Ridley, you know, from Metroid? This is his design from the instruction booklet. Use first person controls to view the scene.
http://grayboxgames.com/michaeljohnston/Ridley.unityweb.html
I like what you’ve done with those shaders! great way to create a retro look.
Haha, excellent! Love it.
That is really impressive, although I kept getting bumped off the platform and had a hell of a time jumping back on at first. 
You doing any more Metroid in 3D studies? Or perhaps other games, like Zelda?
WOW… this is a very interesting … how about Mario 3 castles… they always give me the creeps…
i bet ur work has put so many of us thinking of our childhood gaming days in a new perspective
Heh, pretty good work. Not sure why Ridley has a snout now tho. The look works pretty good for the attack animation tho.
This is just awesome. I always got the impression that the diagonal line near the head, in the sprite, was a long mouth, and that there were teeth poking out of it, and that he had big goofy eyes on top of that. But this is a great, frightening interpretation. My favorite part of this is the spikes on the ceiling. Awesome look all around, though.
Although I played the first two Metroid games a lot, back in the day, I can’t do so anymore. Super Metroid / the Metroid Prime series / Zero Mission caused the old ones to seem pretty dismal by comparison. However, there is a weird charm that the first one had, in terms of sound and visuals, and I do appreciate the homage.
Thanks everyone for the comments. About his shape, this is his original design. I had some pictures lying around so I put them together here:
As you can see, in the Instruction booklet, Ridley’s design is different than his sprite. For Super Metroid, he was redesigned to look more like a dragon. But this design is far less interesting than the original. That’s why I wanted to make him in his original form. His sprite does have a beak of sorts and only two eyes. I added a drawing I found online that is an interpretation of the sprite, not the concept art.
But what about his snout in the concept art? Well, if you look closely, he does have a beak. His head is at an odd angle so you can’t really see it, but its definitely there. That snout is just his nose (Only one nostril).
BUT,
In the official instruction booklet there are a number of little drawing, made by someone other than the original concept artist. And in these little drawings he is drawn with a snout. So, if Nintendo can make that mistake, so can I
When I first saw his picture I thought he had a snout . I actually like him with a snout, it reminds me of other Nintendo characters, like Octoroks.
BTW, can anyone find the hidden Energy Tank 
I thought that it was just weirdness that caused me to be able to stand on the wall at first, but I kept going after you mentioned that. Awesome.
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that instruction manual concept art. Very interesting. Something tells me that anything having to do with what is “official”, concerning Metroid 1, should be taken with a grain of salt (see image), but I think your interpretation is really cool.
…oh crap, I forgot the spoiler alert! :shock:
What was your motivation for making this? Have you tried sending it to Kotaku or anything? I think a ton of people would get a giant kick out of it.
Great work! Very lurid yet stylish!
Who is the girl with green hair in the hidden screenshot?
Samus (the main character in Metroid) - without the suit. In the NES version you could clear the game in under three hours to unlock that art or use a code.
I thought the implied that the question was rhetorical, because Samus with green hair makes no sense, given her blonde tanned-ness at the end screen.
Ahh. I just remember back to playing and being surprised that my character was a girl… I mean, the manual called him a guy. But, the green-haired Samus is what I remember, so the question didn’t register right.
edit: Thinking back, I think she only had green hair in the first metroid IF you used the cheat to play as her… and since clearing the game in less than 3 hours was beyond my skills at the time, that is probably why I always picture Samus as having green hair despite everything that has been released since then.
I always just used the JUSTIN BAILEY code, too, because the main game never made enough sense for me to get all that far into it (especially in places where you could get stuck, forcing a system reset). Here is a guide to the several colors of hair, though.:
I did decide to play through the whole game, using a map/guide a few years back, just to see the whole thing, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Zero Mission was a much better telling of that story.
Very cool
I’ve been getting a low FPS, could you somehow reduce your poly count? I think all those sphere-boxes are the problem, but everything is pretty detailed so i can’t be sure.
The high poly count is something I really like about this. None of the Metroid Prime games were this smooth.
Apparently, the frame rate was completely unbearable on my girlfriend’s work computer, too. It doesn’t mater, though. It’s a fault with the computer, not the scene. It runs beautifully on my current-gen low-end MacBook Pro.
Over time I’ve been pushing more and more polygons in my scenes. This is the most I’ve used by far, around 200,000 polygons. Thanks for letting me know that this has slowdown on older machines. If you want, I can make this a lot slower with some parallax mapping and glow effects 
Rather than make another post, I’ll just add to this one. I’m writing this in response to the post below.
I am not going to make the rest of the game in 3D. What would be the point of that? But the responses I’m getting are very encouraging.
So, in the immortal words of Shigeru Miyamoto, “I’m going to make something you didn’t even know you wanted”. Well, you do know what it is, more NES games made in 3D :). But I’m not going to say what they are. Suffice to say, they will be moments in games that would benefit from being brought into 3D. There are enough games out there that were ruined by making them 3D. I don’t want to add anything to that list.
Wow. Love this.
Really great work with the shaders. Was it coming out that way without much tweaking, or did it take some extended effort? IT works really, really well.
I sure hope you are making the entire game this way. At least do Mother Brain in Tourian. Pleeeeeease?
Two things.
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I’d take the mip mapping off of the background pix. Seems really odd when you are trying so hard to pay homage, to blur the images like that. Let’s see the real square(ish) pixels!
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I get your take on Ridley and all… but the sprite art is clearly a snout. I really like the extreme nature of the sprite, too. The extreme hook to his head/jaw. Anyway, the manual artwork is sort of odd, actually. Almost seems as if the artist understood the homage to Ridley Scott (director of Alien) that was intentionally being paid by the developers and made it more like the Alien in that his film. You should show this off in larger circles (Metroid Database, game sites, etc.) and it’s going to be a pain to keep explaining. lol. Maybe make both versions with a toggle? lol. Maybe not.
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(did I say 2?) I think the stats should be a little smaller or in the upper left… but, I’m sure you lined things up… just seems off, though.
If you do spread it around more, do NOT tell anyone about the energy tank. Way too fun to find it as a secret. Nice touch.
In response to the post above the one above mine… (hmm, this is silly. )
If you do make more of these from different games, please consider making the viewing of the level a bit more interesting and less clunky feeling.
Yeah, I was kidding about making the whole game. But the thought of seeing a lot of the like that is fun. Maybe with the original 2D gameplay and a very literal way of translating the exact map and play mechanics could be interesting. Not very practical, though… for instance, legally. lol.
As a sort of collector’s model that you can view and interact with, I find this to be a great project. I’d make a web page with ad space for a bunch of them. It would be cool to have some interactions that are somewhat automated. Maybe a couple fly-throughs or click here and this happens or watch Samus take him out with a predefined animation. You could REALLY get some traffic with something like that… but I wonder how Nintendo would feel about it.