GRAVITY - Sylux's Crusade is Roebloz's third serious Metroid Zero Mission ROM hack and fifth overall, this time acting as a prequel to Metroid Prime 4, starring Sylux going through a
Space Pirate research station fallen under the control of one of the many weapons onboard, an experimental Nightmare model stolen from the Galactic Federation, having gone rogue and now
generating a black hole, which Sylux will attempt to stop from growing any bigger by destroying Nightmare as he runs through the station's corridors, picking up various Chozo artifacts
along the way.
Much like its predecessor, Crocomire's Last Stand, GRAVITY attempts to provide a more open kind of exploration to the player, though it is much more experimental than the former, having
been made for the MetroidConstruction Star Base contest hosted by MetroidMst, which included many restrictions, such as a maximum of 60 rooms overall. (Which Roebloz cleverly gets around by abusing
the clause for elevator rooms being excluded, and by packing as many rooms as possible within one) It is truly open progression this time around however; The hack is playable in almost
any order that the player chooses, as long as their skills are good enough to handle the tougher lower areas. It is rather short in length depending on how you play (At around 2 hours for a 100% playthrough), though of course if you decide to try and go for all of the ending
images, it will last much longer, and thanks to all the different paths you can choose, there is near-endless replay value! Do you go for the strongest upgrades first, or do you stock up
on Energy Tanks right away? The choice is yours!
Rather than the boring Zero Mission bosses, many of Fusion's bosses have been ported in thanks to the excellent work of the MetroidConstruction community. The aforementioned Nightmare
appears as the final boss of course, but many others show up with new looks and improved difficulty, such as Yakuza NEO, F.R.I.D.G.E., Serris and Arachnus's Revenge. The Fusion beams return
from Crocomire's Last Stand, and many new Super Metroid elements are added in as well such as its doors, basic tiles, pickup sprites, some of its sound effects and enemy graphics, which are
blended together with the Fusion elements (Such as ceiling ladders) and the tilesets adapted from Mega Man: The Wily Wars to create as unique of an environment as possible for the
Space Pirate Elemental Research Station. And of course, you can play as Sylux, making use of the previous technology introduced in Croco's Last Stand to replace the player sprite, and
having slightly less graphical glitches related to it, though Sylux does still perform the "Map Downloading Dance".
Custom music has also been applied, consisting of a tracks from other Metroid games, remixes, and non-Metroid games such as Super Mario 64, UNDERTALE, Mega Man and many others.
Due to the short timeframe and ROM size left to import them though, many of them sound pretty muffled and low-quality.
Despite these issues, if you are looking for a relatively short medium-sized Metroid: Zero Mission ROM hack, GRAVITY's got you covered!
The ZIP file includes the hack's story, two full maps, the changelog and a wallpaper along with the BPS patch.
Database match: Metroid - Zero Mission (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Game Boy Advance (v. 20210227-023848)
File/ROM SHA-1: 5DE8536AFE1F0078EE6FE1089F890E8C7AA0A6E8
File/ROM CRC32: 5C61A844
