Metroid games were some of the first to encourage speed-running. The original game would only even reveal that Samus was a woman (which was a pretty big deal in the 1980s) if you beat the game quickly. And as the speed-running tradition has grown, people have found ways to complete these games (and others, of course) in ways that break the ordinary order in which you complete the game.
Metroid games are built around exploring areas, coming across doors or barriers you can't get past, and then finding items and abilities that allow you to get past them. But often, there are workarounds where you can get places you want to go without getting that necessary item, usually involving some very difficult jumping puzzles.
The second unique boss you fight in Metroid Dread is Kraid, the classic Metroid villain who was one of the bosses in the original game as well as Super Metroid. At the point you fight him in Dread, you've gathered a few abilities, but are lacking, most crucially for the purposes of this post, the Morph Ball Bombs.
Kraid's fight has two phases (the second phase being kind of itself divided into phases.) In the second phase, you fall down to a stone platform just above the magma in which Kraid is sitting, and you need to dodge or shoot things that he ejects from his weird abdominal holes (Kraid is gross).
However, if you somehow got the Morph Ball Bombs (which you'd normally need to beat Kraid well before,) there's a special alternative way to defeat the giant boss. At that lower platform, there's a block that can be destroyed by a bomb, and beyond it is a Morph Ball launcher, which will shoot you into Kraid's weird naval-cannon. A special cinematic will play where you can plant a bunch of bombs in his stomach and then the normal ending cinematic will play with you having beaten big green.
I think it's clear that this game was a labor of love, and I suspect that in the long run it'll be deemed a classic.
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