My memories of Metroid

By now, you’ve all read my scathing Game Spotlight of Metroid: Other M… the first game I’ve ever actually HATED in my entire life. The game that has damaged my high regard of the Metroid series forever and there’s really no going back. Metroid used to be one of my favourite series of all time but now…

…now all I have are the memories of better days. In fact, some of them can be found on the Internet itself! I did a little digging around the forum of my old website, The Anime Crisis Center, and discovered some very interesting posts about how I felt about Metroid all those years ago. So, come back with me in time and let’s take a look at those ye olden posts…

Whatever inaccuracies, misinterpretations I had or just generally horrible spelling and grammar I had when I originally wrote these posts are all intact… so it’s kind of a little embarrassing to be going back and reading them, but whatever…

This first one is the opening post in a thread simply titled “Metroid” that was posted in The Anime Crisis Center back in 2006…

Originally Posted by Lynk Former on 4 February 2006, 11:21 PM
Metroid, an energy based parasitic predatory life form, also the name of a series of action/adventure videogames which no one in their right mind should overlook.

Samus Aran, the mysterious bounty hunter made famous by the Metroid series, also the first true kickass heroine in any videogame and still the only truly credible woman to exist in a videogame.

I guess I’m trying to be poetic here… or something.

Not many people know or realise this but Metroid is actually based off of Alien, the creator, Gunpei Yokoi, going as far as to name one of the bosses in the game Ridley, after Ridley Scott. And for the most part the story of Metroid has also been shaped from the series of movies. Even Alien Resurrection had influenced the storyline of Metroid Fusion. I’m sure you can find some articles about it on the net if you looked hard enough XD I remember there being one somewhere but I forgot where it is.

I love this series and the ways in which it has evolved over the years. And the new paths it’s taking. I love the way Super Metroid makes you feel so isolated and alone, the way the space pirates research lab in Metroid Prime makes you feel so damn uneasy as you wander around in the dark not knowing what’s around the next corner. I love how you KNOW you’re going to get killed by S-AX if you don’t get the hell out of there in Metroid Fusion and the exciting battles you have with Dark Samus in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. And throughout all… well, most of the games, I love how you’re left to explore the world yourself, to find every little nook and cranny and all those lil hidden items littered around the place. And to find a door or breakable wall you can’t get through with your current inventory.

I love how the Metroid Prime series stays true to its origins and adds greatly to the series. I love scanning different objects, learning about the local environment and the lifeforms that live there. I love it when you walk into a room and they’re several dead bodies there, and when you scan them you learn exactly how they became this way and what had happened. I also love the way that the Metroid Prime series has made the existance of the Metroids themselves more mysterious and far more dangerous than anyone realises.

I also like where it’s going, Metroid Prime Pinball has been so much fun to play, it’s been a long time since I’ve played a game where it’s purely about the highscore and nothing else. And I love how Metroid Prime Hunters is gonna be so much fast paced multiplayer (both local and online) fun. And I can’t wait to see what Retro Studios has in store for us for Metroid Prime 3. I’m sure that with the Revolution controller setup it’s going to be so damn kickass and look so damn good. I so so so can’t wait @.@

Ugh… Metroid Prime Pinball was fun, and Metroid Prime Hunters was good for what it was… Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was pretty damn cool, though not the best of the Prime series… and who would have ever imagined that Nintendo would have ever released Wii versions of Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, let alone the Metroid Prime Trilogy with its awesome steel case!… I just wish things had gone differently and Other M hadn’t come into existence… yes, I spelt it correctly this time lulz.

Of course I still want another traditional 2D Metroid game. They remade the original, they could easily remake Metroid II: Return of Samus at least, if a brand new game isn’t on their list.

I’m STILL waiting for this… ugh.

A few posts after the one above I posted the following response to the idea some people had about Metroid having a plot is a good thing.

Originally Posted by Lynk Former on 8 February 2006, 10:25 AM
That’s the last thing I want in Metroid, a story in the sense that it’ll turn into a movie story, with a movie plot. That’s the trend videogames have followed in recent years and I don’t want Metroid to follow that trend because then it becomes less unique, it just becomes one of the crowd.

In other words, I didn’t want Other M to exist before it did actually exist…

The most limiting thing about Fusion, IMO was the story. Because there was a story you were led around by Adam, told to go around different parts of the station to do lil things and such. This IS bad, but why you ask? Well Metroid has always been a game about isolation and it’s always been a game where the story has always been what YOU think the story is. The point of having 4 minutes of story at the start of Super Metroid and that’s it is that it’s trying to put you into the shoes of Samus, rather than putting you into a third persons role, WATCHING the story of Samus. Metroid Fusion is one hellova good game, it had some really kickass moments with SA-X, but the most important parts of a Metroid game were forsaken.

Back in those days I was pretty hard on Fusion… but whatever faults that game had still weren’t that bad. It still felt like a Metroid game, and that’s the least anyone asks for with the series.

This is why I think Metroid Prime is more of a traditional Metroid experience than Fusion is. There is about a minute of written/spoken story at the beginning (depending on which version of the game you have) and that’s it, as soon as Samus gets out from her gunship, you become Samus and that’s that. The there is no story, there is only a living breathing world around you which you need to investigate on your own. There is also a very strong sense of isolation.

But then wait, there IS a story in Metroid Prime, the thing that makes it acceptable is the form that the story comes in. The scans. They’re a brilliant answer Retro Studios have come up with to make the Metroid experience a unique one. To find out about what happened on Tallon IV you have to scan object and computers to find out, and as you read through all of those logs, YOU start piecing together the mystery yourself, because YOU are Samus.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is a bit of an enigma, and it seems to me that it’s an effort by Nintendo to try to give Metroid a story without disrupting what Metroid is. There was still a minimum amount of story, but you still had to figure out everything about Aether yourself. The story was there but it was thin and spread throughout the game. It was a little distracting for me, but it wasn’t that bad.

I don’t think my views on this have really changed much over the years actually…

Oh and… @ Black Howling: Link talking?! ARE YOU NUTS?! That’s worse than Metroid having a movie type story/plot!!

Yeah, Leon… what were you thinking? Sheesh!

Here’s a short one…

Originally Posted by Lynk Former on 9 February 2006, 6:29 AM
Her suit does have an OS that talks, but Samus doesn’t talk to it. As for Adam, I wish him a fiery death before he can do any more damage to the Metroid universe.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this statement… he does die a fiery death in Other M but not before he fucks things up even worse than he already had before…

Here’s part on an interest post made a year and a bit later… The topic being discussed was how Samus was handled in Metroid Fusion vs other Metroid games…

Originally Posted by Lynk Former on 4 August 2007, 12:16 AM
Samus had a lot of development before Fusion, all it took was a few pieces of text at the start of Super Metroid and then the rest of the development was through her actions in the game. She is a character who speaks loudest with her actions and in the final moments in Super Metroid, no words were spoken, but everything was absolutely clear in what kind of person she was.

They did this very well in Zero Mission, aside from guiding you too much in the game, the story was a short piece of text at the start of the game, and then actions and events during the game. You learnt a hell of a lot about Samus through images and got a clear understanding of who she was a lot better than what you got with her in Fusion. That one drawing in the Chozo Temple that Samus drew as a child of her and the Chozo elder told me more about her than the entire script of Fusion.

I still believe that subtlety works best with Metroid… I mean, this isn’t Metal Gear Solid, things need to be toned down to a whisper for Samus because she’s a character that (at least what I thought) is meant to be masked behind the visor, therefore all of her characteristics that do show through would be subtle but apparent… and not a whining teenager writing in her pink dairy.

…Actually, reading through more of this thread, it looks like I have a whole discussion on this issue… here’s part of another post.

Originally Posted by Lynk Former on 4 August 2007, 12:49 AM
Here’s a scenario, the game’s story is exactly the same, except it has no Adam and no guidance at all. Everyone on the station is killed, the main computer is damaged, Samus is on her own, alone on this station which holds a lot of secrets. Samus finds out on her own that the SA-X exists, she then, on her own, investigates the X parasites and works out how to deal with them, going through section by section, discovering and creating her own paths, etc. Players would’ve felt free to explore the station and not be bugged at all by Adam trying to tell you what to do.

I loled when I read this because I had practically come up with a similar scenario in my Game Spotlight for Metroid: Other M.

I know I should probably get over this whole thing with Metroid and move on… and you’re right, I should. I’m moving on *looks around* I just wanted to post something really cheaply since I still have one more assignment left to complete for uni. I promise, the NEXT blog entry will be something I actually sat down and thought about for more than 10 minutes.