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LIPService is a series that puts a spotlight on notable ROM hacks and fan works.
A total conversion hack built upon Super Metroid, Super Junkoid takes the mechanics of its base game and creates a new game out of it by radically altering the context and aesthetics of all its parts. Bosses, abilities and sounds are reused, but by remixing their placements and artwork Super Junkoid creates its own original adventure that uses the player’s familiarity with the original work to create an uncanny atmosphere.
The story begins with a young girl named Junko saving a snake from dying in the sun. Becoming obsessed with her, the snake follows her everywhere, eventually even into her dreams, where it worships Junko as a goddess, and creates a dream realm dedicated to her, trapping her within.The game begins with her waking up, her bed mysteriously caught in the middle of snowy forest scene.
Super Junkoid carries the vibe of an RPG Maker horror game. It begins with mundane environments like snowy mountains and distant cityscapes. As you descend deeper it evolves into disturbing temples dedicated to Junko, lakes of blood, haunted laboratories and the labyrinthine guts. The obsession of the snake grows clearer as you descend, going so far as to attempt to replicate her, with mangled duplicates of Junko populating its depths.
Junko herself is rendered as a cute young girl, a magic wand replacing Samus’ arm cannon, with whimsical substitutes for each of her abilities. The morph ball turns into a rat transformation, complete with the cute touch of Junko holding the wand in her mouth. Missiles turn into baseballs, and the various suits turn into amulets and trinkets. The more “moe” artwork for her character provides a contrast with the horror of the situation, amping it up.
The environmental art is the real star, reusing parts and motifs from Super Metroid, but more often transforming tilesets until they’re barely recognizable, with deep, saturated palettes that add to the surreal atmosphere. Hatches are changed into the crow doors from Doki Doki Panic, the new context making entering their mouths threatening, as if each door you pass through brings you further into being digested by the snake, with the increasingly organic environments adding to the feeling.
The environments paint a clear picture even without direct narrative, with tableaus decorating the backgrounds. Images of Junko repeat throughout in statues, stained glass windows, and eventually replicas of Junko, living, dead and partially animated. A few areas even require you to intentionally take damage, gritting your way through as your health depletes, only able to catch your breath at the hot spring safe rooms.
The snake’s appearances throughout are all desiccated and rotting, with leftover parts of it forming the entrances to deeper parts of the map. It’s clear that the snake’s idea of worship is one with no care for Junko herself, but one of control, and even consumption. These feelings eventually coalesce in chimeras made of exposed skeletons and viscera, warped by the snake’s obsession.
The chimeras are the best demonstration of Super Junkoid’s uncanny recontextualization of Super Metroid’s parts. Many of the original game’s most iconic bosses are used for the chimeras, with their patterns and behaviors immediately recognizable even in their transformed forms. It adds to the feeling that this is wrong, that something is out of place.
That extends to the moveset, which has its order remixed, and sports small tweaks to change their restrictions or make them easier to use. The wall jump is now a dedicated upgrade intended to be used frequently, Speed Booster can now only be used when in rat form and likewise Shinespark now uses ammo, but can be done anywhere, without the need to run and charge it up first. It’s all enough to throw off someone familiar with Super Metroid, but ultimately how you use them in Super Metroid is how you use them in Super Junkoid.
The jumps have the same strange nuances of the original. Air time is long, and you’ll get a somersault variant if you’re moving, which changes your jump physics and is required to pull off moves like the wall jump. Wall jumping works against your muscle memory from other platformers, requiring you to somersault into the wall, then push away from it for a second before pressing jump, rather than performing the inputs together. Once the rules are internalized it’s satisfying to pull off, but knowing those quirks are essential.
Notably, pulling the wall jump off consistently was one of the few times I felt the latency of my emulation method mattered. I originally played Super Junkoid on a lower end emulation device, and the inconsistent latency made it difficult to perform the wall jump with any consistency, due to the tight timing requirements. Switching to a more modern emulator like BSNES quickly removed that issue.
The level design is where Super Junkoid distinctly pulls away from its Super Metroid origins. Super Metroid and its contemporaries tend to push for more sprawling map designs, extending horizontally, with labyrinthine corridors to create the sense that you’re exploring a massive space. Super Junkoid’s maps are dense, layering on top of each other, and repeatedly looping back to connect to previous areas. Instead of creating a sprawling space by giving you a large area to walk through, it extends into the background, showing you other areas you can’t reach, hinting at an endless dream space.
Areas begin split into a tier of surface levels, before leading you deeper into the dream. The wings of the map funnel into a buried hub area, before pushing you further down, and down once again for the final confrontation. The emphasis on your vertical descent amps up the threat of the latter half of the game, and alongside the progressively more threatening environments, lends to that feeling of being consumed.
Progression in Super Junkoid isn’t strict, with many areas allowing multiple approaches. It ended up making walkthroughs hard to reference, as I’d often find I had reached certain items before progressing to the point the other player was currently in. This was unintentionally exacerbated by various major updates to the game, including the new DX version, which added several features as well as majorly reconfiguring parts of the level structure. Until I realized this, it made even recorded playthroughs of the game seem unreliable, as I’d hit the same area the player had reached, only to realize that it was structured completely differently. It was as if we shared the same dream, but recalled it differently.
That dreamy, half remembered feeling is what makes Super Junkoid successful to me. A few moments show its limitations as a ROM hack, but it’s largely successful at using any familiarity with the original game to add to the uneasy atmosphere it builds. The progression from the cute, fantastical surface areas to the gory, disturbing depths never feels edgy or unearned, and the escalation drives home the desperate obsession of the dream’s creator. Super Metroid’s strengths are put to good use, with only small changes for a modern audience. Super Junkoid was clearly made with love for the original’s quirks, and a desire to preserve the character its friction creates.
Many contemporary entries in the genre struggle to find their own identity, having to come up with novel takes on abilities, layering RPG elements upon their progression, or providing deep, complicated combat to keep your attention.
Super Junkoid manages to create its own identity without any of these, telling a new story with pre-existing parts, building upon them with original visuals, rich atmosphere and layered level design. It manages to impress through the technical work needed to refashion the original game, and its many outstanding artistic choices. It’s a collage that a keen eye can comb through to see its original parts, but combines in a way that adds to a cohesive, blended whole.
