Did you know there’s a Japan-only Metroid
game full of exclusive lore, and had several of its story elements reused in Metroid Fusion,
Zero Mission, Super Metroid, and even Metroid Prime 2? Well, kind of... Released a few months after the original Famicom
Disk System game, Metroid: Zebes Invasion Order was an interactive literary adaptation
licensed by Nintendo and published by Futashaba in December 1986. It's sort of like a “Choose Your Own Adventure”
novel on steroids, where the reader - or more accurately, the player - is constantly making
choices and rolling dice, then flipping to specific pages to explore branching paths,
a bit like dungeons and dragons. As such, this gamebook borrows many elements
from tabletop RPG's, like having to use pencil and paper to keep track of Samus' health,
missile count, and current location in Zebes' labyrinthian underworld. The first three- quarters of the story follows
the original metroid pretty faithfully, but the final act strikes out and forges its own
path-- and interestingly, seems to foreshadow events that didn't happen in the mainline
series until decades later. These days, buying the book and getting it
translated into English would set you back about $2000, but we’re gonna save you the
trouble, and at the end of this video we'll even show you how you can play it without
spending a penny. Just like the original game, Space Pirates
have obtained a capsule of Metroid embryos and taken it to Zebes for experimentation,
with the goal of creating a dangerous bioweapon. Samus is tasked with infiltrating Zebes, defeating
the Space Pirates, and retrieving the capsule so the Federation can study it. The gameplay has Samus exploring room by room,
fighting enemies, collecting new weapons and abilities, and backtracking to previous rooms
so she can *use* those new abilities to access secret rooms and more upgrades. Zebes is made up of three areas connected
by elevators; Brinstar, Norfair, and Tourian, totaling 97 rooms, each represented by one
page, and almost every room containing one enemy. To kill enemies, the player rolls a six-sided
die to determine if they kill an enemy, or if it damages Samus. If it doesn’t die on the first roll, the
player keeps rolling until either it, or Samus, are dead. Using missiles -- or more powerful beam upgrades
acquired throughout your adventure -- gives you better dice-rolling odds in combat. And eventually, the Varia Suit will double
Samus’ defences, cutting damage in half. Later in your playthrough you'll wanna backtrack
to the beginning to hunt for upgrades, and with a slew of new abilities, Samus makes
quick work of enemy types that might've killed her just a few hours earlier, and she can
use newly-acquired upgrades like Bombs to gain access to new areas. Zebes Invasion Order is incredibly difficult
-- but when Samus dies, she’s at least sent back to the beginning of the area she died
in, with all her upgrades intact. The gamebook is surprisingly faithful to the
video game, so much so that some Metroid speedrunning strats can be used with the book. Instead of backtracking room-by-room all the
way across the map, sometimes it's faster to just die on purpose and get sent back to
the start of an area-- which is known as a death warp in speedrunning. Keeping track of Samus' health, missiles,
and the map can grow tiresome, but the Metroid formula's conversion into a gamebook is really
quite genius. Some decisions stand out as particularly creative
adaptations of the video game’s core mechanics. For example, sometimes you'll come across
a room with a secret entrance to a hidden room. To access it, you'll need to flip to the page
in the book that represents the hidden room, but the page ITSELF is also hidden. You're told the page number but with one digit
missing, so you'll have to hunt through the book to find it. And you're usually well-compensated when you
do, with secret rooms having some of the best items, like Missile Expansions, Energy Tanks,
and the Screw Attack. Up to this point, Zebes Invasion Order mirrors
the Famicom Disk System title, but with a few notable differences. In the game, Zebes is a planet, but the gamebook
refers to Zebes as an asteroid. A little extra lore was added as well, like
how Mother Brain's been experimenting on Zebes' indiginous creatures and grafting cybernetic
enhancements onto them. The book also expands on Ridley’s abilities,
giving him psychic abilities that accentuate the pain caused by his fire attacks. Kraid and Ridley are also holding key stones
that are required to unlock the path to Tourian, which explains why Samus can't head straight
to Mother Brain right from the start.. After killing Mother Brain and retrieving
the Metroid capsule, Samus climbs out an escape shaft and flies away in her spaceship. At this point, the game changes completely
-- you're no longer required to keep track of Samus' stats or location, and gameplay
shifts into a more traditional "Choose Your Own Adventure" format. The gamebook’s story goes down its own path
for the final act, adding some extra twists and turns, some of which made their way into
future mainline installments. As Samus flees in her ship, she realizes one
of the capsule's embryos broke out and developed into a gigantic mutated Metroid. This new story element was presumably inspired
by the end of the 1979 film Alien, where Ridley finds the Xenomorph stowed away on her escape
pod. Perhaps more interestingly, this was the first
time Metroid fans ever got to see a mutated Metroid, and the same can be said for Samus'
spaceship -- neither were in the original game, and both made their video game debut
five years later in Metroid II: Return of Samus. With the mutant Metroid bearing down on her,
the player has two choices: send out a distress signal from the cockpit, or flee in an escape
pod. Either way, she's eventually forced to dock
in a giant ship belonging to the Space Pirates, in a situation very similar to the extra chapter
added to Metroid: Zero Mission. However, one major difference is that the
gamebook's author depicted the Space Pirates as humans, since they weren't revealed as
aliens until eight years later in Super Metroid. The Space Pirates capture Samus, and their
boss pulls off her helmet -- revealing that, gasp, Samus is a woman. The pirates are all shocked it was actually
A WOMAN who destroyed their base on Zebes, and the Pirate Boss is even, quote, HORRIFIED
by the revelation. What happens next branches off into eight
different endings. [3] Six of those endings result in Samus getting
killed either by the Metroid or at the hands of the space pirates. Of the two endings where Samus survives, "the
bad ending" occurs if you try to escape without risking your life to retrieve the capsule
and complete your mission. If you make that mistake, you're treated to
a conclusion very similar to the end of Metroid Fusion. Samus flees to the docking bay, but gets intercepted
by the mutant metroid at the last second -- and after she kills it in the equivalent of a
final boss battle, she escapes in a small craft and fires a missile that destroys the
Pirate Ship. But as Samus flies into the distance, the
mutant metroid can be seen latched onto her ship, implying she might die off-screen soon
after. In "the good ending," Samus faces off against
the Pirate Boss in a sword fight, culminating in the boss getting killed by Samus, or defeated
and left to get killed by the mutant. Either way, Samus takes the capsule and escapes
on the small craft, fires a missile destroying the pirate ship, and flies off with the Metroid
capsule. Mission complete. After it's all said and done, the player's
treated to an epilogue where a meteorite lands on Earth, and although nothing's found at
the impact crater, several human corpses are found nearby with the life drained from their
bodies. It’s implied that unbeknownst to the locals,
the crashed object was actually the mutant metroid, who's developed a hateful obsession
for Samus and came to Earth to hunt her down. A dark and foreboding cliffhanger for a sequel
that never got made… Although it's worth noting, the idea of a
heavily-mutated Metroid viewing Samus as its arch-nemesis and coming after her again and
again later found its way into Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Zebes Invasion Order features quite a few
original plotlines that have influenced future games, but it's unclear if the developers
took direct inspiration from the gamebook, or if all these similarities are just a coincidence. Zebes Invasion Order borrows story beats from
the Alien movies, and the same can be said for the video games, so perhaps the parallels
are simply the result of shared inspiration. Regardless, it's interesting to see similar
events play out in the book years, or even decades, before they happened in the games. Copies of Zebes Invasion Order have become
increasingly rare and expensive over the past 35 years, to the point where it's hard to
find a listing for one at ANY price. But one fan who WAS able to get his hands
on a copy was Devin Monnens, aided in no small part by the Game Preservation Society in Japan. Over the course of several years, Devin translated
Zebes Invasion Order and converted it into a playable text adventure. It's now freely available on Metroid Database,
so if you wanna give it a try, we'll leave a link in this video's description. Devin even streamlined it so the game keeps
track of Samus' health, missiles, and the map all on its own, so you don't have to resort
to pencil and paper unless you're feeling like a purist. This is actually how we played the game, though
the quality of life features were disabled to best replicate the authentic experience
of playing the gamebook. Did you also know that a Metroid movie was
being worked on for years before being cancelled? For more on that, click the video on-screen. I'm Wayneisboss, and on my own channel October
is Metroid Month, so click the other video on-screen if you wanna watch a full month
of Metroid. Thanks for tuning in folks, see ya next time.
