Oh, this is long overdue. It's been on the radar for a few years now, but I just never got around to it. I actually remember last year at this time, when I totally meant to play it on my vacation. Then my flash cart wouldn't copy it for whatever reason. It took me months to sort out what was going on there, but I did it. I played the thing at long last. It was very neat, and I'd like to talk about my experience with it and all that. First off it would probably help to properly define the thing. Metroid Spooky Mission is a 2017 ROM hack of Metroid Zero Mission, the GBA remake of the original Metroid for NES. I have always had a somewhat acrimonious relationship with Zero Mission; the original NES Metroid is one of my favorite games precisely because of its minimalist and stark atmosphere. Zero Mission taking it and Super Metroiding the shit out of it to make it bright and colorful and Play Like The Good One soured me on the whole experience. Last year I did sit down and get every ending in Zero Mission, and I gained a new appreciation for it. It's not a replacement for NES Metroid by any means, but it's so well structured for multiple playthroughs and shuffles the atmosphere around in different and cathartic ways. What does the spooky-themed ROM hack do to it?Reworks it from the ground up. This somewhat keeps the structure of the NES Metroid (and by extension the first half of Zero Mission) where you have to beat a set of bosses to unlock access to the final area, gaining new powers along the way. The bosses are the same pair of Kraid and Ridley like before, but they add in the Mecha Ridley fight as the third for the ROM hack. Each boss is hiding in a new spooky themed area which you delve into, explore, and get your new powers. Right off the bat I think things are fairly open-ended, and that you really can go anywhere for your first area. I haven't tried replaying it, but considering my second area was much easier than my first? I think I stumbled into a harder area first. Let's talk about that, as the tension and atmosphere was up there for it. I took on the castle area first, slate grey with acidic beer and lots of skeletal Space Pirates. It was difficult at first, as the Space Pirate portions of Zero Mission are. The item I needed to get to unlock a chain of other item collection was very well hidden away, and things were killing me regularly. It was a ROM hack! It was hard! Annoying in some ways, but I powered through.
The hell area was next, and it was much easier. Yeah. Hell was easier. Ridley's down here, and his sprite is the only one changed out of the three bosses. He's white and I guess sort of spectral/skeletal, but by now I was supercharged and beat him easily. Whoever hacked this game really did know their Metroid, as things felt just right. The last area was the mansion, and this is where the soundtrack comes up. I thought these were original chiptunes at first, but then I recognized the mansion's theme. It was the cave level music from Donkey Kong Country 3. Odd pick, but in the Metroid sound font with lots of ghosts and other things, it actually kind of fit. The upper levels of the mansion were a Castlevania-style clock tower, using the Ice Beam (Web Beam here because oooo spooky) to freeze enemies and create platforms without any ground in a very elaborate sequence. I really liked it and nailed it first try. Lastly there's the Pumpkin area, which is an alien lair from Contra 3 with the Zelda 1 dungeon music. It's here Spooky Mission gives you actual fast travel to warp back to previous areas for item collection, a concession that both remakes of Metroid 2 give you. The Metroids here seem tougher, and the final battle with Mother Brain is only slightly less annoying than the one on the NES original. That was Spooky Mission, then, and I really loved it. A quick new and fresh Metroid experience that gave me some of that patented Metroid atmosphere. It's a real winner!
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