Idea for a translation of Metroid Prime to the SketchFighter idiom

When I first played the SkF4K solo mission, as soon as I beat the first boss and collected the red gun, I knew what kind of quest I was on. As I progressed, the resemblance grew clearer and clearer... while the look and gameplay style may be different, the SkF solo quest is recognizably cut from the same mold as a Metroid game, and in many ways Metroid Prime (1) is the best match.

Inspired by this, I'm brainstorming ideas for a translation of MP into SkF terms — keeping the SkF graphics, just translating MP's maps, bosses, etc. into a SkF scenario that is recognizable as MP. Right now, I have no concrete plans and not much hands-on experience with the editor, so this thread is just for collecting ideas for how various MP features could be implemented in SfK.

Things that would work well:

• Basic map look and feel — maybe it's just me, but the SKF maps remind me of MP, thanks to their sprawling layouts and irregularly angular rooms, and to the fact that the map areas match up well between the two games.
• Bosses — while exact replication of boss scripting, tactics, and effects from MP is impossible, I think it will be doable to make SkF bosses that are strongly reminiscent of those from MP.
• General quest structure — this is the easy part: collect upgrades including four colors of weapon to unlock new areas and eventually collect Chozo artifacts stars to unlock the final area. Hmmm, where have I seen this before?

Things that could be tricky:

• Mobility upgrades — most of the upgrades in MP are mobility enhancements of some kind: morph ball, boost ball, space jump, spider ball, gravity suit. There's really only one such upgrade in SkF, (Ship 3). Some of the others could be faked with elaborate arrangements of forcefields which would be switched from impassable to passable configurations using Extra2 flags, however these won't work across multiple maps (will they?).
• Weapon availability — SkF has the four colors of gun, plus missiles, but lacks bombs, power bombs and charge combos. However, it adds four weapon types , each with two levels of power. Some of these weapon types (particularly, wave and super pellets) can be used to hit switches that are inaccessible without them, and can thus be used in place of sequence-essential MP weapons that SkF lacks.
• No activation — in SkF, it's easy to make things that are deactivated by switches, harder to make things that are activated by them. This means none of the events that take place in MP only when you visit an area after setting some flag, rooms where the enemies are different depending on where you are in the game, etc.

I'll add additional posts with specific ideas for how to do individual bosses, items, enemies, and puzzles.

ITEMS:

Power Beam = yellow gun + pellets

Missile = Missile (that was easy)

Energy Tank = shield upgrade — however, SkF only has two shield upgrades. We'll just have to pick which two energy tanks in MP are most appropriate and skip the rest.

Morph Ball and Morph Ball Bombs — I'm not sure how to do justice to either of these. However, as they both occur early and while the player is mostly limited to one map region, and their role in the sequence is to make the player actually explore that region instead of going straight to the boss, they can be replaced by simple switches. I know, these items are totally essential Metroid fixtures, but I can't think of a way to include them that wouldn't suck. If you can think of one, please say so!

Charge Beam — this could really be any one of SkF's sequence-irrelevant weapon upgrades (probably the beam), or it could just be skipped.

Varia Suit = Ship 2 (that was almost too easy)

Boost Ball, Space Jump, Spider Ball, Gravity Suit, Grapple Beam — SkF's only mobility enhancement is Ship 3, and it can only be used for one of these. The Gravity Suit is in many respects the most appropriate, but I'd prefer to use Ship 3 to stand in for the only one of these items that you have to fight for, which is the Spider Ball. Force Field tricks might be used to stand in for some of the others, or the sequence could be adjusted so they're less relevant.

Wave Beam = green gun (by elimination)

Super Missile, Thermal Visor — in MP, both the super missile and the thermal visor are obtained during the first assault on the Space Pirate research facility in Phendrana, and both have the primary effect of allowing you to open doors that you couldn't open before (in the case of the thermal visor, by energizing power conduits). Given the way the power conduit thing works in MP, I'd let SkF's wave weapon stand in for both of these.

Ice Beam = blue gun

Plasma Beam = red gun

Power Bombs — we're running out of sequence-affecting SkF weapons. I'd go with super pellets.

X-Ray Visor — the main function of this seems to be revealing a small number of hidden platforms. This could be done by revealing/opening hidden passages using an Extra2 flag (except that they don't work across multiple maps, right?), or it could just be skipped. They player will have to go to the Life Grove anyway to get the artifact star.

Non-essential charge-beam combos (Wavebuster, Flamethrower, Ice Spreader) = remaining non-essential weapons and/or super weapons (homing, beam, super homing, super beam, super wave)

BOSSES:

These are just preliminary ideas, especially for the later ones where I've tended to overuse the "openly aggressive" SkF enemy AIs. A lot of the boss concepts from MP end up very similar when translated into SkF, so more variety would be good even if it means departing further from the original MP boss concept.

Parasite Queen = enlarged big bug sprite with turret behavior and a rotating shield with two narrow gaps in it

Hive Mecha = passive, stationary drone protected by four destroyable shields, each of which controls (via Extra2) a hatch that will release a bunch of small flickers into the room

Plated Beetle = big bug sprite with angry cutie behavior (I know, this is locked to the angry cutie sprites, so use an invisible angry cutie with a visible, non-corporeal bug on top) and a shield in front

Incinerator Drone = like the hive mecha, but it's in the center of a somewhat cramped room and has spinning shooting behavior

Flaaghra = forest boss-type vegetative tangle in center of room, protected by four shields controlled (via Extra2) by targets located around the edges of the room

Sheegoth = big bug or enlarged cutie sprite with big bug behavior and maybe a turret

Thardus = big ice rock with ice caves boss behavior, surrounded by breakable ice rocks some of which control (via Extra 2) shields protecting the central rock

Chozo Ghosts = nearly transparent angry cutie sprites with fighter behavior and high hit points, vulnerable only to yellow

Elite Pirate, Phazon Elite = guardian sprite with volcano tank behavior (just the body), mounted regular turrets, high hit points

Invisible Drone = invisible guardian with relatively modest hit points

Omega Pirate = enlarged guardian sprite with volcano tank behavior (including mega-cannon and mines), protected by four shields controlled by attached targets (not unlike Thardus), lots of hit points

Meta-Ridley = wasteland boss sprite (including wings) (or some other arrangement of sprites that looks more like Ridley, but definitely using those wings) with guardian behavior, lots of hit points

Metroid Prime (first form) = volcano crab boss, plus a variety of mounted weapons, its head protected by about a dozen concentric shield rings with different vulnerabilities

Metroid Prime (second form) = big blob sprite with attached tentacles, fluorescent purple against a dark background, pusher behavior (slowly chases player), child sprite(s) with forest boss tangle behavior (to spawn seed pods and bugs), vulnerable only to missiles?

Interesting idea. It would be pretty cool if you could pull it off. Seems you've been working on this a while.