2025-05-07

Version 1.1

Firstly, I'd like to thank everyone who's played the randomizer and provided feedback. I'm honored that anyone would find enjoyment in my attempt to improve the replayability this flawed but underrated SNES game. Secondly, I'd like to apologize that I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to work on the project for the last few years. In recent weeks I've been able implement two important features I wanted for 1.0, but didn't have time to complete.

As of today, the Mothership should be fully randomized in stages 2-5. Furthermore, if you check the "Persistent Inventory" option when you randomize the game, you should keep items you collect throughout the game between stages. This adds some interesting resource management challenges and risk-reward dynamics as you decide between going for item points, or running straight to the boss to avoid depleting your timer. This supports the general design goals of the randomizer, which aim to provide an increased challenge for experienced players. I hope you enjoy the new features as much as I have!

In the near future I'll make another post detailing how I'd like to move forward with the randomizer. One of the major goals will be to improve the quality of randomized stages. As of now, all stages (but especially 1-3) are very sparse and uninteresting. This is due to a combination of the amount of space allocated for the map data in each stage and the compression algorithm used. This is the reason there are no electrical lines in stage 3. Long vertical lines undermine the run-length encoding scheme used to compress map data. I have some ideas on how to improve this and hope to share more with you in the near future.

Thanks again for playing!