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I'm playing through Super Metroid again, because I've been craving a good action/platformer game to go along with Skies of Arcadia Legends. I love turn based RPGs -- I really do. But if that's all I play for a long period of time, I tend to start wanting to play a more action themed game instead, as is the case now. I'll probably end up splitting my time between the two games until I beat Super Metroid, which shouldn't be long. I know the game inside out, and I'm already about half way through it.
One thing that I've been struggling with, though, is the control scheme in Super Metroid. After playing the two GBA Metroid games, it just seems awkward in some ways. You'd think it would be the opposite, since the GBA has two less buttons than a SNES controller and you can customize your control scheme in Super Metroid, but it's not, and there's one central reason for it.
That is, a seperate button is required for dashing in Super Metroid. I've never liked this, even before the GBA Metroids were released, simply because it's awkward to be holding in the dash button while jumping with another button and firing with yet another. Having you automatically dash just by holding in a direction on the control cross in the GBA games is something I really liked, but alas, that's not an option in Super Metroid. And because of it, you pretty much just have to use three of the controller's four face buttons for fire, jump, and dash.
Now, having to use three of the face buttons instead of only two -- for fire and jump -- is bad because in Super Metroid, you've got five different selectable items rather than the one or two in the GBA games. So you have an item select button to scroll through these, and an item cancel button to unselect everything. Having the item cancel button was a smart move, since when you're in the middle of a boss fight and you tap the item select button twice to fire off a super missile or two, you're not going to want to have to push the item select button three more times to get back to your normal beam and also be ready to fire more missiles on short notice. So you push the item cancel button and your selection is immediately canceled, bringing you back to your normal beam and also allowing you to fire missiles with only one or two more taps of the item select button.
Sounds like a convenient way of switching between items, doesn't it? But that's where the dash button comes in and mucks everything up. Since you're having to use three out of four face buttons on fire, jump, and dash, three very commonly used functions, that only leaves one more face button for either item select or item cancel. So which do you assign to it? Well, either way, it results in a less than optimum control scheme, since whichever you don't put on the remaining face button has to be assigned to the Select button. And pushing the Select button quickly means taking your thumb off the control cross, which is never a good thing when you're trying to fight something.
Why not assign item select to the L or R button and item cancel to the remaining face button, you ask? Having item select on the R button certainly would be similar to the GBA games' control schemes, where you hold in the R button to select missiles/super missiles/power bombs. Well, that was exactly my line of thought, so I tried it when I first started my new game on Super Metroid. But even though it's more convenient for switching items, it leaves you at a huge disadvantage, and it was causing me to take way more damage than I should have been.
The reason being, I no longer had the ability to easily aim diagonally downward. I chose to put angle up on the L button, like it is in the GBA games, but then you have no angle down. Turns out, in Super Metroid, angle up/down can only be assigned to the L and R buttons; nothing else. (Though having angle down assigned to Select wouldn't really be much better.) And I never really realized it before, but I use angle down a lot in Super Metroid.
In the GBA games, while the L button is angle up, you can hold that down and then push down on the control cross to angle down. Despite taking some getting used to, that's actually a pretty good way of having both angle up and down assigned to the same button. ... But again, it's not an option in Super Metroid; angle up and angle down must be assigned to different shoulder buttons or not be assigned at all.
So there I am in Norfair, jumping over pits of lava. ... But wait, there's enemies in the lava and -- crap, I have no way of shooting them, short of jumping over them and firing downwards as I pass by overhead. Okay, I'll try -- crap, it hit me as I was jumping over it, and now I've fallen in the lava. And it's beating on me while I try and jump out of the pit, knocking me back into the lava a couple times. There goes an energy tank, but at least I'm out of the -- crap, there are four more pits like that in the room.
See what I mean? Angle up and angle down are both equally important in Super Metroid, so losing the ability to use one of them really, really sucks. Admittedly, you can push a diagonal on the control cross to aim in that direction, but that can interfere with your jumping and is just generally a pain in the butt. If you know something's coming, it can be substituted for the use of a button for diagonal aiming without too much of a problem, but it's hard to use on the spot.
From all this, I've come to the conclusion that, to really make Super Metroid's controls work the best they could, you'd need a PS1/PS2 controller with its four shoulder buttons. That way you could have angle up and angle down on L1/R1, and have item cancel and item select on L2/R2. All of them would be easily accessible for quick use, while leaving the face buttons for fire, jump, and dash. ... And maybe the fourth face button could be used for moonwalking. (Anyone remember that? I never have it turned on because I always end up accidentally doing it instead of turning around and firing at something behind me.)
Also, I'm curious. ... How do other people set up the control scheme in Super Metroid? The way I have mine now, and the way I've found I like it best, is to have fire on Y, jump on B, dash on A, item select on X, item cancel on Select, angle up on L, and angle down on R.
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