SUPER METROID - The Perennial Masterpiece | GEEK CRITIQUE

[Music] metroid was a game that I'd barely played metroid 2 was a game that I'd never played but super metroid is different I picked it up when it hit the Wiis Virtual Console in 2007 and I didn't put it down for a while it's the only game in the entire series that I completed before I started this season the 2007 was nine years ago those memories have gotten hazy lost now that I played its predecessors I'm excited to see how it follows up on them so let's ask Dan dan how are things the last metroid is in captivity the galaxy is at peace super metroid starts off with one of the most iconic intro sequences of its era that's slightly off-putting digitized voice which was so rare in games of 1994 was etched into my memory the first time I heard it what follows is told through simple story scenes interspersed with a first-person account of samus's art to this point we see her fighting mother brain on zebus we see her meeting the metroid hatchling at the end of the last game and we learned what's happened since then samus delivered the hatchling to the research station series the scientists on board made promising discoveries that the Metroid's power could be harnessed to benefit humankind neat and that they may have originally been created for peaceful purposes satisfied with their progress Samus leaves the research station to hunt her next bounty but she's barely gotten out the door when she receives a distress signal from Ceres she floors it back to the station and the game begins the Centro may be hard to criticize like I said it's one of the most iconic of the era but I've got a few thoughts for one it's an unskipable cutscenesthat's just the intro but it's still been a bit of a bore whenever I've tried to pick it up again more importantly though I just don't know how effective it is for those not already in the vested in the war zebus Ares Mother Brain the larva this is all pretty deep in new targeting and I'm not sure if someone new to Metroid would get pulled in from this alone I know it didn't do it for me back in o7 watching it now though I think this entire intro from the moment you turn the game on would have been thrilling for die-hard Metroid fans you know that's the larval Metroid on the title screen you know it's making the same noises is the penultimate tunnel in the previous game you know why this gets to take the title of Metroid 3 and you know exactly who shows up once you get to series and if the story failed to grip a new player the developers hedging their bets at the gameplay would Samus lands and you begin play with nothing but an ambient noise of a distant alarm it eventually fades to your ears but it only accentuates the chilling absence of life on the station I found the area depicted in the title screen but the systems are offline and troit is gone did it break free who are what did this be on setting up the arc of the story this also serves as a basic tutorial for samus's controls and the first thing I noticed was how much sharper she is she feels better than ever and it's not just because of the new run button the Super NES allows for much faster more kinetic gameplay and it keeps the unusual floaty dump and that's not a bad thing at all quick platforming is not the focus here and it's still easy to navigate samus exactly where you wanted to be the biggest change is that samus can finally fire in eight directions both by holding the directions diagonally or with L&R the player character is immediately much more versatile and yet more controllable I increased familiarity with the material did bring one question to mind this doesn't seem to be taking place too long after Metroid - so how come Samus is back to square one where's the spider ball the ScrewAttack even the morph all itself I guess I could accept that Samus saw fit to power down her suit in lieu of all that galaxy at peace stuff but given that the story is so closely connected to the previous one yeah we should have been addressed that's ultimately a minor complaint and I completely forgot about it when this happened a room devoid of anything except the last Metroid and then Ridley shows up again almost kills Samus and makes off with a larva that's sprite scaling so iconic of the Super Nintendo helps to drive home just how outmatched samus's Ridley leaves her to die because the station is set to explode I don't really know why that's happening was it a failsafe space pirates responsible it doesn't really matter countdowns are ultimately just a Metroid trope and they are always awesome all that quite trepidation of the simple tutorial rooms to just win through juxtapose with what's happening now as they rock back and forth violently rubble falling and pipes bursting it's a wonderful sequence and this is the point the game got its hooks in me back in 2007 because it was still that impressive importantly though it's not at all difficult to escape this has not meant to challenge the player not yet instead it's to WoW the player get them invested the next thing you see is samus's ship heading to zebus and when I first played this I had no idea why exactly she was going there was she crash landing but I do think the two Hornung another story scene would have broken the flow at this point even if you didn't recognize Ridley as one of the space pirates he and figure it out soon enough but why are the space pirates even on zebus again didn't we wipe them out in metroid yea the manual throws in that it's a rebuilt planet SEVIS but in my personal head Canon Sam's got irritated by antiquated controls and enemies killing her daring room transitions and decided to just let the space pirates be but seriously I love the implication of this quick transition Samus doesn't wait for worse doesn't hesitate doesn't even lick her wounds despite the fact that she just got her butt kicked she immediately takes the fight to the space pirate homeworld because the threat of Metroid weaponization is that severe and she's that crazy brave zebus feels dilapidated and antiquated a thick fog hanging over a familiar chasm the only signs of life for these small insects and vermin which scatter as Samus passes through she eventually emerges into the same chamber you might have taken her through eight years previous it's rare even now that a later game lets you return to a place like this but when they do it's usually to cater to nostalgia this isn't about nostalgia quite the opposite this is about emphasizing how much time has passed Rosetta seems to have been untouched since the original game but when I touch down here at the very spot where Metroid began even in 2007 I knew what to do you go left you get the morph ball and then well that's just concerning these lights are the first signs of any higher intelligence on zebus yet despite the volume and intensity of this effect nothing else happens hey I've got the morph ball now that our head back up and oh they know only now do the space pirates reveal themselves while the outnumbering Samus learning to make metroid crawl leads to the morph ball bombs and then the door slams shut this is the first proper boss battle as the chozo statue springs to life the manual has a section for every other boss but it doesn't spoil this one those sparkly new bombs aren't really effective but the way the statue breaks down throughout the fight is a great effect the series has finally gotten its signature save rooms they still don't restore your items in energy the enemies in this game are a lot friendlier with restorative drops Super Metroid is no longer interested in wasting the players time spots that could have been advanced for tedium or instant used to surprise the player with quicker ways around and the one time I actually was thinking of grinding my health back a hidden passage above just I do a recharge station but far and away the most critical change to the Metroid formula is the addition of the map it'll fill in automatically as you explore but each area also has a map computer that fills in most of the rest it'll show you the main paths but it still doesn't spoil many of the ancillary areas and secrets it marks save points research stations and the location of the area boss and critically it fills in with a different color of Samus explorers which tells the player of where they haven't been yet you might be saying to yourself it doesn't look like much it's very boxy and grid base but believe me it is exactly as informative as it needs to be if it was any less detailed it wouldn't serve the players needs so well and even risk getting lost but if it was more detailed it would risk encroaching on the players own exploration later games tended to show you your next objective on the map and we'll get those when we get to them but it's a testament to how insanely well-designed Super Metroid is that I don't think it needs to tell you where to go I never got lost I could always into it where I needed to be next and remember I'm a twisty action gamer who is normally a real bad at this stuff a little further on you run into stronger space pirates who can only be defeated with missiles and since you haven't equipped anyway come on devs knew you'd go in here this enormous monolith represents the bosses of the game and just like in Metroid Samus will need to beat them all to progress to the final area what did they not feel like putting a suicide pit in here gamers of 1994 had gone soft speaking of suicide how about Samus has death animation over certainly not worried about hiding or kinder anymore are we Nintendo honestly this would have raised my parents eyebrows if I'd played it when I was little the first sub boss never stuck with me the way the kozo stacked you did the music is delightfully creepy but it always feels like it's building up to something that never comes you just spend a lot of time waiting for the spore spawn wriggles around but even it shows a difficulty progression and that's something that all bosses in this game do well plenty of other games boss has just tended to go through the same patterns but super metroids ramped up the tension is the thigh progresses you can tell the enemy is getting weaker and more desperate and dangerous their colors become muted as they start to die and even if he is a bit of a bore spore spawn is a real breath of fresh air after slogging through 30 some Metroid's in the last game bossy reminds me of bar bows from off of Donkey Kong Country 3 anyone know moving on the prologue set up the story and made Samus feel insignificant versus the might of ridley in the space pirates conversely this first section of the game is all dedicated to making the player feel awesome and powerful but it accomplishes this in a very different way for most of their games just letting you curb stomp your way to victory when a beacon system with wouldn't come before so instead Super Metroid presented with challenges that feel monumental but aren't nearly as daunting as they seem take the toes off Stanford he towers over samus attacks in a wide radius in spews projectiles but if a wayward shot collides with those projectiles and a will boom you get a ton of pickups I think every time I've ever fought this thing I've survived with about a quarter of health it deals that guy barely scraped by even though I was never really in much danger same thing with the space pirates who crawl along the walls and past Lee outnumber you but die in one hit the same thing with spore spawn who cheerfully provides you with resupplies while you wait for it to expose its weak point the area really opens up when Samus defeats not Barbosa and gets the super missiles I particularly like how you emerged backwards into a familiar area which might clue a new player and invest how far off the beaten path they can go and if you want to talk about finding secrets this was the point where I remembered a very significant addition to samus's arsenal the wall jump your timing has to be just right but Samus can gain height off of the walls combined with her already floaty dump a skilled player can scale any flat vertical surface and an even more skilled player well I heaved a lot of praise on Metroid for giving the player the freedom to feel like they were breaking the game and outsmarting the developers and while Metroid 2 was largely lacking in such moments Super Metroid brings them back with aplomb right here what's supposed to happen is that you take the elevator down into norfair learn that there are areas that Samus can't take the heat down there a few upgrades including the high jump boots then head back up and use those boots to access of this area behind the wall in the elevator room those upgrades will serve you well when you fight kraid who winds up being a literally massive showcase for the super nes when you take him down you get the Varia suit which buffs your defense and finally allows Samus to take the heat I am positive that this sequence of events is exactly what I did when I first played this and even if you so happen to come back here first without the higher jump that wedge is just too high up the wall tongue just doesn't give you enough horizontal momentum but this time I decided to try something now I'm no genius that's a real obvious trick but I'm positive was caught in development and it would have been easy to just make the ledge higher or even walk the door but nope Super Metroid just lets you proceed onward all the way to create and I had a much rougher go of it without the upgrades developers who didn't respect their players so much might have scoffed at the idea of allowing them to even do this they'd have seen it as something to be fixed the fact that you can break this sequence is an example of how much your super metroid is the developers give you so much leniency with the expectation that you'll be able to handle the consequences and that responsibility continues to grow in norfair to this point there's been a map computer near the beginning of every area but norfair locks behind a door I couldn't open so I had to circumnavigate these tunnels and fill out the map myself norfair is also where Santa's picks up the speed booster and it's my favorite ability in her entire arsenal I'm gonna give you guys a moment to process this me like in a speed upgrade I know you're astonished but we'll get through this give it a wide-enough stretch of land the Run button now enables Samus to bolt directly through every single thing in her path heck the name kind of under sells it unless the team had a premonition of what boost would mean in about 14 more years the speed booster also enables a more advanced technique press down during a boost to store power then within a few seconds Samus can dart off in any upward or horizontal direction at the cost of health I've never been particularly go to any anywhere but up but and it makes a mess out to be so much more powerful that he's capable of stuff like this it's an ability that would become integral to speedruns and speaking of which I just found another cool thing look back tracking is a necessary evil in games like this and while it's never been my favorite thing I accept it comes with the territory in norfair your right to get the speed booster use it to collect the ice beam then backtrack all the way to brim-star to get the power bombs then you head all the way back to off-air and use the power bombs to reveal a hidden tunnel in the ice beam room that leads to the next boss and if you're not sick of going through the same sequence over and over and over again you still need to back out for a fourth time and that's all fine for your first time through it'll help a new player keep a good handle on where they're supposed to be going but guess what a well-timed wall jump can get you the wave beam early it lets you shoot through walls which lets you hit a switch from the wrong side which lets you proceed without ever leaving norfair and again they freaking knew the way the game constantly makes allowances for experienced players like this is I believe where so much of its replayability and appeal wise especially for people like me who might not normally get a lot out of this genre that tracking can almost always be circumvented and thus it isn't just a device to artificially lengthen the game of course the fewer upgrades you have the tougher these bosses will be there's a reason Super Metroid was so critical and raising speedrunning to an art form you know it's versatile enough that you can even beat the bosses in reverse order but all that openness never comes at the expense of the experience crocomire is another easy boss but he's a neat one tanking hits infinitely until Samus can back him up into the lava hmm you think the dkc3 team might have been fans of this game he dies a real gruesome debt that looks like something out of Mortal Kombat and then just when you think you've won he bursts through the wall and promptly falls to pieces you thought right oh and I never noticed before look at the lava you can actually see the bubbles when his remains moved to the other side ah the details for a long time now the game's been teasing the player by putting blocks over pits and here's where it pays off the grapple beam honestly I've always found it just a little clunky it's not nearly as bad as a spider ball from the last game but it still feels a bit unnatural and unpredictable where Samus will end up and I think the animation on her swing could have been and while we're talking about him let's hit the final Hut ability the x-ray scanner it uses a neat graphical beam trick to uncover hidden passages in special blocks I kind of thought it was just good for completionists but I found myself using it a lot out solve the more esoteric puzzles deep into the game and it's partly why like I said earlier I never got lost and I have no idea how exactly they nailed such perfect indirect conveyance following the main path you'd be sure to see this distinct Truman criteria that leads to the next section ages before you ever get the gravel beam and you'd remember to check it as for me I went to this room before leaving warfare well I might not know how to get to Ridley yet but I know where he's hiding at this point I decided to check out this little unexplored section on the map and that turned into a half an hour detour back to the surface I was surprised by how enjoyable it was to dig into brim-star or I guess up out of it because I'd acquired so many abilities since the first time through Super Metroid almost never forces you to backtrack and I think that's why I enjoyed doing it I chose to take the long way and I was rewarded for it on this detour I ran into the few creatures who are actually friendly they fell off how to do the advanced techniques especially the wall jump there's a save point in this pit and if you use it you literally can't escape until you get good enough that wall jumping and think about it it makes sense they really wanted to ensure that a player would be able to break the game on their second playthrough but this next section is where all my Tim's since 2007 have tapered off let's figure out why the wreck ship crash landed on zebus a long time ago and upon your arrival it's dark ambient filled with scattering vermin and feels lost a time which is cool and all but this is the third time now that Super Metroid has pulled this trick and it's starting to lose its edge the reason why it's all dark is more interesting and it's actually a contrast to Metroid's usual sci-fi themes samus's accosted by ghosts and she soon finds their big boo a boss called phantoon he may not be as flashy as kraid or as memorable as crocomire but he is the first real challenge I face in this game and that was fun I especially liked how unfair and unavoidable this attack seemed until I remember to use my head and just jump through it it's very appropriately metroid defeating phantom who turns the power back on and I don't know I get that it's supposed to be a wrecked vessel but it feels convoluted and cramped and worse yet the game seems to suddenly be a little more okay with wasting time like why does this room want me to defeat all the enemies to open the doors every single time I come through it and it keeps wanting to drop me back toward the water water is not fun to be in in this game although it does have an unusually accurate depiction of water physics but I think at least that part is intentional it makes it all the more satisfying when a chozo statue literally delivers Samus by hand to her final form the gravity suit the way that Samus gains and loses and regains power-ups throughout this series it's typically something that can be hand waved as a consequence of it being a game first and the sensible logical story second but the way this goes though is highlighted calls attention to it and raises some questions unless my osmosis knowledge is wrong I think Samus was raised by the chozo and it's their tech that gives her her abilities so the fact that a ship just so happened to be carrying the statue which only springs to life and uncovers it in path beneath a bed of spikes where a morph ball is inserted strays is some questions questions that I don't think there are any answers to it's an ancient unsolvable mystery within the lore of the game and I really like that now the game dunks you in the water and lets you experience the freedom that gravity suit brings the wreckage it feels a bit tacked on it's still not at all bad and the boss in particular is one of my favorites it just doesn't quite meet the same standard of quality we've had up until now it is ultimately a very short section of the game but I was happy to leave it Samus is gonna need that gravity suit because what comes next is Metroid's first stab and a water level now the fact that he controls exactly the same way regardless could have made that distinction moot but meridia stands out is an apt depiction of the deep sea in real life the deeper under the sea you go the more strange and most alien the creatures become Super Metroid manages to capture that difference near the top of the map things don't seem so weird but as you explore deeper the entire tone kangas Meridius use of a screen filter the enemies and creatures you'll find down here the wait bubbles constantly emerge from samus's helmet and a speck that music all make it memorable Lee distinct this extends to the terrain - there are deep wide trenches that the water is hollowed out which really sets it apart from the earlier Brickey corridors there's this huge vertical water pipe early in the map and to see that was that a Metroid further on I came across underseas space pirates what are you guys doing down here and why are you invincible well they're here because of the center of meridia lies the space pirate lab where they seem to be trying to clone the last metroid these things are called mock droids they don't quite look the part and they definitely don't live up to what they're trying to emulate they're just a poor imitation of the real thing I'm hilarious okay seriously mock toys are probably the one bit of the lore that doesn't quite come through on its own I love love love this game's approached a story aside from the intro it's all subtext but unless I had read about marked roads in the manual I don't think I'd have picked up on what's going on here the sub boss here is botwoon and he's yeah I literally had no memory of him at all he's fine he's just like a lot of other 16-bit bosses fortunately Drakon more than makes up for him he has a great design and it's just powerful to the point of being intimidating I remember really struggling with this guy my first time through he has a fantastic exploit if you think outside the box you destroy one of the laser cannons let him grab you then use her grapple beam on the exposed wreckage [Music] yeah that's fine it was here that I noticed that samus's power scaling had slowed down meridia doesn't throw many new upgrades at you in fact the only one you have to get the space jump is almost ancillary at this point being able to jump infinitely just doesn't matter much when you can wall jump into shinespark so instead of focusing on upgrades meridia becomes far more open obtuse and difficult to navigate even when you get the map data it leaves out interconnecting tunnels to critical areas but that's all entirely appropriate by now the player shouldn't need a continuous supply of power-ups to encourage them so by opening up like this meridia allows you to put everything you've learned and everything you've earned to good use and it's only if you do take the time to clear out the whole map that you'll find Samus has final arm cannon power up the plasma beam it cuts through those scuba pirates with ease and getting something so powerful incentive ëismí to check the other side of the map where after a complex series of tunnels I got the spring ball yeah but hey there's only one boss left and I knew just where he's cowering it's finally time to strike back it ridley forget everything I said about the space jump being ancillary you need it just to get in here meridia was a challenge due to its wide open navigation and puzzles but it was eerie in its tranquility lower norfair is a powerful contrast it's a linear shot that's challenging not because it's obtuse but because it's hard enemies take tons of hits and send you hurtling there's lava everywhere and rooms where you have to skillfully navigate with time chumps and enemies who redhot kick and become weak for a few seconds they all whittle away your health it's tense and exciting and frustrating and I'm having so much fun I thought another thing kozo statue but where the first time was about making you feel like you've overcome something now you get a real fight on your hands he takes tons of hits and have so many attacks and we can patches your missiles and throws them back at you then you get the iconic screw attack and you're gonna freaking need it because lower norfair well it's freakin brutal it reminds me a lot of the original Metroid actually but all the challenge here is bare and punishing seriously I was all ready to count off on Super Metroid for being a little too easy for my tastes but that was only because I'd forgotten about this because I'd forgotten about Ridley who you finally confront and who just starts whaling on you you remember how last time I complained that the Metroid style might not make for the kind of skill-based of boss battles I liked and I was wrong to this point in the game the only time I had died was when I did it on purpose to get footage and I was hoping to keep it that way and with only a sliver of health left Ridley caught me and I knew that was it I'd lost my little self-imposed challenge I didn't remember really grabs you and then he dies Super Metroid gave me a steep enough challenge that by the end my heart was racing and I I never would have expected that out of this series I went to the next room only to find oh the last metroid is no longer in captivity in metroid 2 the road to the finale was a bunch of boring tunnels with nothing in them in super metroid ridley is almost on the complete opposite side of the map but the journey is not boring same as my detour earlier i was moving through areas i hadn't been in a very long time and the powers I'd earned since and covered a lot of Secrets but at last it's time to shatter this statue and break into torreón the space pirates command center and home of Mother Brain mother brains and artificial intelligence created by the ancient kozo the AI turned rogue when zebus was invaded by the space pirates deciding that with their help he could quote reset the universe back to zero she is the mad operator behind all of zebus offensives and appropriately enough the brains behind the space pirates every move Samus destroyed her and the old Tory and command center back in Metroid but the space pirates must have performed a System Restore when they came back and it looks like Mother Brain has figured out how to clone the real thing just as they have near the end of every game so far the series namesake finally show up for a fight and there is easy to take down as ever which drives the point home Samus is the one thing they fear that I ran into the strongest drones in the entire game the only way to beat these guys is with five super missiles and still they go down but then I came to this room and OH there used to be a boss fight here enemies all around crumble to dust then and could this even stronger side hopper be what's causing all this nothing I do affects him Intel that right there is super metroids named saver that is the Super Metroid it sucks the side hopper dry killing this creature that I couldn't even damage then it turns its attention to Samus not even the ScrewAttack can save her and I felt like I was missing something I felt like there had to be some way to fight this thing but then Samus is low health alarm kicks in and the Metroid is reminded of something reminded of where it heard that sound before because this Super Metroid is the very same one that imprinted on Samus back on sr388 taken by Ridley and mutated into this abomination it flies around crying confused and conflicted and leave Samus alone but while Samus catches her breath I guess this is my last chance to air a few general nitpicks I want to call any of these flaws per se but no game is perfect first it would be really nice if you could see your completion percentage without having to beat the game second screen transitions take a little too long especially after they were so snappy back in Metroid 2 and I know this last one's gonna be controversial but there's one other thing I think I might enjoy more in the earlier games the music there's just nothing here that sticks with me like brinstar depths or Metroid 2's overworld theme but that is really more down to how Super Metroid uses its music to complement its ambience I just prefer my game soundtracks to be more upbeat and melodic to complement the gameplay but that's just me and super metroids more cinematic approach is to its benefit but then we come to this room this is the final save point in the entire game and it is in my opinion the one and only thing that is outright flawed about Super Metroid because if you save here you can never go back this door for some arbitrary reason just never opens once the Super Metroid shows up meaning that unless you already have everything you'll never be able to get 100% completion on that save file if you use this thing I'm not a completionist myself but even I know this was the wrong decision on a part of developers and there's no defending it the only reason I can think they would do this would be so new players would have to play through the whole thing again and maybe then they discover all those cool sequence breaks that might explain it but it still doesn't excuse it but hey if a wayward save point is the one blemish on what is otherwise a tour de force of game design even that's nitpicking so you just don't use the save point and move on one more time the game leverages fans expectations by repeating the Mother Brain fight from the first game she goes down real easy but is that it so I guess they did more than just a system restore Mother Brain is a mechanized body that kicks in as soon as she is knocked off life support she cows with this terrible mechanical roar and just lays into samus I'm on loading everything I have and she doesn't bat an eye instead she closes that light and charges of this I can't control samus anymore she's too weak and she definitely won't be able to take another blast like that that's when in an act of redemption the Super Metroid absorbs the laser and sucks mother brain time it starts restoring Santa's energy but you might notice the boss music is still playing through all this and the first sign of trouble you'll see is a breath mother brain wakes up now all through the game every boss I've fought has gone from vibrant colors to more muted tones as I've taken them down so I knew exactly what was happening the Super Metroid is dying as it tries to protect samus it charges at Mother Brain and way back at the start it was hinted that the researchers at Ceres had found a way to use Metroid's for good Chekhov's gun fires here because the Metroid absorbed mother brains laser and when it dies that energy is transferred to SAMHSA's power suit there may be no other final boss in gaming and Lydia's such curb-stomp Mother Brain can't even do anything unless you just decide to stop firing and if you do you'll see if she's in a terrified panic every thought you take since are reeling you can feel the impact and it doesn't take long for the leader of the space pirates to be torn to shreds this fight is not difficult if you found even a few extra energy tanks I don't think I've ever even died here Ridley was way more challenging but here's the thing I had forgotten all about Ridley in the past 9 years this sequence is not a challenge it's a spectacle of perfectly balanced game design that both teaches and speaks through subtext culminating in one of the most poignant satisfying moments in the history of this medium and I remembered every last detail of this it's even more touching to me now because I rescued this Metroid mother brain's death triggers a chain reaction all the way to the core of zebus the game is bookended by explosive escape sequences but this one is on a planetary scale it's bittersweet to see such a cohesive and complete world on the verge of meeting its demise throughout the game you can find places where the map connects to another section where it doesn't really need to just because the development team invigorated the world with details even when they were unlikely to be noticed or appreciated if you're low on health you can use your weapon rations to heal yourself you can disable upgrades from a menu even though there's absolutely no reason to do that but if you do every single beam type has a supercharged you can actually save the animals who taught you the advanced techniques if you decide to take a detour while the planets exploding the only difference that makes is a teeny little pick that escapes zebus tear in the ending wait do the animals escape on the wrecked ship ah it's stuff like that there is no reason for these accoutrements to be there most players are never even going to see this stuff but the fact that they are there just adds to how complete this world is and that cohesion follows through the entire experience from the gameplay to the graphics of the level design just at the beginning of this series I said that some of my favorite games don't follow the formula I laid out back when I started this channel Super Metroid is one of those games I didn't just like it I loved it and coming back to it now I have loved it even more Metroid 1 & 2 were games I had to think of in context of their time in order to appreciate Super Metroid needs no such qualifiers because technology was no longer an obstacle for these developers quite the opposite Super Metroid is where technology finally caught up with what Metroid was trying to be this whole time nothing nothing about this game has been superannuated in the 22 years since its release that a game from 1994 could not only hold up but actually still be the definitive example of its genre is indicative of just how mind-bogglingly ahead of its time it was worthy you played it when it was new or have discovered it in the decade since nostalgia is a non-issue Super Metroid is a masterpiece it had taken Metroid eight years to get here to make that masterpiece it would be another eight years before any new game in the series was released but if gamers could hold out that long they would bear witness to the most lucrative and active years this franchise ever had and by the way I kept my Wii U Virtual Console version of Super Metroid and it turns out I actually did make it all the way to the beginning of lower nor Farrah back in July of 2013 I was trying to figure out why I stopped there and then it hit me it was because I started this channel and that ate up all my free time that makes me feel oddly sentimental thank you guys for being here next time Metroid Fusion you can see it as well as the entire rest of this season for just a dollar on patreon otherwise I'll see you next week you keep diggin I'll keep Ratigan thanks for watching you

Channel: The Geek Critique

Views: 849,773

Rating: 4.8818898 out of 5

Keywords: The Geek Critique, TGC, Geek Critique, Josh Wallen, metroid, nintendo, super metroid, samus aran, samus, snes, super nintendo, super nes, 1994, perennial, masterpiece, gunpei yokoi, metroid review, super metroid analysis, analysis, game critique

Id: oTGIGpA9z3U

Length: 33min 11sec (1991 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 10 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Comafly]

I still remember when my best friends mum bought him this game. We were both from pretty financially stringent families, and we'd usually only get games every christmas or birthday, so it was a big deal.

Every day I would go over his house, or he would bring the game to mine, and we'd spend the night playing the game. We'd take turns playing it. Scanning every block of every screen for every secret. Trying to walljump and speedjump to areas we weren't supposed to get to.

It was easily one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, and remains one of my favourite games to this day. I still play through it every year or so.

[u/soadogs]

One of the most influential games that I just never played. This makes me want to make time to play it even more.

[u/jooes]

I had no idea at all that you could spend your ammo to heal yourself until just now. Learn something new every day, I guess!

Anyway, there are a few points where he mentions the original Metroid and shows clips of it, but it's not actually the original Metroid that we're seeing and it looks all fancy. It happens at 24:45, for example... Anybody know what that is from?

[u/[deleted]]

Oh hey, some publicity for Geek Critique.

Good to see some love for the channel. Been subbed for a while.

[u/Beaner1xx7]

Man, did I love this game, though, years after it originally released. And Metroid: Fusion, oh man. I remember mom having to work later shifts early on in high school, so right after the final bell would ring, I'd walk from school about a mile or so to the GameStop and wait for her. They'd just gotten the Gameboy Advance, and I'd stand there for an hour or so every day playing that until I finally beat it. Credit to the employees there, they never said a thing and just let me go on doing what I was doing. Heh, going on 15 years since and that's really putting a smile on my face thinking about it. May have to get that ROM again soon.

[u/tso]

Well crap, i didn't look at the length before hitting play and didn't notice how long i have been sitting there watching until my screensaver kicked in...

Anyways, i find myself wondering if the 16-bit era was the perfect blend of hardware and software.

The hardware being just powerful enough for the developers not to be hogtied by limitations like sprite count (notice the ever-present flicker on NES games when they go over that line) yet didn't allow them to go hog wild with graphics like the 3D hardware to come would do.

Ever since the first 3D accelerators started showing up alongside Quake and Unreal, it feels like code and gameplay has taken a back seat to graphics and "cinematics".

[u/waowie]

I played this game for the first time 5 years ago and fell in love with it. The freedom given to the player was like no other side scroller I'd played before. The way it convinces you there's only one way to achieve your goals the first time you play it, but then on consecutive play throughs you tear down the walls and realize you can play how you want