Metroid Appreciation Thread

[deuxhero]

Best romhacks for the series?

 

[Louis_Cypher]

How’s Other M?

Don't ever mention that game here again.

 

[Grauken]

Best romhacks for the series?

There are lots of visual retoolings of the first Metroid, Roidz is my favorite

Metroid: Rogue Dawn is basically a total conversion of Metroid and works as a prequel to it

Not a romhack, but the guy who made AM2R made a self-contained mini-Metroid before AM2R called Metroid: Confrontation

I quite liked that one

 

[Cunt Dickula!?]

Sadly, nothing else in the Metroidvania genre comes close to Super Metroid

Hollow Knight

 

[Ivan]

Yeah, Metroidvanias are doing great. Definitely a thriving genre.

 

[Jaedar]

Prime 1 has way better art and environment design than Echoes, but Echoes is pretty strictly superior in terms of exploration, enemy design, difficulty, and just overall game design.

I disagree.
One of my favorite aspects in Prime was trying the various guns on the different enemies. There was quite a lot of unique and logical effects to it. A space flower that's immune to conventional weapons, including missiles, but fire beam kills it for example. In Echoes you just use the dark beam against light enemies, and vice versa, and shoop supply crates with whichever you have spare ammo for. The light/dark world mechanics also mean that there is a lot of repeated rooms. That being said, echoes is better in several ways, including cooler powerups, and the high tech area is glorious. Still, it's been many years since I played either so it's possible I have forgotten prime 1 being a bit clunky in comparison.

Prime 3 suffers from bad motion controls. Iirc the L and R buttons on the dpad were unused, if they had made them 'quick turn 90 degrees' buttons the control scheme would have been cool, but as is you either play with medium sensitivty and have good aiming but 10 second turning around times, or crank the sensitivity up to max and have the view jitter like crazy due to input noise and still have 4 second turnaround times. It also suffers quite a lot from dumbing down. The game mostly proceeds down a single linear path, iirc they reduced the amount of interesting powerups/visors/guns that you could freely use in the environment. And the corruption mode is iddq combined with a damage powerup.

 

[Ivan]

Going to give this a spin. Thanks for recommending.

 

[RoSoDude]

Some hipsters will say [...] Fusion [is] better, but they're hipsters. I'd put Prime ahead of either. But SM is king. One of the distinguishing traits of Metroid was being set in a labyrinth, and Super still has the best labyrinth design of the series, and maybe all of so called "metroidvania," with tons of hidden and optional pathways. Other games have lazy, basic level design in comparison.

Also most potent atmosphere and legendary OST. It's a GOAT by any measure.

Reporting in. I've replayed Fusion over a dozen times (I'd just pop it in and knock it out in 1-2 sittings whenever I was home sick growing up), it's easily my favorite. I will fully acknowledge the strengths of Super Metroid and probably recommend it as the game with the broadest appeal as it nails lonely exploration through an alien world, but I think Fusion gets short shrift for moving the series in a different direction towards a different peak on the design landscape.

Fusion is the only Metroid game with actually challenging combat and well-designed bosses. Super Metroid doesn't have a single good boss in the entire roster, I'm sorry to say. The patterns are either so basic as to be completely braindead affairs (e.g. Spore Spawn, Crocomire, Botwoon) or you're getting spammed erratic attacks and just have to DPS down the boss faster than it kills you (e.g. Kraid, Ridley, Mother Brain), which should never really happen. I like that Phantoon gets harder if you spam super missiles, and the grapple beam trick to kill Draygon is a nice bit of spectacle, but there's nothing notable from an action game standpoint to be found. In contrast, Fusion's snappier movement gets matched with more aggressive boss patterns that increase in difficulty as the game goes on. Arachnus, the very first boss, is more elaborate than anything in Super; slash projectiles should be jumped, carpet bombs force Samus to grapple and wait for the boss to roll in order to jump to safer ground, and it can only be damaged from the front. Serris speeds up when hit in its small weak spot in the head, necessitating memorization or quick reflexes to dodge; the Security Robot's two incarnations require careful positioning on a ceiling ladder to avoid projectiles and lunging attacks while also maintaining angles to penetrate its armor plating; Yakuza bounces around like a DVD player's "insert disc" screensaver before briefly presenting its weak spot of a mouth to charge up a fire blast, and its second phase sees it unpredictably springing and spiraling through the air; the Nightmare is arguably the best boss in the entire series, with two phases of rhythmic laser dodging and aiming for its gravitational generator followed by a final phase where it chases Samus across the screen and must be baited into a safe location where it does not trap Samus but also leaves its face vulnerable to missile spam. Each boss is followed by a Core-X phase which gives the player a chance to restore some health and ammo but with the risk of getting cornered or blasted by its protective shell. Basic enemies are mostly fodder as in the other games, but have some interesting setups, like the X parasites that adapt to freeze Samus before she reacquires her Varia Suit create interesting stealth puzzles in the nocturnal sector, or the vegetation sector's worms that harden into cocoons and later hatch into aggressive swarming bees that infest the main sector.

Sure, the movement and combat are better, but Metroid is really about the level design and exploration, RSD! Fusion is hyper linear, so it sucks! Right? Well, no. It's true that Fusion cages you in all the time, but it does that to provide more tightly designed local puzzles and to allow the environments to change over time as you go back through them. You're given general instructions on where to go in each level, but the path there is never obvious and there are frequent scripted events which thwart your progress and force you to divert your route. The change in focus allowed the designers to create new types of gameplay challenges with the closed environments and controlled set of player abilities in mind, like the electrical water hazards in Sector 4, the puzzles opening up in Sector 3 only after you release the security locks and bring the X in, the pseudo-stealth sections in Sector 6 where you can't face the Ice-X, the sequence where you have to get to the main boiler room in Sector 3 before the station explodes, the sequence where the power is out and you can't use any doors or save stations, and the memorable SA-X encounters where you had to run and hide, the last of which requires you to put yourself directly in harm's way to get through. As the game progresses, Samus is forced to disobey orders and find secret paths between the sectors. While still linear, this disrupts the rote procedure of "enter sector, receive waypoint, find path to objective" and brings back the feeling of going rogue. Fusion is much less player-driven than Super Metroid, to be sure, but that doesn't make its level design bad by any means. It's a far sight better than Zero Mission, which was piss easy and even more handholding, preserving none of the spirit of the original game it's remaking nor doing anything new or very interesting with the potential like Fusion does.

 

[Ventidius]

Frankly, Metroid is one of the few franchises that managed to endure for decades while also maintaining a fairly consistent level of quality and adapting itself gracefully to newer technologies and market conditions. The metabology of Endless Decline doesn't really apply to it at all (not that it applies as often as most people here think). Other M and Federation Force don't really count since they are spin-offs.

Given that pretty much every mainline Metroid is at least good in its own way, I've always found it baffling that fans still manage to find it in themselves to put down some of the games in order to exalt others. But I guess that's just the way of these things.

 

[Grauken]

Some hipsters will say [...] Fusion [is] better, but they're hipsters. I'd put Prime ahead of either. But SM is king. One of the distinguishing traits of Metroid was being set in a labyrinth, and Super still has the best labyrinth design of the series, and maybe all of so called "metroidvania," with tons of hidden and optional pathways. Other games have lazy, basic level design in comparison.

Also most potent atmosphere and legendary OST. It's a GOAT by any measure.

Reporting in. I've replayed Fusion over a dozen times (I'd just pop it in and knock it out in 1-2 sittings whenever I was home sick growing up), it's easily my favorite. I will fully acknowledge the strengths of Super Metroid and probably recommend it as the game with the broadest appeal as it nails lonely exploration through an alien world, but I think Fusion gets short shrift for moving the series in a different direction towards a different peak on the design landscape.

Fusion is ...

Fusion is just utter shit. Just because you're somehow autistically obsessed with the game doesn't change the fact that its the very antithesis of what the earlier Metroid games stood for

 

[RoSoDude]

Some hipsters will say [...] Fusion [is] better, but they're hipsters. I'd put Prime ahead of either. But SM is king. One of the distinguishing traits of Metroid was being set in a labyrinth, and Super still has the best labyrinth design of the series, and maybe all of so called "metroidvania," with tons of hidden and optional pathways. Other games have lazy, basic level design in comparison.

Also most potent atmosphere and legendary OST. It's a GOAT by any measure.

Reporting in. I've replayed Fusion over a dozen times (I'd just pop it in and knock it out in 1-2 sittings whenever I was home sick growing up), it's easily my favorite. I will fully acknowledge the strengths of Super Metroid and probably recommend it as the game with the broadest appeal as it nails lonely exploration through an alien world, but I think Fusion gets short shrift for moving the series in a different direction towards a different peak on the design landscape.

Fusion is ...

Fusion is just utter shit. Just because you're somehow autistically obsessed with the game doesn't change the fact that its the very antithesis of what the earlier Metroid games stood for

Good thing I elaborated the reasons why I like it further than "I've played it a lot therefore it's good". I assume the ellipses in your quote edit reflect some inability, be it dyslexic or otherwise, to read past the first paragraph of any post, so I apologize for failing to organize my writing in accordance with your disability. I didn't mean to make your life any harder

 

[Machocruz]

I will say that Zero Mission and Fusion had great controls. Super responsive. But it's Nintendo, so not surprising. Not bad games by any stretch.

But another feather in SM's cap is that it is the game in this Alien inspired series that is tonally the most evocative of Alien, and Aliens to an extent. It's a very cinematic side-scroller. Like those two films, the game does not jump right into the action, it builds mystery and foreboding. And it does it twice, once in the opening lab sequence, and again upon arrival on Crateria (where it is, of course, raining). The soundtrack is also evocative of the Alien soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith. I'm not learned on musical terms, but although the tracks don't emulate any exact melodies(?), they capture the sound tone(?) of Goldsmith's pieces. I dunno, listen for yourself and see if you hear what I mean. The art direction is colorful but evokes the darkness of the Alien films, while some of the games after look like a box of Fruity Pebbles exploded on the screen.

Afaic, the game hits on every level. I can understand criticism that the controls feel kind of funky, but I feel that's more on the subjective side. You either jibe with what N is offering or not. They are Nintendo responsive and there are a lot of ways you can manipulate Samus (giggity). I think the bosses are alright. Not the greatest battles, challenge, or most interesting mechanics, but iconic, memorable, and I think the amount is just right. Nintendo were never top boss battle crafters to me, not when you have the likes of Konami, Treasure, Capcom, Irem, Compile, Square, Toaplan in top form at that time.

Louis_Cypher I remember it had the highest GR ranking for some time, which it was completely worthy of imo. It was the real great console game of that generation, not RE4.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Never played the Primes. How playable are they with mouse and keyboard on an emulator?

Fully compatible with PrimeHack:

Sadly, nothing else in the Metroidvania genre comes close to Super Metroid

Hollow Knight

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Prime is my favourite
The simple fact they managed to perfectly translate Super Metroid's design to 3D, is by itself amazing

Never understood the hate the Chozo artifact in the endgame get
It's neat little way to end the adventure by "touring" around the places you've "conquered", and the places they are located are fairly obvious if you check the map (although the one that requires platforming with the x-ray visor can go fuck itself)
And it also gives the player an opportunity to finish any optional content he might've missed/forgot about

 

[Machocruz]

Prime 2 was "odd" and a little flabby compared to 1, but it was still sick. So immersive. Great aesthetic. Imposing bosses. Maybe the darkest game in the series, which can be seen as a plus considering Metroid's main cinematic influence.

What action adventure game can compare to it nowadays?

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Going to give this a spin. Thanks for recommending.

The movement stuff seemed very interesting until he said that Samus is still floatly
That my main gripe with vanilla Super as far as gameplay - Samus jumps are very unprecise and the wall jump plus grappling beam controls are somewhat autistic
This wouldn't be a problem if there weren't as many platforming sections that require good precise movement
So for all the cool shit that roomhack might introduced, I would personally welcome more a roomhack that simply sharpened the controls and made some other QoL improvements

 

[DJOGamer PT]

considering Metroid's main cinematic influence.

IMO Alien's influence in videogames is highly underrated
I think it's up there with Tolkien and Tom Clancy, in how much impact it had in the medium

 

[Machocruz]

IMO Alien's influence in videogames is highly underrated
I think it's up there with Tolkien and Tom Clancy, in how much it has impact it had in the medium

Ridley Scott films have had major influence in general. They set the tone for a lot of sci-fi, modern warfare, Roman gladiator, Crusades era depictions in games. Ubisoft straight jacked the first AC's color palette from Kingdom of Heaven. Every modern military game after Black Hawk Down looked like Black Hawk Down, or at least they tried.

George Romero is also up there, obviously. Lucas obviously. Cameron. Every video game western is Leone.

 

[Grauken]

Some hipsters will say [...] Fusion [is] better, but they're hipsters. I'd put Prime ahead of either. But SM is king. One of the distinguishing traits of Metroid was being set in a labyrinth, and Super still has the best labyrinth design of the series, and maybe all of so called "metroidvania," with tons of hidden and optional pathways. Other games have lazy, basic level design in comparison.

Also most potent atmosphere and legendary OST. It's a GOAT by any measure.

Reporting in. I've replayed Fusion over a dozen times (I'd just pop it in and knock it out in 1-2 sittings whenever I was home sick growing up), it's easily my favorite. I will fully acknowledge the strengths of Super Metroid and probably recommend it as the game with the broadest appeal as it nails lonely exploration through an alien world, but I think Fusion gets short shrift for moving the series in a different direction towards a different peak on the design landscape.

Fusion is ...

Fusion is just utter shit. Just because you're somehow autistically obsessed with the game doesn't change the fact that its the very antithesis of what the earlier Metroid games stood for

Good thing I elaborated the reasons why I like it further than "I've played it a lot therefore it's good". I assume the ellipses in your quote edit reflect some inability, be it dyslexic or otherwise, to read past the first paragraph of any post, so I apologize for failing to organize my writing in accordance with your disability. I didn't mean to make your life any harder

No, I just didn't want to quote your empty walls of text, which basically can be boiled down to higher difficulty, which is by having some of the worst designed bosses in the series and some puzzles. If I wanted either of those I have a million other games to chose from that do it better than Fusion. But a proper metroidvania like Super Metroid or Zero Mission is the exception. Then to add insult to injury Fusion has terribly writing and basically lacks anything else interesting. Beside Other M it's the worst Metroid

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

The “floatiness” in Super Metroid is absolutely it’s biggest problem IMO, and it’s pretty baffling to me that we needed to wait 25 years for Hollow Knight to come along and address it.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Some hipsters will say [...] Fusion [is] better, but they're hipsters. I'd put Prime ahead of either. But SM is king. One of the distinguishing traits of Metroid was being set in a labyrinth, and Super still has the best labyrinth design of the series, and maybe all of so called "metroidvania," with tons of hidden and optional pathways. Other games have lazy, basic level design in comparison.

Also most potent atmosphere and legendary OST. It's a GOAT by any measure.

Reporting in. I've replayed Fusion over a dozen times (I'd just pop it in and knock it out in 1-2 sittings whenever I was home sick growing up), it's easily my favorite. I will fully acknowledge the strengths of Super Metroid and probably recommend it as the game with the broadest appeal as it nails lonely exploration through an alien world, but I think Fusion gets short shrift for moving the series in a different direction towards a different peak on the design landscape.

Fusion is ...

Fusion is just utter shit. Just because you're somehow autistically obsessed with the game doesn't change the fact that its the very antithesis of what the earlier Metroid games stood for

Good thing I elaborated the reasons why I like it further than "I've played it a lot therefore it's good". I assume the ellipses in your quote edit reflect some inability, be it dyslexic or otherwise, to read past the first paragraph of any post, so I apologize for failing to organize my writing in accordance with your disability. I didn't mean to make your life any harder

No, I just didn't want to quote your empty walls of text, which basically can be boiled down to higher difficulty, which is by having some of the worst designed bosses in the series and some puzzles. If I wanted either of those I have a million other games to chose from that do it better than Fusion. But a proper metroidvania like Super Metroid or Zero Mission is the exception. Then to add insult to injury Fusion has terribly writing and basically lacks anything else interesting. Beside Other M it's the worst Metroid

I found Fusion disappointing at the time (although it’s been quite a while since I played it), but saying it’s worse than MP3 seems nuts to me.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

I like Prime 1. One of my worst monetary decisions as a child was to sell my copy at GameStop for...I don't remember what, but I'm sure it wasn't good. The scanning mechanic added an interesting depth to boss fights, the rock monster one was cool. Apparently those were big back then, as Galaxy Quest had something similar. I don't really think I've seen something similar in any game before or since. Though it is a bit awkward for the story bits, but considering what I've heard of Other M, that doesn't necessarily seem like a bad thing. Otherwise its got a very well constructed world. It is obvious at times what the GameCube's hardware limitations caused, like awkward loading times and surprisingly small areas, but otherwise its still as good as it once was. Very few games make satisfying alien worlds and even fewer make 3D ones. Its not just that it isn't an endless hilly plain or something, it feels like there's considerable thought put into the ecosystem and plants.
I feel less strongly about the others. Super Metroid is a great game, but its just a platformer. A very well made platformer, but nevertheless. I've beaten Zero Mission and Fusion but I barely remember those. They were well-made, but not something I found too interesting. Haven't played any of the others, except the original, didn't care for that one. Surprisingly I've never played either of the sequel Primes, probably because by the time I remembered the series the price for 'em shot up and I didn't like what I heard about 3. Using a KB hack strikes me as a lame move in this series since the combat was designed around locking on and constantly circle strafing. What I'm hearing in this topic makes me think 3's control scheme is just awful, even though I could play it on an actual Wii instead of emulation.

 

[JDR13]

Sadly, nothing else in the Metroidvania genre comes close to Super Metroid

Hollow Knight

Axiom Verge is worth checking out as well.

 

[Grauken]

Some hipsters will say [...] Fusion [is] better, but they're hipsters. I'd put Prime ahead of either. But SM is king. One of the distinguishing traits of Metroid was being set in a labyrinth, and Super still has the best labyrinth design of the series, and maybe all of so called "metroidvania," with tons of hidden and optional pathways. Other games have lazy, basic level design in comparison.

Also most potent atmosphere and legendary OST. It's a GOAT by any measure.

Reporting in. I've replayed Fusion over a dozen times (I'd just pop it in and knock it out in 1-2 sittings whenever I was home sick growing up), it's easily my favorite. I will fully acknowledge the strengths of Super Metroid and probably recommend it as the game with the broadest appeal as it nails lonely exploration through an alien world, but I think Fusion gets short shrift for moving the series in a different direction towards a different peak on the design landscape.

Fusion is ...

Fusion is just utter shit. Just because you're somehow autistically obsessed with the game doesn't change the fact that its the very antithesis of what the earlier Metroid games stood for

Good thing I elaborated the reasons why I like it further than "I've played it a lot therefore it's good". I assume the ellipses in your quote edit reflect some inability, be it dyslexic or otherwise, to read past the first paragraph of any post, so I apologize for failing to organize my writing in accordance with your disability. I didn't mean to make your life any harder

No, I just didn't want to quote your empty walls of text, which basically can be boiled down to higher difficulty, which is by having some of the worst designed bosses in the series and some puzzles. If I wanted either of those I have a million other games to chose from that do it better than Fusion. But a proper metroidvania like Super Metroid or Zero Mission is the exception. Then to add insult to injury Fusion has terribly writing and basically lacks anything else interesting. Beside Other M it's the worst Metroid

I found Fusion disappointing at the time (although it’s been quite a while since I played it), but saying it’s worse than MP3 seems nuts to me.

Never played MP3, probably dodged a bullet there

 

[Jaedar]

Sadly, nothing else in the Metroidvania genre comes close to Super Metroid

Hollow Knight

Axiom Verge is worth checking out as well.

Axiom verge has some issues (lots of random collectibles hidden in otherwise completely normal walls/floors), but it has a really cool and inventive suite of powerups and basically completely dodges the standard suite of double jump, dash and ground slam that is otherwise present in nearly every metroidvania.