Galactic civilization is at an end. After successfully carrying out her mission to wipe out the Metroids on planet SR-388, legendary bounty hunter Samus Aran was attacked by the mysterious gelatinous lifeform known as " X " which the Metroids had been specifically designed to hunt by their creators, the Chozo. The parasite made quick work of her and the bounty hunter dropped dead minutes later, while a nigh-identical copy of her formed from the parasite, the SA-X...
The SA-X would take over Samus's ship and, together with a few other X parasites, leave the planet to take over the galaxy with their power to easily kill and then mimic their prey. Over the next few months, both the Galactic Federation and Space Pirates would quickly be overwhelmed by the ever-growing parasitic lifeforms, with all of them becoming nothing but mutated copies. All of them? No! On the faraway Planet Nebov, a small group of indomitable Space Pirates still held out against the invaders, consisting of Kraid, Ridley and Crocomire, who had been sent there shortly before the X attacked Zebes to build a secondary Metroid Breeding Program in order to potentially find a vaccine to the virus. Multiple tests were conducted and the Space Pirates leaders managed to find Vaccine "Metroid", and injected it into the planet's inhabitants in order to make them immune to the X and be able to rebuild an army to eventually take down the parasites.
The vaccine proved to be successful, and even the strongest of the X mimics were unable to take over the planet, while its inhabitants lived a somewhat normal life, even having Crocomire hosting a live Metroidvania gameshow with the Zebesians as contestants! So now, as a last-ditch effort, the X hivemind is sending you, Samus Aran-X to take down the last obstacles to complete X domination.
Your objective is clear: MERCILESS EXTERMINATION.
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METROID: CROCOMIRE's LAST STAND is Roebloz's second Metroid: Zero Mission hack, this time starring the X parasite mimic SA-X in an alternate timeline where Samus encountered an X instead of The Baby at the end of Metroid II: Return of Samus, taking down the last of the Space Pirates for complete galactic domination of the X!
The hack redesigns the whole map and has quite a few new tilesets, (Mostly from Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion) granting a brand-new experience that feels quite close to Super Metroid. The goal is to terminate Crocomire in the Dissolvery, which is locked behind 4 Security Locks, (Similar to Fusion) however one unique thing that this ROM hack does it that you have a great choice of which order you want to do things in. You could get Space Jump before even touching the Varia Suit, get the Plasma Beam as your second beam upgrade, everything is possible if you're clever enough.
The major items also move around during a "CORE-X" playthrough, (This game's equivalent to Hard Mode) granting even greater replay value, especially to get those nice ending pictures. And yes indeed, the player sprites have been changed to those of the SA-X from Fusion, making the hack the second one to ever have custom Samus graphics in Zero Mission. The length of the hack is pretty short, (Around 2 hours) but going through all the endings and exploring the different paths of every difficulty could more than quadruple that. A full map is included with the download, with two different styles (And two different ones to reflect the changes in Hard Mode)
There are also other various ASM tweaks thanks to the talented ASM hackers of Metroid Construction, such as the Crocomire final boss being very close to Super Metroid's, and the Fusion beams being ported back into Zero Mission.
So if you are looking for a refreshing Zero Mission hack with a Super Metroid vibe, (Including music, as it is pretty much exclusively Super Metroid music ports) a surprisingly dark story despite the lighthearted gameplay, METROID: CROCOMIRE's LAST STAND is for you!
-//UPDATE LOG//-
v0.99.2: Nerfed Space Pirate damage, fixed many spriteset conflict issues (but not all)
v0.99.3: Fixed one-way L4 door in Aqua Abyss leading to an unintended sequence break. Also fixed out of reach map tile and unobtainable missile tank, as well as made the way to the Wide Beam more obvious. (Rather than needing to shoot the extending robot with the Charge Beam, it disappears once Charge Beam is obtained)
v1.0.0: Various graphical and clipdata issues were fixed, and Stokes (Mini-Crocos) were added in the Dissolvery.
Database match: Metroid - Zero Mission (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Game Boy Advance (v. 20210227-023848)
File/ROM SHA-1: 5DE8536AFE1F0078EE6FE1089F890E8C7AA0A6E8
File/ROM CRC32: 5C61A844
