Metroid Retrospective
From thecrankyhermit
Metroid
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.
You play as Samus Aran, an interstellar bounty hunter. You are commissioned by the galactic federation to infiltrate an underground pirate base on the planet Zebes, where their leader, Mother Brain, is breeding parasitic organisms known as Metroids with intent to use them as biological weapons. In between you and this base is a labyrinth of caverns, filled with dangerous life forms and hazardous environments. You begin on the westmost side of the system of caverns, armed with a modular energy rifle and with no sense of direction or bearing. Weapon upgrades must be procured on site, and navigation and charting is your responsibility.
Immediately to the right of your starting position is a wall with an opening too small to enter standing up, so you must head to your left, where you find a "Morphing Ball." With it, you can enter a crouching position, and then change the shape of your suit to a sphere and roll through openings too small to walk through, such as the one to your right. And with this, Metroid truly begins. The world is expansive, open, filled with peril, and is yours to explore, with the point already made that you will be moving in all directions. There are more weapons to discover, bosses to find and defeat, and upgrades and powerful abilities to collect, many of which allowed access to new (or secret) areas making the world even more expansive and open. Eventually, you will discover the entrance to the pirates' hideout, and will have enough energy, ammunition, and abilities to enter it, and destroy Mother Brain.
Compared to other Nintendo games, Metroid was notable for having a dark, oppressive atmosphere, that conveyed a sense of isolation and bleakness that none of its successors have quite captured. There are no friendly toad people waiting for you at the end of a level, no old cavemen offering advice, and no relics of an ancient, benevolent civilization to guide your path. What Metroid does have is bizarre art direction, sprawling map design, unforgiving gameplay, and a musical score that grows more intimidating as you delve deeper into the caverns of Zebes.
Is it worth playing? Common of Nintendo games, its design is a bit rough compared to 16-bit and later sequels. As with Zelda, there is a huge world to explore, and little indication of where you are supposed to go, or even where you CAN go. It's also rather unforgiving - death doesn't take away any of your permanent equipment or progress, but it does restart you in a location that may be far away from your previous one, and with a low amount of health and ammo as well, which may lead to frequent gameplay sessions that begin with farming for health and ammo. If this hasn't scared you off, then go for it. The combination of Mario-style platforming, Zelda-style action/adventure nonlinearity, and a sci-fi setting are a killer formula, realized quite well with the technology available, and with a unique atmosphere that even its remake on Gameboy Advance failed to capture. Super Metroid even has some references to the original that should be quite rewarding to anyone who stuck with it long enough to understand them.
My rating:
Metroid II: Return of Samus
In 1991, Nintendo R&D1 released Metroid II for the Gameboy - Gunpei Yokoi's latest creation.
Taking a couple of pages from the film Aliens, Metroid II sends you on a second mission, this time to the metroids' native planet SR388. There, you must exterminate the metroids, ensuring that the space pirates can never attempt to breed them again. Metroid morphism on SR388 is more diverse than in any other Metroid game to date, representing six different stages of metamorphosis, from Original to Queen, as they grow from jellyfish-like forms to something resembling a dragon.
One of the most immediately striking things about Metroid II is the amount of detail that went into the sprites. Samus in particular is multiple times more detailed than her NES sprite - you can see individual interlocking metal plates on her armor, even bulkier plates on top when equipped with the Varia Suit, and the arm gun changes its shape to reflect what kind of ammo you have loaded - design choices that were necessary given the Gameboy's inability to palette-swap. They even drew separate frames for left-facing animations and right-facing animations instead of just using a mirror image - an unusual feature in sprite based games to this very day. Meaning that Samus shoots with her right arm no matter which direction she is facing.
The environments are more maze-like than before, twisting and turning in all directions, throwing metroids in your path in places you expect it and other places you don't, and generally try to make you feel more lost as you delve deeper into the caverns. Large, expansive caves that scroll in all directions contrast with narrow passages that jut out from all directions, creating a sense of scale that leaves you wondering what lies beyond the edge of the screen until you take a leap of faith into the unknown. Chozo temples, scattered across the caverns, become safe havens - areas that are familiar, provide save points and upgrades, and serve as beacons in a confusing world.
However, some aspects of Metroid had to be scaled down in order to fit on a Gameboy. The caverns are no longer open and expansive, and are actually quite claustrophobic. There are still items to find which give you new world-exploring abilities, and some new ones too like the Space Jump and Spiderball, which allow for interesting exploration tactics that weren't possible in the original. But progress through the game isn't driven by these items as much as it is driven by your mission to exterminate metroids; the world is somewhat linear, and killing all of the metroids in the area available to you typically triggers an earthquake which unblocks passages to the next section. Most of the environments lack variety, mainly consisting of the same rocky caverns over and over again. And the music is quite monotonous.
Is it worth playing? It's overall not as good as the first, but it's still a great formula, with some satisfying action and exploration in spite of the limitations. But perhaps the most important thing about this game is its place in the Metroid timeline. This is a pivotal chapter in the series, as both Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion have plots which follow from Samus's actions here. In addition, it may actually be more accessible than the original, thanks to a save system that doesn't force you to farm for health with each playthrough or enter passwords, improved controls that allow you to shoot while crouching or aim downward while jumping, and perhaps even the more linear design. If you finished Metroid, you might as well play this too.
My rating:
Super Metroid
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.
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. They record health as well, eliminating the need to farm for energy drops at the beginning of every play session.
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.
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. Super Metroid was only released on SNES, and is often played today via emulation, which can be done on the Nintendo Wii through Virtual Console.
My rating:
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.