Viewing Single Trivia
▲
1
▼
Whenever Samus approaches a Bombu, the screen fills with static to show electrical interference with her visor. According to programmer Zoid Kirsch, as the game's developers worked on this detail, a big issue that came up was the memory use of the noise texture since the GameCube only has 24 MB of RAM. If they used a low resolution texture (64x64) to save memory then the static effect would come out blurry and not crisp.
To solve this problem, one engineer came up with the idea to use the memory holding the Metroid Prime code itself, and they discovered that machine code is sufficiently random to pass as a static noise texture. In the final game, whenever Samus' visor is affected by electrical noise in-game, the player is actually seeing the bits and bytes of the Metroid Prime software code itself being rendered on the screen. This same technique was originally employed by game designer Howard Scott Warshaw during the development of the Atari 2600 game Yars' Revenge.
To solve this problem, one engineer came up with the idea to use the memory holding the Metroid Prime code itself, and they discovered that machine code is sufficiently random to pass as a static noise texture. In the final game, whenever Samus' visor is affected by electrical noise in-game, the player is actually seeing the bits and bytes of the Metroid Prime software code itself being rendered on the screen. This same technique was originally employed by game designer Howard Scott Warshaw during the development of the Atari 2600 game Yars' Revenge.
Zoid Kirsch tweet:
https://twitter.com/ZoidCTF/status/1590012270071152640
Correction by Kirsch:
https://twitter.com/ZoidCTF/status/1590037731065102336
https://twitter.com/ZoidCTF/status/1590012270071152640
Correction by Kirsch:
https://twitter.com/ZoidCTF/status/1590037731065102336
Comments (0)
You must be logged in to post comments.
Related Games
New Play Control! Metroid Prime 2: Dark Echoes
Metroid Fusion
Metroid: Other M
Metroid
Metroid II: Return of Samus
Metroid Prime: Federation Force
Metroid Dread
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
New Play Control! Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime Hunters
Super Metroid
Metroid: Zero Mission
Metroid Prime: Trilogy
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS
Metroid Dread
Super Smash Bros. Melee
Metroid II: Return of Samus DX
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
NES Remix 2
Ultimate NES Remix
Super Smash Bros.
Famicom Mini Collection
Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Nintendo Land
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition
Donkey Kong
BS Zelda no Densetsu
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
Pokémon Black Version
The Last Story
Galactic Pinball
Punch-Out!!
Tetris
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games
Super Donkey
Professor Layton and the Curious Village
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
Super Mario 3D All-Stars
Yoshi
Disney's Toy Story
Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards
Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D
Tomodachi Collection
Pilotwings Resort
Gimmick Land: Tomato Atama no Himitsu
Vs. Mach Rider
Devil's Third
Mario Pinball Land