FunWiki: SuperMetroid

The Metroid series is a very well-known set of exploration/platforming games on various Nintendo systems (until the N64, it had one game per major system). The games follow one Samus Aran as she fights against various alien beings, exploring huge worlds and acquiring items to make herself more powerful. The games generally follow the same overall pattern: Samus lands on a planet with little health, a puny energy weapon, and few or no missiles (impact weapons more powerful than the beam gun). As she explores, she finds items to equip on her power suit which make her more powerful and enable her to reach areas that until then had been tantalizingly out of reach (a door too high to jump before, a shaft filled with enemies that could be frozen if only she had the Ice Beam...). Many items are very well-hidden, while some others require a little thinking to get to. A few are hidden in very inobvious locations that require heavy searching to get to. Indeed, much of the game is involved in exploring the accessable areas, looking for that one item that will expand Samus's field of movement. The puzzles involved are usually not terribly complicated, although there are a few more difficult ones.

There are currently seven games in the main series: Metroid, Metroid 2: Return of Samus, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, and MetroidPrime, Metroid Prime: Echoes, and Metroid Prime: Hunters on the Nintendo, Gameboy, Super Nintendo, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, and Gamecube. There is also a spin-off virtual pinball game. Of these, the most well-known is arguably Super Metroid, which greatly expanded on the nonlinearity of the previous games (Metroid 2 was disappointingly linear, though Metroid itself was not so bad), rewarding creative thinking and a heavy use of "secret" techniques. Super Metroid is considered to be one of the best games available on the SNES, in a class with such games as ChronoTrigger, FinalFantasySix, and LegendofZelda? 3.

Metroid the original was a very early game for the NES, coming out in 1986. The graphics are not exactly stunning, but they get the job done. Samus's range for upgrades is rather limited, consisting (IIRC, someone correct me if I'm wrong) solely of missile expansions, extra energy tanks, three different beam weapons, and the Varia suit, the screw attack, and of course the morphing ball and bombs. However, the exploration theme is already heavily present, with relatively huge world to explore. Unfortunately, because of space constraints, much of the huge world is just "Repeat this series of vertical platforms N times and put doors here, here, and here", which makes sightseeing less a possibility than it is in later games. Oh, well; it's still an excellent and rather difficult game.

The original Metroid was later reborn in 2004 as "Metroid: Zero Mission" for the GameBoyAdvance?. Basically, it had the same plot, map, and major bosses (sort of) as the original NES game. However, they spiffyfied the graphics and sound, added a map feature, reworked the terrain and puzzles to be more interesting, added some mini-bosses, gave Samus some abilities of the later games, and threw in a fairly unique surprise chapter just to top things off. All in all, an excellent remake, even if they did make the game easier. Also the only game in the series that didn't make me hate the wall jump.

Metroid 2 is, in my opinion, the low point of the series. Although it made a huge step forward in terms of graphics and Samus's abilities, it was limited by heavy linearity. The only way to increase the explorable area was to kill all of the Metroids in the currently explorable area. There is no backtracking involved unless you think you missed a missile pack or energy tank. Metroid 2 did, however, introduce the "Spider Ball" concept which allowed Samus to roll around on the ceiling, causing many fans to wail in disappointment when that item was not included in Super Metroid. Of course, the walljump is a better replacement. Right? AlexBobbs would like to note that he hates the walljump with the burning passion of a thousand suns

I admit that I've only played the original Metroid once, but I remember MetroidII? with some fondness. It is true that it lacks in the linearity department, but it is leaps and bounds ahead of the original in terms of most of the rest of the gameplay. If you consider the game as a sequence of levels, rather than as one large game, nonlinearity asserts itself (at the cost of world size): none of the areas does much at all to force you in a particular direction except possibly the first one (which is something of a tutorial/introduction anyway). The Spazer and Plasma beams also make their appearances here, doubling the number of nonstandard guns Samus has to play with (I don't count the Short Beam as a real gun). --Andrew

Further, I would argue that SuperMetroid isn't the jackpot of nonlinearity that you're making it out to be. The average gamer is given a fairly constrained set of progressively larger areas to explore, with a distinct egress from each, pretty much up through Draygon. Said areas *do* overlap with each other much more than in MetroidII?, which makes backtracking profitable, but this comes at the indirect expense of the cute repeated-area tricks present in the first two games (*cough*Norfair*cough*). Although bomb-hopping, wall-jumping, and other strange and exotic tricks can allow access to some areas, the Bosses must still be beaten in order (as differs from the original Metroid, AFAIK). This does in no way detract from the theme of exploration present in the game, nor the subtlety of the game design (to the contrary, Maridia, possibly the least obviously linear area in the game, feels much more like a side quest rather than a tightly-integrated part of the world); SuperMetroid is indeed one of the best games on the SNES. --Andrew

I don't know really anything about Metroid Fusion except that it looks spiffy. JeffBrenion, why haven't you gotten this game yet? And if you have, why haven't you shown me yet?

Metroid Fusion is probably best distinguished from the other Metroid games by its more extensive use of plot and dialogue. Instead of just getting dumped on a planet, Samus is investigating a space station and being guided by a computerized commander. In some ways this was interesting, and allowed for better sense of urgency and purpose. On the other hand, it seriously cut into the exploration theme of the series. Each time you enter an area, the computer guide draws out a map (granted, a very incomplete one), and tells you where you're trying to get to. There's still some exploration: you'll need to poke around a lot to get powerups, there are segments that don't require consulting the computer (although he yells at you about it), and the game seems to frequently block off the expected routes, which usually requires you to find some alternate secret path. In the end it's an excellent and slightly different entry into the side-scrolling Metroid canon, although fans of the old-school "explore everywhere" style will probably get a lot of ranting material out of this. But hey, you get hot Samus-on-Samus action to compensate.

I like the sheer cheesiness of Metroid Fusion's plot ("It's called The Nightmare? And it was considered highly dangerous? And you want me to what?!"). I'm not entirely taken with the restricted roaming that the game allows, although there are hints to the effect that I must be missing a way out and about the station near the end of the game. Still, hour for hour the game has as much atmosphere as MetroidPrime, and while the hand-holding objectives are at times irksome, there were several points in the game where discovery of the correct path was still difficult. The booses are interesting, and the game makes good use of non-textual elements to add to the atmosphere. The endgame is also well-executed.

I've seen no evidence of it (yet), but I suspect that Metroid Fusion is the game where they added functionality to the Speed Booster for the sole purpose of making certain sets of missiles more hellish to obtain (a theme continued in Zero Mission).

MetroidPrime took the series from two to three dimensions, thus making it the one game in the series that the most people thought would be a flop. But it wasn't. An average first-person-shooter this wasn't. Definitely a superb addition to the series, featuring some of the best graphics seen on the Gamecube to date, more massive worlds, and enemies with actual AIs. My primary gripes with the game are twofold: Samus seems slow to react, lacking that instant-turnaround ability existing in the previous games, and there are few hidden areas in the game in comparison to Super Metroid. The former is a problem that can't really be solved in the game's form as an FPS; twitch turns would make Samus hard to control. The latter, I suspect, was avoided because there's just far too much surface area to look at minutely for it to be reasonable to require players to find that one hole that can be bombed open (I except here the scannable areas, since most gamers will be scanning any likely spot anyway). Barring these two, the game is excellent, ranked as Penny Arcade's #1 game of 2002.

Since this bit isn't particularly about SuperMetroid, it should presumably be moved. Actually, hell, most of the rest of the description, while good, should be split or moved onto a page about the Metroid series proper.

I just finished Super Metroid with the following equipment list: both suits, high-jump boots, speed booster, space jump, morph ball and bomb, and freeze beam. You'll note some missing items. Had I been willing to do lots of assy bomb jumping, I could have skipped the ice beam and the speed booster as well. Notice that my only way of harming all bosses aside from the first Chozo statue was by use of missiles, super missiles, and power bombs. So I went kinda nuts on collecting items (81% by the end). Sadly, the bosses were all pushovers; I'll have to try it again with fewer replenishable items next time. - ChainMaille

I'm pretty sure that you need the speed booster to get into the Wrecked Ship (specifically, through the 2x2? room with the water and the missiles). Do you have information to the contrary?

You may well be right. I read an online guide to finishing the game with 15% item collection, and the items that he got were: 10 missiles, 15 supermissiles, 5 superbombs, the charge beam, both suits, the speed boost, the morph ball and bomb, and three energy tanks. Given how minimalist this list is, I suspect that the speed boost is in fact necessary. The freeze beam, of course, is not.

This is one of the games with MotherBrain?.