Sorry for another vidyagame-related post here, but I'm pretty sure this will be the last one for a very long time.
From a couple of months ago or so:
A few weeks ago I started playing Super Metroid on and off. [...] for some reason partway through I got the idea to do... well, not quite a "suitless" run (where you don't collect the varia nor gravity suit), but kind of a semi-suitless run. [...] I would have done suitless, but I find maridia tedious enough as it is...
This has been bothering me since I did this. The "semi"-suitless run that I did involved manually disabling one of the suits, so unless I taped myself doing the run or something, there's not much evidence or whatever that I did this.
So, of course, I decided to do an actual suitless run, where I never collect the varia nor grav (nor spacejump nor springball... I think that's it). Since I already did the Norfair part before, this should be relatively easy, right? The only additional challenge is Maridia, and that should just be a bit tedious but not too difficult.
Holy balls.
I didn't even look up what was necessary to do this before I did it... and did not realize that suitless Maridia requires at least two glitches that I don't really like exploiting. (Forcing your way through a one-block-thick solid ceiling, and the so-called "flash suit") I found that out right about when I got to Maridia... and had already played through quite a bit.
But I got through it. Underwater sand likes to glitch out a lot without the grav suit, and Draygon was tedious as hell for the blind shots I had to made, but in general it wasn't so bad. Took less than a day.
But man, lower Norfair. I thought it would be easier since I had done the exact same thing before, and I suppose it was, but
man. It is still not easy at all. The damn Ridley section still probably took around a day in total to do just by itself, though it was spread across several days. That was probably the most frustrating part, since I kept retrying to run, only to die, with the knowledge that not only is it possible, but I had done it myself! Recently, too.
And then after I did the section, I almost didn't have enough energy to make it back out! At first I was very frustrated with myself for saving in such a condition, before I realized it is technically possible to farm life and powerups in that area, albeit very...
very slowly. But I did it enough to get out.
And earlier today I finished that, and the rest of the game. I now have a save file pretty close to the endgame with no suits collected. It feels good, as I'm sure not many people have done that on a console (no matter how pointless doing it was, that fact about it still counts!). But mostly I just feel tired. Too many damn video games for today.
Proud member of the Canadian Alliance.
dgf hhw