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Hi, I'm drb. Never been good at coming up with catchy aliases, and I tend to use my initials a lot anyway, so they'll do. So no, I'm not a doctor, I just play one on the Internet ;) At the risk of dating myself, I've been into Super Metroid since the late 90s. The concept of speedrunning was in its infancy back then and I used to put up some pretty good times in addition to contributing to some of the very early 100% speedrun routes. I've kept up with the various tricks and glitches that have been discovered in the years since but I definitely can't compete with the best speedrunners anymore - these days I'm more into the theory of route optimization, and that's something that ROM hacks allow me to experience over and over again. As far as hacks go, my first was Redesign back in 2008, and I�ve been fortunate enough to play most of the major releases since then in real time. As such, I tend to evaluate hacks relative to their release date over today's date, and I still enjoy a lot of older hacks to this day. That longevity gives me a lot of perspective: just as it's been amazing to watch people like RedScarlet and Oatsngoats redefine what's possible in Super Metroid, it's also been amazing to watch games like Eris and Ascent drive the evolution of SM hacking, as both an art and a science, over the years. My SM hacking Mount Rushmore would have to be Redesign, Super Zero Mission, Hyper Metroid, and Subversion. Something I learned from Danidub along the way: there are a lot of different ways that people contribute to the community. Some design games, some create tools and resources, some volunteer as beta testers, some write thoughtful reviews, and some make maps. I'm drawn to mapping for the same reason that I prefer playing in cover bands: my passion lies in dissecting others' work, analyzing what's going on under the hood, and reassembling it in a way that honors the original. I'm also a bit of an obsessive perfectionist and mapmaking allows me to indulge those tendencies in a productive way. I started making maps in 2021 as a means to route out the hacks that I enjoyed but never got the DaniDub treatment; it quickly grew into a full-blown hobby during the post-Covid work-from-home phase of my life. These days I'll map pretty much whatever I want when the mood strikes but I generally prefer to work with fuller-sized exploration hacks - 70 or so pickups or more. I try not to duplicate others' work and folks like Ambureon and Samantha Arantes tend to beat me to the newer stuff, so I've settled (quite comfortably) into a role of filling in some of Danidub's historical gaps. My dream is a community where every quality exploration hack ever made has an easy-to-find detailed map available - I don't know if it'll come true, but I'm having fun trying. :) This isn't a vanity project for me. I'm not motivated by fame or recognition - mapping is just something that I find fun and productive. If anything, my hope is that some folks out there find the results useful. That said, positive feedback still genuinely gives me all the warms and fuzzies. But I also know that I'm far from infallible, and I encourage reporting of any misses or mistakes in my maps. I'm not terribly active on the Metroid Construction forums these days but I still check my DMs fairly regularly so please don't hesitate to reach out with any feedback, be it positive, constructive, or anything in between. |