GA101 - Super Metroid

From thecrankyhermit

Supermetroid.jpg

In mid 1986, with the NES/Famicom now a permanent fixture in the living rooms of millions and a number of successful titles under Nintendo's belt, Nintendo R&D1, the oldest studio in the company, developed Metroid, with Yosho Sakamoto as lead director and Gunpei Yokoi as producer. Metroid was a platformer, but unlike Super Mario Bros. and other stage-based platformers on the system, Metroid was set in a single non-linear world which took several pages from The Legend of Zelda - exploration was key, occasional backtracking was required, and you would routinely find hidden power-ups which would permanently upgrade your character, some of which permitted access to previously unreachable, and sometimes hidden areas. An Aliens-inspired sequel was released in 1991, not for the SNES, but for the portable Gameboy - Yokoi's latest toy.

In 1994, Nintendo R&D1 released Super Metroid for the SNES, with Yosho Sakamoto as lead director and Gunpei Yokoi as general manager. Under development for a year and a half, it is the biggest 2D Metroid game to this date, and often regarded as the best game in the series, and one of the best games on the platform. It brought a bigger world, more items, impressive graphics and sounds, and a number of features that make the game more forgiving and accessible.

Set almost immediately after the events of Metroid II, Samus Aran receives a distress call from a space colony, where scientists had been experimenting on the last known metroid larva. Answering the call, you find the station has been attacked by space pirates, and the metroid larva stolen. You then track the pirates to their hideout on the planet Zebes, explore the seemingly abandoned base of operations, only to discover an even deeper system of caverns that are infested with pirates and dangerous life forms in your search for the metroid larva.

Super Metroid refines the Metroid formula to near perfection, with careful world design that gives a feeling of freedom and encourages exploration while still having a fairly specific "sequence" in mind, giving the player a subtle sense of direction and tangible sense of progress without ever becoming linear for too long. You walk past, around, and away from impassible obstacles constantly for over half of the game, knowing that every single one of them must conceal something good. This makes every single new item you collect a game-changing moment - new weapons aren't just weapons, but keys that unlock figurative (and literal) doors. Missiles will open pink doors. Speed boots let you charge through walls. Power bombs destroy rubble. High jump boots let you leap to otherwise unreachable ledges. With every new item you collect, all the obstacles and locked doors you previously had to skip over now come to mind, and you have to decide which to explore first. Will you take the route that looks like it advances the game? Will you first go through the obstacles that probably contain powerups? Maybe you'll backtrack very far so that you can search every nook and cranny for powerups, now better equipped than you were the first time.

Smmap.JPG

There are also several features that make the game more approachable than before, as was common of SNES sequels to 8-bit games. First and foremost is the auto-map, which draws itself as you explore Zebes. This not only GREATLY reduces the risk of getting lost, but it provides a gentle push towards exploring and progressing through the game as well, because the map, in showing where you have already been, implicitly shows where you have not already been. Frequent save stations allow you to resume your game at key checkpoints, instead of having to trek through long stretches of familiar territory after each death as in Metroid.

Smatmos.JPG

Super Metroid does things that its 8-bit predecessors couldn't dream of. Super Metroid simply reeks of atmosphere and attention to detail. The aforementioned space station collapses around you, rubble falling and broken pipes hissing with steam. The surface of Zebes is that of another world, with a stormy surface and swirling dust in the air when you first land on it. The old pirate hideout, long deserted since the last game, is dark, filled with rusty and cracked corridors. Much of this atmosphere is thanks to the dark and foreboding soundtrack, which often leans towards ambient. Eventually, you return to the surface, having explored most of the locations in the game, and the storms have cleared. This coincides with that Zebes itself is now clear to you. No longer clouded in obscurity, you now have a basic map of the entire world, and are better equipped (both literally and figuratively) to explore the caverns of Zebes more thoroughly. And yet it is also clear that you've only scratched the surface of the game.

There are even set pieces that convey simple narrative wordlessly, using nothing but sprite animations and interactions that seem plausible in the context of gameplay mechanics. Early on, Ridley snatches and flies away with the larva while you are still in control of Samus. Non-hostile creatures can teach you how to wall jump and shinespark, two undocumented mobility actions, simply by performing the required actions themselves to reach otherwise inaccessible ledges and waiting for you to follow. And of course there is the famous finale, featuring multiple sequences which have managed to inspired complex emotional response in more than a few players.

Smending.JPG

After completing the mission, you get to see the ending, and your final completion time and percentage of items collected. As in the previous games, part of the ending is determined by your completion time, which encouraged players to replay and aim for faster times. By memorizing the game's maps, planning optimal routes, knowing which items are needed and which are optional, and using certain special moves, it is possible to open up the game world early, skip over large sections, and complete it in a faster time than you could have the first time, unlocking the best ending. By keeping track of items collected, it also encouraged players to go back and look for secret items they missed, in pursuit of a 100% completion rate. Players who got really good would find ways to 100% complete the game *and* do it in record time, or even aim for a low percentage completion rate to make things extra challenging.

Super Metroid does what many SNES sequels to then-classic Nintendo franchises did. It expands on a successful formula, tones down the difficulty, and increases the production value. But while Mario, Zelda, Castlevania, Final Fantasy, and even Ghouls n' Ghosts got 16-bit installments fairly early on in the SNES's lifespan, Super Metroid came years after them. It's greatest accomplishments aren't in being ground breaking, but simply in the amount of polish it gave to a worthy formula. Its production values are top-notch for the system, and the overall level design is the best realization of the Metroid formula yet.

Metroid's role in history is much like Zelda's. Zelda came first, and successfully fused many adventure elements into an action game package, with overworlds, dungeons, puzzles, minigames, NPCs of sorts, and conventional narrative. Metroid's design leaned more to the action side, focusing on conventional platforming mechanics, and a few unconventional ones. These simple abilities are how you interact with a complex game world, and most of the items you unlock merely enhance these abilities. In this sense, the Metroids distilled the elements of the action/adventure formula into something emulatable - something that can be found in games of all eras across multiple styles of gameplay. The Castlevania series famously drew influence from the series starting with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and more recent games such as Cave Story, Aquaria, Shadow Complex, and even Batman: Arkham Asylum are likewise clearly inspired by Metroid's structure.

An emulated SNES version of Super Metroid is available on the Wii's Virtual Console.

Beginner tips:

  • The Dash button works even if you don't have the speed boots. Keep this in mind - not too far into the game is the infamous "noob bridge" which has stonewalled many beginners who didn't realize this.
  • You can recharge your energy and restock all weapons by visiting your ship.
  • You can also restock gradually by finding pits that spontaneously generate enemies for unlimited kills and therefore unlimited energy and ammo drops.
  • Always have full stocks of ammo before fighting bosses.
  • Use bombs to "feel" your way around rooms while looking for secrets. Destructible "blocks" will reveal their weaknesses as a symbol when bombed.


Icon-arrow-left.png (work in progress)] Index Final Fantasy VI Icon-arrow-right.png