChorizoCode ok, thanks! damn that was a fast reply i haven't even finished the video yet XD
Well... I just noticed that Yasuhiko Fujii (the game's enemy programmer) referred to Draygon as a "he" in an interview... Oops. 😂
@@samuelmauldin9131 Hahaha. You just happened to comment right before I signed in. :) Hope you enjoy the video!
@@GoldenChorizoCode thanks, and i also saw the other reply, i kinda thought Draygon was male, cause he's based off of the Seahorse and he also looks...... pregnant when you fight him, and we all know which is the one to get pregnant in seahorses
This game is so buggy.