Oddities 14: Reader-Submitted Oddities 2

Metroid


The hidden item as seen in MetEdit
Submitted by NFCDOOM

Here is a new NES Oddity I came by. There are many unsolved mysteries about the original Metroid for the NES, such as the lost worlds, here's another one, hidden items.

While fooling around with MetEdit I uncovered a hidden item which was not on the list, and technically shouldn't even exist! It's an Energy Tank hidden within a wall in Brinstar near the part where you must roll through a tunnel.

There are other hidden items as well, but they are hard to find. Why Nintendo hid these little items around is beyond me, perhaps we may never know.


The estimated placement of the item in Metroid

FO's Thoughts: If there's one thing better than being reminded of a classic game that I love, it's being reminded of why I love it! Metroid was a game full of little secrets and surprises, and was the first game to really challenge my notion of the possibilities of video games. I remember coming to what seemed like a dead-end and being stuck for the longest time, unable to move on...until I learned you could bomb through floors!! Suddenly, the whole game world opened up to me and I was discovering it's secret passageways and items hand-over-foot. I thought that I had done everything there was to do in Metroid and had found every secret, until one day I had found out about this hidden energy tank, via an issue of Nintendo Power that did a retro-review of Metroid. If there's anything cooler than finding all the secrets of a game you love, it's finding out years later that it has even MORE secrets that you didn't know about! If memory serves me correctly, there is also another hidden tank like this in the room with Kraid and another one beyond Ridley.

Samurai Zombie Nation

Submitted by NFCDOOM

This one could be considered a bizarre NES plot, and it's a good one too! It's from a weird shooter called Zombie Nation in which you play the game as a disembodied head, just look!

Yes, just a harmless meteorite, no wait! It's Darc Seed!

The meteorite shoots magnetic rays and turns the United States into zombies! As if this wasn't already achieved through the Simpsons and Jerry Springer. But he also brought the statue of liberty to life to do his dirty work!

Yes, you're actually seeing "The great samurai head".

Isn't this the most unintentionally hilarious thing you ever seen in your whole life? I mean, the great samurai head?!

FO's Thoughts: I don't actually own Samurai Zombie Nation, but it's a game I've been trying to get for some time. I have played a ROM of it, however, and I've read numerous articles about it on the internet. The game really does have you in control of a HUGE floating head that literally vomits on attacking foes and buildings. As if that idea in itself wasn't hilarious enough, it seems your giant floating head does much more damage than the enemies do, because it sets whole buildings aflame! I once heard a rumor that there was miscommunication between the American and Japanese offices when Zombie Nation was made, and the programmers took the phrase "Head of the Samurai" literally, when it was supposed to mean the leader of the Samurai, not actually his big bloated head. And what was supposed to be a Samurai game turned into a hysterically messed-up shooter game. There are a lot of other quirky things about Zombie Nation. For example, in Level 1, you can get hit by beams that are clearly being fired straight up vertically by buildings far off in the background! I could understand getting hit if the beams were fired towards you, but they're not. Also, the first boss is the Statue of Liberty. Can anyone say, "Ghostbusters 2 rip-off"? Here are some more pictures of the hilarity:



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