Thanks! A lot of the speed probably came down to converting it to 60fps very late in development. Honor the Spirit of Your Ancestors would look great on a t-shirt. One of the parts I like about Metroid is managing your missiles and scavenging for ammo and health, so I suppose I must have been inspired by that. Plus, every Metroidvania under the sun is already doing the 'unlock new character abilities to explore further' thing.