General Feedback for the MDb's news.

[Naner]

Oh, and is anyone else curious about how the official bulletin specifically states "original 2D version" of the game? Does this imply an alternate version in the works? Or is that just to differentiate from the colorized DX version?

There's no such thing as a DX version. I think they added that because, believe it or not, many people tend to think Virtual Console titles are in 3D for some reason.

Anyway, I'll definitely grab my digital copy of Metroid II near the end of December or something. Not much point in getting it now when I have too much Zelda and university and too little money and time.

Now all I need is 3D Classics: Super Metroid and Zero Mission on eShop to be able to play the entire classic series on my 3DS. DO IT, NINTENDO.

[LesserChozo]

There's no such thing as a DX version.

I could have sworn there was, for the GB Color. Where did I get that from?

[Naner]

It's a pretty spread out fairy tale. There is speculation that it was actually being developed at some point, but the whole thing was ditched.

Read this thread for more info.


If there were a DX version, we'd probably see it instead of the original in Virtual Console, like what happened with Link's Awakening DX.

[Infinity's End]

Now all I need is 3D Classics: Super Metroid and Zero Mission on eShop to be able to play the entire classic series on my 3DS. DO IT, NINTENDO.

3D Classics: Super Metroid would be beyond awesome and I WOULD NOT HESITATE to buy it. But it looks like we're going to have to just settle for Kirby's Adventure instead..

[Naner]

I got 3D Classics: Kirby's Adventure. The 3D effect really works nicely. And 3D Classics: Kid Icarus is also confirmed for the near future.

But I feel like Super Metroid would be the ultimate demonstration of the 3D effect in sprite-based 2D sidescrollers. Observe.

[Chris]

That pushmo game looks awesome.

[LesserChozo]

That pushmo game looks awesome.

It's like Nintendo's answer to Catherine.

[Emperor Ing]

The interview was pretty great - it was definitely cool reading the whole staff share their opinions and insights concerning the growth and evolution of the MDB. I'm surprised and glad that Darren was able to get a hold of TJ as well - since I joined in 2007 back when the forums were new (at least on this phpbb forum), I felt like I was a little bit out of the loop in terms of the "early days" of the site. Of course, 4 years later I'm standing in different shoes, perhaps being as "veteran" as they come. (lol yeah right)

In any event, it was great to read up on the site history, and the various things that went into keeping such a awesome sight like the MDB up and running. Congrats, staff, and congratulations to Darren for an excellent interview!

[Naner]

I was there too, you know. It was definitely a nice interview.

I feel the same way about 2007, Ing. Quite a lot has changed since, don't you agree?

[Emperor Ing]

Lol, yeah, sometimes I forget that we're two of the older members of this iteration of the forum (I'm surprised that I really only joined when this place was still "new"). You're right, much has changed: I went from being an asshole to being an even bigger asshole!

The good ol' days of IUniverse Gorea/Hunters topics, Sylux's xenopedia compendiums, the epic rise and fall of Wunterwafffen, HMM THAT SEEMS INEFFICIENT... Ah, memories.

Definitely have come a long way from wanting to join the forum to defend the quality of Metroid Fusion against all the haters.

[Naner]

I went from being an asshole to being an even bigger asshole!

I couldn't have put it in better words.

The good ol' days of IUniverse Gorea/Hunters topics, Sylux's xenopedia compendiums, the epic rise and fall of Wunterwafffen, HMM THAT SEEMS INEFFICIENT... Ah, memories.

Oh my, Wunterwafffen. That certainly resulted in some lols. Remember the time Silver Skree blew up the whole site by creating a bunch of empty quotes at THE SPAM THREAD?

Definitely have come a long way from wanting to join the forum to defend the quality of Metroid Fusion against all the haters.

I don't even remember what made me join in the first place, but I did and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

[Emperor Ing]

I would like to congratulate the MDB staff on the excellent rerelease of Metroid's soundtrack - I have yet to hear a crisper version of the songs that you posted. Kudos to that!

I feel, however, that the X68000 renditions are unbelievably wasted - especially when you consider that the soundchip to the X68000 is one of the single best, if not THE best, FM soundchips out there.

The final rendition of Ending is the only one that really takes advantage of the superior abilities of the soundchip. RSY does ok as a first effort, but he needs more work with the soundchip before he can make truly great stuff.

I mean, heck, just look at these examples:



And then TELL me there wasn't wasted opportunity with Metroid!

[Naner]

Wow, those sound amazing! Did the Zero Mission ones get the same kind of treatment? I feel they sound better than before, but I'm not sure.

[CapCom]

You forgot Akumajo Dracula Yeah, I probably should have been harsher on the X68000 stuff, but the final track is the best.

The originals of all of these were line-in recordings. Since I don't have good sound hardware, there was a lot of background hiss (well, provided you have good enough ears and good enough equipment). The same holds true with pretty much everything else on there.

So the Zero Mission stuff was redone, too. I spent a lot of time testing, doing line-in recordings to get a sense of how the audio sounds - not just from the GBA, but the SP, DS, 3DS (using Fusion) and GBA Player - along with the Fusion soundtrack. There's a neat trick for the settings (which you can read in the ID3 tag comments field). If you input a negative value to your plugin, the music will sound close to the actual hardware. I have something like 90% confidence in the quality, so it's pretty good. I just found that out by accident. Positive values have 'cleaner' audio, but it doesn't sound close enough to the real thing, which was the goal. Then it's just a matter of finding the loudest track and setting the audio values so nothing maxes out

Pretty much the same story with Metroid, though I used the official ports (Gamecube, 3DS, GBA) for reference. Unsurprisingly, the GC version sounds the best, though I'd pick the GBA as a close second. The 3DS sound emulation is terrible - it's a bad MIDI version. You can't notice much because the speakers are so small, but if you put it next to the real deal, there's no contest.

Incidentally, this attention to detail is partly why it's taking so long to go through everything... Super Metroid didn't go up with these because the SPC file you download has a crapload of errors in it that I am REALLY surprised nobody noticed, considering the thing has been updated three times in the past decade. Hopefully that will be fixed this weekend...

[Naner]

Nice! Thanks for the explanation.

Pretty much the same story with Metroid, though I used the official ports (Gamecube, 3DS, GBA) for reference. Unsurprisingly, the GC version sounds the best, though I'd pick the GBA as a close second. The 3DS sound emulation is terrible - it's a bad MIDI version. You can't notice much because the speakers are so small, but if you put it next to the real deal, there's no contest.

Did you try the Wii VC version? Did it have the same problem as 3DS?