Happy 25th Metroid!

Link isn't the only classic Nintendo hero celebrating a birthday this year. On August 6, 1986, a little NES cartridge was released on Japanese store shelves, and much like several other games of the time, its simple beginnings would blossom into generations of fame.

We all know how the Metroid series has been the first thing that comes to mind when someone says "good women game protagonists." I am aware of that, and I would refer you to IGN's latest article about Samus' impact if you want to read more. But I'm gonna talk about some of the other burning questions of Metroid's legacy. Like: What made Metroid so special? Why does Super Metroid live on as the pinnacle of 2D gaming? Who cares about Metroid II? Why am I so annoying about the Metroid Prime trilogy? And why Other M can, in fact, be left as a large stain on this good franchise, a stain that may spell doom for the entire series?

What Made Metroid So Special? Well back in 1986, when Metroid was first being released, keep in mind the games that had come before it. Not even the first Mega Man was out at this time. When Metroid came out, it seemed like a weird combination of Nintendo's previous big successes: Super Mario Brothers and Zelda. It had sidescrolling like in Mario, but also you had to collect a bunch of items like in Zelda

  Quick aside: have you ever noticed the first screen of the game? Looking at it belays no indication of where you should go. And if you're a kid back in the '80s, hot off of playing Super Mario, your first instinct is to get moving to the right. Well, we all famously know how that ended up for you. Its an hour long quest around the first big vertical room, and you'll eventually find out that you can't advance until you get the morph ball, an item that is 'hidden' to the left of you. Adventuring at its finest.

Well, Metroid was a big deal because it also implemented a password save system. This was a handy system that allowed developers who were too cheap to use battery saves to allow people to take breaks in between mad gaming. This was pretty cool at the time, and there are several famous codes that allowed you to alter the game. This system of writing down passwords would haunt players for years to come. But that's another story.

 But Metroid was truly a revolutionary game by how it helped introduce an adventure to sidescrolling. Yes, I know Zelda was out before it, and I know that Zelda had several items that you had to run around and collect. But items in Metroid changed the way you played the game, where items in Zelda typically were only useful for opening doors.

This changes things...

In addition to several required items, there were all sorts of items that were the reward for going out of your way. Missile Expansions and things like the long beam were the reward for bumbling your way through the huge map.

Metroid added the idea of permanent power ups, which isn't a new idea to RPGers and modern game designers, but for a side scrolling platformer it was pretty cool. Keep in mind that this was the tail end of the golden age of arcades. People were used to obtaining spread shot for 20 seconds and then going back to the way the game played before.

Why do people remember Super Metroid so well? You may have heard about Super Metroid from any number of gaming websites. Or gamers. Or...everyone. Well, what makes Super Metroid so classic? Its simple game design. Super Metroid took what made the original game great, and then added better controls, stunning graphics, more items that Drastically changed the way the game was played...it was better, in short. But did you pick out the most important part of the several updates?

 The obvious reason is the design of the adventure. Super Metroid shows you green organic sites to obsidian depths, among ruined machinery and rocky mountainsides. It was the detail in the world and the depth at which you could explore, reasoning out which items to use where and which direction to go next. In short, the game was well designed, and set the standard of any sidescroller to come. The next well known game in the style of Metroid was Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. And that game coined the name of an entirely new subgenre.

The underlying reason is the controls. At no point do you not feel in control of Samus' actions. Playing the game is smooth as butter, and all the delays of controls are intentionally placed in the game to help make a sidescroller feel immersive. Using the morph ball feels different from running around. Going into Booster feels different from running around. Moving in water and jumping changes the controls ever so slightly. 

Does anyone care about Metroid II? No. Next question.

Ok, ok. Let's keep this short, because I don't care about it either. No one cares because instead of taking an adventure game approach, it did more of a hidden item approach. Except the items tried to kill you. Was there anything truly wrong with it? Well, no. Its just that it was on the Game Boy and the 40 Metroids you had to kill had a funny tendency to fly offscreen. If you really want to play it, it was remade by fans for the PC, and it also looks pretty too!

Graphics! Monsters! Effects! Whoa!

 Why do I keep flipping out about Metroid Prime? Metroid Prime is my favorite game of all time. Because you just read it. Well it is, and there is a good reason for that one. First of all, the game provides an atmosphere that truly makes you feel like you're there. The levels and music combine into a world stunning world that tells its own story.

That's also one thing I want to mention. The story of Metroid Prime can be totally told through the gameplay. You can go explore the ruins to see the gathering halls of old, and the places of worship and homes and i even recall coming across a type of beach. The ruins got more across visually than many games get across with full cutscenes and voice acting.

But if you keep exploring and scanning things, you can get full accounts of the downfall of the Chozo and what the Space Pirates did when they got there. Its a game were the story directly depends on how much you care to know. It doesn't burden you with cutscenes or heavy motivations. It trusts you to figure out what happened to a great society, and if you want to know the details, you'll pursue them yourself.

And on the final note (for now), I appreciated how the bosses of the game forced you to switch between all of your items. I actually enjoyed the way the game played on the cube controller (though, yes, it was better on the Wii) and using every item at your disposal made the puzzles, enemies and bosses feel well designed. I've always appreciated that about the Metroid games, there is motivation to use all of the considerable power at your disposal, and learning that even with them, the enemies still put up a fight.

Such promise...

Other M: what's the deal? Unsurprisingly, I am one of several fans who feel betrayed for playing Metroid: Other M. Well, let's start with the basics. First and foremost, the gameplay was bad. I played the game on normal difficulty, and as soon as I figured out you can mash the directional buttons to do the invincible dodge move (which also fully charged your beam), I breezed through the game with 2 energy tanks. Normal shooting did no damage, and switching to missiles was awkward and only reminded me of playing Metroid Prime.

Moving on to gameplay specifics, the final scene in the game pits you in first person against invincible enemies. You cannot kill the enemies. You must target the girl in the middle of the room. Which I did on accident on my third try. Bad design kids.

Targeting multiple enemies never works like you think it should. It seems to fire at whatever it feels like, and it usually isn't the enemy closest to you. It seems to be the enemy at the least greatest angle away from the direction you are facing. Not cool when the Wiimote only allows you to face 4 directions on dodge, 8 while running, where you cannot do the invincible dodge, making running in combat useless.

Next, I hope you like bad camera angles, because this game is full of them. Enemies love to dance around offscreen, and the attempt to capture the feel of Super Metroid mars many of the platforming rooms, and just makes you wish they would have done something unique. The final boss thing (a completely phoned in Mother Brain knock-off) completely absorbs screen space, and just kinda likes to get in your way. In addition to taking up space, he has another one of those 'we're not going to tell you what you need to do' deals. I would call these puzzles, but the sad thing is, when you do figure out what to do, actually doing what is expected is an adventure on it own.

I'll give Other M some credit for looking pretty.

We all know the story is poorly presented, poorly written, poorly paced, and retcon-tastic. I'm gonna skip what you can hear hundreds of times in any other critical web-blog/video. But its the direction that the story was taken in that disappoints me. Yoshio Sakamoto, the game's director/producer/writer, has continually made some off-handed comments about not particularly caring about the Prime trilogy. In a way, he declared them non-canon.

This worries me. If Nintendo just wants to dismiss the universe the Prime trilogy helped build, then this could be ruinous for Metroid. If Sakamoto says that Prime never happened, he is missing the influence that Retro Studios has on the Metroid universe, and ignoring their work on the character of Samus won Other M several shots to the foot.

Also, as the Prime games went on, the universe of Metroid kept getting bigger and bigger. Retro started filling in the blanks in this pretty standard sci-fi world, where previously the only known facts was there was a government in space and Zebes was pretty messed up. Retro made Metroid a unique setting. When Other M showed up again, gone were the creative setups, and the sole intention of the game was to recreate Super Metroid in a 3D environment.

Well, go back and play Super Metroid again. Now play Metroid Prime. Now Super Metroid again. Do you notice any parallels? Well, you should. Almost all the items in Prime were retooled Super Metroid items. The environmental progression and design is the same or similar as Super Metroid, and the items you gather is practically plagiarism. Select songs of the Prime soundtrack are also remixes of Super Metroid tunes.

Good. Back to Other M. The same thing was attempted here. Other M wanted to recreate the experience of Super Metroid. What was the difference? Other M and a terribly linear focus. Super Metroid felt like a giant maze. Other M instead felt like someone drew a bunch of circles starting from a center point. You ran down one path got an item, ran back the other part of the circle, and repeat.

 Prime also gave the environments personality, as I said before. Metroid Other M used the considerable 3D technology behind it to build lots of frilly corridors. Gone were the open worlds and platforming of elder Metroids, replaced by linear hallways only designed to connect fights with one of six recurring enemies.

That last point made me aware of how rant-tacular this has become. Time to move on before someone calls my BS.

If you wade through the softcore porn, you'll always find cool pictures on deviantart. Drawing by Smexyheroes.

One final note: I kinda wish that Nintendo cared a bit more about what many would consider to be one of their flagship franchises. Its a well known fact that Metroid doesn't get the same kind of love that Mario or Zelda ever got. Now with Nintendo handing it over to a third party studio to recreate Super Metroid again it feels like they are stuck trying to live the glory days of the SNES, while ignoring the innovations of the Prime trilogy and even Metroid Fusion to some extent. Well the 25th anniversary is still in a few days and the Metroid tribute album coming out too. Maybe Nintendo will get around to caring about the industry's leading lady. Hey, who know, maybe it'll be a 20 minute video apologizing for Other M.

If you really what to know why Other M fails in the story department, go here: Extra Credits. Also don't listen to the them bout the "internal political pressure" theory. Nintendo promoted the game since 2008 about the deep exploration of Samus as a character. It was all planned this way.

Postscript: Damn it. Just read ign's article. They beat me to the punch.