Metroid Fusion/ZM Exploit Weirdness

[Lord Immortallix]

So in hopes of testing the awesomeness of the ice beam in Metroid Fusion I've used some cheats to give it to me early on in the game because IMO its one of the strongest beam stack combos Samus has in the entire series and I've always wondered what it would be like to use it on everything else other than the Omega Metroid. I'm sure other people have tried this, but I've used it against the SA-X every time you meet it in the game (Sec 2, Sec 6, Sec 5, Sec 2 again) before you actually fight it, and it does no damage, so I turned it off to just use the wave beam. Thats when I find out that In every run-in with the SA-X it is actually invincible. So I proceed to the actual SA-X battle with the Ice beam to find out that it actually doesn't hurt the SA-X, as if it removes the plasma beam effect (although it still goes through) and only freezes it. I find it weird that the strongest beam combo in the game which lays waste to every other enemy and boss in the game can't hurt the SA-X. Why do you guys think that would be?
As for MZM, I think I've found a way to permanently lose the power suit. By using cheat codes you do the ruins trial first to get the suit, then go and fight mother brain and escape. I'll see if this actually works later.
Just thought some of you may find that interesting.

[HYRUL3]

That is very interesting. I wonder why the Ice Beam doesn't harm the SA-X. If it harms all the other bosses I wonder if that says something about the SA-X and ice susceptibility in general.

[Lord Immortallix]

That is very interesting. I wonder why the Ice Beam doesn't harm the SA-X. If it harms all the other bosses I wonder if that says something about the SA-X and ice susceptibility in general.

Well the SA-X can still be frozen by Ice Beams and Ice Missiles, and pre-fusion Samus isn't THAT powerful, a charged wide/plasma/wave/ice beam should still hurt, and the X can be affected by the temperature as seen in Sec. 5&6. That means that the programmers may have specifically programmed that a charged ice beam wouldn't affect the SA-X, maybe even as a way of messing with those who dare use cheats to exploit the game.

[HYRUL3]

That is very interesting. I wonder why the Ice Beam doesn't harm the SA-X. If it harms all the other bosses I wonder if that says something about the SA-X and ice susceptibility in general.

Well the SA-X can still be frozen by Ice Beams and Ice Missiles, and pre-fusion Samus isn't THAT powerful, a charged wide/plasma/wave/ice beam should still hurt, and the X can be affected by the temperature as seen in Sec. 5&6. That means that the programmers may have specifically programmed that a charged ice beam wouldn't affect the SA-X, maybe even as a way of messing with those who dare use cheats to exploit the game.

That makes sense. There are a lot of games that have anti-piracy/anti-tampering programs. The ones that troll the pirates are the funniest.

[Emperor Ing]

I think it's more the case that the programmers never even programmed the SA-X a health-bar to begin with, outside of the actual fight.


As for the final fight, I suspect the native attributes of the SA-X (namely, being frozen by ice missiles) obviously don't count on having the Ice Beam.

I also suspect the Ice Beam and Ice Missiles give the same effect on contact (trigger "Frozen"), so the game confuses the Ice Beam for the Ice Missile, and thus, no damage.

[Schrau]

I've mentioned in another thread that Fusion's Ice Beam is fully coded to work on pretty much everything in the game. Maybe they did initially intend for the Ice Beam to be a regular upgrade before they decided to go with Ice Missiles.

SA-X is, in all likelihood, unkillable by design. Nintendo are seemingly aware of the Lord British Postulate*. The probably knew of the old D&D axiom of "if you stat it, someone will try to kill it" and just made the SA-X unkillable until they wanted you to kill it. Even the typical fudge of giving it an absurd amount of health wouldn't do in this case, since someone would have been crazy enough to kill the SA-X with just the Power Beam.

*Yes, I do like linking to TVTropes pages that I launched. Why do you ask?

[Lord Immortallix]

Something else i just noticed as I was playing today, in the final/real fight with the SA-X I switched off the wave beam and tried to kill it with charged plasma beams, but it was also invulnerable to that as well. I find it odd that even though Adam tells you that the plasma beam itself is what it will take to pierce the SA-X that the programmers would make it so only the wave beam and nothing else gets the job done. It's not like its possible to run into it anytime from when you get the plasma beam to before you get the wave.

[Chozo Guardian]

So in hopes of testing the awesomeness of the ice beam in Metroid Fusion I've used some cheats to give it to me early on in the game because IMO its one of the strongest beam stack combos Samus has in the entire series and I've always wondered what it would be like to use it on everything else other than the Omega Metroid. I'm sure other people have tried this, but I've used it against the SA-X every time you meet it in the game (Sec 2, Sec 6, Sec 5, Sec 2 again) before you actually fight it, and it does no damage, so I turned it off to just use the wave beam. Thats when I find out that In every run-in with the SA-X it is actually invincible. So I proceed to the actual SA-X battle with the Ice beam to find out that it actually doesn't hurt the SA-X, as if it removes the plasma beam effect (although it still goes through) and only freezes it.

Yeah, apparently the game thinks you are hitting it with the Ice Missile.