Relevant link

Just thought someone might be interested in this, possibly for reference or educational value. I know there have been a few Metroid-based projects for TI.

I'm pretty sure it was created through reverse-engineering. I recall a utility being released a while back that could basically reverse-engineer the source code of NES games through a mostly automated process.

Honestly, though, the Metroid NES engine sucked. No offense, but even the GB version let you shoot low to the ground. The best one was probably the SNES version,

Nice! I like to collect stuff like this whenever I come across it. It's always fun to look at how classic games were designed and programmed. Looking at this file, it looks like this was disassembled and reverse-engineered by somebody. Pretty well commented, too, so you can get some insight into how it works even if you don't know that particular ASM language.

I can think of many games I'd love to see files like this for but haven't found any yet. But I can imagine it takes a lot of time and work to document them like that.

Yeah, many classic games tended to have repetitive maps in order to conserve space. Games like Zelda I and II tended to reuse rooms a lot too. Super Mario Bros. I used a fascinating approach where patterns of blocks were defined and then levels were built using those patterns to save space. (I remember reading a discussion about that lost deep within the ticalc.org comment boards around a decade ago. Fun memories ) Actually, Metroid does something similar IIRC. Actually, I think quite a few games used these types of schemes in general.

The cool side-effect of methods like that, though (especially in Metroid's case) is that if you take advantage of bugs in the game (or hack/cheat) to go outside the map and make the game load arbitrary non-map data as maps, you tend to see stuff that sort of makes sense and is more fun to explore, rather than just pure completely-random-looking gibberish.

It would be cool to be released by Nintendo.

I don't remember any notable company releasing some source code of some old software or game but sometimes they release freely some old classic. One example is an Elders' Scrolls old game for DOS by Bethesda, IIRC. You can freely play now with DOSBox.

Doom's source was released in '97, I think; but it wasn't released for DOS. I think someone had to port it over and then release the modified source.

I know there is a Flash version of Doom somwhere on the internet...  I'll see if i can find it...

*runs off*

heh heh. Metriod source code.....many of these games consistently used repititive images and maps in order to save space. think how much more space would be needed to incorporate seperate images for EVERYTHING. i mean we are talking about an old low-memory 8-bit NES cartridge. Not a PS3 blueray disc.