Another thing that's interesting and different about Metroid is how it handles all the random creatures in the world. In their very limited 8-bit way, most of the critters give the impression that they're just doing their own thing and don't care much about Samus either way. Ones that directly target her are relatively rare. I also think that's one of the reasons that the Metroids themselves are so shocking when the player first encounters them, since they're absolutely vicious compared to most of the rest of the wildlife. In turn, it also openly encouraged the player to avoid/ignore the critters when there wasn't reason to engage with them. With no score and most of them just acting as mindless obstacles, trying to kill everything onscreen is a waste of time and energy aside from grinding for supplies.
They're indeed just minding their business and defending themselves the best that they can. And in a way, so are you. Literally wildlife and hunter. If it weren't for Mother Brain and her subordinates, you wouldn't even bother with them, let alone kill them just to stay alive for your mission to destroy a greater threat. Tragic. A stark contrast from Zelda where nearly every monster actively attacked you just for being there. Funny that the brighter, more magical game would be the one to more actively encourage killing.
Yeah, I think the music from the first three Metroid games is the best in the series, and the original 8-bit version of the soundtrack, at least in my opinion, is better than that in the GBA remake. It’s far more atmospheric, in the sense that it better fits its atmosphere. They got the theme for Kraid’s hideout right on the first try. And, again, my opinion, Lower Norfair >>> Magmoor Caverns.
I really want the alien exploration, solitude and looming fear of the first three metroids to find its way back into the series. Metroid should feel as though one is alone and abandoned in an alien immersion. Not until Axiom Verge did I get that feeling again.
An interesting little bit you don't get into is the room direction changes. Metroid rooms were either vertical or horizontal, and would alternate with every door transition. This was to account for the original Nintendo hardware limitations which made areas that scrolled both vertically and horizontally difficult (but not completely impossible) until later chips came out. When a player went through a door, the system would switch from the vertical to the horizontal buffering setup or vice-versa. This also was part of why a player could end up in some very strange places if they used an trick like getting stuck in a door to jump through the wall.
This aspect is also reflected in the original name of the game. You have long horizontal corridors, like metro tunnels, and you also have long vertical wells. In Japanese a well is pronounced "ido". Add them together, and you get メトロイド (metoroido).
@@onotoley12345 Multiple sources say the name was a combination "metro" and "android". The Metro part may be correct, I can't get the original sources, but the "ido" part is likely not.
@@kyleolson8977 I mean it can be both considering Samus's organically linked Power Suit literally makes her part android when she uses it. And there's the Metroids themselves: they resemble giant helmets and were artificially created by the Chozo as was the Power Suit, suggesting Samus was already made into a sort of human/Metroid hybrid even before needing the Metroid vaccine in Fusion. Which could explain the hatchling's particularly strong attachment (in every sense) to Samus, going beyond mere imprintation. And vice versa, though Other M did NOT handle that very well. That game could SERIOUSLY stand to use a rewrite. So Samus was indeed Metroid all along.
And there are only three types of forced horizontal-to-horizontal transitions: those to and from a Chozo screen, to and from the top of the Brinstar/Norfair elevator and to and from the start of Mother Brain's room. And all four screen layouts on the right sides of those transitions are used ONLY for those transitions (it can't just be the left side that affects things as the screen to the left of the Brinstar-to-Norfair elevator top is just a palette swap of a screen part of a normal transition). And elevator top rooms, Kraid's and Ridley's rooms and the Tourian Bridge room in Brinstar still allow the scrolling direction switch but disable the actual scrolling behavior for those rooms. Thus boarding or unboarding an elevator at its top also performs a scroll direction switch. And, of course, you can't scroll past the final elevator. Even so, the mostly "LAWL just change it every time" scrolling implementation and the repeated stock screen layouts were effective in putting a decently big open action world in a tiny data space. The tricks used to save space… a rare endeavor nowadays.
I loved Zero Mission's epilogue. It was cool to see how she'd deal with things without her power armor and that revelation that, yes, she can crawl when not bulked down by it.
Same here! I thought it was a great change of pace and soooooo rewarding when you get the fully-powered suit and get to take your revenge on all the space pirates that'd been terrorizing you up until then!
Zero Mission was my entry point into the series and hooked me in a way it is hard to put into words. The sense of exploration, the music, all of the hidden items and puzzles. Definitely one of the only games I played over and over to hit my 100% as well as cut down my time on for speed runs. I think I even just listened to the tracks in it with some weird GBA SP headphones or something, there is some flickering of a memory inside of my brain of looking for a couch inside of a bunch of furniture stores, laying down on them and busting out the GBA while hearing Metroid music. I wonder if there was a track selector in that game or if I was just enough of a dork to pause it and let it roll, few things about my childhood cease to remind me what a dweeb I was. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, if I remember correctly the NES original was packed in with Zero Mission as well but I still haven't beaten that one yet. Hard as shit.
Finding your videos was one of the best things to happen to me! The way you go into depth about their history and impact at the time is amazing! Keep it up!
It was a great to transition from Metroid 1 to Super Metroid, and the Chozo guardian spirit was a great capstone. They tried to bring the SA-X chases back, and it paid off.
Interestingly, Samus was explicitly referred to as a male in the Japanese manual as well, even though it is a language where masking a character's gender is done much more easily naturally than in English. So Americans weren't alone in their surprise in this case. Credit for this goes to Clyde Mandelin on his excellent site covering videogame localization: legendsoflocalization.com/qa-was-samus-called-a-he-in-japanese-too/
that always struck me as weird, like in English it's "lol of course Samus is a man" but in Japanese it seems like they're really trying to sell you on the idea that Samus is supposed to be a guy how could this space man be a woman of course he's not
LOL! So all the jokes about people who thought Samus is a man called Metroid were partly due to Nintendo deliberately trolling their customers. Although ... if people got tricked by reading the manual, shouldn't they have discovered that "his" name was Samus, not Metroid?
The Metroid series has some of the most fitting music of any series. I love this channel! You explain to me in no uncertain terms the fundamental reasons why I like the game.
I think my favorite thing about this Nintendo System Works project is the emotional rollercoaster of finishing a review of a pillar of gaming history and the next episode being... roughly the opposite.
It was the 80s. We had no internet to help us. We were plunked down into this world and it was such a great experience. There is nothing like the feeling of being genuinely lost in a game. Metroid still doesn't get the credit it deserves.
Zero Mission is one of my favorite games ever, and for the longest time, the only Metroid I'd ever really enjoyed or beaten. Will have to eventually play the original for that reason alone now that I'm a fan of the series in general.
The frustration of the original Metroid is certainly legendary. It's interesting to me that Return of Samus, despite preserving a lot of its design features (including the Wave Beam/Ice Beam dichotomy), still tends to be less frustrating. I've beaten Return of Samus, but I've never even gotten to Tourian in the original Metroid. I think it might have something to do with Return of Samus being substantially shorter and more linear than Metroid was. You don't get lost as often and you have a clearer goal to work towards. Having an actual save system probably helps too.
Au contraire. I suck at the original Metroid, never even can beat Metroid Prime. The lack of a map system is vexing and why I get lost, coupled with the lack of health resources proportional to how much damage enemies do.
hah, love how that one password got cut off before things got too NSFW. :P on the music man, Hip Tanaka was legendary! I could listen to the Brinstar theme for hours and not get tired of it. also shout-out to the sequence break to get to Mother Brain, I mean who hasn't tried to do that? :P I did eventually learn the door-jumping glitch... hell I still used that in my latest run on the Nintendo Switch Online versions of Metroid on NES/Famicom! also that escape run is worse on the FDS version the alarm is a lot more annoying there!
The theme for Ridley's lair is SO underrated, at least in the context of Metroid itself. It emphasizes how much more dangerous it is than Kraid's lair. Too bad that idea's diluted a bit by Ridley himself being piss-easy while Kraid's the hard boss due to his upper spikes being at just the right height to block your shots. Thank God you're invincible while bomb jumping in this game.
Metroid on NES was the first game I ever played almost 3 decades ago now and it would define how I look at a lot of things. I think the Famicom Disk version of Metroid is far superior in contrast to it's NES counterpart, with the exception of the Escape theme which is far better in US/EU versions of the game. It's connection to the Alien franchise as well is an interesting topic to consider. Both Alien and Metroid deals with an alien threat that can destroy all life, Aliens and Metroid II is about going to where they found them and exterminating them, and Alien 3 / Super Metroid is somewhat more depressing about the threat still looming and in the end will carry a significant loss with it. Then comes Metroid Fusion and Alien Resurrection, where in AR we see Ripley being brought back to life after 200 years as part-human/xeno, while in Fusion Samus gets saved by a vaccine created from the Metroid Larva thus making Samus Part-Human/Metroid. Though in the Captain N Nintendo Magazine comic, Samus was detailed as Cyborg from the get-go, unlike as we'ld later get retconned / found out that she's part-Chozo.. And also Blonde much to my dismay. And then some other stuff that I shan't mention here since some people get upset over that so I'll just be satisfied from my pov. Samus is one of those characters, like Link, that I believe most of us love and look up to.
Yeah, me and my friends loved that part. What we didn't like was how linear the game was, forcing you to get maps showing exactly where to go next, with sequence breaking added by design rather than a byproduct of it.
@@JeremyParish I thought it was a great surpise shift at the end and was better than any actual stealth game on the GBA. The complete stripping of your powers and eventual reclamation of an even more powerful Power Suit is one of the most satisfying moments i've had in gaming let alone the Metroid series.
Ugh, Athena. My brother got that game for his 7th birthday. We were right in the sweet spot of the kid icarus-metroid run. Nintendo could do no wrong. cover art got us so excited, and then came the "what the hell is?" jawdrop. I still have our original cart. It's still painful to look at.
I think the Alien/Metroid comparison goes further - the way the Metroids latch onto Samus’ head owes a large debt of inspiration to the facehugger in ‘Alien’. I’m not sure how much ‘Aliens’ was an influence, considering it was released less than a month before ‘Metroid’ released. I’m glad, otherwise we might have ended up with The Cunning God of Death going by the name of James.
Excellent videos. I consider Super Mario Bros. The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Kid Icarus 4 of the great games on the NES. had no idea about the release of the last 3 in the USA till now.
There's no doubt that the debut for the three 'Adventure Series' games in the summer of 1987 (Kid Icarus, Legend of Zelda and Metroid) was a watershed mark in video gaming history, especially in the U.S. Following this period the gaming consoles couldn't just rely on simple arcade-style programs to see them through anymore, like the 7800 and Master System were doing during this time. Gamers wanted titles with depth behind them.
I think you're the only popular commentator on the internet that I've seen that doesn't completely disregard Metroid on new as antiquated and pointless
Oh shit, Athena is next... I wish you luck... I save stated through that beast a few months back, and it's without a doubt one of the hardest the NES has to offer....
Great two-parter! Hit a lot of the big points. It's interesting that you consider Zero Mission to be the series' crowning achievement. From most of the buzz I've read, Super Metroid is still considered to have that position, by virtue of its surprisingly flexible controls, endless opportunity for sequence breaking, and the highly subtle yet effective ways it introduces plot and gameplay mechanics to the player without tutorial messages and unskippable cutscenes (well, almost). Zero Mission, OTOH, ends up being highly linearized, with the checkpoint statues being more mandatory than suggested. I like both, though, I just found it interesting that you consider ZM a series pinnacle. Maybe it's worth an NES Works Gaiden or a MetroidVania episode on the topic of non-linearity in such a game style?
Yep, you went more in depth on what makes Metroid unpalatable today, so that was satisfying. It's so hard to separate a game's role in history and importance to the industry - things that might together majorly contribute to its "objective quality" in whatever that means - to the simple question of "How fun is this to play?" On a ten point scale, Metroid is a 10/10 when it comes to influence, concept, and so forth. And it's probably a 9/10 within its own era in strict terms of "How big a deal is this compared to its contemporary peers?" But it's about a 2/10 for me when judged on fun factor alone, so there's this constant disconnect with retrospective reviews where they almost don't want to or can't admit an older game's flaws. Maybe it's the nostalgia of having grown up playing that game and being blind to the flaws at the time. But Metroid in particular just doesn't hold up today, even as some its contemporaries like The Legend of Zelda absolutely do. Anyway, I'm rambling, but this is all to say that I really appreciate your willingness to actually call out an all-time classic for the things it does poorly, even as you extol its historical virtues. It's a level of measured objectivity that's very rare to find.
Got it at the Louvre. We were there on vacation last year. I saw that statue and figured it would make for a nice change of pace to record some footage as a preview for the upcoming Athena episode.
Contrary to popular misconception, Samus' gender being concealed only in the English translation of the manual due to Japanese usually not using gendered pronouns like "he" or "she" is a fallacy- it was strongly implied that Samus was male in the Japanese manual as well, meaning Japanese gamers were just as shocked as western ones to see what was under the armour.
People don't like the stealth part in Zero Mission? I thought it was awesome. Nice change of pace at the end of the game. Then, just as it's starting to wear out it's welcome, you get your suit back and curb stomp all the pirates you just been dodging by the skin of your teeth.
Brinstar Depths, the remix of Kraid's Lair in Smash Bros., is one of my favorite songs in games. Also, Athena is next? Cool. I played it in SNK 40th Anniversary, and the arcade version was neat, if incredibly frustrating. The NES one is pretty bad though
I thought people tend to dislike zero mission, due to being more linear than the second half of super metroid. I actually like the stealth section for its cathartic payoff. Regardless, the original is indeed amazing and cemented the importance of atmosphere along with Castelvania.
Quick question Perish: If you're doing chronologically, is this only going to be officially licensed games or will you be doing the unlicensed ones like those from Tengen? What about those super rare official ones like Nintendo World Championship? Also, do you have a google docs of what's to come in your lineup or are you going by an already established list of games that were chronologically sorted? Even if you don't answer any, I enjoy your videos a lot. Keep up the great work and I look forward to the next releases!
I love metroid but for those who've never played this game you dont have to. It's very frustrating to play. There are tons of dead ends designed to drain your life and missiles. Olay the gba remake instead.
I honestly feel this game is superior to its remake in the fact that it offers something no other game in the series does. Zero mission is a lot more linear than NES metroid, even more so than super. It cuts a lot of areas off so you pretty much have to go to where you need to next, and even draws you a map. NES Meteoid gives you a sense of dread and isolation because you CAN get lost and not know where to go Corridors look the same at times and the game doesnt hold your hand. Get a pen and paper to draw maps and play NES metroid with no guide.
I did enjoy Zero Mission when I first played it, but I'll always have a disgust for it since it didn't respect me as a player. If you try to skip the Power Grip, it spawns an impassable barrier in Norfair. Search for "why you can't skip the power grip" for a video.
Nah, Zero Mission still wouldn't be able to surpass Super Metroid, even without the awkward stealth section. The difference is in the sequence breaks. Super Metroid: 90% Hey, I bet I can get up there by creatively using these difficult skills. Zero Mission: 90% Hey, I just so happen to magically know that there's a completely normal looking destructible block in that exact place. Then I'll get to make use of these difficult skills. Both games offer freedom, but freedom driven by a natural curiosity and desire to explore is better than freedom driven by, well, probably gamefaqs unless you're OCD about checking every single spot for secrets.
Jeremy Parish hahahaha! “And this next game is a licensed racing game from developer .... there’s no name here but the credits show it’s two guys in Romania.”
I hold that sonething that makes Metroid special, even among the games since, is having to draw the map yourself. It's an immersive feature that brings part of the game into the real world. Super Metroid is too complex to expect players to map it out, and Metroid 2 was designed to make the player feel lost and turned around in a strange place, but the first game is relatively small, and entirely compromised of rectangles, making it perfect for this. As such, I rather think Zero Mission is a poor remake, treating both the lack of an automap and the open player-determined direction as flaws, rather than defining features. Not to mention adding in abilities from later games that aren't needed here. Not that there aren't changes needed for a remake, since there are things like starting with low health every time and enemies being able to hurt you during screen transitions, and I think shooting in 8 directions is probably good. (unlike Castlevania IV, where whipping in 8 directions completely negates the purpose of most of the sub weapons) However, the treatment of unique elements as flaws to be fixed is not a good strategy. The restrictions on exploration and enforcement of a particular order, rather than just exploring and seeing what you find, effectively lobotomize the spirit of the game, making it too similar to Super Metroid. Super Metroid is one of the greatest games ever made, but that doesn't mean another game should be more like it at the expense of its own characteristics.
Well, maybe "lobotomize" is too strong, but I can't think of a more accurate word at the moment. That word might be better suited for how Samus Returns and AM2R approached remaking Metroid II.
May I point out that no matter how PC you are you can't deny the fact that Samus is wearing man's armor. So if anyone's sexist it's the engineers who made her armor. Or wait! Maybe it's a plot twist. The hero was murdered and his identity was assumed and his armor stolen!
Never got much into Metroid when I was little, or now, but hard to over estimate its importance in games that I love today, Rez Evil..Metroid is shameless & complete Alien rip off with Disney/Nintendo sensibilities..but so is Resident Evil with Dawn of the Dead so what do I know
According to one of the Super Metroid devs in the game's Japanese strategy guide, Samus is actually a transgender woman. I think it's hilarious how cishet male gamers try to deny the devs said that even though it's right there in black and white. Samus is trans. Get over it.
Another thing that's interesting and different about Metroid is how it handles all the random creatures in the world. In their very limited 8-bit way, most of the critters give the impression that they're just doing their own thing and don't care much about Samus either way. Ones that directly target her are relatively rare. I also think that's one of the reasons that the Metroids themselves are so shocking when the player first encounters them, since they're absolutely vicious compared to most of the rest of the wildlife.
In turn, it also openly encouraged the player to avoid/ignore the critters when there wasn't reason to engage with them. With no score and most of them just acting as mindless obstacles, trying to kill everything onscreen is a waste of time and energy aside from grinding for supplies.
One shall be victorious when one knows when to fight, and when not to fight. :D
They're indeed just minding their business and defending themselves the best that they can. And in a way, so are you. Literally wildlife and hunter. If it weren't for Mother Brain and her subordinates, you wouldn't even bother with them, let alone kill them just to stay alive for your mission to destroy a greater threat. Tragic. A stark contrast from Zelda where nearly every monster actively attacked you just for being there. Funny that the brighter, more magical game would be the one to more actively encourage killing.
Metroid music is spine chilling good to me. It brings me back being a kid.
Yeah, I think the music from the first three Metroid games is the best in the series, and the original 8-bit version of the soundtrack, at least in my opinion, is better than that in the GBA remake. It’s far more atmospheric, in the sense that it better fits its atmosphere. They got the theme for Kraid’s hideout right on the first try. And, again, my opinion, Lower Norfair >>> Magmoor Caverns.
@@rootbeer_666 The abstractness of purely electronic sound helps it play to fear.
Beating metroid was a huge badge of honor for me back when I was 14...
I call the floating orange rings in Mother Brain's lair SpaghettiOs. I ate a lot of them as a kid on summer break in late 80s onto the early 90s.
0:40 ENGAGE RIDLEY MOTHER F-
I really want the alien exploration, solitude and looming fear of the first three metroids to find its way back into the series. Metroid should feel as though one is alone and abandoned in an alien immersion. Not until Axiom Verge did I get that feeling again.
An interesting little bit you don't get into is the room direction changes.
Metroid rooms were either vertical or horizontal, and would alternate with every door transition. This was to account for the original Nintendo hardware limitations which made areas that scrolled both vertically and horizontally difficult (but not completely impossible) until later chips came out. When a player went through a door, the system would switch from the vertical to the horizontal buffering setup or vice-versa.
This also was part of why a player could end up in some very strange places if they used an trick like getting stuck in a door to jump through the wall.
This aspect is also reflected in the original name of the game. You have long horizontal corridors, like metro tunnels, and you also have long vertical wells. In Japanese a well is pronounced "ido". Add them together, and you get メトロイド (metoroido).
@@onotoley12345 Multiple sources say the name was a combination "metro" and "android". The Metro part may be correct, I can't get the original sources, but the "ido" part is likely not.
@@kyleolson8977 I mean it can be both considering Samus's organically linked Power Suit literally makes her part android when she uses it. And there's the Metroids themselves: they resemble giant helmets and were artificially created by the Chozo as was the Power Suit, suggesting Samus was already made into a sort of human/Metroid hybrid even before needing the Metroid vaccine in Fusion. Which could explain the hatchling's particularly strong attachment (in every sense) to Samus, going beyond mere imprintation. And vice versa, though Other M did NOT handle that very well. That game could SERIOUSLY stand to use a rewrite. So Samus was indeed Metroid all along.
And there are only three types of forced horizontal-to-horizontal transitions: those to and from a Chozo screen, to and from the top of the Brinstar/Norfair elevator and to and from the start of Mother Brain's room. And all four screen layouts on the right sides of those transitions are used ONLY for those transitions (it can't just be the left side that affects things as the screen to the left of the Brinstar-to-Norfair elevator top is just a palette swap of a screen part of a normal transition). And elevator top rooms, Kraid's and Ridley's rooms and the Tourian Bridge room in Brinstar still allow the scrolling direction switch but disable the actual scrolling behavior for those rooms. Thus boarding or unboarding an elevator at its top also performs a scroll direction switch. And, of course, you can't scroll past the final elevator. Even so, the mostly "LAWL just change it every time" scrolling implementation and the repeated stock screen layouts were effective in putting a decently big open action world in a tiny data space. The tricks used to save space… a rare endeavor nowadays.
I loved Zero Mission's epilogue. It was cool to see how she'd deal with things without her power armor and that revelation that, yes, she can crawl when not bulked down by it.
Same here! I thought it was a great change of pace and soooooo rewarding when you get the fully-powered suit and get to take your revenge on all the space pirates that'd been terrorizing you up until then!
Agreed. The epilogue is awesome!
A lot of people do actually. I don't understand why the video pointed the opposite
Plus it was totally unexpected!
I love everything about Zero Mission!! My favorite 2D Metroid so far, right next to Super Metroid
Zero Mission was my entry point into the series and hooked me in a way it is hard to put into words. The sense of exploration, the music, all of the hidden items and puzzles. Definitely one of the only games I played over and over to hit my 100% as well as cut down my time on for speed runs. I think I even just listened to the tracks in it with some weird GBA SP headphones or something, there is some flickering of a memory inside of my brain of looking for a couch inside of a bunch of furniture stores, laying down on them and busting out the GBA while hearing Metroid music. I wonder if there was a track selector in that game or if I was just enough of a dork to pause it and let it roll, few things about my childhood cease to remind me what a dweeb I was. Thanks for the trip down memory lane, if I remember correctly the NES original was packed in with Zero Mission as well but I still haven't beaten that one yet. Hard as shit.
Finding your videos was one of the best things to happen to me! The way you go into depth about their history and impact at the time is amazing! Keep it up!
Anyone else loves the stealth section in Metroid: Zero Mission?
I didn't know that others didn't enjoy it. To each their own, I suppose.
It was a great to transition from Metroid 1 to Super Metroid, and the Chozo guardian spirit was a great capstone. They tried to bring the SA-X chases back, and it paid off.
Yeah! I love it. I mean, I also suck at it and usually get to the boss with very little health remaining, but I think it’s a fun epilogue.
The closure lines were flawless.
Interestingly, Samus was explicitly referred to as a male in the Japanese manual as well, even though it is a language where masking a character's gender is done much more easily naturally than in English. So Americans weren't alone in their surprise in this case.
Credit for this goes to Clyde Mandelin on his excellent site covering videogame localization:
legendsoflocalization.com/qa-was-samus-called-a-he-in-japanese-too/
My first genuine exposure to Samus was Super Smash Bros. Melee, and I too didn’t believe she was a woman
that always struck me as weird, like in English it's "lol of course Samus is a man" but in Japanese it seems like they're really trying to sell you on the idea that Samus is supposed to be a guy how could this space man be a woman of course he's not
That's a great link. Thank you for sharing.
LOL! So all the jokes about people who thought Samus is a man called Metroid were partly due to Nintendo deliberately trolling their customers.
Although ... if people got tricked by reading the manual, shouldn't they have discovered that "his" name was Samus, not Metroid?
Again, I just love your narration and overall pace to your videos. You have a unique documentary style that I just really enjoy watching/listening to!
The Metroid series has some of the most fitting music of any series.
I love this channel! You explain to me in no uncertain terms the fundamental reasons why I like the game.
I think my favorite thing about this Nintendo System Works project is the emotional rollercoaster of finishing a review of a pillar of gaming history and the next episode being... roughly the opposite.
It was the 80s. We had no internet to help us. We were plunked down into this world and it was such a great experience. There is nothing like the feeling of being genuinely lost in a game. Metroid still doesn't get the credit it deserves.
Ah, but we had the all mighty Nintendo Power.
Great episode! I have been a Nintendo fan since 1987 because of Metroid. It was so mind-blowing to play this back then.
Yeah. This was the first game I bought for my NES. It made an impression, which is why it gets TWO episodes.
So glad I went to UA-cam this morning to find this!
Seeing a new one of these on the YT homepage never fails to get me psyched.
Zero Mission is one of my favorite games ever, and for the longest time, the only Metroid I'd ever really enjoyed or beaten. Will have to eventually play the original for that reason alone now that I'm a fan of the series in general.
The frustration of the original Metroid is certainly legendary. It's interesting to me that Return of Samus, despite preserving a lot of its design features (including the Wave Beam/Ice Beam dichotomy), still tends to be less frustrating. I've beaten Return of Samus, but I've never even gotten to Tourian in the original Metroid.
I think it might have something to do with Return of Samus being substantially shorter and more linear than Metroid was. You don't get lost as often and you have a clearer goal to work towards. Having an actual save system probably helps too.
Au contraire. I suck at the original Metroid, never even can beat Metroid Prime. The lack of a map system is vexing and why I get lost, coupled with the lack of health resources proportional to how much damage enemies do.
That wonderful feeling you get when you realize you missed this video and are now watching new content
I find metroid an important game on NES, I personally found it way confusing so I never got that into it
hah, love how that one password got cut off before things got too NSFW. :P on the music man, Hip Tanaka was legendary! I could listen to the Brinstar theme for hours and not get tired of it. also shout-out to the sequence break to get to Mother Brain, I mean who hasn't tried to do that? :P I did eventually learn the door-jumping glitch... hell I still used that in my latest run on the Nintendo Switch Online versions of Metroid on NES/Famicom! also that escape run is worse on the FDS version the alarm is a lot more annoying there!
ooh, that more ambiguous tease towards the next NES works is really good
Love your videos man.
Thank you so much for this. Been waiting for days. = )
The theme for Ridley's lair is SO underrated, at least in the context of Metroid itself. It emphasizes how much more dangerous it is than Kraid's lair. Too bad that idea's diluted a bit by Ridley himself being piss-easy while Kraid's the hard boss due to his upper spikes being at just the right height to block your shots. Thank God you're invincible while bomb jumping in this game.
Metroid on NES was the first game I ever played almost 3 decades ago now and it would define how I look at a lot of things.
I think the Famicom Disk version of Metroid is far superior in contrast to it's NES counterpart, with the exception of the Escape theme which is far better in US/EU versions of the game.
It's connection to the Alien franchise as well is an interesting topic to consider. Both Alien and Metroid deals with an alien threat that can destroy all life, Aliens and Metroid II is about going to where they found them and exterminating them, and Alien 3 / Super Metroid is somewhat more depressing about the threat still looming and in the end will carry a significant loss with it. Then comes Metroid Fusion and Alien Resurrection, where in AR we see Ripley being brought back to life after 200 years as part-human/xeno, while in Fusion Samus gets saved by a vaccine created from the Metroid Larva thus making Samus Part-Human/Metroid.
Though in the Captain N Nintendo Magazine comic, Samus was detailed as Cyborg from the get-go, unlike as we'ld later get retconned / found out that she's part-Chozo.. And also Blonde much to my dismay. And then some other stuff that I shan't mention here since some people get upset over that so I'll just be satisfied from my pov.
Samus is one of those characters, like Link, that I believe most of us love and look up to.
I hear mostly praise for the stealth epilogue of Zero Mission.
What alternate universe do you live in?
Yeah, me and my friends loved that part. What we didn't like was how linear the game was, forcing you to get maps showing exactly where to go next, with sequence breaking added by design rather than a byproduct of it.
@@JeremyParish I thought it was a great surpise shift at the end and was better than any actual stealth game on the GBA. The complete stripping of your powers and eventual reclamation of an even more powerful Power Suit is one of the most satisfying moments i've had in gaming let alone the Metroid series.
I mean, I really like the stealth bit, but boy howdy are there plenty of people who definitely don't.
8:28 Death Cheerios
My favorite Metroid password is still "MOTHER BRAIN? FUCKIN TOASST".
Metroid is number one game of 1987.😀👍🎮
Nice work once again!
Awesome, thanks!
Love the breakdown!
Excellent video! I love Metroid!!
Ugh, Athena. My brother got that game for his 7th birthday. We were right in the sweet spot of the kid icarus-metroid run. Nintendo could do no wrong. cover art got us so excited, and then came the "what the hell is?" jawdrop. I still have our original cart. It's still painful to look at.
I think the Alien/Metroid comparison goes further - the way the Metroids latch onto Samus’ head owes a large debt of inspiration to the facehugger in ‘Alien’.
I’m not sure how much ‘Aliens’ was an influence, considering it was released less than a month before ‘Metroid’ released. I’m glad, otherwise we might have ended up with The Cunning God of Death going by the name of James.
LoL!
Masterpiece videos. Thanks for making these.
Excellent videos. I consider Super Mario Bros. The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Kid Icarus 4 of the great games on the NES. had no idea about the release of the last 3 in the USA till now.
There's no doubt that the debut for the three 'Adventure Series' games in the summer of 1987 (Kid Icarus, Legend of Zelda and Metroid) was a watershed mark in video gaming history, especially in the U.S. Following this period the gaming consoles couldn't just rely on simple arcade-style programs to see them through anymore, like the 7800 and Master System were doing during this time. Gamers wanted titles with depth behind them.
GBA remake has the NES version, you can play it after completing.
I think you're the only popular commentator on the internet that I've seen that doesn't completely disregard Metroid on new as antiquated and pointless
“Popular” is so relative tho
good job on this vid. very nice
Good job with your things and stuff dudemanbro
8:28 actually they’re called Spaghetti-Os
Uh oh
Oh shit, Athena is next... I wish you luck... I save stated through that beast a few months back, and it's without a doubt one of the hardest the NES has to offer....
I can get to stage three. Of 10. Yeah.
@10:30
FINALLY someone who pronounces her name as I always have!
Zero Mission’s epilogue is _unpopular?!?_ news to me!
Wow, which part of the internet have you been on where it's not? I want to go there.
Great two-parter! Hit a lot of the big points.
It's interesting that you consider Zero Mission to be the series' crowning achievement. From most of the buzz I've read, Super Metroid is still considered to have that position, by virtue of its surprisingly flexible controls, endless opportunity for sequence breaking, and the highly subtle yet effective ways it introduces plot and gameplay mechanics to the player without tutorial messages and unskippable cutscenes (well, almost). Zero Mission, OTOH, ends up being highly linearized, with the checkpoint statues being more mandatory than suggested. I like both, though, I just found it interesting that you consider ZM a series pinnacle.
Maybe it's worth an NES Works Gaiden or a MetroidVania episode on the topic of non-linearity in such a game style?
Cool channel my man. Good video!
Yep, you went more in depth on what makes Metroid unpalatable today, so that was satisfying. It's so hard to separate a game's role in history and importance to the industry - things that might together majorly contribute to its "objective quality" in whatever that means - to the simple question of "How fun is this to play?" On a ten point scale, Metroid is a 10/10 when it comes to influence, concept, and so forth. And it's probably a 9/10 within its own era in strict terms of "How big a deal is this compared to its contemporary peers?" But it's about a 2/10 for me when judged on fun factor alone, so there's this constant disconnect with retrospective reviews where they almost don't want to or can't admit an older game's flaws. Maybe it's the nostalgia of having grown up playing that game and being blind to the flaws at the time. But Metroid in particular just doesn't hold up today, even as some its contemporaries like The Legend of Zelda absolutely do.
Anyway, I'm rambling, but this is all to say that I really appreciate your willingness to actually call out an all-time classic for the things it does poorly, even as you extol its historical virtues. It's a level of measured objectivity that's very rare to find.
This belongs in the louvre
Nice editing....keep it up
Next time, we get two "A" games.
I'd say more like a B+ game and a D.
@@JeremyParish True. BTW, where'd you get that footage of the statue of Athena?
Got it at the Louvre. We were there on vacation last year. I saw that statue and figured it would make for a nice change of pace to record some footage as a preview for the upcoming Athena episode.
Contrary to popular misconception, Samus' gender being concealed only in the English translation of the manual due to Japanese usually not using gendered pronouns like "he" or "she" is a fallacy- it was strongly implied that Samus was male in the Japanese manual as well, meaning Japanese gamers were just as shocked as western ones to see what was under the armour.
People don't like the stealth part in Zero Mission? I thought it was awesome. Nice change of pace at the end of the game. Then, just as it's starting to wear out it's welcome, you get your suit back and curb stomp all the pirates you just been dodging by the skin of your teeth.
It's divisive! I like it. Many people do. Many people don't.
@@JeremyParish Huh, who knew? I'd put it in my top five revenge fueled murderous rampages, personally. Different strokes and all that, I suppose.
What were the names of the animes? I like that era. Very project ako.
Did people not like the ending of Zero Mission??? wtf why
Brinstar Depths, the remix of Kraid's Lair in Smash Bros., is one of my favorite songs in games.
Also, Athena is next? Cool. I played it in SNK 40th Anniversary, and the arcade version was neat, if incredibly frustrating. The NES one is pretty bad though
I thought people tend to dislike zero mission, due to being more linear than the second half of super metroid. I actually like the stealth section for its cathartic payoff. Regardless, the original is indeed amazing and cemented the importance of atmosphere along with Castelvania.
Start a brand new game as suitless Samus (no inventory unlocked or bosses killed):
000000 000020
000000 000020
Correction: five areas
Quick question Perish: If you're doing chronologically, is this only going to be officially licensed games or will you be doing the unlicensed ones like those from Tengen? What about those super rare official ones like Nintendo World Championship?
Also, do you have a google docs of what's to come in your lineup or are you going by an already established list of games that were chronologically sorted?
Even if you don't answer any, I enjoy your videos a lot. Keep up the great work and I look forward to the next releases!
There will be some coverage of unlicensed titles, especially since three of them started out with an official license.
I recently beat the famicon version using nintendo online... just because I wanted the save mode
Athena up next!
Or at least the first three stages of Athena, since the water world is a hard stop for me every time I play
Is that the crocker art museum at the close?
It’s the Louvre.
I love metroid but for those who've never played this game you dont have to. It's very frustrating to play. There are tons of dead ends designed to drain your life and missiles. Olay the gba remake instead.
What was that ending song from at the end of the video?
So the next game is Athena?
And Arkanoid, probably.
I like the music in the American version better. The Famicom Disk System music is a bit too warm for my taste. Same with the first Legend of Zelda.
Agree on the sound effects too.
Wait, so why did the regular retronauts podcastone link stop updating though? www.podcastone.com/retronauts B/c I thought the podcast just stopped.
We left PodcastOne, as announced in the last episode or so. We're on retronauts.libsyn.com
@@JeremyParish Thank you for the reply! Sorry, I missed that :/
I honestly feel this game is superior to its remake in the fact that it offers something no other game in the series does. Zero mission is a lot more linear than NES metroid, even more so than super. It cuts a lot of areas off so you pretty much have to go to where you need to next, and even draws you a map.
NES Meteoid gives you a sense of dread and isolation because you CAN get lost and not know where to go
Corridors look the same at times and the game doesnt hold your hand. Get a pen and paper to draw maps and play NES metroid with no guide.
When's the next Book Jeremy :)
Check the title card toward the end of this very video.
Ooo game boy works. *pulls out wallet* @@JeremyParish
I did enjoy Zero Mission when I first played it, but I'll always have a disgust for it since it didn't respect me as a player. If you try to skip the Power Grip, it spawns an impassable barrier in Norfair. Search for "why you can't skip the power grip" for a video.
Wat, there are people who don’t like the epilogue in Zero Mission?
Nah, Zero Mission still wouldn't be able to surpass Super Metroid, even without the awkward stealth section. The difference is in the sequence breaks.
Super Metroid: 90% Hey, I bet I can get up there by creatively using these difficult skills.
Zero Mission: 90% Hey, I just so happen to magically know that there's a completely normal looking destructible block in that exact place. Then I'll get to make use of these difficult skills.
Both games offer freedom, but freedom driven by a natural curiosity and desire to explore is better than freedom driven by, well, probably gamefaqs unless you're OCD about checking every single spot for secrets.
Please zoom in the starting overlay to a transparent bit!
So umm... GBA Works?
Naw mang
Jeremy Parish hahahaha!
“And this next game is a licensed racing game from developer .... there’s no name here but the credits show it’s two guys in Romania.”
Zero Mission is definitely an improvement over Metroid 1, but every 2D Metroid after Super Metroid just feels "off" to me. Bring back SM physics.
I hold that sonething that makes Metroid special, even among the games since, is having to draw the map yourself. It's an immersive feature that brings part of the game into the real world. Super Metroid is too complex to expect players to map it out, and Metroid 2 was designed to make the player feel lost and turned around in a strange place, but the first game is relatively small, and entirely compromised of rectangles, making it perfect for this.
As such, I rather think Zero Mission is a poor remake, treating both the lack of an automap and the open player-determined direction as flaws, rather than defining features. Not to mention adding in abilities from later games that aren't needed here. Not that there aren't changes needed for a remake, since there are things like starting with low health every time and enemies being able to hurt you during screen transitions, and I think shooting in 8 directions is probably good. (unlike Castlevania IV, where whipping in 8 directions completely negates the purpose of most of the sub weapons)
However, the treatment of unique elements as flaws to be fixed is not a good strategy. The restrictions on exploration and enforcement of a particular order, rather than just exploring and seeing what you find, effectively lobotomize the spirit of the game, making it too similar to Super Metroid. Super Metroid is one of the greatest games ever made, but that doesn't mean another game should be more like it at the expense of its own characteristics.
Well, maybe "lobotomize" is too strong, but I can't think of a more accurate word at the moment. That word might be better suited for how Samus Returns and AM2R approached remaking Metroid II.
May I point out that no matter how PC you are you can't deny the fact that Samus is wearing man's armor. So if anyone's sexist it's the engineers who made her armor.
Or wait! Maybe it's a plot twist. The hero was murdered and his identity was assumed and his armor stolen!
Did you unironically use the term "PC" in TYOOL 2024
The games you mention here sucked up a lot of my time in the 80s. Most of the games for the nes were pretty bad.
Never got much into Metroid when I was little, or now, but hard to over estimate its importance in games that I love today, Rez Evil..Metroid is shameless & complete Alien rip off with Disney/Nintendo sensibilities..but so is Resident Evil with Dawn of the Dead so what do I know
According to one of the Super Metroid devs in the game's Japanese strategy guide, Samus is actually a transgender woman. I think it's hilarious how cishet male gamers try to deny the devs said that even though it's right there in black and white. Samus is trans. Get over it.
she's just a sweet transvestite from metroidsexual metroidvania