The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!
Let’s discuss the Metroid series. What are you’re favorite games in the series? What aspects do you like about it? What doesn’t work for you? Are there other games that gave you similar feelings? Feel free to share any thoughts that come up, or react to other peoples comments. Let’s get the conversation going!
If you have any recommendations for games or series for the next post(s), please feel free to DM me or add it in a comment here (no guarantees of course).
Previous entries: Journey, Resident Evil, Polybius, Tetris, Telltale Games, Kirby, LEGO Games, DOOM, Ori, Metal Gear, Slay the Spire
Here’s something totally bizarre that you might it might not care about.
The other day I brought up Metroid on the Nintendo Switch NES app (the one that lets you play some NES games with an online subscription.) After playing for a bit, I wanted to show him the Justin Bailey code. But I couldn’t remember it exactly at first. So I tried it in various cases, and when I enter the code with all lowercase letters, it crashed the game.
No idea if it’ll do that for everyone, or if it did that on the actual NES, but I tried it a few times and it crashed everything.
For reference, I entered in the code like this:
justin bailey ------ ------But the actual code is:
JUSTIN BAILEY ------ ------Out of the 2D metroids, I think Super Metroid still takes the cake. Dread and 2r are still pretty good but there is a reason why super metroid game design gets taught in college game design courses. One of the best games of all time probably, still trades blows even with good modern metroidvanias. I played it for the first on in the Wii back when I was in high school so this isn’t even nostalgia talking, I even played it after the Prime games.
For the 3d ones, both Prime and Prime 2 are classics imo. Just the sheer immersion is something you don’t find too often in video games. Prime 2 gets a lot of flak for the ammo system and dark world constant damage, but I think those were useful improvements to balance the game since Prime 1 is quite an easy game. They do add a decent amount of friction to traversing the world and makes the dark world feel actually dangerous to be in. Prime 3 was a bit more forgettable but still not a bad game.
Super and Echoes might be my favourites as well. Also shoutout to Fusion and Zero Mission. They were good too, although they owe so much to Super.
Can we take a moment to appreciate how Metroid II really did the groundwork for what Super Metroid perfected? I don’t think SM would have flown to the heights it has had Metroid II not taken the risks it did.
Edit: this wasn’t intended as a reply to a comment and should have been it’s own comment!
The longest I stuck with the franchise was through Metroid Prime Hunters for the DS, and it wasn’t the graphics or the game itself that captivated me (although both are awesome, ngl) but the online capabilities and gameplay, I have not even finished the game, only played several minutes of the campaign (which maybe I am not missing out of much here, as I have read it is one of the weakest), and yet I have had more than 500 hrs of playtime thanks to the multiplayer, which I still used even after the closure of the servers thanks to Wiimmfi.
For me the gameplay with the stylus as the main aim control is the best the DS can offer to have a proper and fast paced aim, if you could search for some of the crazy stuff that the pro players managed with this game on YT and how hardcore it can get for this hardware in those days, you’d be surprised, here is a video that comes at the top of my mind, and it is a recent one too, also the sniper battles (imperialist) were pretty awesome.
With that said, I know the franchise and what it means for everyone, I appreciate it that much that I refuse to even play more metroidvanias without finishing Super Metroid (and Castlevania Symphony of The Night while we are at it).
JUSTIN BAILEY ------ ------Original NES Metroid was the second game I ever beat, after Super Mario Bros. 3.
Justin Bailey Samus >>> Zero Suit Samus 👀
I remember throwing my controller as a kid whenever one of those bubbles attached to Samus.
Great game.
Can we take a moment to appreciate how Metroid II really did the groundwork for what Super Metroid perfected? I don’t think SM would have flown to the heights it has had Metroid II not taken the risks it did.
Edit: this wasn’t intended as a reply to a comment and should have been it’s own comment!
Metroid 2 turned its technical limitations into claustrophobic feeling. It has aged surprisingly well if you disregard the visuals. I started my Metroids with Prime, but og M2 is the oldest I have actually played through. NEStroid has many outdated features that makes the gaming impractical like starting with 30 health, slow healing, save system, difficulty curve etc. Playing M2 felt closer to Super than NES. The spider ball was also neat. I even liked the experimental soundtrack even though that’s an unpopular opinion.
It really was a masterwork in that regard. I really see a lot of the creative genius of that era revolving around working around hardware limitations. Metroid II really did make me rethink what the Game Boy was really capable of back then. How it managed to play so well when the Castlevania games struggled to resemble their NES counterparts really told a pretty telling story in its own right.
Edit: that is a lot of "really"s.
There are few games that define a genre, transforming them into games for history books, and that’s Super Metroid. It refined the exploration-by-abilities genre we know now as “Metroidvania”, much like Dead Souls defined the “Souls” genre, and so forth.
On the other hand, it also had it lows. Like that entry you don’t talk about that we hope someday is declared non-canon and all copies destroyed by spontaneous combustion.
Dead Souls? Did you mean Dark Souls?
