And of course there’s old pals Kraid and Ridley, in what seem like the same arenas in the same exact spots on the map that they were in the first game… That’s not even getting into the hatchling from Metroid II and what happens to it. Also, towards the end of the new version of Tourian, there’s a desert terrain and this sort of brushy vegetation pulled directly from SR388 and Metroid II, which seems to imply that these new manufactured metroids have turned this area into something resembling their homeworld. And then the game follows the same structure, with statues representing bosses blocking the gate to Tourian and a final boss the first phase of which is… literally the final boss from the first game. One of the earliest structures you find is actually the remnants of the original Tourian, and the Morph Ball is sitting in the exact same part of Brinstar. The areas (with the exception of hell Maridia all have multiple points and structures that call back to their appearance in the original game - they even have some of the same traps (which, of course, I fell for again). It’s the same planet with many of the same enemies and power-ups - and they’re presented in a way that shows the game clearly expects you to remember them. The title, Super Metroid, feels almost like a pun, because with it fresh in my mind this feels like a supersized, remixed version of that first NES game. Which makes sense, considering how often teams change and how likely it is that the people working on a third or fourth entry may be completely different than the ones who worked on the first.īut no there’s continuity for days here. I’m used to video game franchises - at least the ones that aren’t hardcore RPGs (and like even some that are) - basically making each new game a perfectly suitable jumping on point with their own standalone, entirely explicable stories that maybe sorta connect to each other in some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey way (s/o Zelda timeline).
Hardcore gaming 101 metroid series#
It’s actually remarkably less finicky than it is in II, where I found it incredibly frustrating to control - even more annoying than these goddamn wall jumps (which, yes, were the bane of my existence also).įrom that, something I maybe wasn’t expecting to see coming into this was just how much of a series this really is.
Hardcore gaming 101 metroid manual#
I think this is something that’s pretty inscrutable if you’re coming to this game first, because it doesn’t indicate that really at all but it behaves exactly the same way as in both Metroid II and Samus Returns (and the infiniteness of it is specifically mentioned in the manual for II, a thing I always have to remember these games assumed you’d have). The game explains itself a bit too little sometimes for me, which is of course the toughest balance to strike here.
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iirc you could use it infinitely (or at least in water or lava), but it had never occurred to me that I could do that, so I had to go to Google again there. My other issue was a misunderstanding of the double jump.