Game:

Super Metroid (1994)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 9:05

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8

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Truly one epic game; arguably still the best in the series and can be rightfully so as it helped pioneer the the other Metroid titles to come even the most recent Metroid: Other M. One thing that I found interesting is that this is the last Metroid title to give the player the freedom to explore the entire planet at his/ her leisure (at least to my experience), many of the later games deviate from this by giving strict objectives or key locations in which Samus must investigate. Such directions can be considered helpful to first-time and inexperienced players, and to be honest, it doesn't really bother me a whole lot, but it was something that stuck in my mind.

There are an amazing number of upgrades and abilities to find compared to the previous titles, making Samus' arsenal much more diverse than ever before at the time. A mini-map included was a huge relief after Metroid 2: Return of Samus, made it far too easy to get confused and lost. The Beam Upgrades can now be stacked up and permanent upgrades which is a huge improvement. The game also gives Samus the much needed break with the inclusion of friendly lifeforms, which helps break Samus from the notion of thinking that everything around her is out to kill her. Knock back from damage is a little less subtle than before which is good so that Samus doesn't get knocked around like a ping-pong ball.

Like many titles, the game is not without some issues. Wall jumping, although to be fair was still a new thing, required pretty strong precision to pull off, but wasn't too difficult. Including a Dash button is a good idea; however, this adds pressure to maneuver through this button, jumping and attacking. Later games ease this by embedding dashing into Samus' normal movement after she obtains the Speed Booster upgrade. Maybe it's just me, but maintaining firm control over 3 equally important buttons can be a little off. The Grappling Hook swinging feels a little iffy, sometimes it is hard to properly launch Samus, especially underwater in Maridia. Bomb jumps are pretty hard as well, precision and timing is way more strict than later titles where the blast radius of morph ball bombs do bounce Samus even if she is away from the blast.

The story is more structured for a Metroid game while the previous adventures, the story is more or less explained or implied. Zebes is more thoroughly explored making it more of an interesting planet with diverse environments than the NES corridors. Also interesting to note is that, this is the first game to include the actual appearance of space pirates as enemies, sure they were in mentioned in NES Metroid, but they never actually showed up except for Kraid and Ridley...

Woah! Ridley looks like he really means business. Someone clearly didn't like how Samus owned him back in the NES. Looks like he took steroids or something. Although he is tougher, he doesn't attack a whole lot and is reasonably easy to evade. One thing I've heard about this story-driven battle is that Samus can actually defeat Ridley; and I think she did. I've never seen Ridley drop the Metroid Hatchling during this battle before (until this playthrough), which I assume pretty much means Samus techinically beat him, otherwise he flies off once Samus suffers enough damage.

Title Music is called "Echoes" from Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes Multiplayer Mode.

Super Metroid is owned by Nintendo, copyright 1994.

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