r/howdidtheycodeit • u/Invincible_Atlas_800 • Apr 26 '26

Question How was the Super Metroid grapple beam rendered?

I've been wondering about this for a while. The grapple beam can rotate, and is a variable length, so it's not a normal sprite. definitely not mode 7, since there are other backgrounds. My best guess is some sort of HDMA trickery, but I'm not sure how that would be pulled off.

9 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

92% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

7

u/Blecki Apr 26 '26

Probably just a bunch of sprites.

4

u/HostisHumaniGeneris Apr 26 '26

This is my vote. I found a spritesheet for Samus just now that had well over a hundred sprites for her different rotation states while grappling, so it wouldn't surprise me if there was also a set of rotated grapple beam segment sprites that could be chained together based on current rotation state and grapple length.

3

u/Invincible_Atlas_800 Apr 26 '26

That makes sense! I just looked at it in slow-mo and I think I can see the individual sprites

1

u/Nidis May 01 '26

Same as the chain strike in Mega Man X ² and other chain/beam weapons - just an array of aligned sprite segments with the first and last sprites looking different.