METROID - History of a Legendary Franchise

i have a strange relationship with nintendo super mario brothers was the first game i can remember playing at a friend's house and super mario world was the first game i ever owned as it came with my super nes i've loved several mario games zelda games and the original donkey kong country games i've played dozens of hours worth of drunken super smash brothers melee with my high school friends and more time than i can reasonably estimate killing time on my game boy advance sp while i was on military courses in the early 2000s i am also extremely critical of nintendo's consumer practices particularly in regards to how they handle their back catalog and how most of their games are stranded on their legacy platforms and the ones they do bring to their current hardware are given a fraction of the attention which community modders give those same games for free they also do their best to cease and desist everyone who has the nerve to use their passion for their properties to make fan projects which in my opinion they do to prevent their fans from outdoing them they're also very inconsistent about their fidelity targets sometimes designing games perfectly for the hardware they're releasing those games on producing incredible performance results like super mario odyssey or they shoot for the moon and have games which struggle to hit 30 frames a second like breath of the wild while refusing to officially port their games to pc or create new hardware iterations which can run their own games more competently finally their online service both when it comes to value and stability is atrocious they are both an incredible company who make amazing games and a terrible company who is very out of touch with many aspects of the modern industry while the vast majority of the amazing games they make are targeted at children and families one nintendo franchise is very much unlike the others it draws its inspiration from films like ridley scott's alien and like that film stars one of the most badass women in its entire medium that series is metroid metroid was originally created by satoru okada but the man behind the majority of the franchise is yoshio sakamoto who is the character designer on the original game and has overseen every other game in the series if not as director than as a key advisor the result of having sakamoto act as the shepherd of the series is that despite the numerous iterations and spin-offs the metroid cannon has remained relatively tight over the years the only major deviations from the originals come as a result of metroid's zero mission and metroid samus returns as they are remakes of the first two games which have some more narrative details even then they're not exactly retcons as much as they are elaborations of the original games the series has had a lot of absolute bangers over its nearly 40-year run which have come in the form of its main line entries a trilogy of spin-offs would shift to the perspective to first person remakes of both the official and unofficial variety and even some creative fan projects which nintendo being nintendo has sadly ceased and so join me as we take a historical look at the gameplay as well as the stories featured in every official game in the series a few key spin-offs and a couple of fan projects without further ado i present to you metroid [Music] the super nintendo was the first game console i ever owned and metroid was sadly not one of the games which i would play at my friends janelle jerome or keith's houses and yes keith is world-renowned stand-up comic keith pedro remember back in the day five of you guys were squeezing a honda accord right on your way to montreal five and a half hour drive one of the guys is like yo man you got a cd the driver's like yeah grab that book in the fact and he hands you this bible of blank cds remember that bible blank cds the 12 case you go to walmart now you're on the highway trying to find the right cd but you can't because you're ripping through so many cds and none of it's labeled no all it says is summer jams 07 and that's it long story short i never played the original until i decided to make this video and when i did it was in two sittings on my laptop and bed so i could spend time with the puppies [Music] charlie [Music] i honestly can't think of a game which can be better described as ahead of its time except maybe doom as you fire the game up you may be put off by how limited the gameplay is you can't shoot while crouching can't aim diagonally your beam rounds fire about 2 meters in front of samus and it may be jarring particularly if you're accustomed to more modern metroidvania games however as you push into the game you'll find weapons and items which will very quickly make the game feel much more contemporary your beam will get longer your jump will get higher and when you unlock the screw attack jumping almost becomes your primary method of attack it made me think that the developers of sonic the hedgehog must have been really big fans of the original metroid the really crazy thing about this game's design which incidentally was quite novel in 1986 is that you can carve your own path through the game deciding to approach different areas at different times allowing you to make every playthrough a little bit different by making a simple decision like maybe i'll try going here first this time instead of there the only real downside is that this being the genre's infancy a critical component was lacking a map navigating planet zebus without a map is often confusing at times reaching the point of frustration as many areas look very similar and nearly any surface has the possibility of being a secret pathway which can be opened up with one of samus's bombs the upside is that much like the modern dark souls games the absence of a map forces the player to repeatedly explore and eventually build a map in their heads which is aided by areas having color-coded textures which act as signposts when you get to say the long vertical gold pathway in brinstar you know you're at a familiar nexus and can feel the map layout orienting itself in your brain for me this was admittedly hated by being able to fire up an actual map on my phone which did mitigate the challenge significantly so while i did play through the entire game while researching this video if asked have you ever beaten the original metroid my answer would still be sort of that being said i did get a good sense of how the mental map effect would have worked for players in the 80s and it's super cool to see non-linear level design in a game so old and even better seeing it in a game which still plays so well the story of the original metroid isn't much to write home about and that's also the case for most of the series and really most of nintendo's catalog but it is an interesting and very serviceable premise the galactic federation is transporting dangerous life forms known as metroids to a research facility when the ship is attacked by space pirates the federation finds the space pirate base on planet zebeas but is repelled by their defenses so they contract a bounty hunter named samus aaron to infiltrate the base and destroy the mother brain which is the biomechanical computer that controls the fortress none of this takes up very much time though it's all just kind of in the background if you want to dig into the supplemental material fundamentally you just appear on zb's as samus start exploring and need to kill two bosses craig and ridley in order to open the path to mother brain destroy it and escape the base before it explodes when you escape you're giving your first glimpse of the original badass female video game protagonist without her helmet on but it was the 1980s so it was totally okay to reward the player with samus being in various levels of undressed based on how quickly you managed to get through the game what's also kind of cool is that the game immediately fires up a new game plus of sorts in which you play as samus in her body suit which later came to be known as the zero suit while metroid may not have any of the quality of life features you'd expect from a contemporary metroidvania game it is a pleasure to play through particularly considering it's really easy to find a map without buying a copy of nintendo power these days you really just need google and the ability to type original metroid map the original metroid is one of the two games in the franchise which can be found on the nintendo switch online service but can also be officially acquired on the nes classic edition or the wii shop if you legally own one of these it like all nes games is also very easy to get running on the numerous nes emulators out there i cannot recommend that you play one of these games unless you legally own a copy though that being said if you'd prefer to play the game on pc instead of your switch that's none of my business [Music] in the modern context of portable gaming at least prior to the nintendo switch it would be unheard of to release a full-fledged sequel to a home console game on a portable platform very often portable entries of major franchises or spin-offs or approximations of the console experience rather than sequels which evolved the series in major ways but in 1991 nintendo did just that with metroid 2 the return of samus this isn't a game boy version of the original metroid nor is it a half-formed homunculus sibling of its nes counterpart this is the sequel to metroid which introduces a ton of new ideas amps up the visual details and pushes the story forward in some major ways while the pixels are certainly more defined samus is much larger and a lot of the animations are much more complex the big glaring thing which you may have already noticed presuming at least that you have color vision is that being an original game boy game metroid 2 is in black and white while my eyes did eventually get used to it and due to the backlit monitor of my laptop i did not have to fiddle with shining a light on my device in order to see anything the way that we used to have to back in the day i had to remember what snake lights were while making this and now so do you the monochrome visuals did have an impact on the game's design which was not corrected for in any innovative way remember when i said that the colors of the environment in the original game acted as natural signposts which help you keep track of where you were that is not really the case here they do make an effort to vary the textures but the trade-off for the large character sprites appears to be that the majority of the backgrounds are solid black making it pretty hard to tell where you are unless you're near a landmark which you recognize part of the reason i devoured this eight hour game in three sittings was that i was afraid if i took too much time away from it i would forget where i was where i needed to go or what i needed to do basically the same reason most people give up on japanese role-playing games not me though i love japanese role-playing games though i really do gotta get back to trails of cold steel i haven't played it in like six months but i remember what's going on in the story that's the important part it makes me entirely understand why metroid 2 has been remade twice both of which we will be looking at later in this video because all this game would have needed to be held in the same masterpiece regarded as its successor super metroid would have been full color visuals and a map and sadly ninety percent of the frustration i experienced while playing this otherwise awesome game was due to the difficulty in navigating these black and white backgrounds without a map structurally metroid 2 is far more complex than the original with this game finding samus travelling to sr-388 the home planet of the metroids in order to exterminate them there are 47 metroids to find with your remaining number being displayed at the bottom of the screen this works quite well as it gives you a really good sense of your current progress much of sr-388 is consumed in lava and for whatever reason killing the metroids makes the lava lower why this is happening isn't explained particularly well or at all but again airtight writing has never been nintendo's strong suit somehow palpatine returned all right modern lucasfilm is worse regardless all the player needs to know is that there are lava pits which you cannot traverse but if you kill enough metroid's an earthquake will occur which will reveal new places to explore aiding you in this exploration are awesome new items like the spider ball which lets you climb any surface other than spikes and the space boots which essentially let you fly albeit with a technique that takes a little bit of practice i wouldn't say that's really a negative though as it makes it so that managing the physics of your jump balances how much being able to free fly would trivialize exploration at the end of the game when you knock that counter down to 1 samus fights and kills the metroid queen not unlike what ripley does at the end of the second alien film samus also discovers a little metroid hatchling which helps her escape the planet and plays a key role in the next game we'll be looking at the two remakes of metroid 2 later on so there are options for experiencing this entry which feel a bit more contemporary and slick but ultimately i'm really happy that i decided against skipping the original black and white game boy version because it gave me a really good sense of just how far this entry advanced over the original game if you're up for having a map at the ready and needing to use a bit of brain power to do some orienteering every now and then you'll probably enjoy playing the original metroid 2 be it on original game boy hardware a digital copy from the 3ds store or on an emulator with a legally acquired rom of course because sadly there is no other way to play the original version of metroid 2. [Music] now we're getting into the real meat of the series this is the one everybody the game which truly exemplifies the metroid and the term metroidvania super metroid or metroid 3 as it's called in the opening credits is one of those special games in video game history which set the template for an entire genre while metroid and metroid 2 were both very important routes for this development super metroid is the tree the most notable change is something you've had to put up with me complaining about while discussing the two previous games the map as simple a feature as this seems it adds an indescribable level of smoothness to the overall experience of playing this game while constructing your own mental map was its own kind of fun in the previous games i would absolutely be lying if i said that having a map didn't make the game more enjoyable less frustrating and more engaging after konami's castlevania symphony the night released with a very similar map system in place the standard for the metroidvania sub-genre was solidified and it's rare that you'll ever see a game like this without one and if you've ever played a game like this before you probably already know how this works but for the layman in the audience the map reveals itself in two ways when you physically explore an area and when you locate a map room for a given section even when you have revealed the map for an area you're given clear markings of the sections you've already explored and sections which you still need to seek out some areas will be blocked off based on your current complement of weapons and armor upgrades and it's fairly easy to know which of these areas need to be revisited later as they'll have areas without borders or with a space which indicates a doorway that has not yet been explored while some would take the stance that dozens if not hundreds of games have copied this system since i think that it was such an important development that you can chalk it up as a standard which needed to be set had nintendo been able to patent this idea somehow it would have deprived the world of several other incredible games like hollow knight blasphemous and even the aforementioned castlevania symphony of the night the map in question is of the planet zebeas which was also the setting of the original game and yes it might be zebus i don't know i'm really not sure how it's pronounced i just know that in other m they call the species from that planet zobesians so zebes it makes sense to me if i'm wrong tell me in the comments but know that i know that i might be wrong however super metroid is not exactly a remake as the story picks up where metroid 2 left off with samus delivering the metroid hatchling to a scientist on a colony called cirrus who discovers that the hatchling can be used as an energy source which could help humanity this scenario is set up through an absolutely stunning pixel art cinematic which clearly dates super metroid as a late era 16-bit title next a playable intro begins in which samus receives a distress call from the lab and returns to find it's been attacked by the space pirates with everyone dead samus finds the metroid hatchling but before she can retrieve it a decidedly not dead and much larger ridley appears an unbeatable boss fight occurs and then samus is forced to evacuate the facility and chase ridley back to zb's so narratively it's a sequel while it also has kind of a remake vibe to it sort of like the force awakens but you know good i'm in charge i'm in charge now phasma i'm in charge bring it down many of the environments and all three of the boss battles from the original game are recreated in super metroid but it's also much more detailed and expanded that it totally changes the experience not to mention there are several new bosses many new items and a few new areas as well what's really cool about this particularly from my perspective having played super metroid when i was 10 years old and not again until just recently after having played the original nes game is that i was able to see the game in a whole new light it's almost like watching a simpsons episode which parodies a movie then watching that episode again after having seen that movie you feel like you're in on the joke in a way which you just weren't before from a gameplay standpoint super metroid feels like a refined version of metroid 2 with new items adding all sorts of fun gameplay into the mix such as an endlessly fun to use grappling beam it seems like someone on the team must have played super castlevania 4 and realized how awesome whip swinging was so they added a souped-up sci-fi version into this game which works beautifully the weapon types are handled a bit differently this time around as well with each of the beam types combining to make samus progressively more powerful the upside to this is that it feels amazing and you no longer have to ignore beams which would be fun to use if not for the fact that the ice beam is objectively the most useful but the downside is that it does remove some choice and consequence elements from the original two games i personally land on the side of this system being better and if you want you can decide to turn beams off in the option menu but i personally never saw the need to do this so my sam has just continued to keep getting more and more powerful super metroid also introduces powerful versions of both the missile and the morph ball bomb which act as keys for the new green and orange doors in addition to helping you discover secrets more easily and giving you a means to lay heavy damage on bosses that being said there are many enemies in this game which these weapons have no effect on and your ammo count is very limited at first so you are strongly encouraged if not required to find secrets for example i reached ridley with what turned out to be not nearly enough super missiles and after several repeated attempts to take him down without a capable arsenal i had to hit the old youtube and find myself some super missile capacity upgrades which i had missed during my own explorations there is no fast travel in this game so even though i knew the locations of the missile upgrades this wasn't quite as simple as warping to them picking them up and then warping back to ridley i had to effectively explore the entire game world over again and even ended up learning a new technique as a result the very awesome looking ultra jump later renamed the shine spark in future games this jump which you can achieve by activating the super sprint then crouching banks the energy and then lets you launch into the air like superman or i i guess super girl cause you know samus is female and what a female it isn't ever given a tutorial and it is not required in order to reach the ending of the game but it's in there if you can stumble across it talk to some friends who are also playing the game or you can learn about it by watching incredibly informative youtube videos like this one there you go i taught you about the ultra jump if i have a complaint about super metroid it's that at times it can be very difficult to figure out where you need to go next or how to get there this isn't a flat-out negative as the requirement to explore the environment thoroughly does create very immersive gameplay but i can also understand why some people might find themselves getting frustrated because they didn't realize that say they were expected to use a difficult and also unexplained wall jump technique to progress through the meridia zone that zone can pounce sand by the way even the map is hard to read it should also be said that in an era where there are dozens if not hundreds if not thousands of super metroid walkthroughs in the world which can be easily found on your phone if you find yourself lost it's hard to hold the complexity of the world design against the game by the time you find yourself in a desperate battle against the mother brain being saved by the metroid hatchling who's been clearly hitting the zb's gym which apparently gave it the ability to supercharge samus's armor which turns her into an invincible superhero temporarily before the desperate escape sequence which echoes the finale of the original game it's really hard to finish this game without thinking of it as anything other than a masterpiece not only that it's a masterpiece from almost 30 years ago which holds up incredibly well today you can play super metroid yourself on nintendo switch with the nintendo switch online service on a super nintendo classic edition an original super nintendo of course or rendered on retroarch if you can legally acquire a rom nice and legally next the series continues its trend of having the even numbered entries being exclusive to a portable console as well as the new trend of hiding the number within the opening credits metroid 4 is known as metroid fusion and debuted on the gameboy advance in 2002 however unlike metroid 2 which sported a mix of visual upgrades and downgrades from its predecessor having more detailed sprites and elaborate animation but being monochromatic due to the hardware metroid fusion takes advantage of the gba's 32-bit architecture and pumps out the most impressive 2d visuals yet seen in the series at least from a technical standpoint as the color palette is a bit more washed out this time around the result is that fusion doesn't quite achieve the same effective atmosphere that super metroid did that being said the premise of fusion is a bit of a departure for the series and allows for a very cool slasher film dynamic between samus and her doppelganger entity known as sax or sawx sax gameboy advance games didn't have voice acting your guess is as good as mine in a callback to metroid 2 the intro sequence sees samus leading a crew from an organization called the bsl or biologic science laboratories on an excursion to sr-388 the metroid home world it's here that samus is attacked by a parasite known as x which attaches itself to her armor infects her central nervous system and nearly kills her she's taken to a federation facility where they managed to cure her with cells from the baby metroid who is still being a total bro to mama samus from beyond the grave the cure isn't exactly clean though as parts of samus's suit are fused with her body essentially ruining the possibility of any more appearances of samus's sexy zero suit outside of course from smash brothers and games which take place before fusion because nintendo's fairest waifu of all is now effectively part human part power suit and part metroid shortly after mutant metroid cyborg samus comes too an explosion occurs on the bsl station and samus is sent to investigate in her new purple ship which comes with a helpful new ai companion who she calls adam which was the name of her former commanding officer adam malkovich if you're noticing a new focus on story you aren't wrong at all as fusion goes way harder on narrative than any other game in the series thus far even more so than metroid prime which we'll be discussing shortly that's relevant because fusion and prime came out on the same day on game boy advance and gamecube respectively and you would probably have expected the aaa home console game to be the one which leans into cinematic storytelling but oddly enough it was the 2d portable game fusion will frequently cut away to limited animation but very detailed cinematics and during these samus will speak in the form of text none of this is revolutionary for a video game in general but it was certainly new for the metroid series in which samus had previously been the most silent of silent protagonists the new focus on character and narrative doesn't overwhelm the game as this is still very much a metroid game and its gameplay absolutely takes center stage but the structure of fusion is also very unique and is both the game's greatest strength and biggest weakness depending on your perspective the bsl research facility is divided up into sectors all accessible through a hub of elevators this is radically more centralized than all previous games in the series you're never unclear as to how you will reach a new area or return to an old one the system effectively removes the mental map idea of the original two games entirely and streamlines the exploration into an almost linear format some may find the shift jarring and feel it does away with one of the critical aspects of the series while others may find the more segmented exploration in which you know that your goal is definitely somewhere within a specified area much more engaging and less frustrating there's a new type of room called navigation rooms and whenever you find one adam will tell you what and where your current objective is so you will never feel that okay what am i supposed to do now feeling which will creep up every so often in the previous games that fact alone makes fusion one of the most approachable games in the franchise and while it was the farthest game along in the story's timeline for almost 20 years until the recent release of metroid dread fusion is one of the best games in the series for a beginner as it'll give you bite-sized areas to explore find secrets in and conquer which will help you understand the mechanics of the series other changes to the gameplay are partially superficial like the fact that healing and missile replenishment items are now floating x parasites which samus has to quickly collect after killing an enemy the twist is that if you take too long the x parasite will either reform the enemy which you just killed or find another living host and boost that enemy up to a stronger tier of the same type before dread fusion also had the most bosses out of all the traditional 2d metroid games assuming you don't count every metroid you hunt in metroid 2 is a different boss as those are all repeated several times over so while fusion is the easiest game as far as exploration is concerned it is pretty heavy on combat with the evolving enemy types and unique boss encounters however the exploration being more simplistic means it's also a lot easier to find upgrades to your missiles and energy tanks which makes the combat more manageable than it otherwise would be outside of gameplay the narrative focus of this structure gives samus a lot more character and while her foil is mostly a cold calculating ai there is a nice little twist at the end the ai informs samus that much like the weyland yutani company in alien the federation decides that they want to capture the sax and study it potentially turning the x parasite into a bioweapon samus much like ripley understands the danger of this and decides to nuke the whole place from orbit it's the only way to be sure the ai tries to stop her but in her frustration and panic samus calls the ai adam the ai seems confused and asks her why she called it that and samus tells the ai about adam malkovich the co who died saving her life at this point the ai realizes that it is actually the digitized consciousness of adam malkovich he then goes against his programming releases samus and calls her lady which did a good job of hitting me in the way that samus explains it at the beginning of the game samus explained that when the real adam malkovich called her lady it didn't come off as condescending or disrespectful because it was clear that he did respect her and was using the term affectionately this wouldn't fly at all in the real military i assure you but it was a nice character moment from this point the finale of metroid fusion becomes awesome with a great battle against one of the sax which mutates like a resident evil boss into a grotesque monster followed by a showdown with an omega metroid here one of the other sax intervenes and is killed at which point samus absorbs its parasite into her suit restoring her ice beam and letting her kill the metroid before a last-minute escape on her ship which is piloted by adam and the adorable ex-parasite immune creatures which she saved from one of the labs on the station metroid fusion was really good and if you're looking to play it your options are pretty limited these days with the original game boy advance hardware or a digital copy on the wii u being the only official ways at this time but i was able to fire it up on retroarch without any issues so if you can legally acquire a rom somehow that's probably your best bet [Music] after metroid fusion there was definitely a hunger for more 2d metroid on the game boy advance and while nintendo hasn't exactly been great about doing so ever since this was one demand which they actually decided to supply zero mission is a remake of the original metroid game which combines gameplay elements of super metroid and metroid fusion as well as expands the story giving fans of the original more content to sink their teeth into however even with that extra content zero mission is very short as it's one of the easiest games in the series the advantage of the short length the easy difficulty in addition to it following the narrative of the first game in the series is that it makes zero mission the best game for a beginner to start with moving through zb's finding krait and ridley and then making your way to samus's first battle against the mother brain is much smoother than it was in the original game thanks not only to a map system being present but also due to waypoints which are given to you by various chozo statues which incidentally also refill your health and ammo the downside for experienced players is that these quality of life improvements are not balanced out by any significant increase in challenge the most difficult portion of the game is one which is pretty novel for the series and takes place after the battle against mother brain and the escape from zb's this sequence is brand new content and in addition to a fresh new gameplay style it also adds some new layers to samus's backstory after she escapes samus's ship is shot down by the space pirates and she finds herself on their mothership which is docked outside some chozo ruins the various suit is damaged and samus finds herself in the super sexy cosplay bait that is the zero suit which sadly has little to no combat effectiveness her only weapon is a low-powered stun gun and her traversal is limited to spin jumping ledge grabbing and crawling as such stealth is very important in this sequence and while it's simplistic it functions well enough and samus is agile enough to competently run when she's spotted there are moments when being discovered and running is forced which isn't exactly fantastic stealth game design but the sequence is so short that it's hard to complain about too much the stealth vignette ends with a simple boss fight where you do battle with the chozo apparition of samus which ends with the chozo ruins producing the iconic design of samus's power armor in some beautiful hand-drawn cinematics we see a young samus being raised by the chozo which is a cool little detail that adds some depth to the story and even makes the reason why samus has always been able to use chozo relics to power up her suit make a good deal more sense than it ever did before similar to metroid fusion zero mission is not available on the nintendo switch at this time despite being the best game in the series for beginners so you'll have to either track down a game boy advance a wii u or you guessed it a legally acquired rom in order to emulate it on pc [Music] metroid prime was the first 3d metroid game to ever release it came out for nintendo gamecube on the exact same day as metroid fusion i bought both of them day one and assumed that my time would just be devoured by metroid prime and that i'd maybe fiddle around with the silly little gameboy game while i was in bed to my surprise i really ended up clicking with metroid fusion but i was underwhelmed by metroid prime when i originally played it this was the era when halo was all the rage so i suppose that high school me saw metroid prime as a simplistic first-person shooter which had a strange reliance on lock targeting and environmental puzzles when all i wanted to do with the time was solve complex combat puzzles like the endurance trial which was completing halo combat evolved on legendary however last year was brought to my attention that the nintendo wii port of the whole metroid prime trilogy could be played via the dolphin emulator with a mouse and keyboard i fired it up and found it kind of charming if imperfect but i didn't pick it up again until i started working on this video i put about three hours in using the simulated wii remote controls which can be found stock in the dolphin configurations and metroid prime trilogies in game settings the stock control scheme turns your mouse into a wii cursor but in order to make samus turn you have to move the cursor to the far end of the screen in order to look up down left or right if you turn on the advanced sensitivity setting it's a challenge to keep samus looking straight ahead as having the cursor even slightly off-center will initiate a look both of these methods are still absolutely playable but far from ideal and require a degree of acclimatization before they are anything resembling comfortable so when i discovered prime hack which is a mod that hacks perfect mouse keyboard controls into the game i felt what neo must have felt when he realized he was the one all of a sudden this gamecube game which didn't really click with me in 2002 got me to not only reconsider whether i truly did prefer 2d metroid to 3d metroid as i originally thought but also got me reconsidering which games belonged on my favorite games of all time list i'll address now that the argument can obviously be made that if a game requires a complete control hack overhaul in order to get me to consider it one of the best games of all time then it doesn't really count but objectively speaking metroid prime trilogy with the prime hack mod exists and it's absolutely incredible that's not to take anything away from the developer of the prime series texas based retro studios who are incidentally the first american developer to ever work on the series as their game design is the frame on which the rest of this body was built and even the original gamecube version had some pretty great control innovations the most notable of which was a slight downward tilt which would happen anytime samus would jump making the platforming segments feel a lot more comfortable than they otherwise would the lock targeting despite being a bit of a controversial choice in a time when halo was the gold standard for console shooters also did help the player achieve a high level of precision during combat even if it made the game feel like the combat was on autopilot at times that all being said tracking down a gamecube and hdmi adapter or a tv which still has component inputs and a copy of metroid prime isn't exactly easy so your best bets are to play it on wii u where you can get it for twenty dollars on the eshop or acquire a legal rom and run it on dolphin with prime hack a mulkearian's texture pack and this well-designed vintage game magically becomes one of the best modern games in existence the premise and structure are very similar to super metroid the prologue sees samus investigating a space pirate ship where she fights a massive parasitic organism naturally this causes the ship to explode damaging samus's armor forcing you to lose all those sweet sweet upgrades you had during the prologue as samus chases a cybernetic version of ridley known as meddaridly down to the planet on which the game takes place talon 4. you explore the planet find your path block by obstacles and have to unlock items and abilities in order to move past them the spider ball from metroid 2 returns though this time it's limited to specific tracks though does create some really cool puzzles which involve detaching yourself from one track free falling and then catching yourself on another not too long into the game you unlock a double jump which i honestly really wish was possible to do in real life because be it in titanfall dead cells do maternal or devil may cry i absolutely love double jumping another interesting morph ball ability is the boost which lets you learn a technique that allows you to build up speed in a half pipe until you have enough speed to mount the lip this technique didn't click with me at first but it became much more intuitive once i realized that you shouldn't move your directional input at all just simply charge up the boost for progressively longer as you're building height and then eventually just nudge yourself over the top when you're close to clearing it the grapple beam returns as well and while it sadly isn't used very much as there aren't a ton of grapple points in the game it is a lot of fun to use whenever you do get a chance though i did think it was a bit of a shame that you didn't have more flexibility in regard to controlling your swing you're really just kind of at the mercy of your angle of approach but it still felt awesome when you completed a successful platforming puzzle with it through all of this you have another suite of devices which are pretty much unique to the prime series and add a new dimension to both the gameplay and the storytelling samus has multiple modes for her visor the first of which is the scan visor the scan visor lets you analyze points of interest letting her activate computers and switches during puzzles discover enemy weaknesses and collect copious amounts of lore while metroid fusion certainly had more character story in it with samus as well as the ai atoms speaking to each other throughout the campaign the amount of lore in metroid prime is staggering this type of storytelling is similar to what's found in dark souls or even doom 2016 with the silent protagonist not giving the player much in the way of personality but the codex entries providing plenty of world building to those who feel like taking the time to read it the other two special visor modes are infrared and x-ray one of which is mostly used to see enemies and obstacles in dark areas and the other would certainly make my wife's job incredibly easy if it were real but luckily for samus and the player the x-ray visor will reveal secrets including invisible platforms which can be used to reach new areas the weapon set in metroid prime is pretty limited as far as first-person shooters go but pretty much what you'd expect from the metroid game what's unique is that the beams for samus's arm cannon kind of split the difference between the original two game systems in which you can only have one beam type and the metroid three and four systems where the beam elements stack as you continue to earn them here you were able to acquire and carry all four beam types at once power wave ice and plasma but you have to select them individually this is applied to the gameplay in a simple but pretty effective match system which is required for fighting some of the late game enemies you'll encounter yellow space pirates which need to be killed with the power beam white pirates which are weak to ice purple for wave and red for plasma i found this to be a bit simplistic and thought it would have been more interesting if these elemental enemies were immune to their match color vulnerable to two others and weak to one which would have forced the player to think a bit harder during fights against multiple pirates as it stands it's pretty much as simple as yellow enemy i guess i'll use my yellow gun i just think it would have been cool if instead it was okay there's a white enemy thus the yellow beam is doing okay but if i want to take him down faster i better switch to the red beam in addition to the standard beams each has a charge attack as well which are infinitely more effective than the standard shots so particularly when you're up against space pirates the chart shots are your meat and potatoes missiles and bombs also make their 3d debut and this is where things get complicated the standard missiles are what they are they do decent damage they're replenished by pickups and you can expand your storage capacity for them by finding upgrades which are plentiful but also hidden and require some exploring the super missiles and optional elemental attacks are where things start to get tricky instead of having its own dedicated ammo the way the super missiles do in super metroid and metroid fusion firing one super missile depletes five of your regular missiles considering how late in the game you acquire super missiles this isn't devastating but firing five missiles at a time can certainly deplete your supply faster than you'd imagine the elemental attacks which are optional as they don't open any areas on the critical path work the same way as the super missiles having you charge up your beam and then press the missile button only for these you need ice wave or plasma beams equipped the ice attack called the ice spreader is essentially a super powered ice missile which does heavy freeze damage and costs 10 missiles which isn't too bad double the price of a super missile the wave buster and flamethrower on the other hand are continuous attack beams which absolutely melt your missile ammo as you can sustain their attacks until you're completely out of ammo that being said the final boss of the game is significantly more manageable if you have these weapons you just have to take care that you don't overuse them speaking of bosses they are really solid in this game for the most part there's usually a hook of some kind which you'll need to figure out and once you do they become relatively simple to beat but certain standouts like meta ridley the penultimate boss are quite challenging i honestly don't even know how anyone managed to topple meta ridley with the original control scheme on gamecube because even with rock solid mouse aim and strafing it's a pretty tough fight the fight against the titular metroid prime is a bit more bombastic and flashy but the critical difference is that shooting prime's projectiles gives you weapon and energy power-ups which infinitely reproduce so you can always count on being patient replenishing your resources and continuing the fight while against meta ridley once a handful of item-containing chozo statues are destroyed that's it for ammo and healing items so you really gotta make what you have count playing metroid prime in the form which i played it was the most incredible part about making this video and i honestly think it's a shame that it can't be officially played the way i managed to but as of this writing it's not even available on nintendo switch in any form nintendo is leaving boatloads of money on the table by not making this the easiest game in the world to pay them for and i honestly hope they ported to switch soon also nintendo if you ever cave i'll happily pay you for an official pc release and it'll probably be the game i gift to my steam friends for all their next birthdays i don't even care if i've already given it to them be like hey buddy happy birthday here's metroid prime again boom the original gamecube control scheme was a nice experiment and i do see what they were going for with their lock targeting system i imagine the idea was that strafing is only really important when you're in combat so keeping movement tied to one stick for stepping forward and backward and turning left and right then activating the ability to strafe and eliminating the need for precision aim with the lock targeting was a unique way to approach a console first person shooter in an age when they were still sort of being figured out however just as i never clicked with goldeneye 007s controls back in the day because i was playing quake 2 on my pc like a 13 year old giga chat at the time i didn't click with metroid prime's controls because halo had already solved the how do you design a first person shooter for a console controller problem with that enjoyment barrier removed i've honestly got a back pedal on my 2d metroid is better than 3d metroid position which is one i've held for decades for now i'll take the enlightened center's position of hey they're both great retro followed up metroid prime with a sequel very quickly and this one i didn't ever play on gamecube back in 2004 so metroid prime 2 echoes was totally new to me if i haven't seen it it's new to me echoes is an interesting sequel as while a lot of it does feel like just more metroid prime there are also a lot of unique new ideas which help it feel fresh off the bat the art direction and tone feel much more dark and bleak than the previous game with the initial areas of the planet aether the game's setting looking dirty and lifeless kind of like the planet geonosis as seen in star wars republic commando also similar to geonosis the inhabitants of the planet are an insect race who look like anthropomorphic grasshoppers these grasshoppers are called the luminoth and are quite friendly but after a faison meteor struck their planet they were infected with the species of interdimensional parasites known as the ink dimensional travel plays a big part in both the story and the gameplay of metroid prime 2 with the big hook being that this game takes place in both light and dark versions of planet aether they took some cues from my favorite zelda game a link to the past and designed a lot of the game's puzzles around the alternate dimension mechanic the dark version of aether is an incredibly hostile place in which samus progressively loses energy if exposed to its atmosphere to prevent this samus has to stay in light bubbles some of which stay lit permanently and others which need to be activated periodically the upside is that these light bubbles replenish your energy slowly rather than simply preventing the loss changing things in the dark world has an effect on the light world and retro uses this mechanic during puzzles in some very cool ways with some structures or machinery being inaccessible in light aether which you can access in dark aether the ing are also very intimidating enemies and they provide a lot of interesting combat scenarios as well like the x parasite infusion the anger able to take many forms but their natural state appears to be a thick liquid and by and large they can only be damaged when they take solid form there are also enemies which can phase in and out of the light spectrum of each dimension which are first fought by waiting until they reappear but later countered with the dark visor the dark visor sort of functions like a cross between the infrared and x-ray visors from metroid prime one and presents with a bright monochromatic background with enemies or invisible platforms appearing as flat red it kind of reminds me of those accessibility high contrast color options that you're seeing pop up in some games and by the way that is the kind of accessibility in gaming which i can totally get behind there's also an echo visor which kind of works like daredevil's vision in theory but in practice it's just a mode that you need to switch to in order to solve a few puzzles and fight the final boss the new visors are okay but they're not really game changing the beams on the other hand are very different than anything else in the series up to this point for the vast majority of the game you have access to the standard power beam as well as a dark beam and a light beam that's it this is a metroid game with no spacer beam no wave beam no plasma beam and not even the legendary ice beam the dark beam kinda stands in for the ice beam locking certain enemies in place but only after a charge shot and the light beam fires sort of like the plasma beam but much faster the unique element of the beams in this game is that both the light beam and the dark beam are controlled by expendable ammo this ammo is also much harder to come by than the normal energy or missile pickups too sometimes you'll get a pickup after destroying an object in the environment but only when you're nearly out of ammo however you can earn ammo for the dark beam by getting kill shots with the light beam or vice versa but this feels like it's balanced in a way which makes it feel like a consolation prize at most because you'll probably end up expending more of one ammo than you'll gain of the other this really makes it feel like the only way to refill your special beam ammo is by hitting one of the very few ammo recharge points or saving your game at samus's ship normal save points do not refill your beam ammo while this certainly made me value my beam ammo much more than i would have if it were infinite or even if it were easier to replenish but it also really discouraged me from using these weapons in combat outside of major battles the gameplay implication is that it did add an element of resource management which wasn't present in metroid prime 1 but i personally found the challenge this presented to be more annoying than it was engaging that being said metroid prime 2 is the most challenging entry in the prime series across the board which did make it a fun one to work through the faison story advanced in some cool ways with this one too notably with the introduction of dark samus after defeating metroid prime at the end of the first game prime harnessed faison energy and samus's faison armor to construct a humanoid form it definitely requires a bit of suspension of disbelief in that this is the second evil clone of samus featured in the series alongside the sax from fusion but dark samus does function well as a powerful antagonist for the player to pit themselves against you fight dark samus several times including an incredibly challenging final showdown which results in dark samus being destroyed before reforming herself out in space ensuring she can be the antagonist in the third game as well overall metroid prime 2 echoes was a worthy follow-up to the original and carried on the tradition of a second entry in a trilogy being the most dark and brutal both from a narrative and from a gameplay standpoint the original metroid prime functions as a more direct transposition of metroid gameplay into 3d but the new mechanics introduced in prime 2 advanced the formula and helped turn the prime series into a more unique property with its own identity i personally prefer the original metroid prime but i absolutely understand why there is a huge community of players who hold prime 2 as their favorite and i say that without being able to experience its multiplayer mode you can find metroid prime 2 echoes in the same places you can find metroid prime 1. on gamecube in the wii trilogy collection which can still be found on the wii u shop or on pc in its truest form through the dolphin emulator and the prime hack mod now we've arrived at the final game in the metroid prime trilogy and the conclusion of the phase on arc metroid prime 3 corruption metroid prime 3 was retro studios attempting to utilize the nintendo wii control interface in some immersive ways and i'm happy to say that at the very least playing it with the prime hack mod on a mouse and keyboard still feels really awesome i'll admit that it did involve a bit of tinkering in order to map the motion controls properly but aside from one sequence near the end of the game when you have to synchronize turning a lever with a federation soldier only large exaggerated movements are necessary which allows mapping wii remote movements to the keyboard to still work quite well but the most interesting aspect of metroid prime 3's design is the way in which retro integrates samus's ship into the action the ship is used as a fast travel device a save point a health station and a tool for solving puzzles samus even has a whole visor dedicated to controlling your ship when you clear a landing pad be it through simple discovery clearing it of enemies or using puzzle solving to clear it of obstacles samus can then summon the ship to that location this allows the classic metroid formula of backtracking to old areas with new abilities in order to access new areas to exist on an intersolar scale there are three planets to explore with multiple landing zones and you'll be traveling between them constantly over the course of metroid prime 3. this easily could have backfired and removed the series trademark atmosphere but i found it to have the opposite effect it actually made me feel more like a space-faring bounty hunter than any other game in the series 3d or 2d in fact it feels like retro put a lot of effort into making prime 3 as immersive as possible by integrating sequence in which samus is exploring non-combat areas where she can talk to npcs and kicking the game off with an extended intro mission in which samus is supported by a team of three other super-powered bounty hunters rundus gore and gundreda i found this a little off-putting at first as it seemed like an attempt to make metroid prime feel a bit more like the avengers with some large scale call of duty set pieces thrown in but when the intro concluded i totally got what they were doing with it fresh off her defeat in metroid prime 2 dark samus has turned into what is effectively a faison ghost which can possess other living things and control them so you can probably guess what that means for the diverse cast of super powered bounty hunters who were assisting samus in the intro that's right a metal gear solid style eclectic cast of bosses to fight baby this serves the dual purpose of keeping dark samus aka metroid prime as the main antagonist but also doesn't recycle the boss fights from metroid prime 2. instead you fight what is effectively a team of superheroes who retro smartly allowed you to spend some time getting to know beforehand they aren't the only boss class enemies which you fight in the game but they do provide very unique encounters which involve a little bit of thinking to overcome the tools at samus's disposal are rather limited in this game but the grapple beam in particular is used a better effect than it ever has been before due in no small part to the desire to integrate motion controls in addition to being used to swing the grapple can also lash onto objects obstructions or enemy armor and allow you to rip and tear until it's done considering the input method i used wasn't the one the game was initially designed with it would be tough for me to accurately critique the implementation but mapping a pull of the grapple beam to the rapid tapping of my mouse's thumb button felt really solid likewise using mouse movements to control samus's hand as she navigated screen interfaces felt very immersive and once again makes me lament that nintendo will not likely ever release official pc ports of these games as far as the rest of combat is concerned retro must have received some complaints about the difficulty of metroid prime 2 as metroid prime 3 is significantly easier a major factor contributing to this more approachable difficulty is the faison hyper mode mechanic at any time after the intro mission samus can use one of her energy tanks in order to supercharge her weapon letting her deal massive damage not only that this is the first prime game which stacks its beam type so you don't ever have to worry about switching beams the trade-off is that there is no ice beam and instead samus gets the ice missile similar to metroid fusion and later spoiler alert metroid dread as you progress you unlock some hyper mode variations of attacks such as a hyper missile a grapple which can overcharge and destroy some obstructions and a really awesome lightning attack which replaces the morph ball bombs while in hyper mode i personally can't decide if i prefer this streamlined combat to the more complex nature of the first two metroid prime games but it does help the pace of metroid prime 3 feel very snappy and overall it feels like a great action-packed cap to an incredible trilogy after playing these games and seeing the whole faison arc as a self-contained story within the metroid universe with a pretty clear beginning middle and end i understand why retro studios originally did not want to make metroid prime 4. that has since changed as the original team who was developing metroid prime 4 was dropping the ball so nintendo smartly fired them and brought retro studios back on but i hope they start a new arc even if it means dropping the prime name from the title as metroid prime also known as dark samus is now dead and i think bringing her back for a fourth round would start to get a little silly the two official ways to play the trilogy are either on the original platforms or on wii u where they can still be purchased through the eshop as of this recording but act before march 2023 as nintendo is closing that store as well as the 3ds shop news which came between me recording the prime two segment and this one so uh back when i told you that you can still buy metroid prime one and two on wii u uh yeah you won't be able to pass march of next year that said i would strongly recommend acquiring a physical disk of metroid prime trilogy ripping yourself a rom of it and running it with prime hack because metroid prime with most keyboard controls is the paul allen's business card of video games metroid has its fair share of spin-off games but none of them are quite as polarizing as other m released in 2010 for the nintendo wii other m like metroid prime was outsourced to a third-party developer this time around it was ninja gaiden and neo's team ninja taking the reins for what desired to strike a middle ground between the old school 2d metroid games and the first person metroid prime games while also taking advantage of the nintendo wii hardware the results were definitely mixed but not nearly as bad as some metroid purists and other people who didn't play the game and just parrot opinions about games that they hear are bad would have you believe first off it must be said that other m is absolutely too linear to be considered a good example of the metroid franchise there's not nearly as much backtracking in other m as there are in other games in the series and while that does make the game feel like it's always moving forward it also makes it feel like a sprint between safe rooms rather than a world to explore you can do some exploring for items in the areas between those points and general item locations are marked pretty clearly on the map but you never really know if you have the equipment required to reach those items until you try to get them and fail repeatedly by the time you actually do have items like the grapple beam and the super missile which can give you access to the items which you missed and are given the ability to explore the areas you've previously visited the game is almost over but the most unique aspect of other m is its control scheme which makes it inherently require being played with a wii remote if the game were officially ported to switch or any other future nintendo console it could easily be adapted to work with a standard controller but as the game code stands right now at this moment even playing on the dolphin emulator requires the use of a wii remote to be even halfway playable i know because i spent about two hours fiddling with options looking up tutorials and trying as hard as i could to get other m playable with a standard gamepad or with a mouse and keyboard but nothing felt even close to acceptable luckily the dolphin emulator has become so ubiquitous that enterprising engineers have built usb wii sensor bars with bluetooth that work on pc and even support the motion plus gyroscope features which nintendo later added to the controllers the one reason for this inseparable link between the game and this controller at least at present because don't hold your breath for a switch port nintendo gonna be nintendo is the means by which you swap between third person and first person view other m is primarily a third person game in which you run around linear environments using the wii remote d-pad with a horizontal two-hand grip and then utilizing the motion controls to fire missiles by aiming at the screen when you do this the game snaps you into first person view and allows you to fire either your beam or missiles using the motion controls the major downside to this system is that you are 100 stationary while in first person view and it's absolutely impossible to fire missiles any other way it does feel a bit more intuitive as you grow accustomed to it but at best it feels like the first person aiming in metal gear solid 2. i could tell that this was at least somewhat intentional as well because there are a few winks and nods to metal gear in this game such as the radio chatter which happens when samus dies and the general fixed angle nature of the camera ultimately the game wouldn't have lost anything at all by allowing the player to fire missiles in third person and especially from the perspective of preservation it would have been really nice if team ninja added a pro controller option using a more traditional control scheme which let you say hold the left trigger and enter first person view and then aim with the right stick motion controls are also used for the dramatically overhauled healing and ammo system in other end this is the only metroid game in the series in which you never receive any ammo or health from fallen enemies all your energy tanks are healed and full by reaching a save point but the only way to recover any health at all during battle is to hold the wii remote vertically pointed upward perpendicular to the sensor bar and then holding down the a button this will recharge one single energy tank at least at first allowing you to stay in the fight if you're able to find a quick five seconds or so in which you can perform this maneuver where i think this system falls apart is the choice team ninja made to balance it you can only perform the recharge heal if you're below 30 on your final energy tank this seems kind of silly when you find yourself between encounters with say 34 health and then need to find a weak enemy to hurt you just a little bit so that you can enter the next battle with the maximum amount that you can heal for instead of starting a potentially difficult fight on death's door this seems like an oversight when you can refill all of your missile ammo at any time using the same charge technique i don't believe that letting the player charge health whenever they want would nerf any difficulty in a major way it would just reduce a bit of the tedium luckily the rest of the third person combat works far better than you'd assume controlling a 3d third person game with what is basically an nes controller ever should as mentioned earlier you control samus's movement with the d-pad using your left hand you jump and fire using the one and two buttons with your right hand and when you need to switch to the morph ball that's handled by tapping the a button with your left thumb samus will automatically aim at whichever opponent you're facing and this works very well i rarely felt like i wasn't shooting at the enemy i wanted to be shooting at the dodge system is also pretty cool though it does start to show the limits of the single wii remote control scheme just before an attack hits samus you tap a direction on the d-pad and she'll do a slick dodge move but the downside is that it becomes difficult to do a split second dodge in the direction you're currently moving as you have to lift your thumb off the d-pad and then back onto it if the game were played with a pro controller then you could have samus dodge when you say hit a in conjunction with the direction you could then make samus roll at any time like in a dark souls game but you could also still get a bonus of sorts from executing a dodge with perfect timing that being said the system as it stands does work well enough one thing i did really like is that you can perform execution moves on downed enemies by charging samus's beam and then jumping on top of the enemy the animations for these are really awesome and satisfying and they can clear really powerful enemies much more quickly than slowly whittling down their health where the combat in the game becomes cumbersome is when missiles come into play especially because boss enemies take very little damage from anything other than missiles pointing the wii remote at your tv and then hoping you'll be aiming in the general center of the screen then having to hold the b button wait for a lock on and then press a to fire a missile takes a whole lot of getting used to it does begin to feel a bit more natural as you progress through the game and get more practice with it but it's certainly awkward even when you master it that being said when you master the basic traversal you're still interfacing with the eight directions of a d-pad instead of the true omnidirectional movement of an analog stick so it feels like the definitive version of other m may come someday in the form of a switch port with pro controller support but as it stands it's a clunky but unique action game which is also an unfortunately linear metroid game where other m goes far beyond the series norm in a big way is in its storytelling and there are some mixed results here as well i do think there are a few positives to pull from the story of other m but there are some prominent negatives some of which impact the gameplay sadly the premise of other m is that between super metroid and metroid fusion samus finds herself on a mission with a federation platoon led by her former commanding officer adam malkovich the gameplay implication of this plot device is that the lone girl on a mission vibe of the series is stripped away and your progression is primarily dictated by adam authorizing samus to use her abilities at story critical moments you don't hunt for tools or abilities at all in this game you just sort of earn them automatically in a pretty clumsy way with adam knowing samus it would make a lot of sense if he just said use everything you've got lady mission over in 20 minutes gg let's go home but instead he'll wait until samus is in an unwinnable fight and then just call her up and say hey it's cool to use the plasma beam now it's also worth noting that the dialogue scripting and voice acting at least in english is not very strong it's low budget anime territory which isn't helped by the fact that samus is constantly espousing inner monologue during cinematics but the good news is it isn't all terrible other m does present a more vulnerable side for samus and humanizes her in the most direct and overt way seen in the series this is an element which apparently angered those who saw samus as an infallible badass who always works alone samus's characterization in other m is absolutely unacceptable and frankly insulting to her fans in general and female fans specifically sexism in gaming but i'd argue that the scenario presented another m removed from the ramification which the permission system has on the gameplay doesn't contradict anything we know about her character other aim takes place between super metroid and metroid fusion so samus's emotional state is informed by her loss of the baby metroid who died giving her the power she needed to defeat mother brain samus finds herself in a scenario on a research station called the bottle ship where she is not working as an independent bounty hunter but as a contractor who is working under the jurisdiction of the galactic federation even then every flashback we see of samus in her days as a federation soldier shows her defying adam with a thumbs down whenever he gives orders that she disagrees with this not only retains the independence which some argue this story strips from her but reinforces why she left the federation in order to work as an independent bounty hunter in the first place she's just not really built for teamwork but because it's adam the commander whom she respects she's willing to play by the rules temporarily the plot is extremely complex for a metroid game dealing with a rogue federation soldier a bit of murder mystery and an ai to surpass mother brain but the big threat is that the federation was using this facility to breed metroids who are immune to the cold near the end of the game adam locks himself in one of the station sectors with these metroids and makes it self-destruct while telling samus to complete the mission without him the rest of the main game involves samus throwing down with the new enemy ai known as mb before an extended prologue in which she recovers adam's helmet and destroys the rest of the battleship despite the claims of outlets like x-play who think team ninja ruined samus and other m yoshio sakamoto has stated that his vision of samus's personality was realized in this game he's very proud of the work he and team ninja did and he doesn't have any regrets i also found it very interesting to learn that he was the person who decided on the single wii remote control scheme he made the decision to impose that restriction on the team hoping it would foster an environment in which creative solutions could be found in order to get around those problems i have mixed feelings on the results as i still think that if the game reported to work on a standard controller that it would be a better game but i can't help but respect the guts it takes to make a decision like that with the intention of cultivating creativity it would be sort of like a monster movie director deciding that he would not use any cgi at all in his horror film but instead used nothing but practical effects the results may end up being mixed as they are in other m but the intention is commendable and i like that sakamoto stood by his vision after the fact other m can be found on nintendo wii wii u or as i played it on the dolphin emulator with a usb wii sensor and a wii remote but with that said finding a pre-owned nintendo wii is probably your cheapest option so if you're not looking to make a 4k video on the game that might be the move metroid prime hunters is in a strange position in that it is the handheld follow-up to metroid fusion as an early nintendo ds title nintendo may have bitten off more than they could chew by attempting to replicate the metroid prime experience on a handheld console which is at most minimally suited to play first person shooters my first memories of this game were playing it on a demo unit at a best buy using the d-pad to move and the stylus on the touchscreen to aim it felt awkward and silly as if i was trying to play a video game on a device which wasn't meant to play video games that's not to say there aren't any good nintendo ds games it's just uh first person shooters are not the genre for that platform playing it years later on the melon ds emulator was a much more pleasant experience though it isn't quite as smooth as playing the core metroid prime games with the prime hack mod on dolphin which in fairness to hunters is a pretty high bar to hit i was able to map the d-pad to the wasde keys and aim with my mouse but i had to crank the windows mouse sensitivity way down keep the left mouse button depressed in order to look and as a result had to use the e key to fire my beam i was happily able to map the jump button to space but sadly switching to missiles or other weapons in addition to transforming into and out of the morph ball are handled by the touchscreen so they have to be clicked specifically with the mouse that said the game is playable and i honestly could see a modernized port on switch working quite well but in its current form it's a fun novelty at the very most the campaign is quite simple in its design and definitely feels like metroid prime light but the premise of traveling to small mission areas in which to hunt down bounties which culminate in boss fights is interesting enough that i pushed through most of the game i got stalled at a difficult boss fight which was sadly made difficult by the control scheme more so than the game's design however that proves that there is a skeleton of a decent experience here should nintendo ever want to flesh it out and make it more playable there have been rumors that metroid prime 4 will prominently feature an enemy called silex who is one of the bounties samus hunts down in this game so maybe that bodes well for a modern version of hunters for now though it's primarily a fun curiosity in the metroid cannon which can be sufficiently approximated by an emulator if you want to check it out just don't go in with high expectations even more curious than hunters was the other metroid game which came out for the nintendo ds metroid prime pinball this is a pinball game and i'm honestly not sure what else to really say about it it's metroid themed with the ball being samus and morph ball form and if you're a pinball aficionado i'm sure you'll enjoy firing it up on original ds hardware or on melon ds but i'm not the guy to give this game a proper critique i can say that there are some little things like events in which samus changes into her normal various suit and you use the shoulder buttons to turn her left and right as she consistently fires her beams at enemies and that honestly was pretty awesome the tables are also pretty cool looking and designed around areas from metroid prime like talon 4. sadly the ds is not the best console for a pinball game because the two screens are separated so even playing it on melon in vertical mode the image is broken in two with a presumed spatial gap between them which means you always have sort of a blind spot in the middle of the table which is really awkward to look at that said i included metroid prime pinball in this video if for no other reason than to work in a joke that this one-legged cyborg [Music] the last spin-off we'll be looking at is one that no one wanted no one asked for and it's very possible that no one played metroid prime federation force is a 3ds exclusive multiplayer game in which you play as a chibi-art federation soldier enacting missions on various planets unlocking items and suit modifications it's basically a very small scale mission-based shooter in which the primary hook is replaying stages in order to get better scores not exactly the style of game which metroid is known for it doesn't really tell much of a story and the chibi art makes it not really look like a metroid game that said when stacked up against other first person shooters on the 3ds federation force gameplay is actually alright it is one of the few 30 fps metroid games so that's not fantastic but the control options allow for proper dual stick control on a controller so like many of the other games in the series it would be quite easy for nintendo to port this to switch but i wouldn't hold my breath luckily playing it on the citra emulator is quite comfortable though oddly the resolution of the game does not seem to upscale very well the in-game text does but no matter which setting of internal resolution i ran the game at i would still end up with a ton of aliasing that made the edges of the models look like saw blades that all being said there is a decent little game under the strange art style technical limitations and awkward focus on multiplayer the puzzles can be clever the boss fights can be pretty intense there are some cool third-person platforming sequences and even a few nods to the rest of the franchise of all the games i cover in this video hunter's pinball and federation force are titles which you can absolutely skip but it would still be awesome if nintendo would add ports of them as say bonus content for a metroid prime collection because as of right now they are all fun little curiosity games which are stranded on unsupported legacy hardware so nintendo being nintendo for some reason nintendo did not follow up metroid's zero mission with a badly needed remake of metroid 2 right away so a group of fans took it upon themselves to do the job am2r or another metroid 2 remake is the best way to play metroid 2. the project was led by milton gwasti who was later hired to work on ori and the will of the wiss which incidentally is one of the best metroidvania games ever made so don't let the fan remake qualifiers suggest that this is not an extremely high quality product the visuals are arguably or possibly even objectively the best of the traditional pixel art metroid aesthetic though i would entertain arguments for super metroid's zero mission or fusion whichever game ends up coming out on top in the comments section am2r is a beautiful game it retains the vast majority of the gameplay from the original gameboy game but adds full color presentation as well as some mechanics from super metroid and zero mission most notably of which is a map but it also brings progressive beams making your weapon more powerful as you play and eliminating the need to choose beam types as well as super metroid speed charge for which some of the environmental puzzles have been remixed and iterated to incorporate there are also some brand new additions like an underwater snake boss which was very challenging and fun simple as it is the controller also vibrates vigorously when you've cleared enough metroid's to unlock the next area not an absolute game changer but it certainly added a nice bit of flair for the game's atmosphere there isn't too much more to say about it which won't be retreading mechanics story and design elements which i've already covered while talking about metroid 2 super metroid and 0 mission but considering am2r is a free download assuming nintendo hasn't sued them into oblivion i would strongly recommend playing it if you're interested in experiencing the entire story of the series metroid 2 is a pretty critical piece of the franchise's puzzle game boy games can be a chore to look at and the next version we're going to talk about has a totally different flavor to it so am2r is the best bet for a modernized but still relatively pure metroid 2 experience i will say for sure am2r stands toe to toe with any other game in the series despite not being an official nintendo product the developers who worked on it are incredibly talented and their work absolutely should be played and appreciated i'll leave a link to their site in the video description so if you're fundamentally opposed to fan games the other metroid 2 remake not to be confused with another metroid 2 remake is mercury steam's 3ds game metroid samus returns spanish developer mercury steam gained some prominence albeit with mixed reception from their castlevania reboot series lord of shadows for which they developed three games one of these games was a 3ds game called mirror of fate which i assumed nintendo was very impressed by because that landed them the responsibility of developing not only the first official full-color version of metroid 2 but the first polygon based 2d perspective metroid game i remember that this game really caught me off guard when it was first announced as it was to be released in september 2017 for 3ds which was six months after the release of the nintendo switch i really didn't understand why nintendo would put this game on their soon to be phased out portable system when they had just released the best console they'd manufactured since the gamecube which was also really hurting for worthwhile software at the time despite owning a 3ds and being a huge fan of 2d metroid i skipped it thinking it would eventually pop up on switch i know i know assuming nintendo would do the logical thing but while making this video i found best buy was still selling the game new so i bought myself a legal copy for ethical purposes then proceeded to emulate the game on citra the most immediate difference between playing a 3ds game on its native hardware and on the citra emulator is that on citra you're playing the game on a single screen with no touch screen citra does provide a number of options for this which offer functionality best suited to the game you're playing and while i'd ordinarily like to play the game using all of my screen's real estate samus returns keeps its map as well as the ability to switch your beam type on the touchscreen luckily the functions are fairly simple and fast to use with a mouse or laptop's trackpad but playing with the second screen boxed into a corner at the very least was absolutely required the upsides of playing on citra outweighed those downsides though in addition to letting me capture footage and play with an ergonomic xbox series controller i was able to run the game at 4k internal resolution super sampled to 1080p on my laptop at 15 inches which is a pretty significant jump up from the 3ds's 240p 5 inch screen sadly the game's functional animations seem to be locked at 30fps so while there is a 60 frames a second hack which you can apply it also doubles the speed of the gameplay so on my long journey through the metroid franchise samus returns was the first one which i was forced to play at 30fps but yes that's correct metroid and metroid 2 despite being released on 8-bit hardware 30-plus years ago both ran at 60 fps what happened universe once my eyes adjusted to the frame rate my brain still had a bit of work to do in order to acclimatize to mercury steam's vision of metroid the enemies in samus returns are much more bullet-spongy than i was used to and several of them require successful use of the new parry mechanic in order to do any damage at all while this isn't an objectively bad thing it will create some subjective division and the balance of the mechanic in this title feels very uneven in many spots that being said part of why i felt this way while playing my first run was my own fault as i did not set up the controls properly and played the vast majority of the game thinking you could only aim in eight directions when you can in fact free aim with the analog stick the reason this shifted my perspective so dramatically is because the metroids you hunt in this game do not mimic the movesets found in the original metroid 2 or am2r which certainly made them more interesting to fight for me but i was convinced that they were primarily fought with perry counter-attacks which turned out to not be the case you can just aim at their weak spots and shoot while samus returns retains the basic framework of the level design from the original it re-contextualizes the structure by suggesting that the chozo installation on sr-388 was submerged in a purple acid which can be lowered by using metroid dna strands as keys the original game and am2r both have their lava levels lower spontaneously when you've killed the required amount of metroids per area but samus returns presents you with a chozo structure which has a visible number of orbs around its circumference once you've slain the number of metroids which corresponds with the orbs you return to the structure submit the dna strands you've collected and opened the path forward once the dramatic changes from the original start to feel normal and more importantly when the abilities you earn begin to improve the gameplay feel samus returns really starts to come into its own returning from the original game are the obvious missiles morph balls super missiles power bomb high jump space jump screw attack spring ball and the ever awesome spider ball however the spider ball is nerfed a bit in this version as some of the surfaces are covered in a slick goo which can't be stuck to at first i was kind of pissed when i saw this but it did make some of the puzzles a bit more easy to figure out as i knew that i would definitely not be expected to spider climb on the goo the new additions in samus returns come in the form of brand new powers called aeon abilities these abilities are mediated by a yellow bar which can be expanded by finding items the first of these abilities you receive is a scan pulse which greatly assists with exploration as it shows you which blocks in the environment are destructible if you're lost and aren't sure where your critical path is or if you're just doing an end game sweep for items activating the scan paul's can point you in the right direction so you aren't just bombing or shooting walls at random which i'm sure would make david jaffee happy i'm not opposed to uh uh metroid or castlevania uh metroidvania style design really bro really are we sure about that the next ability is the lightning armor which gives you an extra layer of protection and even damages weak enemies this is very effective for enemies which attack in swarms after that we've got the beam burst which gives you an incredible rapid-fire ability which does great dps and finally we have the phase drift which slows down time lets samus move at normal speed and is used in a few of the late game puzzles as far as other unique content is concerned mercury steam decided to have ridley attack samus as she's escaping with the baby metroid i honestly don't think this makes any narrative sense as ridley should probably still be reeling from his defeat in the original game and it does sort of undercut his return in the intro to super metroid but it is a pretty awesome fight and it was a cool way to cap off the experience there's also a cool post-credits scene which sets up the x parasite being on sr-388 which is a nice little way to tie the game into the cannon and is paid off in the intro to metroid fusion overall i enjoyed samus returns quite a bit even if i prefer am2r as the definitive way to experience metroid 2 however i do see why nintendo assigned the project to them and why it was released on 3ds rather than switch it was a trial run to see if mercury steam had the chops to make metroid 5 dread [Music] metroid dread released at a very good time it was nintendo's only major fall 2021 release which also happened to be a season in which sony had nothing to launch at all and microsoft was not to be launching halo infinite until a few months later the metroid series has never been a particularly big seller but here nintendo found itself with the only high-profile exclusive console release launching in the prime holiday buying season pre-black friday though halo did manage to sneak its multiplayer out at this time generally i'm a person who finds that nintendo games tend to get a bit of a bump as far as it's critical as well as user reception goes the easiest example of this is mario odyssey which i played thought was good but will argue to the death that the 10 out of 10 review scores it received only existed because it was a mario game had the exact same game released as banjo-kazooie odyssey or i don't know bubsy the bobcat odyssey it would have been scoring eights instead of tens with that in mind i'm very pleased to say that metroid dread absolutely earned its nintendo level scores i don't personally score games with numbers in my reviews because i believe that it gets the critical conversation focused on math which in turn is largely based on subjective criteria instead of the actual merits of the game as of this recording the major conversation around eldon ring seems to be the controversy over the game getting 10 out of 10 scores despite its performance issues which i'm sure i will be getting to on my video for elden ring which is very likely up next metroid dread is a game which has a lot of merit i've played the game four times on both the nintendo switch as well as three times on the ryujinx emulator which allowed me to play it at a higher resolution than the switch can output whether or not you plan on playing this game on an emulator i strongly recommend that you buy a copy of this game if you're interested in playing it please do not pirate it as much as nintendo can be a very horrible company when it comes to how consumer friendly they are their partnership with mercury steam has resulted in an incredible game which deserves every cent it can make which will hopefully result in better health through the series overall including nintendo being inspired to support retro more on the development of metroid prime 4 but without further ado let's get into what makes metroid dread one of the best games in the series the premise of metroid drag kicks off after metroid fusion with the game greatly respecting the canon established in the previous entries super metroid is still metroid 3 but it also echoes the original game so greatly that it could be argued as a soft remake which might make people think that the metroid cannon functions similarly to zelda in which every game is something of a reboot dredd solidifies that that is absolutely not the case after samus presumably killed all the x parasites on the bsl station footage of an x is found on a planet called zbr or zbr is what people tend to say but i'm canadian okay that letter is zed not z the galactic federation sends a cadre of what are essentially terminators called emmys to exterminate the ex but contact is lost with them so samus is sent to investigate as she's the only human who is immune to the x parasites we get a really cool sequence with a.i adam briefing her fully voiced in what sounds like a monotone text to voice but ends with him calling her lady that may not sound significant to those who haven't played fusion but if you understand the narrative framing the presentation and score do a great job at getting you pumped up for the mission it then hard cuts to samus unconscious in de-powered armor waking up as she flashes back to an encounter she had with a living chozo warrior as far as the cannon is concerned the chozo are supposed to be totally extinct so seeing one not only alive but strong enough to make samus seem powerless in comparison is a pretty cool way to kick off the game that being said my podcast host cool guy fonts pointed out that this was a missed opportunity for an unwinnable boss fight which could have shown the player how powerful samus was to make them appreciate how much he lost in that opening fight i'm inclined to agree with him that would have been pretty cool that aside things kick off as most metroid games do with a d-leveled samus beginning to explore an environment in order to regain her strength and neutralize the threat you will immediately notice one of the best additions dread makes to the franchise which is the slide move samus doesn't have her morph ball at the game's outset but she does need to clear low passages and mercury seam lets you do this by sliding underneath them this move can be used during combat and in certain boss fights it's all but required so it pays to grow accustomed to it quickly in fact i got so accustomed to it that when i fired up mercury steam samus returns for a second run it felt flat out weird to not be able to slide as you progress through the game you gain a collection of abilities which return from the other games like the grapple beam morph ball and its associated bombs speed boost space jump and screw attack one new ability is the spider magnet which lets samus climb certain walls and ceilings like spider-man as opposed to the spider ball from samus returns that lets you roll up walls you can also grapple to these points when you have the grapple beam which can make for some really epic traversal moments the aeon abilities make a return from samus returns and mercury steam smartly decided to save the sonar pulse for late in the game so that players can't use it as an exploration crutch that being said when you do acquire it it certainly makes clearing the end game items a lot easier to do to have the sonar pulse been an early game ability the undoubtedly large number of players for whom this will be their first metroid game might get a better sense of the mechanics like david jaffe the first aeon ability you get is the phantom cloak which is primarily useful during the me stealth sequences which we'll go into detail later on finally the phase shift is a real game changer in that it basically adds an ultra fast dodge which can be performed on the ground or in the air and is absolutely invaluable during the late game boss fights for one of them in particular i'd go as far as to say it's required the beams and missiles are streamlined the way they are in metroid fusion where each upgrade progressively makes both of them more effective or powerful instead of having to select different beams or missiles you just have a beam which eventually becomes able to charge then upgraded with wide diffusion wave and plasma the missiles in turn can be upgraded into super missiles and then added with the ability to freeze enemies like the ice missiles and metroid fusion you can also earn the storm missiles from metroid prime 2 which is an incredibly welcome return as from the moment you find these they'll be your primary boss melters which brings us to the aspect which is riled up the easy mode crowd in a way which i previously only thought from software was capable of the boss fights in metroid dread are awesome i wouldn't hesitate for a moment to call them the best fights in the series due in part to their generally varied and innovative design but also because the traversal options and parry ability which mercury steam introduced in samus returns make them feel incredibly tight from a gameplay standpoint all the bosses have attack patterns which can be learned and memorized all those attacks can in turn be dodged or countered so what may seem impossible on a first attempt can become a super satisfying and rewarding kill by the 5th 10th or 30th try there wasn't a lot that i tried 30 on but there were a couple i did qualify that the fights are generally varied before as there are a lot of battles against what are the same robotic soldiers no i don't mean the emmys but don't worry we'll get to them the robotic chozo soldiers are enemies you encounter several times and it may seem at first glance that these are just recycled boss battles however the amount of them you're fighting the terrain you're fighting them on and whether or not they have a shield change the fights in ways which help them feel fresh as while your basic strategies will still work you'll need to adapt to each encounter's specific conditions all of the other boss fights with the exception of the final battle are against much more varied species of monster with the only returning guest being crade on my second run a viewer informed me of ways to break the standard sequence and finish craig's second phase in one move this blew my mind when i pulled it off in a certain area if you pull some slick slide jumps you can acquire the grapple beam and morph ball bombs early krait has an opening in the middle of his abdomen and with the bombs you can reveal a morph ball cannon in the boss fight room which fires samus into the opening and lets her blow him up from the inside i also found that a late game boss can be killed with one strike by pulling off a well-timed horizontal shine spark jump discovering these secrets or even just researching them and taking the time to develop the skill necessary to pull them off is incredibly satisfying and help make running through the game multiple times feel worthwhile and rewarding that said even without the fancy tricks the boss fights in metroid drag go a long way toward making it one of the best games in the series now we'll finally talk about the reason dread took over a decade to get made yoshio sakamoto originally pitched dread as a nintendo ds game not long after the release of metroid fusion and zero mission but the odd nintendo handheld console didn't have the processing power necessary for the concept the concept involves sequences where an enemy or enemies could relentlessly stalk samus forcing the player to creatively use their abilities and environment to dodge the pursuer this was sort of done in fusion with the sax but the sequences were canned set pieces rather than dynamic scenarios which reacted to the player's actions it wasn't until recently that sakamoto with the assistance of mercury steam was able to bring the concept to life in the form of the emmy robots while the emmys who hunt you are confined to specific zones this allows these sequences of stealth and traversal to be a part of the game which isn't overwhelming there are seven emmys in the game and each one involves you entering one of their zones and finding their control unit when you find the control unit you enter a simple mini boss fight which rewards you with a limited use weapon capable of killing an emmy using this weapon is interesting it has two fire modes in automatic fire mode which deals consistent damage capable of wearing down armor and a charge shot which does incredibly high single hit damage when aiming either of these types of shots the camera spins to an over-the-shoulder perspective which doesn't provide any gameplay advantage really but it does look cinematic and was a really nice touch when in this view you have to aim the auto fire in order to break the armor off of an emmy's face then blow their head off with the charge shot in order to do this you need to create enough space between yourself and the emmy not only that but the control units are often inaccessible on your first visit to a particular emmy zone what this does is turns the emmy zones into complex multi-tiered puzzles where you have to use a mix of stealth fast traversal when you're spotted exploration and finally combat to destroy the seven emmy units it takes the concept which was simply hinted at in metroid fusion and implements it in a way which is incredibly intense but also doesn't overwhelm the game by letting the enemies chase you over the entire planet the last thing we need to talk about with metroid dread is the story as it has been touted by nintendo as the last game in the numbered metroid saga if you don't want to learn what that means and why skip to this time code to avoid story spoilers we already touched on the core premise in the intro samus going to zbr to investigate an outbreak of the x parasite before being curb stomped and de-leveled by a living breathing chozo this chozo is named ravenbeak and he's the leader of a warrior tribe called the mockin before the events of any of the games the machine and a tribe of scientists called the thoha joined forces to trap the metroids on sr-388 the setting of metroid 2 as well as the place where samus is infected by the x-parasite at the beginning of fusion the foha intended to eradicate the metroids but ravenbeak planned to use them as a weapon with which to conquer the galaxy naturally he massacred the thoha tribe leaving only one alive as the thoha were the ones who could control the metroids ravenbeak brought the surviving thoha known as quietrobe to zbr what ravenbeek didn't realize is that the x parasite had already infected one of his men ravenbeek managed to quarantine the x on zbr but was unable to stop samus from eradicating the metroids in the interim however he eventually learned that samus was saved from the x after being fused with metroid dna and realized that samus would be the key to retrying his plan that's why he transmitted evidence of an ex-parasite being on zbr reprogrammed the enemy robots and lured samus to the planet and all of this information is given to us in a concise exposition scene in the middle of the game where samus speaks to quiet rope toward the end of this sequence we hear samus speak in the chozo language as the main theme kicks in this moment rocks [Music] is [Music] sadly this moment is cut short by quiet road being stabbed by one of the chozo drones equally unfortunate is that the evidence of the x parasite which raven beak sent out was not faked and shortly after this point in the game samus inadvertently releases them from a gameplay standpoint this was a fantastic choice as it alters the enemies and thus the gameplay of every single one of the game's zones as well as how healing and ammo replenishment work after the xr release zbr becomes a horror show with the john carpenter's the thing-like mutations of the x really popping in full 3d in a way that they didn't in their game boy advance debut the last third of the game feels very intense and dovetails into an explosive conclusion when fighting the last emmy unit samus conjures a new power which is hinted at in the game's intro the power is purely narrative and that you don't use it outside of quicktime events or cutscenes but it's a cool looking energy drain in which samus's metroid dna activates and sucks the life force out of an enemy with this new ability samus becomes ready to go toe-to-toe with ravenbeak when you arrive at ravenbeak's ship adam gives you a briefing and essentially tells samus that her choices at this point are either to die or to use her metroid powers to contribute to galactic peace being a lady who can see right through bs she shoots adam's ai construct to reveal ravenbeak sitting on his throne it's here that an awesome flashback occurs showing that samus has always been able to use the chozo technology because she was spliced with their dna as a child both the dna of the thoha the tribe which can control the metroids and ravenbeak himself giving her the dna of the mokken warrior tribe in a way this is the classic genre film moment which was prominently featured in one of the good star wars films at this point the most challenging fight in the game commences with that said like all other boss fights ravenbeak has patterns which can be memorized and all of his attacks can be dodged or countered before you know it the impossible first phase becomes second nature the significantly more difficult second phase becomes doable and the third phase is a piece of cake after that as it's very similar to the first phase at the end of phase three it seems as if raven beat gets the better of samus until her metroid dna due to being spliced with human machine and thoha dna fully activates and turns samus into the ultimate weapon manifesting the metroid suit samus then promptly messes ravenbeak up and destroys his ship forcing it to crash down on the surface of zbr when on the ground ravenbeak stumbles out of the wreckage and is infected by an x parasite which immediately turns him into a final phase resident evil boss sadly for him samus's metroid armor is packing an absolutely devastating cannon which the player uses to kill ravenbeak x instantly cue a desperate timed escape sequence and one last twist the real adam ai informed samus that her metroid armor will instantly fry her ship if she turns it on which leads the player to believe for a moment that this will be samus's final mission the x-infected quiet robe then appears and just when you think our lady is done quiet rove lets samus absorb his ex parasite which neutralizes the metroid and lets samus evacuate the planet ready to go on a new adventure the metroid and x arcs conclude in spectacular form and for the first time in years i agree with the overblown scores of a nintendo game metroid dread is playable in 4k on the ryujinx emulator but i would strongly recommend that if you do go that route please buy a copy of the game on nintendo switch as this is one which i personally really want nintendo to see succeed as it's my hope that they'll continue to make these games and maybe just maybe release the other metroid games on switch why would you say something so controversial yet so brave we've reached the conclusion bounty hunters and if i sound a bit different it's because i'm recording this several months after the rest of the video and have upgraded my microphone setup in the interim i originally wanted to wait in order to record this conclusion because we had a string of about a month in which details of metroid prime 4's development were trickling out and i didn't want to finish the video with a huge serving of relevant news left unaddressed turns out i had the right idea just not for the reasons i expected the week before i put the finishing touches on this video i found a stable 60fps hack for mercury steam samus returns so my criticisms of its performance are completely moot with that applied and it honestly helps the game sit much more comfortably alongside dread i replayed the entire game to get nicer looking footage for those of you watching in hd or 4k please check your video settings in the youtube app and it shifted my opinion on samus returns as i thoroughly enjoyed my third nine hour playthrough likely because the clarity which comes with a higher frame rate made the combat feel a lot more responsive particularly when fighting fast moving enemies i'll link the code in the description and to activate it just copy it and paste it in the samus returns cheat directory within citra but even before i noticed that at the end of june my steam deck arrived prime hack works wonderfully on the steam deck whether you're playing in handheld mode or using a usbc dock to play on a monitor or a tv the dual stick control works as well as any modern shooter and the gyro controls which can be mapped and tuned on a per game basis make it feel almost as good to play as it is with a mouse and keyboard that said transferring save files between the linux based steam deck and a windows pc is is tricky so kind of think of the steam deck version as a separate playthrough unless things get updated and change until then i might just be too dumb to have figured it out though that's a possibility dolphin and prime hack are both included in the mudec package which takes about five minutes to set up and it might teach you a thing or two about linux in the process so while as of this recording there is still no news on a switch port of the prime trilogy or any solid news on metroid prime 4 for that matter there is an option on the table for playing every game in the series on the go except for other end that one is still sort of a unique nightmare for control scheme configuration there is some irony in the fact that the steam deck was likely designed as an evolution of the nintendo switch form factor in that it's a high quality handheld which can be docked to play on a display and now the only option for playing metroid prime on the go is to emulate it on the handheld pc which nintendo themselves inspired poor support on their current flagship platform notwithstanding the metroid series is my personal favorite product which nintendo makes a large part of that's due to the mature tone of the games relative to their other project as i am a 38 year old man but also because the vision for the series has remained so consistent over the years despite a pair of offbeat spin-offs in the form of metroid prime pinball and federation force and that consistency exists in the face of several different studios working on the series from japan to america to spain i've got to assume that credit belongs to yoshio sakamoto is across all those projects with all those variables he is the constant yet some fantastic metroid projects have been made without his input and sakamoto may shoulder some of the blame for how the developers behind those projects have been treated i don't really know for sure one way or the other but i just want to make it clear that i'm not saying nintendo bad sakamoto good they might both be to blame we looked at am2r in this video and as of this recording it's still available as a free download for which you can find the link in the description of this video but nintendo hasn't done the thing which i think they should absolutely do contact the developers of am2r thank them for the work they've done pay them a modest fee for that work and then release aim to our own switch maybe even bundled with an enhanced version of mercury seems remake which is apparently very possible to get running at 60fps and even the original gameboy metroid 2 thrown in for good measure metroid 2 collection probably 60 dollars because nintendo worse yet is how other fan projects have been treated such as the very promising metroid prime 2d i was lucky enough to score the demo to this project before nintendo hit them with a cease and desist and am happy or i suppose sad to report that it was really good it's so cool to see talon 4 from that perspective and the one boss fight which is featured in the demo is honestly better designed than the same boss fight in the actual metroid prime which in fairness to retro is probably the weakest boss fight in the game but it's a pretty solid fight in metroid prime 2d i just really wish nintendo would see projects like that without deciding to respond with legal action which when taken against a project which is being offered for free is sort of ridiculous it'd be like an author issuing a cease and desist on some fan fiction that was written about their universe on a blog it just like then just let the let the fan fiction exist it's fine in a world where nintendo would see metroid prime 2d and offer it as a bonus feature on a re-release of metroid prime i don't see how everyone involved from the developer to the license holder to the players would not benefit from that decision i understand the desire to protect their ip and control which projects are officially sanctioned as canon but after replaying am2r which is honestly one of the best games in the whole series it's clear that the reflex to react to such project with lawyers is doing themselves and especially the fans of the series a huge disservice failing better treatment at fan developed projects nintendo should at the absolute least treat this series better when it comes to preservation it is flat-out insane that at the time metroid dread launched there was no way for switch owners to play metroid fusion any version of metroid 2 or the prime games sales of those games on the soon to be closed wii u and 3ds stores apparently skyrocketed which should show them just how much money they left on the table by not telling an intern to code a gameboy advance emulator which runs on switch considering nintendo are one of the oldest and most successful companies in the industry they have no excuse for providing customers such a lackluster level of access to their history on a brighter note mercury steam has done their best work with dread and the series is primed to continue to be strong going forward presuming retro studios manages to deliver with metroid prime 4. though even if prime 4 turns into vaporware and nintendo decides to retire the series dread was certainly a high note to go out on which solidified metroid as a truly legendary franchise [Music] thank you for watching everybody this has been my most massive project to date it was a lot of work but i really wanted to dig in take my time and deliver something which if you've gotten this far i hope you've enjoyed while i'll never be the cringe type of youtuber who asks you to like subscribe and share before i've said anything substantial liking commenting sharing and whatnot will go a long way toward helping my channel grow if you would like to go one step beyond that i've finally launched channel memberships you'll get some cool emojis and badges which i'm sure will get cooler as x-ray girl comes in and schools me as she's far better at that stuff than i am also we share a mortgage so it behooves her to help me by the way honey if you're watching this could you help me with the membership stuff now don't ever put yourself in a bad financial spot on my account but i will be eternally grateful for any members i do earn just as i'm eternally grateful for any super chats i get during live streams and fret not the next video will definitely not take another 10 months and is going to be as large in scale as this one but about one single game i've finished eldon ring several times have about five terabytes of footage and have written a script which in its current draft is 20 000 words long soon the quest to get the script to a final state record it and put all the puzzle pieces together begins and i hope to finish it within the next few months i really do absolutely love making these long form projects but they really aren't very algorithm friendly which is why i launched the memberships and your support will definitely go a very long way one final note while i was making this video our dog harley died i was pretty beaten up about it but finishing this video and knowing that she has a cameo in the first segment definitely helped cheer me up i'll miss you forever i'll always love you and i hope that you're having an incredible time running around on the plains of elysium rest in peace my baby bear this video is dedicated to you not really yeah i love you harley so does mama she's gonna be home soon okay baby jojo look we did it we beat metroid prime too ooh dark samus is scary isn't dark samus scary baby jojo yeah i knew you'd think so thanks for the help harley good girl you

Channel: MarcTheCyborg

Views: 309,653

Keywords: MarcTheCyborg, Gaming, PC, Review, Metroid, Prime, Dread, Nintendo, Emulation, Steam Deck, Prime Hack, Ryujinx, Retroarch, AM2R, Samus, Samus Returns, NES, SNES, Gamecube, Wii, Switch, History, Documentary, Legendary, Franchise, Synopsis, Analysis, Retro Studios, Mercury Steam, Team Ninja, Samus Aran, Fusion, Zero Mission, Pinball, Federation Force, Other M, Corruption, Echoes

Id: DG6naqPoVK0

Length: 105min 56sec (6356 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 15 2022