Retro Game of the Month January 2018: Metroid (NES) and Super Metroid (SNES)

Tanoomba · Jan 1, 2018

They were both mentioned in the same suggestion post and they're short enough to be able to beat both in a single month so we're doing a package deal for Metroid and Super Metroid for January!

Metroid

Wikipedia Blurb:
Metroid[a] is an action-adventure video game developed and published by Nintendo. The first installment in the Metroid series, it was originally released in Japan for the Famicom Disk System peripheral in August 1986. North America received a release in August 1987 on the Nintendo Entertainment System in a ROM cartridgeformat, with the European release following in January 1988. Set on the planet Zebes, the story follows Samus Aran as she attempts to retrieve the parasitic Metroid organisms that were stolen by Space Pirates, who plan to replicate the Metroids by exposing them to beta rays and then use them as biological weapons to destroy Samus and all who oppose them.

The development of Metroid was handled by Nintendo Research & Development 1 (Nintendo R&D1) and Intelligent Systems. It was produced by Gunpei Yokoi, directed by Satoru Okada and Masao Yamamoto, and had music composed by Hirokazu Tanaka. The game's style, focusing on exploration and the search for power-ups that are used to reach previously inaccessible areas, influenced other video games. Its varied endings for fast completion times made it a popular game for speedrunning. It was lauded for being one of the first video games to feature a female protagonist, though the player must complete the game in under five hours for this to be revealed, with the game's English-language instruction manual even using "he" to refer to the protagonist.

Nintendo Power ranked Metroid 11th on their list of the best video games made on a Nintendo video game console. On Top 100 Games lists, it was ranked 7th by Game Informer and 69th by Electronic Gaming Monthly. The game was re-released for the Game Boy Advance in 2004 as part of the Classic NES Series. It also became available as a Wii Virtual Console title in Europe and North America in 2007, and in Japan the following year.

Super Metroid

Wikipedia Blurb:
Super Metroid[a] is a side-scrolling action-adventure video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System video game console. The third installment in the Metroid series, it was released in Japan in March 1994, with other territories later. The story takes place after the events of the Game Boy game Metroid II: Return of Samus (1991); it follows the protagonist and playable character Samus Aran, who travels to planet Zebes in an attempt to retrieve an infant Metroid stolen by the Space Pirate leader Ridley.

The development staff from previous Metroid games – including Yoshio Sakamoto, Makoto Kano and Gunpei Yokoi – returned to develop Super Metroid over the course of two years, with half a year earlier to gain approval for the initial idea. The developers wanted to make a true action game, and to set the stage for Samus's reappearance. The gameplay focuses on exploration, with the player searching for power-ups that are used to reach previously inaccessible areas. It features new concepts to the series, such as the inventory screen, an automap, and the ability to fire in all directions.

The game received critical acclaim, praising its atmosphere, gameplay, music and graphics. It is often described as one of the best video games of all time. Although the game did not sell well in Japan, it fared better in North America, and had shipped 1.42 million copies worldwide by late 2003. It became popular among players for speedrunning, and has inspired other games within the Metroidvania genre. The game was followed by the 2002 release of Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime, ending the series' eight-year hiatus. Since 2007, Super Metroidbecame available as a Virtual Console title for the Wii, the Wii U, and the New Nintendo 3DS. The game also received its release as part of the Super NES Classic Edition microconsole in September 2017.

Enjoy!

Szlia · Jan 2, 2018

So yeah, I played through Metroid in one go earlier today. It took me a little bit less than 5 hours. I had played it and finished it back in... '89 or '90 and I don't think I replayed it since. I saw some speedrun of it in recent years, but they were of little assistance as they are full of odd warping and extraordinary difficult execution. It was interesting to confront the game with the memories I had of it.

Foreword: For the best Metroid experience, you should probably not read what follows if you never played the game.

A core thing of the game is feeling lost: there is no map system and many places purposefully look like others. On top of that, the game is expert at breaking Ariadne's thread. By that I mean the game puts the player in a situation where he cannot backtrack, usually with a fall. Also, there is no true haven, as in there is no save room nor healing room nor supply room (the nearest thing being rooms with infinite supply of monsters, we'll discuss these below). Combine that with secret passages / fake blocks / etc and it leads to the following result: several time while playing you have a sinking feeling in your belly... 'I fucked up' ... 'What now?'... 'Ooooooh shiiiiit.' I always argued that the first Metroid did that a lot better than all of its sequels. Replaying the game, I still hold this opinion, but it will be interesting to see if this conviction wavers after replaying Super Metroid.

Something that did not hold up is the feeling the game was packed full of secret passages. There is a number of them, but their bulk is made of the same few 'families' to the point they are almost not secret. That being said, they are not really telegraphed, so playing the game for the first time back then, it was jaw dropping to discover a secret passage accidentally, realize it's a thing and backtrack to find a handful of such passages you totally missed before. Playing it now after having played 5 or 6 other games in the franchise, there is no surprise left. So, with cold analytical eyes, I think it's fair to say Super Metroid has a greater density and variety of secret passages.

What I did not remember though is the number of super weird design decisions in this game. In no specific order:

- When you continue, you restart with 30 hp, even if your max is 700 hp. Why? All it does is forces you to mindlessly grind for random hp drops from monsters in spots where there is an infinity supply of them (such places are also mini haven as if you stay there and have a pulse, your hp can only go up). Dying to Mother Brain and having to spend 20+ min to regain health and missiles to be able to have another go at the last zone is very very dumb (on the up side though, all the doors are opened and even the regenerating barriers in the Mother Brain room don't respawn after a continue, that was a pleasant surprise).

- Jumping out of lava is all kind of wonky. At some point I fell in lava between two pillars and I really thought I was stuck there, but somehow after 654 tries I got out (I had the Varia suit so it would have taken 5 minutes for the lava to kill me). Falling in the lava between Mother Brain and the last door though proved a very annoying death trap.

- For some reason there are more E-Tanks in the game than what you can have... talk about a let down when you find your 7th (8th?) E-Tank and all it does is top your health.

- You cannot manage your upgrades, so when/if you pick the wave beam and its 'going through wall' hotness, you lose the 'climbing on frozen enemies' option of the ice beam and, more importantly, your ability to survive in the final zone (if you don't freeze metroids, you DIE), so you have to go fetch the ice beam again once you are done with the minis. So bizarre.

- If you are able to understand the logic of when you can and cannot lay bombs, you are a superior intelligence and should use it for less complex problems such as word hunger or the squaring of the circle...

Metroid goes to great lengths to make the player feel uncomfortable. It's a game about being lost in a strange and dangerous place. A worrisome adventure played to eerie and ominous music, packed with not so obvious gating (the staple of metroidvania: new abilities allowing you to go to new places) and a ton of hidden, non-mandatory, yet very potent power-ups (you can finish the game without screw attack or varia suit). When most game of its era are structured with levels, numbered dungeons or at least a clear string of objectives, Metroid drops the player in an continuous (almost open) world and gives him none of these comforting tropes (in fact, the first thing you are supposed to do is go left! Left!). It's Adventure on amphetamines. A game not about 'fun' (even if there is some fun to be had in the late game when you navigate the world icing a guy, screw attacking another, bypassing a third with the safety of a big energy stock) but about immersion. A classic that, in spite of some odd design and shortcomings, should be replayed for its uncompromising core. A core that has been somewhat softened in the following installments.

Siliconemelons · Jan 2, 2018

I remember as a kid playing this with my brother never being able to find the "dragon alien guy" lol we killed the green spike throwing monster guy... hehe

Maybe I will replay 1 for this month, I was just going to do super and finish PS4

McCheese · Jan 3, 2018

I started playing NES Metroid last night. I never made much progress as a kid because I was a stupid little shit who didn't have the patience for it. I'm really enjoying it now that I'm a stupid big adult with slightly more patience, though. I'm trying to do it blind without any maps, guides, or save states. The exploration is fun.

Tanoomba · Jan 3, 2018

Re-played the same first couple of hours of Metroid I have played several times before.

There are a few things I definitely appreciate:
- Once your life and missiles are full there's no benefit to killing enemies, so when you backtrack (and there's a LOT of backtracking) the game becomes about avoiding confrontation, which itself requires constant attention and quick reflexes. Finding your groove and ducking and weaving through enemies can be very satisfying.
- The standing jump and spinning jump each have their own physics and situational advantages, and even though the game does nothing to explicitly teach you this it's pretty much a given that you'll figure it out through natural gameplay. I like design like that.
- When you need to descend a vertical corridor it's fun to turn into a ball and bounce your way down from ledge to ledge.
- The music is oppressively creepy and definitely adds to the sense of isolation and being in constant danger.

But, of course, there are the well-known flaws:
- Not having your life refilled when you die is such an unnecessarily brutal punishment that it makes the game feel broken. I may resort to using save states to keep from spending hours grinding for life and therefore maintaining my sanity.
- As satisfying as it is to sprint through enemy territory and dodge them like a pro, there are rooms where the enemy placement is downright cruel, where there are multiple powerful enemies coming from every direction but the terrain placement doesn't give you enough room to avoid them and you're not yet powerful enough to take them down quickly.
- You power up very slowly. Sure, it adds to the sense of being vulnerable and having to work hard to develop your strength, but it also means it's super-easy to die for the first several hours of gameplay, which can be very discouraging.
- The stages are sprawling and very confusing to navigate. Without cheating and using online maps, or going real old-school and mapping the game out with a paper and pen, it's really difficult to keep track of what areas you'll need to come back to later with what abilities.
- The first time I died was from falling in the lava and getting stuck under a platform, completely unable to move. That felt cheap.
- I'm positive I missed a few hidden missiles and energy tanks already. But with no hints and only vague memories about where they are hidden, I may miss out on the advantages they would afford me for a while.

Anyway, I tried my hand at the white area down the elevator and got my ass handed to me, so I may try the purple are down the other elevator, even though the enemies look even tougher. I'm not sure I have the patience to beat this, but I'll give it a good try before moving on the Super Metroid, which is a masterpiece I'm looking forward to going back to.

Szlia · Jan 3, 2018

You can get the ice beam pretty early and I don't think there is an enemy that can't be frozen (other than bosses). Once you have ice and 15ish missiles, there isn't really any tough enemy (a missile always kill a frozen enemy) other than maybe the lava sea-horses thingies that spit fire, but these only get troublesome if you stay around them instead of sprinting through, freezing, bopping and weaving. I think I died 3 times in total (once because I said 'fuck it' and explored down a path without being careful, once because I got stuck in a vertical dead end that is tricky to escape without ice and/or high jump and once to Mother Brain), but I also played it safe: always topping my health when I had the opportunity, totally cheesing Ridley and reaching Kraid so late that I could just dps race him.

As far as E-Tank go, I don't think that many are super hidden. In fact I think the one that is the most hidden is the one

that is in the ceiling very early in the game and that you can only reach with the ice beam, but this is also the most well known 'secret' in the game I guess?

pharmakos · Jan 4, 2018

McCheese · Jan 5, 2018

I played Metroid for about 2 hours last night, and I suffered a tragedy when I paused the game to grab my pizzas from the delivery guy. When unpausing the game, I accidentally hit the hotkey combo to reset the game. I hadn't gotten any continue codes since starting the evening.

Feels bad man.

On the plus side, I decided to go truly old school and draw myself a map as I went. So at least it won't be hard to retrace my steps and make up the lost progress.

Siliconemelons · Jan 8, 2018

Fortunately for you... Metroid 1 is 90% knowing where to go.

The game is very small if you have a map, proper missiles count and ice beam are all you "need" spin and suit are mere trinkets.

gshurik · Jan 8, 2018

So I decided to beat Metroid and Super Metroid last night. I've played through them both so much that I know the optimal paths. I didn't 100% Metroid but I did 100% Super Metroid (which is the only true way to play imo). I'm not going to bother speaking about Metroid. It's great but it's very much a game stuck in time. It hasn't aged particularly well but any criticism is unfair really. It was a pioneering back in the day.

Super Metroid though did so much correct for an old title. There are two games that atmospherically give me chills and that's Silent Hill and Super Metroid. That feeling of isolation is so palpable and only made worse when you hit areas like the wrecked ship.

The wrecked ship is so claustrophobic and it's lovingly rendered to make sure you feel lost at all turns. I love how they managed to create an already claustrophobic game even more so when you hit this part. If you look at the map you'll notice that there's a ton of vertical exploration, which gives you a feeling of getting deeper and deeper into this creepy atmosphere.

Crateria already had a really creepy atmosphere but it almost feels relieving when you escape from this area into Crateria.

McCheese · Jan 8, 2018

Man, this farming health pellets to fill up energies in Metroid is absolute dog shit. It's really sapping my enjoyment of an otherwise great game.

I never made it very far as a kid, so I have no clue about where to go. This means I'm doing lots of back-tracking and lots of trial and error. I spend 20 minutes getting my guy filled up with health, explore a bit and gradually lose it all, and then need to farm for another 20+ minutes to fill it up again.

I'm getting tempted to go to a walkthrough just to go along the main route and beat the game.

Haast · Jan 9, 2018

McCheese said:
Man, this farming health pellets to fill up energies in Metroid is absolute dog shit. It's really sapping my enjoyment of an otherwise great game.

Original Metroid would be much better with a mechanism to get full health besides picking up a new E tank. Or at least a way to fill up health faster than 5 points at a time for several hundred HPs. It's a glaring omission in retrospect, and I totally agree it saps your will to keep exploring.

Despite that, Metroid is a genre-establishing masterpiece.

Super Metroid fixes the flaws of the original, has timeless graphics and is still arguably the best game ever made IMO, even when compared to modern competition. Super Metroid also cemented speedrunning as a hobby.

Siliconemelons · Jan 22, 2018

There has not been as much activity here as last month, maybe last month we all had more free time due to holiday? opposite me...lol

Anywho - while I think many either skipped or have not really commented is because most everyone has played at least Super Metroid - but at the same time it has much love and garnered the votes because of what it is.

Super Metroid is a game many can replay - but not just at "anytime" you have to "want it" - the game is so perfect that sometimes just thinking about it, talking about it etc. give you what you need from it- later on, you will eventually want to replay it, but not every month or year - what the game gives you is not exactly the direct entertainment of playing it, in the now-now. While it is fun to play, that feeling can be garnered by many other options that are "new" - what you want is the feelings only Super Metroid can give, and you only need to refil that every now and then.

Super Metroid is a classic in all terms, it has copies and ripoffs for the very reason Tolkin's dwarves and dwarves and elves are elves etc. - sure there are "other types of elves" but none of them "feel right"

Axiom Verge is most likely one of the best clones of metroid there is, it has feeling (even the feeling and tone is to emulate metroid) - the gameplay is slick, there are new "things" that give it personality - yet what it does "is" metroid.

Blossom Tales is a huge clone and rip of Zelda, but does it very, very well and again - captures the feeling and adds some of its own uniqueness to itself so it can stand on its own legs.

Because of all of this, there is "not much to say" with metroid, its awesome... it IS metroid... even if you have played "mertoid clones" you need to play super metroid, even if you have read high fantasy novels, you need to read the hobbit and LOTR- even if you consider the "new stuff better" you still need to play the genera defining piece.

stupidmonkey · Jan 22, 2018

Xadion said:
Axiom Verge is most likely one of the best clones of metroid there is, it has feeling (even the feeling and tone is to emulate metroid) - the gameplay is slick, there are new "things" that give it personality - yet what it does "is" metroid.

Beat that a few months back and would agree. I've been playing Metroid off and on this month but it hasn't been holding my attention. Probably do a late night binge so I can get on to Super Metroid.

Therage · Jan 22, 2018

Yea, I've been playing a bit when I can but work has been crazy lately. I think I'll make some heavy progress tomorrow.

Tanoomba · Jan 22, 2018

I really wanted to beat Metroid 1 and was willing to use an online map to do so (because, let's face it, the game was designed for you to waste a ton of time trying to find essential bombable blocks). I even decided I would make some use of save states (because, let's face it, the punishment for death is ridiculously excessive). But, after what felt like significant progress, I accidentally reset the game instead of saving it, then immediately accidentally saved it.

What I'd like to do now is chart out a course on the map so I can start over and beat the game with minimal backtracking and ideally get the good ending and never play it again, but I haven't been able to rustle up the spirit yet. Even though Metroid played an important role in the evolution of gaming, it's pretty close to unplayable by today's standards and holds more nostalgic value than it does timeless gameplay. Zero Mission is definitely the way to go if you want to play a modern version of Samus' first adventure.

Siliconemelons · Jan 23, 2018

Thought Zero Mission was not a remake of 1, but a kinda total remake/reimagine and prequleish?

Another "thing of note" about super metroid is that, right at the start you are "at the end" of M1 - you go through and it shows you just how "close" the "end" is to the "beginning" - some people simply think it is a product of them just not wanting to rebuild what would essentially be the first (last) 1/3 of the metroid 1 map... yet then at the end of super metroid, as you run off to escape and are busting through everything like a bat out of hell you bust through a wall and... lol BACK RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING!

Samus needs to invest into mining equipment.

Tanoomba · Jan 23, 2018

Xadion said:
Thought Zero Mission was not a remake of 1, but a kinda total remake/reimagine and prequleish?

Another "thing of note" about super metroid is that, right at the start you are "at the end" of M1 - you go through and it shows you just how "close" the "end" is to the "beginning" - some people simply think it is a product of them just not wanting to rebuild what would essentially be the first (last) 1/3 of the metroid 1 map... yet then at the end of super metroid, as you run off to escape and are busting through everything like a bat out of hell you bust through a wall and... lol BACK RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING!

Samus needs to invest into mining equipment.

As far as I remember from when it came out (and also according to Wikipedia), Zero Mission is indeed a remake of the original Metroid. It covers the same locations and events of Metroid, updated to play more like Super Metroid and with some added story elements.

Siliconemelons · Jan 23, 2018

Oh... I was thinking fusion- the one where the blob anime raped Samus and made her run around in her blue skivvys

Haast · Jan 25, 2018

Tanoomba said:
As far as I remember from when it came out (and also according to Wikipedia), Zero Mission is indeed a remake of the original Metroid. It covers the same locations and events of Metroid, updated to play more like Super Metroid and with some added story elements.

I played the first 30 minutes of it today. This description is accurate so far. It's like the soul of Metroid 1 is transplanted into Super Metroid. Not an exact remake, but it does play like the modern update of the original Metroid.

It's a good way to get the original Metroid experience without some of the will-sapping design flaws.

Retro Game of the Month January 2018: Metroid (NES) and Super Metroid (SNES)

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