Hey, everyone! It’s time to discuss the 3rd (and weirdest) unused enemy in Super Metroid - Bang. This lil guy is practically harmless - as long as you leave it alone. It only deals 4/2/1 damage to suitless/Varia/Gravity Samus, respectively. Should you decide to attack it, be careful...
The Bang enemy keeps track of how much damage you’ve dealt to it. When it dies, it fires a charged shot in your direction, and the shot’s appearance depends on which beams you have equipped when the shot is generated. The shot will deal 100%/50%/25% of the total damage that you dealt to the Bang to suitless/Varia/Gravity Samus, respectively. For example, at the beginning of the video, Samus dealt 300 + 900 + 100 + 300 + 300 = 1,900 damage to the Bang, and thus the Bang’s shot dealt 475 damage to Samus (since Gravity was equipped).
Bang will take 5 (at minimum) beam/Missile/Super Missile shots (or Bombs) to kill. This is because it has 4 “expansions” to progress through - then, the next shot/Bomb will kill it. If you shoot the Bang DURING an expansion, it won’t trigger the following expansion, but it WILL add to the total damage dealt. You can see this at ~1:20 in the video, when I shoot the Bang with Hyper Beam twice in quick succession. This was done so that the Bang’s shot would deal just enough damage to kill Samus (1,000 damage per shot*6 shots*0.25[Gravity Suit] = 1,500).
For this video, I kept the Bangs immobile, which was convenient for demonstration purposes and for the setup to kill Stoke at the end of the video. If you'd like to see a mobile Bang, check out my "Part 2" video: • Super Metroid Unused E... . :)
If you’re wondering what happened at the end of the video... Bang and Reflec don’t really know how to handle Hyper Beam. If Hyper Beam is equipped when Bang generates its “death shot”, that shot will take the form of a charged Ice + Wave + Plasma [cIWP] shot (with Hyper Beam’s colors). Then, when the Reflecs "reflect" the beam, its damage value is reset to the standard value for the beam type being reflected - in this case, 900 for cIWP. So, although the shots that hit the Stoke near the end of the video had Hyper Beam’s colors, in the game’s mind, they were basically cIWP shots. As with standard cIWP shots, you can freeze enemies without killing them, even if they have well under 900 HP. And the colors of the frozen enemy depend on the colors of your beam - for example, try freezing an enemy and then equipping Murder Beam, or freezing an enemy after acquiring a shinespark suit (when your beam is gray). That’s why the Stoke froze and had Hyper Beam’s colors. :)
If you want to create your own Bang in the Etecoon Energy Tank Room, as seen in the video, enter the following 21 “cheat codes” in your emulator:
B484E5 3F
B484E6 DB
A19778 3F
A19779 DB
A19781 28
A19784 2B
A19785 BB
A19788 3F
A19789 DB
A1978A 2F
A1978B 01
A1978C 7F
A1978D 00
A19791 28
A19794 66
A19795 BB
A19798 3F
A19799 DB
A197A1 28
A197A4 4A
A197A5 BB
If you want your Bang to be mobile, add this code: A1978E 01.
Finally, here’s the code for Hyper Beam: 7E0A76 01.
Once again, thank you VERY much to PJ Boy (and everyone else involved in disassembly over the years) for making your Bank Logs publicly available. Would never have figured out how to do this otherwise. :)
Thanks for watching, everyone! :)