Super Metroid high playthrough log part 5

just about at 6 hours of game time now... I tried Ridley again and beat him on one try while coming up on edibles. He's not that hard once you get into a good rhythm. I used up all my missiles first, usually only shooting 2 or 3 at a time... then I switched to super missiles, hoping to finish him off with these during his harder phases.. but ran out just when he was red... you really have to focus on making every super missile count... then I beat him with a few more charge beam shots after that. during his last phase, he gets really mad and mostly just stays near the bottom shooting and whacking you with his tail, not even trying to dodge you anymore...

Found an energy tank hiding in the empty room after Ridley... the path leading out of the Ridley part of Norfair, with another one of those fake walls you can't see with the Xray visor, followed by a bunch more xray visor puzzles.. the transition back to normal Norfair is very gradual... finally made it all the way back to the Brinstar elevator... that one blue area left in Brinstar where I needed the gravity suit, is the only other missing thing I can easily find before Tourian... there's another energy tank there...

I now have 12/14 energy tanks, 160 missiles, 40 super missiles, and 40 power bombs... the other stuff I'm missing, I have no idea where to look. I'd seriously have to use a guide or otherwise just literally scour the entire game looking for doors or xray paths I might've missed.

If I were to try to 100% this game again, I think to make it faster I'd have to open and go through every door as soon as I come across it, so that I can easily tell on the map that there's more to explore there... and I'd have to remember most of the hidden xray stuff to minimize the amount of time spent xraying everything.

- Tourian -

This place is all blue already, without needing to find a map console... there are Metroids that you have to kill to unlock the grey doors... and being shot at by rinkas at the same time, really pressures you to take out the metroids quickly...

a room with some invincible giant bugs that you don't need to kill, and can easily just screw attack past them... then a room where a chozo statue disintigrates into sand and the grey door unlocks... more unmoving enemies that disintigrate into sand when you touch them... then suddenly you see a living giant invincible bug who gets eaten by a giant metroid and turns into sand... then the giant metroid eats Samus, but stops just one energy unit away from killing her... there's that shrubbery like in M2 that could only be destroyed by the baby metroid in that game, but now your plasma beam can also destroy it.

this is some really crazy good atmosphere... you really get the sense that this area that used to be inhabited by normal mosters got ravaged by these Metroids... and you see why it was blocked off by the boss statues.

right after that you find a missile/energy recharge room... then an empty hallway with mechanical looking structures, at the end is a boss door... after that is the classic mechanical looking area from M1, with Rinkas everywhere..., and the Mother Brain hall...

fucking A+++ ending...
this was done in the earlier 2 games as well, but I really love how the game never explicitly tells you to get back to your ship to end the game... it just says "Self destruct sequence activated" and you're just supposed to know to go back to where you started the game.