Metroid Series Catch-All

A lot of people love Super Metroid because it was their first experience with the franchise. Mine was Fusion and then I went back and played the others, but regardless I still love the 2D stuff over the 3D. That said, I thought the Prime games were great and I probably agree with you that I would rather see a new prime at this point. I just hope they do something about the morph ball sections because they almost always make me want to throw up.

Edit: Literally, they make me motion sick.

Do you mean Justin Bailey?

Yah apparently I did....not sure why I typed it that way....lol.

Bringing Zoso's comment and my response over here:

In AM2R, I died to him like 6 times, and decided to move on and search of upgrades and such. Found the Varia suit (and high jump boots, and many missles and a couple gun upgrades) and b-lined it back to beat him first try. I haven't made it too much further than that, though. It seems like that's going to be a thing in this game. If you are beating your head against a wall, go look for upgrades and come back after finding some. Progressive Exploration, and all that...

I've put in less than 2 hours. I am more impressed than I thought I would be based on watching a video of some numbskull flail about and giving it the critical eye of only watching a video. It looks much better while playing it.

Warning - there will be spoilers, and I won't be spoiler-tagging them!

Also, apologies in advance, this is some long-form navel-gazing going on here.

Farscry's Metroid Navel-Gazing Extraordinaire

So yeah, I've threatened to do this for what... a couple years now? I'm well past when I should've sat down and written it all out. With the recent availability of the much-lauded AM2R project which I am currently playing through, it's gotten me mulling over my thoughts once more. There was a time when I held Super Metroid up as the pinnacle of the series, but over the past few years as I have settled into thoroughly enjoying games on their own merits and striving to leave my baggage at the door, I've been re-evaluating some of my long-term gaming loves. It helps to have folks like ClockworkHouse and Ccesarano doing some great analysis of their own gaming likes and dislikes along with titles that carry baggage as well.

At this point, I can comfortably say that I don't feel that any single Metroid game fully exemplifies what is great and appealing about the franchise for me. When I say I want a "true" Metroid sequel, I am speaking to having a new Metroid game to play that hews closely to those qualities, though I must admit that I don't think any game could exemplify every one of those qualities. Instead, I am enjoying replaying the series with that new perspective and reflecting on what about each one appeals to me or doesn't.

Canon

The first bugbear I want to hit on is something that seems to get a lot of attention, but which I realize that I quite frankly care very little about: the story -- or rather, the plot. I don't care about the plot of a Metroid game. I don't care what the chronological order of the series is. I only really care about a few elements relating to the story, and the single most important one is Samus herself.

Samus is the lone wolf, the Big Bad of space hunters, the Boba Fett of the 8-bit gaming era who remains just as cool and awesome today as she was when we first met her. I don't care about or want to see Samus's origin story, I don't want to play games where she's playing second fiddle to someone else, and I certainly don't want to see her being portrayed as weak or fearful (yeah, I'm looking at you, Other M). I'm happy to see moments where Samus shows that she does have a soft side (oh hai, cute baby Metroid!) or where she is at danger of being outmatched (baby Metroid to the rescue!), and the idea of her facing herself in the form of a doppelganger is a classic sci-fi trope that works well.

The story elements of the metroids themselves are intriguing, especially the idea of them going through multiple stages of life through moulting or metamorphosis to provide interesting diversity as opponents.

The same goes for the Chozo, in the form of an ancient and lost civilization that you pick up bits and pieces about as you explore these remote worlds with their exotic ruins and ecosystems.

But really, that's pretty much it. It's enjoyable to see reimagined versions of classic Metroid enemies throughout the games, such as Ridley, Kraid, Space Pirates, and the Mother Brain. But I really don't need to go through gratuitous and obligatory cutscenes that indulge in contortionistic plotlines to "justify" new versions or reappearances of our classic franchise enemies. It simply doesn't matter to me.

So if it's not about the story, beyond the importance of Samus herself as an established character and the Saturday Morning Cartoon re-appearances of our classic Metroid villains, then what is Metroid to me?

Metroid

For every gaming franchise, each person creates in their head a concept of what constitutes the essence of that franchise based upon both their first experience with it, and the elements of that game which resonate with them in particular.

I started into video games back when I was a young'un around 1979 with Pong. I don't actually remember this, but Mom loves to tell the story about how when she and my dad visited some friends with me in tow, there was someone playing Pong on the family TV and I was completely enraptured. I didn't try to play or anything, apparently I was content to simply stand and watch. From that point on, a video game in visual range of me was like the inevitable pull of a black hole. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Q*Bert, Centipede; the classics were a HUGE draw for me and I would play (horribly) whenever I could.

For a lot of people, their first big love of "modern" video gaming around the dawn of the Nintendo era was either Super Mario Bros or The Legend of Zelda. For me, it was Metroid.

Now, I didn't have an NES; I received a Game Boy as a gift in 1990 (best gift ever!), and I didn't get my own TV console until I bought a Super Nintendo with my summer earnings in the early 90's. But I was obsessed, and fortunately had equally obsessed friends. I was a subscriber to the old Nintendo Fun Club magazine, and then a founding subscriber to Nintendo Power. And back then, it was Metroid that completely captivated me. I would pore over every scrap about that game I could find. I drew Samus and Metroids and labyrinthine gameworlds in the back of my notebooks at school. I rarely ever got the opportunity to actually play the game, but whenever I did, even though I was starting over from the beginning it was gaming nirvana for me.

What drew me in so much was that magical combination of music, impressive futuristic sci-fi graphics, and most importantly, a central gameplay loop of exploring a seemingly endless maze of dangerous and fascinating corridors (both horizontal and vertical). The promises of new secrets to find in areas previously visited with each newly acquired item was a powerful allure, as well as the ability to delve ever further into the crazy and alien world of Zebes.

Metroid still remains quite possibly the single most formative game in my life, rivaled only by the one-two punch of Dragon Warrior I and Final Fantasy I. I actually really like Clocky's proposed "progressive exploration game" genre title, as it really sums up the appeal as succinctly as possible.

So when I speak to whether I feel something is a "true" Metroid sequel, I'm really working off of a rather subjective view of how well the game evokes an experience similar to that personal response I had to the original game. I can still recall that particular mixture of excitement, eagerness to explore the unknown, and simple joy I had playing the original.

That said - I can also see now when playing it the gaping flaws of the game. It was experimental, and unfortunately a little too lacking in direction. The lack of resource recovery options leaves the player having to resort to tedious "grinding" at times to harvest health and missiles from easily farmable enemies. The lack of an in-game map of any type - while taken as a given in a time when even the likes of The Legend of Zelda left players needing to draw their own maps on gridpaper to keep track of the vast overworld and confusing later dungeons - combined with far too repetitive corridor graphics leads too easily to players getting unnecessarily lost (especially in Kraid's hideout and portions of Norfair; what a mess). Quitting and continuing later via the password system leaves the player starting over with barely any health or missiles, resulting in the aforementioned resource farming just to start off a play session.

Metroid set the tone of the franchise for me, and in many ways comes close to being its purest form. But it is not the gold standard, nor are any of the other entries in the franchise; each one contributing some elements to the greater whole, but still landing short.

Metroid II

Metroid II was actually the first game that I managed to beat. I never had an NES until my college years thanks to a Christmas gift from a good friend, so I did not have the opportunity to actually play the original Metroid to completion until after having fully mastered Metroid II and Super Metroid.

This game was the most impressive of my early Game Boy library, and I played it obsessively. I spiderballed around every damn nook and cranny I could find in the game, must've bombed every tile of the floors, walls, and ceiling at some point, and did my best to "sequence break" before I ever even heard of the term or realized it was something other people did too. It was just my way of playing: try everything, everywhere, and explore until there's nothing left to explore.

Despite how much I loved the game, and how well it evoked much of what I loved about Metroid, it still felt a bit off to me from the start. Having to slaughter X number of Metroids to arbitrarily unlock the next area simply felt too episodic, rather than the more directionless and less linear feel of the original. There was also little to no reason to return to earlier areas of the game to uncover hidden secrets or unlock new areas; this was one area where Metroid was quite inventive compared to its peers. I also thought it felt wrong that the metamorphised Metroids, even the initial "alpha" stage, were actually [i]less[i] deadly than the initial larval stage of the Metroid life-form.

Those concerns aside, though, I found the game captivating. New dangerous lifeforms to deal with, hints of a technologically advanced civilization left to ruin (complete with AI defenses that still worked in places), and the areas felt distinct and had more interesting architecture and layouts than the first game, while still managing to evoke the feeling of a vast, desolate planet teeming with danger for Samus to adventure through and hunt her quarry.

While the "slaughter X to proceed" nature of the game's structure was a bit off-kilter as I noted before, it does indeed address that drawback I mentioned about the original Metroid having essentially no direction at all. It was a heavy-handed attempt to address giving the player some sense of purpose during the course of the game, and I still think that the core of it is a solid idea that could be utilized better than the now-customary "blinking destination point on an empty map" that the series has utilized since then -- even, disappointingly, the Zero Mission remake of the original game.

I also think that the understated denouement of the baby Metroid helping the player to calmly find their way off-planet at the end is the most brilliant ending sequence of the franchise.

Super Metroid

The big bugbear; this game benefitted from the huge popularity of the SNES and its first-party games, as well as a fancy big upgrade in graphics over the previous two entries. I seem to remember it being marketed fairly aggressively (or just getting heavy gaming press attention or something) here in the North American market. It certainly got a big push from Nintendo Power, between previews, a review and gameguide, and a short comic-book-style mini-series over the course of several issues.

Super Metroid continued to push the idea of giving Samus more varied powers and suit upgrades to provide more variety in gating the player's progress through the game and squirreling away secrets throughout the gameworld to discover upon returning with these new abilities later on. An in-game map was provided that was uncovered both from the player simply exploring, and through revealing portions of the map from discovering and using "map terminal" rooms. The game helped nudge the player in new directions from a combination of map terminal reveals and various "breadcrumbs" provided at different points of the game.

It was a stroke of brilliance to have the player's initial exploration of Zebes feel both familiar and alien, followed very shortly by descending into the planet through the final two corridors of the original game. It was also fantastic to find familiar spots inserted at various points of the gameworld at well; it is hard to emphasize how much it added to the experience of playing the game to have it blend the familiar and the new in this way.

At the time I played it, the combination of the "wow" factor of the improved graphics, sound, and gameplay mechanics - layered on top of a heavy dose of nostalgia via the explicit callbacks to the original game - made for a profoundly satisfying gaming experience. I enjoyed Metroid II, but I adored Super Metroid. I did not have any game guides at the time it released, and it was a point of pride that I can still remember to this day when I finally completed a 100% playthrough of the game, having discovered everything on my own with no assistance. It was a time in my life when I had the luxury of throwing myself fully into a single game for far too many hours at a time over many weeks and months.

The finale's callback to both of the previous games was impressive as well, and served to tie the three games together into what felt like a solid trilogy with a clean and decisive ending. Plot? Not important. Character moments and memorable villains, that was what still rings true to me. Metroid I establishes Samus, Mother Brain, the Metroids, and the style and atmosphere of the franchise. Metroid II delves further into the Metroids themselves and hints at intriguing connections between the lost Chozo civilization and the origins of the Metroids. Super Metroid brings it all together into the final package and finishes off with hints that the Metroids may ultimately have the potential to be communicated with and befriended, providing an end to the necessity of Samus's further involvement in hunting them. I may be projecting some there, but that's just how it played out for me.

All of this could lead one to feel that Super Metroid is the pinnacle of the franchise so far, but unfortunately time has shown that some of what felt like improvements at the time instead serve to detract from what Metroid I & II built.

For me, the biggest problem introduced in Super Metroid is the way that the in-game map is used to lead the player along by the nose throughout the majority of the game. Rather than the organic exploration of the first two games, at any given time there is a blinking "GO HERE NEXT" dot in the in-game map where the player is "supposed" to go next. This takes away from the experience somewhat by breaking the illusion of exploration and non-linearity. Yes, of course we know that every Metroid game is still roughly linear. There are steps in the player's progression that are, ultimately, unavoidable. But there was a carefully crafted illusion of choice in the first two games; whether it was a choice borne of blindness (much of a new player's experience in Metroid I in particular consists of exploring in randomly chosen directions until they simply can't go any further; they don't know what they need until they find it, such as Bombs, the High Jump Boots, or the Ice Beam) or through knowing a general goal but going about it in the order of your choosing (killing X number of Metroids to progress to the next region in Metroid II, but not knowing anything other than how many there are yet to kill).

This is also experienced through the use of doors that aren't locked by the requirement of certain weapons to use, but instead through arbitrary trigger conditions: I am speaking about the inactive grey doors in the game that only power on when you meet the expected condition, which is almost always that you have killed a certain boss or enemies. You can argue that this is mechanically no different than having the level of lava in Metroid II not be lowered until you kill enough Metroids, but this still feels different somehow.

There are also two other problems with Super Metroid for me: The Ghost Ship, and Maridia.

I never cared for the Ghost Ship section of the game. I get it, they wanted to have a change of pace and throw a little "horror" in there, but it just feels too disjointed from the rest of the game. And Phantoon is simply not an enjoyable boss encounter; roughly as annoying and un-fun as that stupid plant boss in Brinstar. Both are fights that provide a new challenge, but which last for too long and wear out their welcome before you've even finished them. Anytime I played through the game, I would reach the Ghost Ship section and either decide that was a good quitting point for that playing session or just blaze through it as quickly as I could (and it was never quick enough).

Maridia was a different beast, though. I actually like the way that water changes Samus's controls in the game so much until you get the Gravity Suit. But instead of really making use of that in the early part of Maridia to provide a new and interesting challenge, you instead receive the Gravity Suit in the Ghost Ship and then the underwater nature of Maridia simply leaves me wondering "what's the point?" Instead of the anticipated difficulty of traversing an underwater area due to the underwater controls, the big challenge in Maridia ends up being a lot of grappling hook challenges.

Meh.

Overall, Super Metroid is an outstanding game, one of the best of the series, but it's not without its flaws.

Intermission

After Super Metroid, we went through the entire N64/GameBoy Color generation without a new title in the franchise. On the one hand, Super Metroid was a truly satisfying conclusion, and there was no compelling further exploration apparent for Samus as a character, or the Metroids as a menace. However, the classic gameplay and feel of the games would be much missed if we were to never receive another title.

Surprisingly, the next two titles released simultaneously. And each of them featured some fairly significant changes from what came before.

Metroid Fusion

When Fusion and Prime released, I gravitated naturally towards Fusion: it was a side-scrolling, sprite-based game just like the previous ones, and on the surface it looked like it would provide the return to the Metroid gameplay that I had craved for many years.

It certainly had its positives: the feel of the controls was better than ever, the graphics were spot-on, and the traditional progression gating based on power-ups was back. However, the emphasis on plot with a big exposition-dump right off bat was a little concerning. What really put me off, though, was the continued exposition-dumps with the Navigation Rooms and Elevator Monologues. Remember, I noted earlier that I don't want plot from my Metroid games; I don't care about that. I care about the character, the atmosphere, the memorable villains.

Well, at least initially, the main villain in Fusion was a condescending computer that hand-feeds Samus one task after another and acts as though she's some incompetent scrub, not one of the galaxy's premier space hunters.

If Super Metroid felt like it was leading me by the nose at times with the blinking "go here" goal on the mini-map, Fusion quickly made me feel like a toddler being led from one attraction on a playground to the next by a helicopter parent. Those grey doors that only activate when you kill the right things in Super Metroid? That mechanic is used even more blatantly in this game, and it frustrates me.

Whereas in Metroid II, Samus drove the unlocking of additional areas by hunting Metroids, in Fusion the unlocking of additional areas is handled by a patronizing computer who tells you when and where you're allowed to go. Even worse in terms of how it makes the game feel, you soon discover that you won't be acquiring all of your new abilities/powers by discovering them, you'll be acquiring some of them as your computerized handler doles them out to you.

It is important to note that, mechanically, none of this is in fact a far cry from the way that progressive exploration was gated in the previous games. You acquire a power or item, or overcome a challenge, and you discover that you have new avenues along which to explore and continue ever-onward. What is profoundly different in Metroid Fusion is not the mechanics of the game, but the other half of the appeal to the Metroid titles that I played prior to this: the atmosphere. To really hit on this, I'll quote myself from earlier in this post:

The reason Metroid Fusion fails as a Metroid game for me is because it loses that sense of isolation, of discovery, of accomplishment. I am instead a glorified "go-fer" being ushered around by a micro-manager, and the only reason I don't know my way around the place is because that manager has decided that I don't need a map, I need to just listen to their instructions every step of the way (and who has a frustrating tendency to lock doors until I listen to their instructions).

This theme is repeated in other ways. For example, instances where you are cut off from backtracking. In prior games, this typically happened more organically. One of the first big instances of this in Super Metroid is when you jump down the shaft into the lower section of Brinstar; you discover that there's no way back up: it's just an empty vertical corridor with some enemies in it. Later, once you gain the Ice Beam, you can use it to freeze enemies along the shaft to work your way back up. It's an arbitrarily designed section of the map, sure, but in execution it manages to feel somewhat natural as an obstacle. In Fusion, one of the first big instances of this is when you descend an elevator, then in a non-interactive cutscene, Samus-X shows up, wrecks the place, and breaks the elevator in the process. This leaves you with no way back the way you came, but it doesn't feel natural at all.

Time and again, the atmosphere and feel of progress in Fusion comes off as essentially the opposite of the isolated "player against a deadly world" feel of the prior games and instead is "player against an asshole AI, artificial station, and weird evil alien twin". It wasn't long before my urge wasn't to go hunt metroids or space pirates, but to instead get on my ship and leave this damned space station, and to hell with the AI or the X-parasites or whatever, they could go pound space-sand.

Metroid Fusion thus revealed itself as a game that mechanically played very similar to the Metroid titles I loved, but felt significantly different, and not in a way that appealed to me. I gave it another shot last year, and while I was better able to appreciate the mechanics (and agree that it has arguably the best controls of any of the 2D titles), the game still felt as wrong to me as it previously did.

Metroid Prime

As we approached the release of Prime, I was really skeptical. How could a first-person shooter work as a Metroid game? WTF was Nintendo thinking? "Everyone" knows how horrible platforming challenges and controls are in a first-person shooter!

When Prime released alongside Fusion, I picked it up, but eagerly jumped into Fusion first. When I soured on that one, I grudgingly decided to give Prime a shot (it's hard to explain how pessimistic I was at this point; if the 2D Metroid game was a flop, how could the "Metroid shooter" be better?)

Rarely have I ever been as happy to be proven wrong as I was with this game. Somehow, against the odds, Nintendo succeeded and crafted what genuinely felt like the world's first fully-realized First Person Adventure game. The jumping felt right and the shooting wasn't much more pronounced than that which was featured in the 2D Metroid games. But most importantly, the core exploration gameplay and desolate/alien/solitary atmosphere of the previous games was fully retained in this game.

Interestingly, Metroid Prime has many of the same strengths and weaknesses as Super Metroid. Great big world to explore, you'll be doing a lot of returning to previously-visited areas either via new routes, or via backtracking to reach/open previously inaccessible areas. Despite the first-person-shooter trappings, the bulk of the gameplay is classic traversal/exploration just as in the rest of the franchise. The only truly new element of the game is the scanning function.

The scanner itself is reminiscent of the scanner in Super Metroid, but in Prime you use it to collect information and activate a few things (mostly just elevators; I honestly can't remember if there was anything else that you had to use the scanner on). I particularly appreciate how the scanner functions as a replacement for hand-holding tutorials. You can pretty much ignore all the tutorials in the game by just not scanning them. In fact, there was remarkably little handholding with Prime, especially considering that it was the first 3D Metroid game and Nintendo had demonstrated that it wasn't shy with tutorials in their other primary franchises (yes, Retro developed Prime, but if I recall right, Nintendo stayed quite involved with development through to the end).

Where Prime excelled was in bringing back a strong sense of isolation and being lost in a truly alien world, much like the first two games in the series. For all their strengths, Super Metroid and Fusion were "busy" enough and hand-holding enough that they lost some of that atmosphere from Metroid I & II. While Prime made use of the same in-game map with "go here next" blinky spots, the change to three-dimensional level design actually made it less clear how to get to where you were going in the early and mid game. Perhaps it was just me, but I definitely found myself lost and disoriented far more often in Prime than I ever did in Super or Fusion, even though all three games featured in-game maps.

It only stumbled a little, and mostly in just two areas.

First, while the devs did an outstanding job of making the transition to 3D, the shooting/lock-on controls were a bit hackneyed even at the time, and unfortunately there were multiple frustrating encounters where the real enemy was the control limitations rather than the baddy on the screen. The encounter with the alien bees early on, for example. Ugh. The Trilogy re-release with the Wiimote controls helps somewhat, but those same encounters are still a bit rough even with that.

Second, as noted already, the breadcrumb aspect of the map detracts from the focus on exploration, similar to Super Metroid.

Metroid: Zero Mission

The last of the Metroid games that I have fully played through and finished. I was very excited when this was announced and eagerly dove into it immediately upon release. This one took the original Metroid, spruced up the graphics to bring it up to the presentation quality of Super and Fusion, and retooled the controls to take advantage of the Fusion engine (this one is, in fact, built directly on the Fusion game engine).

Much like the recent HD remakes and 3DS facelifts of older Zelda games, this remake of Metroid brings the presentation up to the quality that the game took on in my imagination. The improvement on the controls is actually the single biggest improvement over the original game. Overall, it's a solid remake that's well worth playing if you love the Metroid games. However, it has a few issues. It resides in a design space somewhere between Super and Fusion, which brings with it the drawbacks of those games.

The greatest issue I found was the much more blatant linearity. Remember, one of the things I praised Metroid for most highly was the way that its design allows the player to stumble around and slowly discover ways to progress through a combination of their failures and their ability to learn the map and figure out how to access new areas. Zero Mission goes even further than Super Metroid in hand-holding the player through a significant portion of the game, overly telegraphing the correct path through the game through map indicators and railroading.

Compare the acquisition of the Long Beam and the first Missile upgrade in both games to see what I mean. In Metroid, you can actually miss the Long Beam for a very long time (in fact, it's completely optional), and in fact you need to acquire missiles before you can access it. First-time players will likely stumble around a while (learning the map a bit in the process) before they find missiles, and then may not backtrack enough to find the Long Beam at first. In Zero Mission, you are led by the nose to the Long Beam almost immediately, and then funneled over to the first Missile upgrade. First-time players who follow the "tutorial" breadcrumbs will likely not get as familiar with the early parts of the map, but they also don't need to: they have an in-game map, and they don't really ever need to return to the Long Beam area after they've acquired it.

The other questionable element was the surprise final area after you finish the original Metroid I part of the adventure; there's a tacked-on new section of the game that starts with a lengthy "stealth" section featuring a no-power Samus who has lost her suit. Ugh.

The Rest

Sadly, I never got very far into Prime 2 due to a number of circumstances; it wound up on my pile and I'm not even sure whether I still own it or if I traded it in. I never picked up Prime 3 or Other M on the Wii. So while I may have opinions on them from what I've read or watched of them, I can't comment from the perspective of having any hands-on experience.

I did pick up the Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii U eShop, and will get through them eventually. I have to admit, a lot of my reluctance is due to my dislike of using the Wiimote controls. I know I'm in a strange minority on that, as most people that I heard/read from had a very positive experience with the Wiimote controls in both the Prime Trilogy and Resident Evil 4, but my short time in RE4 and Prime 1 using the Wiimote was rather frustrating and uncomfortable (I'm including RE4 because its control scheme, both the original and the Wiimote version, is notably similar to Prime's).

Other M... I dunno, from what I've read about it, I think I would be even more negatively disposed toward it than I found myself towards Fusion both times I played through it.

Conclusion

I love Progressive Exploration Games, and the Metroid series is my favorite established franchise in the PEG genre. I think that the core PEG experience of the games is fairly easy to define, but what makes a Metroid game "true" to the original is -- for me -- based upon how well it evokes the experience of Samus as a lone, elite space hunter going on a mission into a harsh, alien world all on her own; traversing a seemingly endless labyrinth of caves and ruins that can create a genuine sense of being lost in the depths.

It is for this reason that I can't point to any single game in the series that serves as its pinnacle. I can point to a few that veer a bit too far from that vision: Fusion in particular from the ones I've played, Other M from the ones I haven't, and even Zero Mission treads a little too far sometimes into the player being led by the nose in a manner that breaks the illusion of non-linearity.

I knew what the spoiler said before I clicked on it.

We've had this discussion before somewhere. I replayed it for the first and last time when I got the Prime Trilogy. Never again.

Yeah, I was just trying to say that while Retro developed the game, I know Nintendo was pretty involved (but I don't recall just how involved they were) so it still kind of counts as a Nintendo-developed game.

I'll have to try that; the split control I can deal with just fine. It's the sensor aiming I just don't enjoy.

I have vague memories of an option to lock your aim to the center when you're locked on with the nunchuck trigger. I wish I wasn't out of town or I'd have checked my copy before posting anything.

I really do hate following up a novel with another post, but whatever. Started AM2R last night and it really is fascinating how well they did in this adaptation. It really does feel like it could be an official remake for the most part. However, I also imagine Nintendo would have streamlined and redid a lot of the map. By changing the graphics and backgrounds into different zones, you begin to understand why the original GameBoy version was so confusing. A lot of big, wide open areas that would be nearly identical without the visual changes and adjustments. It explains why several times I'd just go back and spiderball everywhere for a while, because you couldn't remember which giant chamber you needed to backtrack to in order to progress.

There are, however, some moments that really don't work so well. I just got the speed booster (well, I think I gotta get it again because I died somewhere) and holy cow, there's an area that requires you to immediately master the timing of shinespark. If you never played Super Metroid or were forced to learn about Shinespark (which, if I recall, is always used in the mainline series as an advanced optional tool for finding secrets), then you'd be stuck completely. Literally trapped with nowhere to go, because you'd have to figure out to 1) crouch once you gain speed, which is further complicated by having barely any time to crouch before running into a wall, 2) that you gotta morph and spiderball to maintain the charge, and 3) you gotta hit A/Jump then right in order to dash through the air and onto the next step of the stage.

That's a lot of steps that took me a surprising amount of time to figure out.

I'm liking the game, but modern Nintendo design would not drop the player into such a situation. Maybe a scenario that's rather "Oh, duh" once you GameFAQ it, but there's nothing "Oh, duh" about that spot.

So AM2R is definitely fitting for Metroid fans, but Zoso I'm not sure would be fit for it without having played other entries in the series first, and specifically the 2D iteration.

I want another Metroid Fusion type of Metroid game, that is all.

So, I was all set for playing through Metroid, the original, thanks to the release of the Nintendo Classic Mini. No crouching. No diagonal shooting. On second thought I think I'll play that copy of Zero Mission.

Maybe I'll give the original another shot. It may be one of those lost to time, though.