In the weeks since Metroid Dread launched, a handful of glitches have been discovered. Most are the sort of thing you’re unlikely to stumble upon, but a few could crash your game. Some were even useful for speedruns, adding interesting routing possibilities. Nintendo previously released two patches to address these bugs, but none of the changes impacted speedrunners. However, a third Metroid Dread patch became available this evening, and it removes the invincibility glitch.
Metroid Dread patch removes invincibility glitch
Here are the official patch notes for Metroid Dread Version 1.0.3, courtesy of Nintendo.
General Fixes
Fixed an issue where Samus’ damage detection would disappear under certain conditions.
We made the decision to fix this issue because there is a possibility that it may occur unintentionally, and if it does, it will result in a play experience that is far different from the way Metroid Dread was originally intended to be experienced.
The invincibility glitch is frame perfect, which means you have a window of only 1/60 of a second to make the correct input. However, it’s an extremely simple trick, and it’s entirely possible that someone playing the game casually could stumble upon it by accident. Other speedrun-friendly glitches were left alone because it’s extremely unlikely that they would impact the average player.
This new Metroid Dread patch will pose some interesting problems for the speedrun community going forward, as the invincibility glitch is a key part of the Any% category. This category allows the use of major glitches, and invincibility can be used to completely skip the Varia Suit and Gravity Suit upgrades. Without it, the routing will change significantly.
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