samus returns sequence breaking stuff

Samus Returns discoveries & guide
by JillyRabbit (@Grimic)

sections marked with a * are things i have looked into but have not confirmed are possible

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*SKIPPING CHARGE BEAM:

i currently only have one theory as to how this could be done: when you parry an enemy with a melee attack and fire immediately, you will fire a charged shot even if you don't have the charge beam. the problem is that there doesn't seem to be a way to aim at anything other than the enemy without losing the charged shot, or a way to miss the enemy with it somehow. otherwise it might be used to open charge beam doors

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SKIPPING SPIDER BALL:

this guide will assume you already know how to bomb jump in order to complete Area 1 without the spider ball. the hardest part of proceeding from there is getting to Area 2 due to a certain room at the end which requires you to spider ball along a ceiling to pass over a set of 5 crumbling blocks

there is a trick to getting around this which i've dubbed the Bunny Hop Ledge Grab, or Bunny Grab for short. fair warning: this trick involves landing two frame-perfect (as far as i can tell) jumps, and took me about two hours to successfully perform even after i had worked it out in theory

the first thing you do is spin jump at the crumbling blocks from the right side in such a way that the rightmost two break and you land directly underneath the second one. from here, you need to jump straight up immediately as you land in order to get Samus inside the block she just broke before it reappears. ( screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/vICXZZ2.jpg ) from here, you need to resume holding forward and press B at the peak of Samus' jump so that you return to spin jumping mode with enough distance to break the third and fourth blocks in the same way as the first two. from here you have to jump straight up again, essentially repeating the same extremely tight trick twice in a row. if you manage to jump up a second time and spin forward a third time, you should be able to get enough distance to grab the ledge and proceed to Area 2

a successful bunny grab looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/00KWiZV.jpg

the game can be completed beyond this point, but there are two particulary difficult things you will have to do without the spider ball:

in area 2, there is a room leading up to the Wave Beam with two of those silver flamethrower enemies. the trick to getting through this room is as follows: if you get really close to a ledge and let go of the circle pad while in Morph Ball, Samus will slowly begin to roll off the ledge without any directional input. you are then able to use the Spring Ball with fairly precise timing to sort of air-jump straight up from where the ledge ends. to get through this particular room, you need to do this kind of jump twice consecutively: once to plant a bomb next to the block above you, and again after the bomb explodes to actually get inside the path it opened up

the thing that makes this room particularly frustrating is that you have two unkillable enemies in the room and will probably end up losing energy over time because of it. the nearest save point isn't all that close either, but thankfully there is a Metroid just before this room. ideally you would kill it with a full Aeion gauge to give yourself a good checkpoint for attempting this trick with Lightning Armor active, which will siginificantly increase the amount of time it takes for the flames to kill you

once that's out of the way, the game largely proceeds as normal until you get to Diggernaut. beating him without the spider ball involves using either Spring Ball with bomb jumps or entering Morph Ball halfway through a Hi-Jump in order to reach the top of his pillars. after those are taken care of, the third phase will involve planting bombs just in front of his vacuum's path without getting sucked in yourself. with practice you should still be able to get 12 bombs per cycle. when his last 3 weak points are open, you can just use Spring Ball to attack lower ones and Hi-Jump morphing to attack higher ones, bearing in mind that you need to be pretty much touching the weak point for your bombs to "stick"

all that's left from here are some of Queen Metroid's attacks, which normally don't seem avoidable without using the Spider Ball. first you have the whirlwind. all you really need to do once you see it coming is enter morph ball, roll underneath her, and hold left when it starts pushing you. the attack involving the green sparks is even easier to avoid by doing the same thing minus the part where you hold left. at some point she will combine the whirlwind and green sparks, which i have not found a way to completely avoid, but the aforementioned strategy will allow you take only one hit from a spark that travels along the ground

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SKIPPING ICE BEAM:

i don't believe the entire game can be beaten this way due to the gauntlet of Metroids near the end, but there is nonetheless a way to get to Area 2 and beyond without the Ice Beam

normally you would get stuck in a room with shallow water where you're supposed to freeze an enemy, stand on it, shoot a missile at the ceiling, and jump up to enter a room with a Metroid in it

the alternative i found to reaching that Metroid is simply: tap B to short hop out of the water, use touch screen to enter morph ball and set a bomb, exit morph ball and repeat once. if done quickly enough, you can start a bomb jump just above the surface of the water. (screnshot: https://i.imgur.com/MvgR007.jpg) that solves only one part of the problem: you will notice that the missile blocks cannot be broken beforehand if you simply jump up and fire at them. there are two ways around this:

1. unmorph and fire the missile upward after bomb-jumping high enough that the missile block is onscreen, and then immediately start another bomb jump to get up before the block respawns
2. before starting your bomb jump, fire the missile from the ground and then jump a split second later to so that the missile connects at the peak of Samus' jump. you will see some debris at the top of the screen if you succeed, which means it's time to stop firing missiles and start bomb jumping

in theory the second method would be easier, but for some reason i have way more luck with the first. there is also the fact that your missiles are more likely to whiff completely using the second method, whereas the first almost guarantees one bomb jump attempt per missile

either way, a successful ice beam skip looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/50jyL9U.jpg

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*SKIPPING HI-JUMP BOOTS:

so far i have only heard of this being done before, and nothing about it requiring any special tricks. there may be extra complications if you try to skip this and Spider Ball together