Samus Returns… I don’t like that it had to be a remake, but as a remake and a Metroid game, it’s a good one, capturing the feeling well of exploring a hostile alien planet while gradually becoming stronger. It makes a few tweaks to the Metroid formula but they mostly make the game better or more interesting. So, a few quick points.
Using 3D graphics in this 2D game works well, because they use depth in the backgrounds to create vast spaces that look amazing.
On top of the expected addition of the usual Metroid abilities that weren’t in the original Game Boy game, the new Aeion abilities are integrated fairly well into the game. Some aren’t worth bothering with until they’re (infrequently) required, but the Scan Pulse to reveal the map feels the best to use in a game about exploration. On the whole they’re a tad fiddly to use but a useful crutch when needed.
The new 360 degree aiming feels natural, uses the hardware’s controls well, and is incredibly useful. The tradeoff of being rooted to the spot makes it not overpowered. The new melee counter move is also fun and engaging.
Another new addition is the ability to bring the baby Metroid with you at the end, to fully traverse the map and get more items. This turns it into almost a buddy duo platformer, or at least echoes the familiar system from Symphony of the Night, and I love it.
Despite being a Sakamoto-produced project, the game doesn’t continue the Other M trend. It feels like a proper Metroid game, has a detailed game world, and even goes some way to reconciling the Prime and non-Prime games. I think MercurySteam is to be praised for this game; as Zero Mission did before, it’s brought Metroid 2 up to a modern standard and expanded on it in fun ways. My biggest gripe is that they gave Samus’s suit heels; it doesn’t need frigging heels just because she’s a woman! Infuriating! But yes, good game, and a bittersweet last hurrah for dual-screen gaming. I’ll miss you, bottom-screen map.
I regret not giving this game a chance when it first came out. No, I didn’t sign the petition for Nintendo to scrap it and make a real Metroid game (which was a real, and very stupid petition). I didn’t lament the art style or Samus not being the focus. In fact I was in favour of Tanabe’s justification that it would expand the universe of the series. My issue was more that with Splatoon still on everyone’s lips, and Tri Force Heroes being around the same time, that Nintendo was just releasing too dang many multiplayer games.
I do feel guiltily like an entitled fan that it took this E3’s announcement of two new Metroid games to prompt me to reevaluate this maligned title. But I’m glad I did. More than the other two multiplayer games I mentioned, a solo player can have a perfectly good time with this, and as far as I’m concerned Next Level games have done a spot-on job making this feel right; it feels Prime. Even with chibified characters and working as part of a Federation team and having a locked-down mission format, it fits.
More than the previous Prime handheld game, Hunters, they’ve also made the game fit the portable format. Breaking it up into missions with briefings and loadout customisation in between works for the 3DS and it works for multiplayer. The missions’ objectives and setpieces have pleasing variety. As you progress you learn more about the three planets in the Bermuda system, and become more powerful not through acquiring upgrades and abilities but by collecting and improving randomised perks, and becoming more familiar with the limited sub-weapons that are provided. The scoring system is also addictive, although to get the best results there’s only one right answer for each mission; I wished for more leeway or options. Some exploration is encouraged but at odds with this, speed is demanded for good scores.
Every part of the game works in single player, but obviously it was designed for teams of up to four. I was fortunate to have a play session with one and then two friends (thanks Gibbon and Sun-Wukong), and had a blast. Playing with friends really does improve the experience, with plenty of opportunities to work together… as long as you have some external voice chat client like Discord!
As a way to revisit the Prime universe, the game acts as a refreshing antidote to Other M’s brazen, sour, profligate boondoggle. I would have appreciated more fleshing out of the faceless characters involved or a central villain, but the pirates were a credible threat and having Samus flitting around being awesome was an amusing and welcome addition—especially when *spoilers* (she gets brainwashed, although the fight with her is disappointing as she’s in morph ball the whole time). The idea of the Space Pirates embiggening themselves and you fighting back with big ol’ mechs is a jolly novelty, but you don’t always get this sense of scale in the levels so it was occasionally jarring.
Federation Force is absolutely a worthy Metroid game… as a spin-off. I hope it can be accepted as such, seeing as the franchise has been promoted to “not actually dead”. The planets you explore are well themed and have interesting backstories and designs. The core gameplay is very different to other Metroid games, yes, but the way the game world is constructed and the attention to detail make it feel very much like a Metroid Prime game. The control scheme is also decent, and even the small amount of motion control is well-implemented. As for Blast Ball, I didn’t really enjoy it at all, but it’s a neat little extra I suppose. Give Federation Force a chance!
This is my take on the expanded Metroid timeline. The main games in chronological order, adaptations of those events presented above, and other related works and appearances below, placed according to which game they draw inspiration from.
There’s some fuzziness of course, around M2 and Super especially. Or like how the Valiant comics are probably set before the first game. But I wanted to keep the layout simple.
This is probably the most extensive shopping work I’ve done, and I’m pleased with it. Bonus points if you can identify the background.
Great video game comic news everyone! The Metroid Database has finally finished their scanlation of the complete Samus & Joey series, which they’ve been releasing periodically for some time now. There are 4 whole volumes of completely new and original action-packed stories in the Metroid universe, with Samus and some new friends and foes (the 4th volume is called Metroid Extreme; it’s a continuation of S&J that wasn’t released in tankobon format). Check out their news post with links to the latest volume and the start. While you’re there you can even read the Metroid Prime 2 adaptation Episode of Aether in English, or any other Metroid comic going right back to Captain N. These folks are doing great work.
The premise of this low-detail pixel art is: what if Samus formed a team?
Let’s say she had a real big mission. Or maybe she’s throwing a party. Either way, here’s the surviving people she could conceivably collaborate with or could be said to be friendly with. This line-up works any time before or after Fusion, but after Other M. Captain N is not canon, so he’s not here.
Row 1: Samus (Zero suit).
Row 2: Federation. Kreatz and Mauk were her comrades when she was a Federation Police officer in the Metroid manga from 2002. I had to make up colours for them. Anthony Higgs: remember him? He was on her squad in the Federation Marines and helped her in Other M (also the only surviving squaddie from that game).
Row 3: Friends. Old Bird is a Chozo who raised Samus, as seen in the 2002 manga. He also helped her out later in the Nintendo Power Super Metroid comic, which is where his look here is drawn from. Joey and Diesel, from the Samus & Joey manga, travelled extensively with Samus and had many adventures. They’re tight.
Row 4: Bounty Hunters. Armstrong Houston is a fellow hunter seen in the NP Super Metroid comic, who helps Samus out in a moment of need. Spire and Noxus are the only two hunters from Prime Hunters who are actually good guys, and I reckon in other circumstances they’d get along fine. Unfortunately other hunters on good terms with Samus died in Corruption. :(
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, low-detail pixel style!
I had trouble with these as with the Hunters cast. The colour on these characters also really depends on lighting and stuff, it gets tricky. The three other hunters are so great in this game though, you feel a connection to them so then it’s even more tragic when they get corrupted. Let’s all just live in the past when they were friends with Samus and they invited Dark Samus over for tea and they had a lovely time.
Samus (PED suit), Dark Samus, Rundas, Ghor, Gandrayda
Some of these designs are very hard to reduce down to this scale. It’s cool that this game fleshed out Samus’s world a bit. Would love to see these folks return. Have a look at the supplementary material for their backstories, it’s pretty interesting.
Quickie time: Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt. This demo for Hunters was distributed a couple of years before the game was ready, at the DS’s launch. By comparing it to the final product, not only are there lots of differences but the content it offers is largely unique. The multiplayer maps are apparently similar to ones in the final game, but I couldn’t test that anyway.
The uniqueness is in the three single player modes. Regulator is a combat challenge map where you clear each room of enemies, including (unlike Hunters proper) Metroids, which behave as in the larger Prime series. Survival is a larger free-roaming map where you have to hunt down enemies to get a high score before you die. Morph Ball is a cool race/obstacle course where you roll along collecting tokens. They’re like fun minigames that I think could have fleshed out the Hunters game in addition to the story and multiplayer, if they’d been included and expanded on. Imagine that Hunters the game is a combination of this and the final release, and you have a more full proposition.
Apart from the HUD and such being shifted around, there’s things that I’m glad were removed from the final game, like the basic beam using ammo, and a shared ammo/missile pool. I may be missing other gameplay subtleties, but I had to play this in the far from ideal conditions of an emulator, which necessitated button-only controls: an awkward situation, to be sure.
You do see carts rarely, but since the full game fleshed out the multiplayer over this preview, the unique solo modes are the only reason to check it out, and there’s not much there. Like I said, a nice extra to Hunters, and I wish they’d explored those ideas further in addition (but not in place of) the story mode. Plus Metroids! On the DS! That’s new (although the solo modes are stated to be a training simulation, so they’re not real).
Another quick one; I mentioned earlier about rounding up the last few dregs related to the Metroid series after I played 2. Galactic Pinball of course, is a space-themed pinball game on the Virtual Boy developed by Intelligent Systems, who had by this point made Super Metroid. They inserted a minigame where you control Samus’s gunship, blasting Metroids and Skrees and some other critter who come at you.
As a game, it’s not a great pinball simulator. The forced perspective is interesting, especially on a 3D system, but you end up with very small things at the far end that are hard to see. The physics don’t feel as stable and smooth as later games like, say, Metroid Prime Pinball. It’s not even technically pinball because you’re hitting a puck.
As a Metroid game, there’s not much there besides the minigame, but we can induct any other content into the Metroid universe: with the space theme, it fits well enough. We have four boards: UFO, Colony, Cosmic, and Alien. As they stand they’re rather generic sci-fi concepts, but they all have unique layouts and gimmicks. It doesn’t say much about the larger world, though, and as I said I wasn’t blown away by the gameplay so I didn’t persist with it too long. The Virtual Boy really was a failure, wasn’t it? This is supposed to be one of the better games (out of the dozen or so released, anyway).
This is it; the last main Metroid game I had yet to play. Aside from First Hunt and Galactic Pinball, I’ve now experienced the complete saga. It’s odd of course, because not only were several of the games made anachronically according to the series’s timeline, I played them in a strange order too. Starting with the Advance games (the last and first in the timeline), I became accustomed to the controls there, which made Super too floaty and needlessly complex for me.
Metroid 2 is a bridge between the first and Super, and introduced many concepts that made their way to the console sequel. The larger Samus sprite, the Varia changing your appearance, ducking, as well as the ship and some of the abilities. From my memory, it also seems to be closer in feel to Super. Being simpler though, I found it easier to deal with. I should also note that I used savestates and a map throughout (MDB’s reconstruction of the Nintendo Power map, to be precise).
There’s not too much variety and it’s quite linear, as well as the numerous repeated level structure elements you’ll notice. But it’s quite short, ramps up nicely, and feels self-contained and the right length. I miss the days when these big franchises weren’t afraid to give us a little sidestory on a handheld. The consistent theme in tracking down those Metroids is a unique experience.
The music is largely unintrusive, apart from the fantastic “Main Caves” theme. The graphics look nice, but this is one of the more complicated games to get colours into. Usually you have to try it on a Super Game Boy and a Game Boy Color, not to mention the different options they’ll give you. I was happy with what I ended up with, nice contrast between enemies and background. The only problem is that the light blue level tilesets never changed, giving it an unfortunate uniform feel despite the different designs of those textures. Most likely my fault, but oh well. It’s too bad they never actually made the proposed DX version of this game for GBC.
I feel quite good about this game, allowing for the fact I used a map. There was a good amount of challenge, exploration, and not too much backtracking. I certainly had a better time than with Zelda 2, as this actually keeps and evolves the core gameplay of the series. And using that Spider Ball to just nip around any surface was so fun! The beam-switching mechanic was interesting too, with several instances of each littered around, and none being compulsory until the end.
I even got the best ending for finishing under 3 hours and with 100% items, although as I said I had my map and savestates. Metroid 2 is a fine instalment for the series, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for the final release of the fan remake AM2R. The baby! I actually like the baby now.
I finally got around to playing this. I got it back in the Famicom anniversary sale. Having played almost every Metroid game before this one (only Metroid 2 left now), I was kind of looking forward to it as the commonly-held “best” in the series.
I actually played them in a weird order. My first two were Fusion and Zero Mission, chronologically the last and first. I also played ZM’s included NES version of Metroid 1, with my own hand-drawn maps and everything! So while I’ve seen how low the series could go, it felt like I still had a glorious high to go through. To make a long story short: I prefer Zero Mission in a lot of ways.
I played the GBA ones a lot, and they have a distinct feel. I don’t have Fusion to go back and check, but I played ZM to confirm after finishing Super and it felt so right. In comparison Super feels slow and floaty, and the controls are much clunkier. ZM streamlines everything: no run button, no toggling between 5(!) different abilities, no need to deactivate or switch your powerups, no cumbersome X-ray scope. It’s also quicker and smoother, and with trickier puzzles and more impressive set pieces.
So my general impression is that I don’t quite see how Super is the be-all end-all that it’s made out to be. I’m just a dabbler in game design theory, so maybe a lot of the clever things went over my head. I think nostalgia must play a part too—in terms of growing up with it, ZM was my Super. However, Super has a lot of good stuff.
You can go anywhere to see why people think SM is great. It’s the subtle environmental storytelling. It’s the open-ended structure, where you choose what you do next, and many powerups are missable for a long time. The exploration, and the exciting combat.
There’s a dark side to open-ended exploration in a game with obvious goals, though. In Maridia especially I wandered around for ages, falling down holes and having to go the long way around. I don’t like that area. It brought to mind another comparison: the map, while immensely useful after my scribbled pencil scrawl for the first game, is simply not as helpful as its counterparts on the GBA. I relied on a separate map from the good folks at Metroid Recon, especially during the item collection phase.
Enough comparisons though. The endless secrets in this game were very rewarding: the animals who teach you new techniques (never could get the hang of the bloody walljump though), the beam combos, and of course all the missile tanks and so on. And sometimes it felt like you stumbled upon a boss, although most were well set-up. You get to know these areas you’re exploring, and then suddenly you find a hole in the wall that opens it up, that you never knew was there.
If you’ve played Metroid games before you know all the items you’ll get, although I had a few surprises such as the X-ray scope. Switching beams is also not something I’m used to outside of Prime, and I’m not sure I liked it. Sub Tanks are also unique to SM, taken straight out of Mega Man X, although given its open nature I wasn’t sure of the point. I also found so many things that I now recognise were being called back to in later games, especially Prime, ZM, and Other M. This really was an influential game for the series.
I dunno, I feel weird about this game. To me it’s not so special, just another Metroid game. It’s a good one though, probably better than Fusion if I really think about it. Fairly glitchy but full of ideas and atmosphere. Treating it as a game I didn’t like how it played compared to ZM, but it’s a well-crafted experience. My recommendation (if you somehow haven’t played any Metroid games) is to take this one fairly early. The bosses can be hard, but the puzzles are easier. Search thoroughly for items, it really helps. And find the Metroid larva!
I finally got around to playing this. I got it back in the Famicom anniversary sale. Having played almost every Metroid game before this one (only Metroid 2 left now), I was kind of looking forward to it as the commonly-held “best” in the series.
