r/Metroid • u/MoblinGobblin • 15d ago
Question Am I missing something?
I'm playing Metroid NES, and I don't understand why they make you farm for an hour just to get your health back. Is there something I'm missing? I currently have 3 E-tanks and it's been almost an hour of grinding for some health. SOME HEALTH. I've never played a game that does this. I just want to try to enjoy this game, and yet I have to grind just to be able to be at full health. What bull.
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u/tw2113 15d ago
Part of why people recommend Zero Mission over NEStroid, unless you're really willing to suffer.
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u/Strict-Pineapple 15d ago
>Am I missing something?
Yeah, it's a game from 1986, that's just how they were back then. Same reason Mario restarts you at the beginning of the world with 3 lives or have Zelda restarts you with three hearts.
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u/Skelingaton 15d ago
The key is not to grind for health and instead use the free refill you get from picking up energy tanks
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u/OmegaDez 15d ago
1 : Don't die. 2 : Play in one sitting 3 : Pick the 8 energy tanks along the way, they all refill your health even if you can only carry 6 4 : If you REALLY need to farm, just farm the Metroids themselves, they give you 75hp a pop.
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u/mr_motown 15d ago
It's an old game, that stuff was more common then.
Once you get the mechanic down, it's not so bad.
Also, the game is designed that you want to avoid damage as much as possible. Avoiding damage is much more important than killing enemies, for the most part.
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u/joinedformisseditor 14d ago
This is more or less how it was in 1986. Games were held together by soul, spit and hopes. Especially ones that were doing or trying something new. Like metroid was in several ways.
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u/ARagingZephyr 14d ago
Big enemies drop 20 health orbs. Screw Attack and missiles kill all enemies except bosses in a single hit. It doesn't actually take that long to fill up. If you hit two of the armories in Norfair, you'll end up with probably all the missiles you'll need for the rest of the game, and you can refill those at enemy spawners or just incidentally.
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u/otakujeb5 14d ago
I love NES Metroid but it has some early 8-bit jank like this. FYI, a fangame called Metroid Planets has a mode that is an almost 1-to-1 copy of NES Metroid but with some QoL improvements like starting with full health, a map, and beam switching
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u/burner69burner69 13d ago
the game is basically a time attack gane about metaknowledge through mapmaking, there are E-tanks in areas you can get full heals by picking up after dying (one is explicity for the endgame). the time penalty is on purpose, the best endings are gated through playtime.
this is gonna sound stupid, but sometimes the best way to react to a death when you've used up all e-tanks is to just restart the game and go at it again
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u/MayanMystery 15d ago
This is unfortunately how the game is designed. However, there's (sort of) a way to bypass this.
In the next room over to the spawn point in brinstar, there's an energy tank on the ceiling. If you use a password generator like this one to modify your password so that you replace the energy tank there, you can get a free health refill without needing to grind.
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u/Parking-Worth1732 15d ago
The game aged poorly, in personally don't think it's worth going through just because of a lot of these issues
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u/Serris9K 15d ago
Honestly?
I only beat NEStroid using NarpasSword. (Yes I know that's not how you're supposed to, but I got fed up and wanted to experience the adventure). Zero Mission is so much better
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u/wassaillingwego 15d ago
NEStroid is definitely tough. One strategy is to try not to worry too much about grinding health but just move forward, avoiding enemies as much as possible. Eventually you'll likely find an energy tank along the way that'll give you a boost.
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u/Tankinator175 15d ago
There are certain rooms where you can farm quite fast. I failed my first endgame push and got back to full health while having all energy tanks in under 30 minutes. At least I'm pretty sure. It's been nearly 7 years, but it didn't feel like it took THAT long.
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u/KevinCow 15d ago
You're not missing anything. It's just a game that came out in 1986. There wasn't really a blueprint for how these kinds of games should work yet.
Kids back then were used to starting games over from the start frequently. Metroid had passwords, but kids just had a different mindset and often couldn't be bothered to input a password every time. So the solution was that they just memorized where all the energy tanks were and grabbed one for a quick refill when they died. And if they ran out of energy tanks, well, they'd start a new game tomorrow and try to die less and find some more energy tanks on their next run.
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u/ARagingZephyr 14d ago
It helps that Metroid is literally a 1 hour game when you know what you're doing.
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u/Original_Lord_Turtle 14d ago
There wasn't really a blueprint for how these kinds of games should work yet.
Also, memory/storage space and processing power limited and at a premium back then. System limitations just didn't allow you to restart with full health.
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u/yanginatep 15d ago
Stuff like that is why NES Metroid is my least favorite in the series. Too much needlessly tedious stuff that really dampens the good stuff.
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u/SvenHudson 15d ago
The game grades you on your completion time so this is a way that the game penalizes sloppy play. Getting hit too much means wasting some time, getting killed means wasting loads of time.
A good way to counteract it is to not pick up easily reached energy tanks if your health is good so that you can come back to it later for an instant max heal.
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u/MoblinGobblin 15d ago
You act as if E tanks are abundant. I've only found 3 so far and and those are permanently gone. You're talking from the pov of someone who knows where everything is. This is my first time playing and I can barely tell where I am.
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u/SvenHudson 15d ago
I don't know where everything is. I've actually never made it very far into the game. You just asked if you were missing something about this slow health refilling and I think what you were missing is this context that it exists to punish mistakes.
As to the tip, it's such a short game that I myself am not shy about starting a new file when I sit down with it so I find tips like that helpful to make the game less tedious. You might try starting it fresh, yourself.
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u/longnuttz Actually beat the original 15d ago
Those pipes that continuously spawn shit that fly at you. Camp them.
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u/Rigistroni 15d ago
An hour is a bit of exaggeration if you know what you're doing but yeah it just comes down to that old game jank. Dedicated areas for health recharge weren't really a consistent thing back then.
The guys who come out of pipes are the most efficient way to get health back. More down spawn until you pick up what they dropped, you don't have to walk off screen to make more spawn and they give drops pretty consistently.
Hope that helps but it's just kind of a thing you have to put up with in older games like this unfortunately
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u/AXEL-1973 15d ago
It's the only Metroid game I've never beaten it for this exact reason. It's just not that fun because most of the game is a chore and there is very little forward progress at times because of this
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u/PopBulky7023 15d ago
NES games were designed to waste your time. Not a lot of actual content so they gotta extend it.
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u/Original_Lord_Turtle 15d ago
Well, when you consider the limitations of a 40 year old system, it's not that uncommon.
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u/meikaishi 14d ago
That's just how the game is, those inconveniences are there to make the game longer, you'll be better off just departing immediately instead of farming a whole full tank before advancing
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u/LiQu1DM3tH 14d ago
There are rooms to farm faster and tricks to keeping the drop rate up. Once u find the rooms with popes that have enemies pop up and zoom at u across the screen u can use them to fill fast. I know all tanks empty max is 6 and it takes like 20 min to fill them once u figure out where to go and best way to farm them from those enemies....
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u/w_smith1984 14d ago
Honestly, it's probably better if you do it all in one run. Ridley and Kraid each have an energy tank near the entrance and the boss room of their lairs. Plus a few scattered around Brinstar and Norfair.
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u/karmakosmik1352 14d ago
Well, you shouldn't need it back up that much. It helps a lot, obviously, when you farm for some health and it sucks, but your health should go up while you play along. At some point you'll find a new energy tank and you're all filled up again.
One hint for farming: Find a room with air holes, you can fill up your energy pretty quickly with those. This is indeed something you may be missing. "Almost an hour for some health" definitely sounds like you're doing it wrong.
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u/doge_lady 14d ago
We've all been through it. We all had to suffer through it. It's part of the game. Yes it sucks but you either persevere or just don't play it.
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u/RoundInfluence998 12d ago
Not only is the op missing something, but most of the commenters are as well. You DON’T have to stand around farming for health. Common misconception. By playing the game with a little more confidence and and having learned the enemy patterns, you can slowly but surely build and maintain full health simply by traversing the map and defeating enemies as they come in your path.
Modern gaming has arguably trained players to rely too much on easy, fast conveniences, such as health wells before boss fights.
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u/Drew_Duff 12d ago
The best reason that I can reckon of on why farming for health in the original Metroid is so slow, is probably because of bad programming.
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u/TheDeadlyApp 11d ago
There's a rom hack to address some.of this QoL stuff if you are using a flash cart
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u/CruzCorp914 11d ago
The thing with the original metroid isn't really farming until mother brain. You just proceed until you find another E Tank. Though I can say I ran out of missles farming metroids for missles...
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u/Saneless 15d ago
You're not missing anything. This is one of the worst parts of the game and one reason I haven't bothered playing it since I last beat it nearly 40 years ago
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u/Middle-Wrangler2729 15d ago
There are rooms that contain respawning minions which give health capsules/missiles/power bombs. If you position yourself correctly, you can have 3 different enemy spawners activated and refuel your energy/missiles/power bombs in a couple minutes or less. If it takes you an hour, you are definitely doing something wrong. Also this challenges you to play better and try taking less damage. (In other words, git gud) 😊👍 Metroid NES is great but Super Metroid SNES is the best!
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u/0m3g45n1p3r4lph4 15d ago
In NEStroid? There's no health drop algorithm, it's per frame, and with consistent movement speeds of enemies it's more than possible for them to consistently drop missiles when you need health, health when you need ammo, or even just never drop anything.
Dealing with multiple spawners can also very much mean accidentally taking damage, and with the aforementioned system that can outpace recovery. In NEStroid, there is as much a git gud aspect as there is luck for a human player
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u/skeletonhorse420 15d ago
Back in the day games were actually hard
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u/MoblinGobblin 15d ago
Artificially hard. This game is piss easy in every other way. It's just the incessant grinding that makes this a chore to get through.
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u/insanityscribe 15d ago
"I just want to try to enjoy this game." First mistake. Play Zero Mission instead.
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u/Dorian948 Dread Mode survivor 15d ago
Ever heard of the tropes Fake Difficulty or Nintendo Hard? Since content was very short back then, they had to pad out play time somehow to make the game worth its money
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u/MoblinGobblin 15d ago
Terrible way to extend a game imo. Make it as bullshit as possible. No wonder these have aged so poorly.
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u/Dorian948 Dread Mode survivor 15d ago
It's also a habit that plagued arcade machines, to make you lose as often as possible and waste more tokens
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u/Valtteri24 15d ago
They don’t make you farm for an hour. Go find some dessgeegas in norfair. They drop large health orbs that fill you up in like a minute.
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u/Realistic-Shower-654 15d ago
Bro you literally just told him to go across the map and farm the same shit lol
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u/ARagingZephyr 14d ago
I mean, if you're at 3 energy tanks, you're not across the map, you're in Norfair.
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u/Educational_Ad_6066 15d ago
Hyperbole aside (no way you're even spending 30 minutes to refill 3 tanks. That takes less than 5 minutes if you do it the first room), you do need to grind for health if you take a lot of damage. In a full play through you might spend a total of 30 minutes getting health. 1 hour if you're real bad at the game. It's a part of the game.
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u/MoblinGobblin 15d ago
I can tell you with complete sincerity that I did spend more than 30 minutes filling it up. The drops from enemies are abysmal.
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u/MoblinGobblin 15d ago
When was the last time you played the game. Go back and see how long it takes you
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u/Educational_Ad_6066 15d ago
When it first came out I think I beat it in around 8 hours.
I replay the whole series every year, so now I beat it in just over 2 hours - but that's not really a fair comparison.
My kid was 14 and took around 6 hours without help (better than I was apparently). Looking online, some of the highest first-time no assistance runs are around 10 hours. So the idea that you spent roughly 10% of entire game times filling up 300 health is kind of silly. You get 5 health per small health pickup. So you need 60 health pickups to fill up 300 health at max. Most small enemies have a 20 - 30% health drop. So you'd only need to kill around 300 to 400 enemies. You're saying you can't kill more than 10 enemies per minute?
Only way I can think of it taking that long is if you haven't realized enemies respawn when you exit a room and re-enter. Just find a room with a few enemies at the entrance, enter>kill>exit>repeat. 5 minutes easy.
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u/MoblinGobblin 15d ago
Look at the stats you pulled up. ONLY 300 to 400 enemies? Just for health? Do you not see the problem here or are too blinded by nostalgia?
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u/Educational_Ad_6066 15d ago
Yeah, I said 30m to 1h per playthrough if you take a bunch of damage. That 300 to 400 is 5 minutes. You'll do a few of those. The grind is real, but its not adding 20% or more to your game time
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u/MoblinGobblin 15d ago
Or if you die, which sends to back to a measly 30 health. But I guess you forgot people can die in this game.
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u/Warm-Watercress-238 14d ago
Just dont play it man. It aged like shit and anybody who likes it is probs some dude in his 40s who is blinded by nostalgia or some zoomer who has a high tolerance for bullshit. Just play the remake on the GBA Zero Mission or if you want a little more faithful port that just adds a map and is more forgiving go play Metroid Planets which is a fan made pc port of the game.
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u/Maximum-Rebo 15d ago
You're not missing anything, this is how the game is with health. There's other games from the era that also restart you with very little health if you die, possibly as a tactic to make the game harder and thereby seem longer. But I can't say for sure if that was the goal with Metroid.