Super Metroid

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JaySevenZero
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Super Metroid

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Super Metroid for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
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Kasuga-san
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by Kasuga-san »

I had one of my friends pick this game up for me on its release date since I lived outside of town and couldn't get to the store. I may have played hooky after my friend gave it to me at school so I could go home and start playing it (and did the same thing for Mega Man X). I knew from the moment I fired it up that I was in for something special. This game builds atmosphere in a way that very few games of that era could with its soundtrack and willingness to have quiet moments in between the action. I played the heck out of this game until I beat it... and then I immediately started playing it again to try to get one of the better endings. It's hard for me to judge the difficulty of the game since I've beaten it so many times over the past almost three decades (!!!), but I often find myself coming back to it. Maybe not every year, but pretty close. Other games may have cleaned up some of the rough edges of the metroidvania formula, but Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night are the only ones I always want to revisit.
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Jobobonobo
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by Jobobonobo »

This was another game that I first experienced on the Wii virtual console and the strongest memory I have of Super Metroid was when I was home for Christmas holidays one year. I was playing the Wii when one of the kids from next door popped in for a visit; he came into the living room and asked what I was playing. This was just before I was about to fight Mother Brain so I told him how close I was to finishing it off. Seeing the memorable duel play out along with the giant Metroid coming to my rescue really impressed him and he was begging me to let him try a new game. I warned him that this was not like a regular sidescroller and that it might be harder than what he would be used to playing but he was insistent so I let him start a new game.

As he was playing, he came across missiles for the first time and he realised that they will open the doors he was having trouble with. That is when it all clicked. He was exploring, beating enemies, unlocking power ups and going back to previous areas to use the new abilities to progress further. It was interesting to see how quickly he picked it all up and got engrossed in this world. There was something delightful about seeing someone new to a sub-genre of game and adapt to its conventions so quickly and enjoy themselves. It speaks to the incredible design of Super Metroid and how it communicates its mechanics to the player in such an organic fashion. This design philosophy along with its wonderfully captivating atmosphere has made this game age like a fine wine and makes it truly one of the all time SNES greats.

3WR: Galaxy at peace
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Magical_Isopod
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by Magical_Isopod »

Super Metroid is a game I've tried many, many times to sit down and beat... But I never quite make it. There's nothing bad about Super Metroid - and especially for its era, the design is really something special. But after picking it up once again for the podcast - this time emulated on a 2DS - I realized it's the culmination of a lot of little things that make this one not something I really get on with. It's just a bit too difficult. It's just a bit too cryptic in design. It's just a bit too calm in its tone and presentation between boss fights. And for a lot of people, these will undoubtedly be positives. But for me personally, they all add up into an experience that feels like tedium.

There are definitely some things I really enjoy about this game - the music is great, the art direction is very unique for a console that usually blasts you with bright colours, the overall movement and tech feels great. I recognize it's a great game, and I really enjoy watching other people play it. But it's just not one for me, and that's A-OK. Fusion and Prime have always been more my speed.

As an addendum, and I don't know if this will come up in the episode, I find I almost always get stuck in the water area of this game. Even using guides - which are more difficult to follow due to the non-linearity of this game - I usually just get stuck here and give up.

Three Word Review: Middle Tier Metroid
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DaMonth
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by DaMonth »

I marathoned the major most recent 2D Metroids leading up to Dread, so my first foray into Super Metroid was after Zero Mission and Samus Returns. Definitely a staple of game design and I'm not saying it doesn't hold up, but I think some of it doesn't hold up as well as people want it to. Like, that one room where they never tell you there's a run button so you get stuck for an hour. Or the whole thing where you literally cannot beat the final boss without enough energy to survive the cutscene move. Weapon switching.

I do enjoy how much contained freedom the game gives you. And the crazy amount of moves you'll just never use but exist anyway. Like that crystal healing thing.
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Wuqinglong
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by Wuqinglong »

I wasn't truly aware of how highly this game is regarded until I got involved in the speedrunning scene in 2011ish. I had been aware of the game being regarded as a significant milestone, possibly progenitor, of the Search Action sub-genre but seeing it masterfully executed at blistering speeds is what put it on my bucket list. Some years later I roped a friend into a friendly live race through the game. Having loved Metroid Fusion in my youth I expected a good time, unfortunately a good time was not what I had that evening. At first everything seemed fine but after an hour or so I was slowly coming to grips with the fact that this game didn't hook me in the same way so many subsequent titles in its genre had. It was a bit too cryptic, the controls were a bit too unwieldy, combat always felt a bit too easy or a bit too hard. I threw in the towel at Phantoon and and resigned myself to possibly never finishing this "classic" title.

Thanks to Cane and Rinse I did decide to give Super Metroid another chance. I knew my prior negative experience would color this revisit so I was pleased when I ultimately enjoyed it much more than I was expecting. Don't get me wrong, I feel later titles are far superior both in design and controls, but I was happy in wasn't a sullen, reluctant affair. The controls still felt like they had too many actions for the available buttons to comfortably accommodate and lack of fast travel meant a lot of running through long stretches the same areas to reach somewhere on the map you wanted to explore which contributed to a feeling of artificially lengthening the experience, admittedly something games of this genre are frequently guilty of. I chalk much of my dissatisfaction with the game to not having experienced it at the time before the foundations it laid had been built upon and refined, its historical significance cannot be understated. Today however I view it as a good, not great, game that is worth your time in spite of its flaws if you have the patience and are interested in seeing this part of video gaming's legacy.

3 word review: Killed the animals
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BearFishPie
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by BearFishPie »

Super Metroid, and the SNES not long earlier, came into my life a while after their time (and possibly that of the original PlayStation), as I giddily snapped up that gloriously oversized red cardboard box in a thrift shop for what would have been a pleasantly low price even at a time when its reputation was steadily growing.

Though my recollection of exactly when I aquired it is wooly, my memories of firing it up for the first time are seared into my memory, transporting me back to my childhood bedroom. I sat surrounded by an jumble of relics spanning the awkward stretch between teenager and adult, eagerly powering up my ageing console. It's good - that's what they say - one of the best games to grace the SNES. But that's the thing - it's running on the SNES, a machine severely lacking in grunt compared to the powerhouses of now. It'll be educational. Interesting. Hopefully fun too. But it won't wow me.

The title screen of Super Metroid is an incredible thing. An almost static and shockingly sparse tableau accompanied by suspenseful, menacing music that I find chilling even now. It's imposing, and threw me off guard. It took a few moments before I was ready to press Start, and by that time the game had already pulled me into its orbit.

The game is in no hurry to entertain at first, instead fixated on selling you its atmosphere. And by god, it works. That uneasy creep through unsettlingly empty corridors, happening on the room from the title screen, with the titular life form gone. The stressful and claustrophobic (if not particularly interesting in retrospect) battle with Ridley, and subsequent panicky flight through the listing facility. To me, this segment remains an object lesson in dramatic pacing, as limited as it ultimately is in scope.

Then you're on Zebes, relieved and mercifully unharassed, untethered in an environment ready to unfurl for you piecemeal. Other Metroid games have greatly improved Samus' movement, culminating in Dread's wonderfully flowing dynamism, and of course the fidelity of the series' environments have only got better with each entry, but for me there's something special about the way Super Metroid fits together. Its world opens up just enough at a time to feel expansive but not overwhelming, focused but not hand-holding, challenging but not impossibly so, and to me the journey from tentative weakling to indigenous wildlife-obliterating badass remains as intoxicating as ever.
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Mr Ixolite
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by Mr Ixolite »

Coming to this game more than 20 years late, there was no way it could live up to its common reputation of “one of the greatest games ever made, certainly the best SNES game”. So I consider it to Super Metroids credit that I still found it quite good. It still looks and feels good, and plays mostly fair with the exploration save one fake wall in the lava area that had me completely stumped. What really stood out to me was how rather than just having endless combat, so many of the games “rooms” would contain small platforming or puzzle-based challenges tailored around your tools, which kept things fresh. Using your grapple beam to navigate a hazard to grab the collectible is more fun than a room with just the collectible.

Probably the biggest sticking point for me was the combat; it felt mostly fine against regular enemies who die quickly, but I never really got comfortable fighting the games bosses. I could never dodge as well as I wanted, and it felt like my wins were mostly dependent on having a big enough health bar and being able to shoot enough missiles at the boss before it killed me. Which certainly made for a tense type of battle, but didn’t exactly make me feel like a cool, in-control bounty hunter.

Still, the game has generally aged very well, and its easy to see how it could leave such a massive footprint.

Three Word Review: Bomb the Tube!
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Seph
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by Seph »

Despite being a huge fan of Metroidvanias, I actually didn't play this one until a few years ago when I picked up a SNES Mini. When I was younger I remember seeing the cover of this game a lot, especially at the homes of family members, but it never appealed to me. I'll probably get a lot of grief about this, but I think the cover art isn't good at all, it just makes the game look very generic and appear like a Mega-Man clone.

Now that I've got the negative stuff out the way, like a lot of Nintendo games from this era I think the gameplay and presentation of Super Metroid really holds up. The game is actually very fun to play and the difficulty is pretty much balanced. Some of the later boss fights caused some annoyance, but each time I knew I was getting better and learning patterns.

The drip feeding of powers and upgrades meant that you always had a new shiny toy for every new section and it's always great to play a game that encourages you to use your full armory in a way that doesn't feel forced.

The only time I actually felt any frustration was learning how to wall jump. Maybe I missed on onscreen prompt or how-to, but this baffled me for a stupidly long time until I had to find a video to show me what I was doing wrong. I might be alone on this, but if anyone on the show had this issue please vocalise my pain!

I think if I did play this game when I was younger I would have hated it. The backtracking in particular would have bored me, but now I appreciate these moments as the design of this world makes exploration fun and allows you to find secrets or hidden items that you might miss by teleporting everywhere. That's always the key to making these types of games playable and engaging; and as this game trains you to search every corner, just in case.

While I, overall, don't rate this as the top 10 best ever game that some people still regard it as, I can see the influence and importance it had on games that came after; not only the 2D indie games all over the stores now, but adventure games in general.
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Alex79
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by Alex79 »

I played this for the first time ever when it was released for the Switch Online SNES service a couple of years ago. Despite 'MetroidVanias' being one of my favourite genres over the last few years, I'd never actually played one of the biggest inspirations to the games that followed. I was expecting to wrestle with the controls and bang my head against outdated game design, but was delighted to find a game which didn't seem to have aged a day since it's release.

Far more insightful people than me have commented on the atmosphere, the music, the feeling of constant oppression, so I'll simply say that I absolutely loved this game, and think it stands proud alongside the likes of Hollow Knight, Salt & Sanctuary and Symphony of the Night as one of my favourites of the genre. A remarkable piece of game design that is the right side of challenging without ever feeling unfair. I'd recommend anyone give it a try.

THREE WORD REVIEW: Samus' finest adventure.
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Alex79
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by Alex79 »

Seph wrote: January 31st, 2022, 4:57 pmThe only time I actually felt any frustration was learning how to wall jump. [...] I might be alone on this, but if anyone on the show had this issue please vocalise my pain!
No, the wall jumping is shite. :lol:
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NoMoreSpearows
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by NoMoreSpearows »

My most recent playthrough of Super Metroid was done after I had my wisdom teeth removed. I had a mouth full of gauze and blood, I was loopy from the knockout drugs, and I needed to be supervised, so my father agreed to watch me play it to make sure I didn't collapse or anything.

I should preface this by saying my father isn't much of a fan of video games: there are two he enjoys playing (Mario Kart 64 and Mario Golf), and he likes some characters like Mega Man, but he never really saw the appeal of the medium as a whole. Super Metroid didn't change his mind, necessarily, but he was quick to tell me how impressed he was by the trust the game showed to the players.

While I was running around trying to find an Energy Tank or remember, yet again, where that stupid breakable block in Maridia is that lets you escape running around in circles, he was studying the HUD, trying to determine what everything in the mini-map meant, or how you were supposed to remember which missiles you were using, or simply how you were able to focus on Samus while everything else was happening around you. The interesting thing to me is that arguably the intention was the opposite, to make progression clearer compared to the bare-bones approach of the original Metroid especially, but I could see where his confusion originated.

Would he be as lost if he was holding the controller? I'm not sure we'll ever know; he's not one to leave his comfort zone. But just for a few hours, I think Super Metroid allowed him to see just how much brainpower is required to press some buttons and look at a screen.
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by bixer »

I first experienced Super Metroid on the Nintendo Classic Mini. As someone who is typically a big fan of the 'Metroidvania' genre, I was intrigued to try the game that lots of people credit as one of its most important.

My overall impressions were definitely positive. The atmosphere really is engrossing and few games have managed to match it since. The map design is brilliant and it really does entice you to backtrack as soon as you discover a new ability to open up any areas that were previously inaccessible to you.

That said, I think the controls of the game have aged incredibly poorly. The wall jump and screw attack in particular are so finicky that you never really feel like you've quite mastered them, you just pray that you'll never have to traverse the sections that need them ever again. It's for this reason I don't believe Super Metroid deserves to be considered as one of the best in the genre any more and truthfully I'm surprised at how many publications continue to include it in their top 10 best games ever.

Most important? No doubt about it. It helped pave the way for so many games that have come since, but it has similarly been bettered many times since.
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Re: 506: Super Metroid

Post by seansthomas »

As a kid who grew up on Sega and Amiga, I shockingly never owned a Nintendo console until the Wii, bar a brief foray into the 3 flagship titles on N64. So Metroid as a series completely passed me by.

However as I played catch up, I devoured Metroid Prime Trilogy and grew to adore them. Several years later, it made me wonder if the much vaunted Super Metroid could hold a light to the 3D iteration, so I downloaded it on the Wii U virtual console.

And I was genuinely shocked that it truly did. Despite the age and limitations of the SNES, Super Metroid does an incredible job of getting the most important things right.

Those iconic theme tunes and sound effects are all here, such as when you save or load up the game. The boss fights as varied as in their counterpart. The upgrades felt suitably important. And the finale as epic.

But what I was stunned most by, was that same sense of isolation and wonder. I wanted to explore, though I did so with trepidation knowing that I was venturing farther and farther away from the safety of a save room.

There were some quirks that in the modern day I found tough to get past. Aiming in running combat was hard. THAT part with the speed boost run. Timing wall jumps. The map.

I honestly don't think I could have beaten it either without being able to save anywhere. Though that was more down to patience than difficulty I suspect, given I've beaten Celeste and Hollow Knight.

But that atmosphere and sense of going it alone are what I found most miraculous about Super Metroid. That 30+ years on, the formula and highs were fully established and realised.

It's a staggering achievement.

----------------

Three word review: Exploratory gaming's bedrock

(Looking forward to hearing about you talking about Aliens in context to this game, as I'm sure there is some artistic borrowing going on here!)
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