Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 74: Metroid II & Samus Returns

Episode Date: November 17, 2017

Words no longer have any meaning as Jeremy, Benj, and Chris record a so-called Micro episode that last more than an hour. But then, there's a lot to say about Metroid II and its remake, Samus Returns.

This week in Retronauts, Spider-Ball, Spider-Ball, Friendly Neighborhood, Spider-Ball. I'm Jeremy Parrish, and this week we're going to talk about Metroid 2 Return of Samus versus Metroid Samus returns to different games, but also kind of the same game. And with me to discuss this as part of a tie-in to our third Metroidvania-focused episode, we have Ben Jedwitch and Chris Sims. And, yes, of course, they have also been on the previous Metroidvania episodes, and having just recorded in your time, not our time chronologically, we're doing this one first, having just recorded our third Metroidvania episode, it seemed to make sense to break out

discussion for Metroid 2 onto its own because a remake of the game just came out a few weeks ago, or I guess like two months ago at this point. But yeah, I don't know. I thought, you know, rather than trying to cram all this discussion into the full episode, we should set it aside. Maybe that's a terrible idea. I guess we'll find out. But that third episode we recorded was awesome.

It was, it was, it will and on have been amazing. I can't believe I finally proved that Super Mario World is a Metroidvania. That was great. Because you didn't. He argued about that for 20 minutes. So, Metroid 2, of course, is the, yes, wait for it. The second game in the Metroid franchise. And it was released in 1991 for Game Boy.

It was one of those sort of rare sequels to an NES game that did not appear on NES or Super NES, but rather on Game Boy. But that kind of makes sense because the people who created the Game Boy, Nintendo R&D won, that division of Nintendo, was the division that created Game Boy and also the division that created Metroid. Both were done under the supervision of division leader Gunpei Yokoi, who passed away in 1998, I want to say, 97. but he was basically sort of like the first genius creator for Nintendo. We've talked about him a lot, but he did not actually have a direct hand in creating the Metroid games. He was like the producer.

He oversaw things, but he was more of like an inventor, a sort of freewheeling designer of sorts, not so much like the nuts and bolts kind of game design person. That's okay because, you know, everyone who reported to him, I think, shared his enthusiasm for new ideas. And Nintendo R&D 1 was always kind of like the weird group at Nintendo. You know, Shigero Miyamoto's R&D4 Entertainment Analysis Division, they're kind of like the reliable, creative types. And they get a little, you know, acid trippy with Mario's mushrooms and everything.

But for the most part, their games, you know, they're kind of steadfast and, you know, kind of reliable. Whereas R&D1, they're the people who made, like, the Game Boy camera, which has a hidden mode where you can, like, shoot people's faces and stuff. It's, yeah, they do the weird stuff. And so the Metroid series isn't weird, but it's definitely a little offbeat. And this game in particular kind of feels like a sort of strange follow-up to the original Metroid in a lot of ways. I'm curious, what experience do you guys have with Metroid 2 I got it

when it was pretty new I think I traded it at school for some I don't know what I had I had some

other Game Boy game like Castlevania The Adventure Oh you came out ahead I didn't enjoy that game

so there's a guy in my seventh grade math class who traded me Metroid 2 and Alleyway or something

at the same time You got you got two games Yeah two games Yeah no wait alleyway was another guy

I bought that for $1 it was good. Okay. That game is worth a dollar. It was worth a dollar. I paid three. That's how good it is. Metroid, too. I mean, it was, I was excited about it because I loved Metroid. And the only problem I had with it was it was really hard to see on that screen. The original Game Boy screen was so muddy and the refresh rate was so slow. And I really didn't get to enjoy it much until the Game Boy Color came out. And that had a good enough screen to play it.

And I remember being so excited about the Game Boy Color just because I wanted to play Metroid 2 on it. But there was a time in between, probably on the Super Game Boy, where I beat it with, I don't know if I used a game genie or not. I don't remember. It's been a very long time. Super Game Boy was how I first experienced it. I wanted it very much because Metroid was a big deal to me. But I didn't have a Game Boy. My brother had one and he didn't like to share it with me. So I had to wait until Super Game Boy came out. And once I picked up a Super Game Boy, I kind of went on a binge. It used game shops, like, buying all the Game Boy cartridges I had missed,

like Final Fantasy Legend and Metroid and Zelda. And it was pretty great. Yeah, that's awesome. So I played it that way. I did eventually go back and play, like, I guess maybe the same summer, played Metroid 2 on the original Game Boy. And it was more difficult that way. Yeah, it's hard to see what's going on.

And Chris? I got Metroid 2 yesterday So lots of fun memories of that one Yeah Remember what it was like yesterday Yeah I was watching Netflix Were you trading games

You were eagerly waiting for Mario Odyssey To go up on the e-shop No I I literally got it yesterday I had a Game Boy as a kid But I think I only ever owned Like three games for it Because by the time

I had the Game Boy Like the Super Nios was coming out and, you know, growing up with my mom as a schooltea, a public school teacher of raising two kids, we did not buy video games a lot and you couldn't rent Game Boy games, presumably because renting Game Boy games is asking for them to be stolen. Or just lost. They're so tiny. There was a shop called Video Plaza that rented video game, Game Boy games around here.

Really? Yeah, it was neat. Blockbuster didn't rent them. I mean, I know a place that rented Turbo graphics games, those little huge. cards that aren't much bigger than Game Boy games, but Game Boy games, just no one ever rented those. There was one place I saw in like 1999 that rented Game Boy Color games for a little while. They had like three of them. That's it. You just didn't see them. Yeah, I don't know what's going on with that. I rented Mortal Kombat for the Game Boy one time because I wanted to see what

that was like. Definitely a game to rent rather than buy. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. So I'm playing it for the first time now, which hopefully will not infuriate the listeners of this show that I'm on here talking about it. I don't see why it would. I mean, all perspectives on old games are valid. Like, I have memories from back in the day of Metroid 2, but you are coming to it fresh. Yeah, and playing it, and weirdly enough, like, my biggest encounter with Metroid 2 up to this point was reading Anatomy of Games.

and your thoughts on how the stuff worked. So I've spoiled everything for you. Yeah, but I don't really remember it because I read that book like three years ago. Bad memory. But playing it on 3DS, I was really surprised at how polished it feels. And I know I shouldn't be, but compared to even something like Super Mario Land, which I also experienced for the first time on virtual console when I played through all those, it's the controls are really tight uh you mentioned that samus's jump feels like really floaty it's

very floaty but i think it like maybe because i don't have like a huge connection to metroid or to super metroid like it works for me uh the only thing i would say metro or samis's metriots samis's jump was always floaty in the classic games it wasn't until zero mission that they really stopped and said let's make her fast um but i feel like just the perspective, like the close-in zoom on the graphics, tends to make it feel floatier than in other games. Yeah, but I like the way that giving her such a big sprite and closing in the area around her does really reinforce the sort of claustrophobia of Metroid 2, which I think is interesting

because, as you've mentioned, you are no longer trapped in super long vertical shafts are super wide, long hallways. My question, as someone who's not as familiar with the history, we all know that, like, Tetris was the, you know, the killer app on Game Boy in those early years. Metroid 2 feels like it was meant to be, like, the game that if you had an NES and you, and you were like a, for lack of a better term, a hardcore gamer, like, this is what was going to get you into Game Boy. Is that accurate? I think it's fair to say that.

Nintendo certainly promoted it heavily. There were, you know, Nintendo Power covers with Metroid 2 on it. And they, yeah, they blew out coverage of Metroid 2 in the magazine. I have the Metroid 2 poster is still hanging on my old bedroom wall in my mom's house. It's like a really terrible airbrush, right? Yeah, there's nothing else there. It's because I put it there to...

Except the one where she's like doing the disco thing and like arms up in the air, the Freddie Mercury Power thing. No, that's the one. from Nintendo Fun Club news or something. Really? There was a terrible illustration, like a spiky hair thing. Oh, no, no, no, no, not that. I mean, like, I mean, just like the poster.

Like, she's in her suit, but her arm's kind of up and... It's not as good as a Super Metroid poster, which is right next to it. But I put it on the wall there to cover a hole in the wall back. Oh, that's where you're going to get out of prison, right? Yeah, I was working on... Samus Perrin is your Rita Hayworth. Yeah. But that's why it's still there, because there's a hole behind it.

Anyway, there you go. Yeah, it... The feeling of it, only having a few Game Boy games as I did and not really going back and revisiting Game Boy that much outside of the Super Mario Land series, it feels like a complete game. Oh, also, I forgot to mention as part of, like, the Nintendo pushing Metroid 2 pretty hard. If you look at the original Super Game Boy box, the game that is promoted on that is Metroid 2. Like, Metroid 2 is all over the front of that, even though that thing came out like, I want to say two and a half, three years after Metroid 2. Would it have come out

like around the same time as Super Metroid? Yes, it was like the same month actually. So you could get all the Metroid content except for Metroid 1. Well, I think it's also just like when we were talking about, the soupy green screen was not suited well for action games like

Metroid 2 and it was like playing in a fog. But the Super Metroid like and Jeremy said really allowed Metroid 2 to shine as a good game for the first time, I think. They may have promoted it because of that, because I experience this finally, the way you can

actually play it. Yeah, see it again for the first time. It's the kind of game that you would see on NES or Super NES. It's a side-scroller. It's an action game. It's not just a puzzle game, which, you know, Tetris, you can play endlessly, but it's not Mario Brothers. You know, it's not Metroid.

It's no, Hey,ankio, Alien. I like that it had save points, too, which was good for the Gameboy when you had to put it down and turn it off and go to school or whatever, you know. Yeah, that really sort of reshaped the design of the game because Metroid, when you stop playing, you get your password and it takes you back to the beginning of the current area. And in the Japanese version, you would save because it was a disk-based game.

And then when you restarted, you would start at the beginning of the game, not the beginning of the current area. So having the addition of these save points throughout the game kind of changed it. And they, you know, I think they realize that because you're likely to play a Game Boy, a portable game, sort of on the go and in small sessions, they build the entire game around those save points. Like there are, I think, 10 areas in the game, and each of them is kind of like a hub and spoke. So you kind of go forward and you find the base in the next area, which is like this big structure that everything sort of emerges from. And there's usually a save point, sometimes two, which is kind of weird. inside those bases, and you use those as kind of like your launching point for going out

and finding a Metroid, and then you go back and save and so forth. Yeah, I was bothered by the non-linearity of Metroid 2. I mean, the linearity of it, I should say, compared to the original Metroid, where in Metroid, for the NES, you had to backtrack and explore and there are secrets. And it seemed more prescribed in Metroid, too, that you will go to this area. You will kill this Metroid. You will go to the next area. You will kill this Metroid, et cetera, you know.

And I thought that was a letdown at the time. Do you think that was a function of the handheld nature of it where you don't want to, you know, be backtracking all the way to a previous area when your bus gets to school? Maybe. They may have been like, hey, Gunpei, I can't keep backtracking in this muddy screen all day long. I don't want to go through any more corridors than I have to. I think it's a function of several different things. I think, yeah, the portable nature of the game where, you know, everything is kind of meant to be played in small chunks accounts for that. But I think also there's less differentiation within the world because everything is three shades of gray. green or whatever um so yeah they they they really rely on color design a lot in the original metroid to kind of help you find your way around you know you know that you're in the gold corridor or the blue corridor so even if they have the same tile set it's still different because it's you know a different color whereas you don't have that that option available on game boy and so

everything is kind of like well you're in the rocky tile set but which kind of rocky tile set is it like the roundish rocks or is it the more square rocks? Like that's, that doesn't really communicate easily. So I think, so it could get lost easily in that. Yeah, I think it's very easy to get lost in that game. I can tell you with someone who just started playing it. They pushed backtracking kind of to the, to the side just as a, just as a practical limitation of the system. And it's something they've actually played up more in the remake. I don't know how much of that you guys have played, but we'll talk about that. But yeah, a little bit. Yeah, the remake, like, it is still kind of the same general structure, like you kill X number of

Metroids and then move on to the next area, but they've added so many places where there are power-ups or extra pick-ups or whatever for you to go back and investigate once you've acquired new weapons and powers and so forth. So there is more of that in place than there was in the original Metroid 2. Yeah, the Metroid 2 is interesting because you don't actually need to collect all the power-ups in order to finish the game. Like in the original Metroid, you could skip DeVaria and you might skip the wave beam because really as long as you have the ice beam, that's what you really need. But like the high jump boots, the morph ball, the bomb, the missile, I guess you could get by without screw attack, but why would you

want to? The high jump boots, like you need those things. Whereas here, once you have the spider ball and the space jump, you're pretty good to go. Yeah, Chris. I'm getting a lot of looks right now about how I've been unable to progress since I got the spider wall, and I don't appreciate that. Well, you made the classic blunder, one of the classic blunders, along with fighting a land war in Asia. You also backtrack to the beginning of the game, and there's no real point in doing that. Yeah. So you're stuck somewhere the designers didn't want you to be. Well, I thought there would be some stuff up there.

There's tall walls, and I have a thing that lets me go off walls now. No, unfortunately, that's not the case. There is that sort of enticing high ledge next to where you park your ship at the beginning. But everything's blocked off, and that's because that's where you escape from in the original. Like at the end of the game, once you beat the final boss, then you come up through the back route and come over the wall and you come out onto the surface of the planet. You're like, oh, this is where I parked. So, yeah, you just kind of, you found a dead end that was sort of put there, I guess, to be a mystery if you bother to explore or else to be like a, oh, hey, it's this place if you don't bother to explore. But realistically, in Metroid 2, you don't need to backtrack much.

Like, once you clear out an area of all the Metroid's, that's pretty much it. Go to where the water was and move on to the next phase. That is, when I got a little stuck, I did start going back and rereading Anatomy of Games to see if I can pick up any tips. You're my game counselor. That's great. I should charge you like 70 cents a minute. Please don't.

1-900 number. But I was really. genuinely oppressed by the thoughtfulness and how it takes advantage of, or not takes advantage of, but works within the limitations of the system. That's something that's always really fascinating to me going back to NES

and Game Boy games, is how they manage to work in that system. You talked about color, which is a big part of Metroid, and a big part of Castlevania, too, which goes away in the Game Boy, Castlevania games for a long time. But I love the countdown

because the countdown is really easy to miss, I think. If it had just been, you know, you kill a Metroid and it drops down to 37, 36. But it kind of like retallies every time and that motion on the screen grabs your attention and makes you pay attention. So if you're not reading the instruction manual and you're just kind of going into the game cold, then it manages to draw your attention to a thing that goes, oh, okay, that's what this means. That's what this additional thing that's next to my missiles and health means. Yeah, so it's drawing your visual attention to that part of the screen so you notice it counting down. That's a good idea.

It's that kind of thoughtfulness that makes it feel more like a complete game than I think any other Game Boy game I played. That thoughtfulness is to like Wario land. It's what makes Nintendo games, Nintendo games, whereas if you play like a clone of a Nintendo game on the Sega Master System, it just doesn't feel as well thought out. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about, those details, those things, just like what you're saying, like a little visual. visual flourish to bring you your eyes to a part of the screen. So can you name a master system game that you have in mind when you say this? Yeah, like...

Talking about vampire, master of darkness. Dragon Warrior Quest, what is that thing? No, Dragon, what is? Golden Axe Warrior. Oh, oh, yes, there is a Zelda clone. And we're going to talk about Zillion. We did talk about Zillion already. Right, yeah, wink, wink.

That feels like, you know, it's a play on Metroid and some other games, but it's just not as effective or something. There are a lot of, just there are a lot of those games. I can't. What else? Yeah, I mean, any, any, any platformer on the Sega Master system doesn't have the fluidity and feel of a Mario game. You know, they just couldn't do it. They couldn't get it. I think Nintendo has, you know, the home field advantage with their hardware because they make the hardware, so they know what it can do. So like, if you look at, you know, I've been going through, uh, the first year of super NES games and like all the third party games, that appeared right at launch were so riddled with slowdown, and someone commented on my

YouTube channel to say, the reason that happened, according to someone who worked on Super NES games, like a British developer, I don't know who it was, I can't remember. But the reason that happened is because the third parties, you know, when they first started working on the Super NES, they weren't programming like with the proper, you know, with assembly language. They were programming in C or C++ or whatever they used at the time. So there was like this level of interpretation happening, and that caused all the games like Graddeus 3 and Super R-type and Final Fight to just be riddled with slowdown. But you didn't see that with Nintendo's games, like F-0, and Super Mario World is not a hugely fast game, but it never slows down.

Like, it never has that kind of technical error element that you see in the other games. Pilot Wings is always, like, very fluid and crisp as you're spinning around giant bit bitmaps that are supposed to represent a world map. Yeah, like, they just have. that advantage. And this is a case with Metroid 2 also, because, again, this was the division that created the Game Boy hardware. So they knew what they were doing. Yeah, like, the, the Game Boy was actually designed by Satoro Okada, and he did not work on Metroid 2, but, you know, he was, he would have been right there. They could have, like, talked to him and say, you know, like, what's, what's, what's, what's, what's the pipeline we should use here? What do we

need to know? What's, what's some technical tricks that other people just didn't have? I mean, I've played, I've played like super simple side-scrolling games for Game Boy works that are just like playing in molasses. I'm like, how, how is this possible? Like this game, this is one of the simplest games I've played on Game Boy. And yet it's just like almost unplayable with how rough it is. And they, you know, it's just they lacked that expertise. They lacked that sort of insight into how the system and the hardware worked. I think there's also something to be said for.

knowing what it's supposed to be like and how you got there the first time. Because I hate that I keep going back to Super Mario Land as my Touchstone, but I really love Super Mario Land. It's a great game. But it doesn't, like, feel like a Mario game. It's a little, Mario's heavier. His jump isn't quite right. He's a little looser in the movements because it's a different group of developers working

on it, which is why that game feels so weird. And I mentioned once that you don't. see all the stuff that happens in Mario Land ever coming back, except Wario. Like, Wario sticks around, but... That's in Wariland, too. I mean, Mario Land, too. Yeah. But, like, all the weird, like, all the weird enemies and, like, let's do a level with

Yochai in it. Let's do a weird go inside Mario's body level. Like, none of that stuff comes back in the way that you'd think it would, because those are really good ideas. Well, yeah, like you said, those weren't made by the core Mario team. And so, as a result, those... things mutated into the Wario games. Yeah.

So that's where all of that was. In the Super Mario Land 1, there's a fly that jumps around like in Mario Brothers. Yeah, it's like Fighter Fly. Which is cool. And the original Arcade Mario Brothers was co-developed by, I want to say, Yoshio Sakamoto, who was the director of Metroid, the designer of Metroid. So, uh, I love that game. Maybe, maybe I'm misremembering, but someone with, with the R&D1 division worked on

Mario Brothers. So that was them drawing from their own personal experience with Mario games to create something that they could put into their own take on the Mario platform. And I think that what sets Metroid 2 apart, and again, I have very limited experience with Metroid on the NES, but like, despite the larger spright, despite the smaller screen, despite the linearity even, it feels very much like Metro. It feels like the sequel to Metroid, regardless of platform. Yeah, but it is still kind of like this weird sort of outlier in the series. And the remake attempts to kind of reel it back in. I mean, you know, with Metroid, your goal was to defeat the mother brain. And in order to do that, you needed to beat two mini bosses, Crayed and Ridley.

Because by defeating them, then it opened up the passage that led to the zone where mother brain and the Metroids were actually staying. So that's like, those are your objectives in Metroid. defeat them of their brain, and en route to doing that, defeat Craydon Ridley. Everything else is kind of tangential. Whereas in this game, your mission is just literally kill all the METROids. So you don't have those, you don't have those like two load-bearing bosses, those two critical points. Instead, it's a matter of like killing, what is it, 38, 39, Metroid?

37 or 8, I don't remember. Somewhere around. I think I've killed two and I'm a 37. Okay, so 39. And spoilers, once you kill all of them, the Queen Metroid at the end, who's actually, I guess, Metroid number 40, is like, whoa, all my babies are dead.

I'm going to repopulate really fast, so she hatches a bunch of Metroid larva, which are the METROids that you fight at the end of the original Metroid, the ones that haven't molded yet. So there's like another 10 of those or another dozen. So, yeah, kill 50 asteroids and leave the planet. How dare you ruin this game for these? I know, I'm sorry about that.

Remember there's a tie-in. I shouldn't have read an anatomy of games. In the beginning of Super Metroid, it refers back to Metroid, too, right? Yeah. I mean, oh, we will slash have talked about my experience of the Super Metroid. That was great. Already in the future. Okay.

I have one other thing to say about the experience of Metroid 2 today is that I, you know, even though I played it back on the day on the Game Boy, I also just downloaded it again on the 3DS to try it. And I'm impressed at how well it's aged and how well it, how good it feels to play and also when I was a kid for some reason I didn't like the sprite of Samus Aaron running

I mentioned the clown boots or something on some other podcasts but you have mentioned her clown boots yeah but I feel like it just didn't bother me as much today when I played it again at the time I was like man this is terrible and animations are bad that's why I thought when I was a kid but now I think it looks great

you've mellowed in your old age yeah congratulations on that rosy colored glassy I literally just popped over in my 3Ds because I want to see these clown boots. Clown boots. What do you think of the music in the game, Chris? I think it sounds a lot like podcasts that I was listening to while I was playing it. Okay.

It's good music. I was impressed by the music. I noticed, I did have the sound off because I don't usually listen to sound when I'm playing like a handheld game because I got that iPhone 7 and unless it's got a lightning port, My headphones do not go in. But I noticed that every time I got a power up, like it would just stop for a few seconds. And I was like, oh, it's...

You can't play a game without sound. That's like half the experience. And the sound effects. I've only been playing it two days. I'll get there. But that's half the fun. I mean, just like the original Metro is so defined by its music, it's half of why it's so great.

I mean, not half, but, you know... No, I agree. The music is a big part of it. And the sound effects. And the sound effects, but the, the, uh, the fan pair of when you acquire stuff is actually much simpler. It's just like, bo-to-bo-boom. That's it.

There's something. There's like a static or something. It's kind of a strange game. The sound design is pretty weird. There's something special about music that sticks with you and your memory. Kind of like smell is so linked to memory. Music is also linked to memory very strongly in emotional experiences. Oh, oh, yeah.

That's one of the most powerful things about. I mean, switch cartridges, the taste also. Wow. I'll never forget that. Yeah, I never forget that damn bitter switch taste. Speaking of which, here's one, no way, that's not Switch. Okay, so I was going to say that for every Nintendo game, there's almost a great, always a great soundtrack that's a big part of the nostalgia for me of playing these games again.

It brings me back when I hear that music is so good in a lot of those games. You will be happy to learn slash have learned that I did play Super Metroid with the sound dog. I mean, you can't not play that one without sound. You can't not play. I think I put too many negatives in there. I have no idea what I just said. You absolutely need sound, is what I'm saying. As someone who tends to fall on the vania side, more than the Metroid side, Metrovenias. Like, I am well acquainted with how a soundscape can shape a game. And I do firmly believe that the moon theme from Duck Tales is maybe like the second best song ever.

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Get up to date on gaming by signing up today and start playing all the latest games absolutely free for 30 days. Yeah, so anyway, so anyway, um, I'm I'm serious, you know, before we move on to talk about the remake, what do you think of some of the things that Metroid 2 does with, like, the concept of Metroid, specifically like the METeroids themselves. In the original game, I always thought it was kind of cool. In the original game, how the game itself is named after these things you don't see until the very end. Like everyone, you know, you see the meme like, why can't Metroid crawl? Like, people are like, oh, it's the girl Metroid or the boy Metroid, the robot Metroid, whatever his name is. is um never seen that you've never seen that yeah okay get on the internet sometime it's fun i haven't either actually i'm still on bbs is okay so so someone this is getting sidetracked but someone you know on meverse where you can like leave notes on games and stuff and drawings and that sort of thing some kid played super metroid for the first time and couldn't figure out how to duck and uh like into the morph ball like he would press down once i guess and you know

she crouches when you do that, but she doesn't actually go all the way down. But he needed to get into a hole, the passage that you're supposed to roll into as a morph ball. So he posted on Meverse, like, why can't Metroid crawl? And that became a meme. Like, you know, in case you ever wonder why video games hold people's hands, it's because here is this basic feature in the game that it actually tells you, like there's a little pop-up when you get the morph ball, like press down twice to turn into a ball. So anyway, yes, that's that's that.

What were we talking about? That's funny. The Metroid themselves, like species. Yeah. I think you're talking about Zelda. Right. Yes, Zelda. Yeah, he's great.

I really like him. So, yeah, so, so Metroid, like, the game is named after not the main villain, not the hero, not the place, but these creatures that appear at the very end. So it kind of creates a sense of buildup. Like, you know there are, there are, there are, there are mentioned in the manual and it says on the like the introductory screen like go stop the the parasitic life form Metroid so it all feels kind of climactic and that final sequence where you're just running through the the final passages of the mother brain's lair the donut and the only yes the only

enemies you face are the the donuts like there's always it's always time to make the donuts there and and then the Metroid's like it feels really like oh this is what it's all been leading up to yeah and they're scary don't they jump on you drain your energy away? They don't jump on you. They fly. But yeah, they zip down onto you. And you have like a frame in which they grab onto you where you can shoot them and freeze them. So you have to do that and then hit them with missiles. Oh, yeah. I remember that. But this game, this game changes that. Like,

Metroids aren't the things that appear at the very end. They appear all throughout the game. They're kind of the point. Like you're there to exterminate the Metroid. And they change. They evolve. They have different forms. And you don't have to use the ice beam on them anymore. You just use missiles. They lose that like two-step process that's so stressful the first time you encounter them because you see them in Metroid and you're like, I got to shoot it with missiles and it doesn't hurt them. I had a feeling about that the first time I played Metro 2 as a kid, but I cannot transfer it into words somehow. I remember thinking, seeing that the first Alpha

Metroid, it looked like it had a big pregnant belly floating amoeba paramecium thing. And I was like, man, this is weird. What have they done to my dear precious Metro? that look like a jellyfish. But they do a good job of communicating that because the first time you encounter an alpha Metroid, it's in the process of molting. Oh, yeah, it comes out of the... So it's like, you see the shell and you're like,

oh, my God, it's a Metroid. And then all of a sudden it pops out of the shell. And you're like, what's happening? This is not what I expected. That works later in the game when you find the molded shell. You're like, oh, we're going to find one of those around here. Every single Metroid in the game is announced, like, you know it's nearby because there is a molded shell.

It's a really good idea. It builds tension, too. Like when I was mapping the game, I actually made a note of all the molded shells because they're like really important waypoints. You see the shell and you're like, well, you know, I've been to a shaft that looks like this several times, but this is the only one that has a molded shell in it. So this one's different. Like I know somewhere there's a Metroid around here.

I think from a storytelling standpoint, calling the first game Metroid and not, you know, Adventures of Samus or whatever. And then only having them show up at the end makes it feel like the first part of a saga. Even if they did not know that they would eventually make 10 of these. And then the move from taking you to the point of knowing that these things are so deadly

and then showing them evolving and changing in the next game, that's like really solid, like compelling serial storytelling. And the way that it does that way that it does that with, you know, you do see the first one emerge from what you know as a Metroid. And then you get those discarded chills. And it's a really good bit of

storytelling in a game that otherwise, you know, doesn't use, like, doesn't have like Sammas talking to a computer as she goes up and down elevators. Yeah. Yeah. And I like those games. I will throw that out. They work on their own, on their own

level. But yeah, the idea of the Metroid life cycle is really interesting because it shows them as something other than just like these parasites flying around. Like clearly there's more to them. They turn into these giant bipeds that are very, very powerful. And so you kind of feel like, oh, maybe I do need to wipe these things out because they seem very dangerous. I don't remember the bipeds. Oh, yeah. The Zeta and the Omega Metroid's. They are? Yeah. It's been a long time. And you fight an Omega Metroid at the end of Metroid Fusion. It's the final final boss after you complete the escape sequence. Have you beaten Fusion?

Yeah, a long time ago. Okay, yeah, you beat the SAX, and then you have to escape. And when you get to the escape, you reach the bay where your ship is. But your ship's missing, and there's an Omega Metroid that's, like, basically twice the height of Samus, and it pretty much kills her in one hit. Kind of like, you know, mother brain of the, oh, you haven't beaten that one yet. Never mind. Yeah. Anyway.

The Chozo. I think that's a cool thread that goes through the Metroid series. Yeah, that's one that I like in here, too. So, you know, you fight through these increasingly big, increasingly deadly metroids that go from being like jellyfish to these sort of like spider crab creatures to basically a dinosaur like walking around on its hind legs. And, you know, they play around the idea of those chozo statues a lot. Like you're clearly fighting through ruins again like you did on the original Metroid.

But things happen with those little statues that give you the orbs that have items in them. There's one statue where you go and you shoot the orb, and instead of being an item, it's actually a creature that's pretending to be an item and has, like, stolen the, it's the spring ball boss. It's stolen the spring ball and, like, imitated it. So when you shoot it, you have to fight it in order to claim the spring ball. There's another place where there's just like a room. This is a Metroid, too. This is a Metroid, too, yeah.

The Springball guardian. It's like an armadillo, and I think the only way you can kill it is to bomb it. Yeah. Armadillo, okay. Yeah. writing that down. Yeah, yeah, do that. Bomb it.

There's another room where you go to, and it's just like a room full of those orbs that you see on the Chozo statues, and you have to shoot them until you find the power that's hidden in there. And then when you get to the end of the game, the very final area of the game, there's like 10 areas, and the final one is pretty much empty. Like, there are just a handful of enemies and some automated defenses around, but mostly it's empty because it's like the Metroid Queen's layer.

So it kind of creates this sense. of ominousness. Ammonosity. Ammonosity, yes. That sounds better than ominousness. And the Choso statues there have all been, like, shattered and broken. So there's, there's, you can pick up the ice beam if you need it. Like, all the different weapons are in a couple of rooms there.

Because you can only hold one kind of beam at a time and you have to have the ice beam to kill the Metroid. And switch back to ice beam. Yes. But in those rooms, like the statues have been broken and the orbs that have. have the weapons are just, like, laying on the side of the floor. So you feel like the queen, like, knew what was up, and she was like, I'm going to mess up these dudes.

I hate them. I'm going to make things hard for Samus. That's awesome. Another little bit of story-telling that I really like along those lines is that the Metroids in their original form are so deadly. Like, their end-game monsters, they suck out your energy. And then seeing them throughout Metroid 2, you get this sense that it really is, like, a, the first form is designed to protect them.

And there's this bit of vulnerability after they emerge from it that you can deal with at a much lower power level. And I think that's really cool. Like, they're changing into something more dangerous. But there is a period of time where they are much more vulnerable when they're kind of between forms. I wonder if they actually thought of that because that's pretty brilliant. I mean, this series owes, teasing out all kinds of levels here, Chris.

The series owes so much to the alien movie. franchise. And that's how the aliens work. You have the facehuggers that pop out of the eggs. And they're like pretty much, they're not indestructible, but they're extremely durable. They like are able to survive in space. And they're designed to basically wrap onto a host and be there as long as they need in order to implant an egg. And if you try to like remove them, then they tighten their tail around the victim's neck. And if you try to cut them, then they start to do other things. So it's like, Yeah, basically this one form that sort of starts the life cycle is extremely durable. And then when the little chest buster pops out, it's tiny and has to go hide until it can start to grow. If you think about the Metroid, the original Metroids in Metroid suck, you know, do grab onto you like a facehugger, I guess, kind of suck away your life force. Oh, yeah, there's a really direct line. I mean, there's a bad guy called Ridley, as in Ridley Scott. So it's not really, yeah, it's not really that subtle a connection, and that's fine.

It's a good expansion on that theme because they grew it every time. So here's my one question about Metroid colon Samus Returns. Does it have a map? It has a huge map. Good, because that's the one thing I'm really missing playing through the Game Boy version. I will say, though, that the Game Boy version has a much. simpler map. Samus returns... Wait, there's a map?

No, I mean, just like the layout of the world. Sorry. You have to map it yourself. Go get some graph paper. There's a map and then there's a map. Do you need to take some graph paper home with you? I might. There's no in-game map. Right. But the game world, the game layout, is

very similar to that of the remake, but much simpler. I actually posted something about this on Retronauts.com back before the remake came out. where I compared like the first area of Metroid 2 to the first area of Samus Returns. And like the shape and arrangement of the overall world is pretty much the same. But Samus Returns is very dense.

It adds like twists and turns and puzzles and alternate routes and one-way paths and that sort of thing to these same processes. Where in Samus Return or in Return of Samus, Metroid 2, you're just like, you start at point A and you run to point B, and there's not really much room for doing anything besides, like, trod forward and kill the Metroid. I feel so embarrassed right now to have gotten so thoroughly lost in this game where you guys are like, oh, it's very linear. It's just so straightforward.

Well, no, I mean, that's the thing is that because it is so visually monotonous, that it is easy to get lost. And there, it's really, there aren't a lot of waypoints. You kind of have to use the Metroid shells to sort of orienture yourself. But it is a game that really does benefit from mapping. It's why they invented graph paper. This thing I've been doing where I've been mapping games is, you know, at this point it's just kind of for fun and for novelty.

But, you know, back in the day, it was a genuine need. Essential. Yes. Absolutely. And that is a game, I would say one of the last games, really, where it was really essential. Because after that, you know, Super Metroid, you get an in-game map. Well, they may have printed a map and Nintendo Power for that. Most likely.

Because, I mean, I've made my way through it. I'm pretty sure I've completed it at one point. Using Nintendo Power Map is just not, just doesn't have the same connection to the game world as creating your own. That's definitely true. It's sort of a form of cheating in a way, but it's like, you know. What, the Nintendo Power Map? Yeah, using a map that someone has already made for you. It's not cheating.

It's just, I don't know. Yeah, I'd take him to them all the time, but I also use the game genie, you know. If you're not willing to cheat, I don't think you're very serious about wiping all the Metroids from the galaxy and putting the galaxy at peace. Thought I was just half-hearted about that. Well, I advocate using game genies, like, well, I advocated this about 12 years ago when I started my blog, that game genies are cool because they let you enjoy the game to its fullest. If you can't, if you don't have the skill to complete it and you paid $50 for it,

why not enjoy it all the way? Yeah, my feeling is, as long as you're not affecting anyone else's enjoyment of a game, uh, why not use cheat codes or genie, game genies or whatever. Like in a multiplayer game, no, don't do that. That's just, that's dickish. Don't do that. But when you're playing solo in a game like this, who cares? Han Solo. Yes, solo the movie. Solo. Okay. So let's talk about the remake. Sell me on this remake. Because my question is, what's the full title of the remake?

Metroid. Samus Returns. Okay. So, sorry, I forgot the colon. Metroid 2, Samus Returns is the original, right? Return of Samus. Return of Samus. So this is Metroid, Samus Returns.

And when they do a sequel, it'll be Metroid, Samus Returns, Two. Samus re-return? Is it like in storyline canon, is it meant to, go between Metroid and Super Metroid? Like, is it a storyline remake? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is a top to bottom remake of the original game.

Okay. By which I mean the Game Boy Metroid 2. So it's a heart gold, soul, silver situation. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is, it's a Pokemon reference. It is, yeah, they sat down, by they, I mean, Mercury Steam, the developer, sat down with the original game and said,

let's flesh this out. But the objectives are the same. you have 39 or whatever Metroid's to kill. You have the same areas to go through. You have the same general power-up cycle. It's all pretty much identical. It's just this version is much denser.

And they've added some new features and some new weapons and stuff. So here's my question. By denser, you mean more stuff happening in every screen instead of just wandering around faceless corridors for a while? And I kind of feel like they went too far with that, but we can, we can talk about that. So my question is, as someone who's new to Metroid 2, if I had the choice, which I did slash

do, of paying $4 for Metroid 2 on virtual console, or, you know, swinging by Target on the way home and paying $30 for Metroid. I think it's $40.40. So it needs to be 13 times as good. If that's how you think about games, you know, as someone who is certainly enjoying, you know, obviously enjoys older video games, I would not be on Retronauts if I wasn't, but like also really enjoys like modern sensibilities applied to the formula. Like, is it worth it for me to get one or the other or worth it to get both? Um, I mean, I think at this point, Metroid 2 has become sort of a historic curiosity, an artifact. because this game does supplant it in a lot of ways. Just like the original Metroid is kind of an artifact now because Zero Mission came out and did the Metroid thing better.

I think for the most part, Metroid-Sammis returns does do things better than Metroid-2. Like the controls feel better. There's much more dynamic play. Like Samus can aim freely in 360 degrees of, space. It kind of has like a, you know, like a contra-shatter soldier or Gunstar Heroes thing where you press the L-trigger and Samus locks in place and then... Yeah, moving the analog stick causes her to aim in any direction. So it doesn't try to do

like dual analog, which is nice, because that would be a mess. Instead, you kind of lock yourself into place and aim that way. I'd like to just point out. Chris's question gets to the existential reason for actually playing old video games or not somehow. Like, there's a few reasons that people do it. And I think one of the reasons I do it the most is for nostalgia purposes, because I'm reliving experiences from my youth or my past, and it makes me feel good. But there's a whole new generation of people who want, I guess they probably like to play old video games that are from before their time because it's an art form that's,

you know, like any classic piece of art was crafted at a different time. in a different social situation. And, you know, if you want to go back and experience that, that's fine. But if you want to play a modern game, you know, that's just with modern sensibilities, you just play Samus Returns, the whatever title is. I would say the original Metro 2 does have value because it is a different play experience. It's much more straightforward. I mean, I know you've gotten lost in it, but I think after you kind of get a sense of how the game structure works,

and get a feel for it, that stops being an issue. Like, it is, I do remember getting lost a lot when I first started playing that game and thinking, like, oh, I need to go back to the beginning. I did that. I went back to the ship and was like, there's nothing to do up here. What about my spider ball? Yep, it's a classic bunder. Yeah.

But eventually, like, you kind of get the rhythm and the feel of it. And it's very direct. Like, you go out from the little save base and you find a quarter you haven't been down and you figure out where the Metroid is and you kill it. and you either say, do I keep on pressing forward and try to kill some more Metroids, or do I need to go back and stock up on health and missiles and just kind of explore from that angle? Whereas Samus returns, like the whole world has been turned into this intricate puzzle platforming scenario. Like everywhere, you are constantly

trying to figure out, like, what's the route I need to take? Where do I, like, do I need to bomb up here? Do I need to bomb down there? You even have a power where you emit like a radar pulse. Oh, yeah. And it'll show you like where there are weak points in the map. Yeah, it'll reveal the map on the bottom screen where you have like the general like overview map at the game. But then within the actual play space, vulnerable points in the environment will flash. So like you're you're constantly doing that. And it's a much it's a much bigger game even though there are fewer areas. I'm, almost about 10 hours in and have beaten, defeated about two-thirds of the Metroids, whereas Metroid 2, you can finish that in like four or five hours pretty

easily. So it's probably like a game that's three or four times in terms of actual content and volume, the size of Metroid 2, just because it's so the, it's so labyrinthine. I think there's two fundamental ideas with with something like this. And I think it's that on the one hand, seeing the way that a like groundbreaking game

is refined over the years, like that approach is refined, can in some respect eliminate the need to go back, unless you're just very curious about the history. Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers, is a great game. But given the choice, I would play Mario 3

any time because it takes a lot of those ideas and I think does them so much better, even though I think Mario 1 is valuable because it's the foundation of the platformer. On the other hand, I feel like there are games that are so good that a well-crafted game can stand up to the test of time. And, you know, to use an example that we're going to be talking about a lot, Symphony of the Night is as good as any game that is derivative of Symphony of the Night. It holds up. Like, it's... It's as good as anything that comes out today as a Metroidvania.

Likewise, Super Metroid, but you don't know that yet. I don't, I don't slash do know that. And we'll slash will have talked about it. I don't know what you can do. Sure, sure, sure. I think the original Super Mario Brothers is wonderful and it holds up. Yeah, it's very good. I think it still has value as its own play experience.

I think a better example is Sonic 1, 2, and 3. It's like, people were always, like, what's the best Sonic game? They will go, like, Sonic 3 or Sonic 2 instead of Sonic 1, because they're all kind of the same exact thing, just a little more, added to it. My vote is Sonic 2 personally, but apparently people really like Sonic 3 and get angry if you don't. Or Sonic CD. And Mario might not be the right. Yeah, but I see what you're saying. I get what you're saying. Does it supersede the game? The earlier game, does it replace it with better play quality?

Exactly. Is it worth going back to it? Is it a better experience because it's been refined or does it hold up? I have a weird thing. I was just thinking how I was born in 1981. I grew up with an Atari 2,600, and Atari 800 and NES, everything has come since then. So I've witnessed pretty much the majority of video game history, commercial video game history in my life, when it was relatively new. And so I don't really know how people perceive that. If you're someone who's 20 years old, do you go back and play a Game Boy game? And how do you feel about that?

It might be torture to play a little black and white game or whatever. I have no idea, honestly. I think some people are more into it than others. I will say that I'm not going to be a lot of it. I will say that in the case of Metroid 2 versus 6th, I will say that in the case of Metroid 2 versus Samus returns. The remake does introduce one very specific mechanic that really changes the flow of the game. And to me, is kind of a make it or break it sort of thing, depending on whether you like it or not.

And that's the melee counter system. I'm very curious about this. I don't like that. I don't like it. So in the original game, you're just Samus running around. You shoot stuff. You kill it. Very few of the enemies actually have any awareness of Samus.

They're just kind of there doing their thing. So there's not... Bromaging in the leaves. Yeah, I mean, you're just like wiping out wildlife that doesn't even care that you're there. It'll hurt you if you touch it, but if you don't touch it, then it's pretty much doesn't care that you exist. Whereas in Samus returns, everything in the environment hates you and will aggressively attack you. Coming to get you. And also, everything that you fight takes a lot of bullets to destroy or a lot of phaser blast.

Like, everything is a bullet sponge. And, you know, you get more powerful ways. weapons, you get the plasma beam and then the spacer and so forth, and those, those add strength to your attacks. So eventually the enemy is at the beginning of the game, go down in like two shots. But, yeah, in the beginning, you're sitting there going, bo, but then you, you're trying to aim up diagonally and all this stuff. And then I would kill to just be able to play with a deep head. I swear, because it's hard to duck with that analog stick or something. I can't remember why, but I don't really like the 360-degree analog gaming. And so, yeah, the,

The design choice there is to make enemies really difficult to kill by default. And what you're supposed to do is play more of a reactive style, where you wait for an enemy to spot you, and then go agro. Like it'll dive at you or dash at you. And when that happens, you have a single melee attack, which is not a punch. It's like an arm swing where you smack the enemy with your arm cannon. And that will stun it. If the enemy is in the process of charging at you, that will

stun it and then you'll automatically lock onto it and you can shoot once and because the enemy is stunned, you'll kill it in a single shot. So the game is really, really keyed around this sort of like reactive play style where instead of just killing things that you see, you stand there and wait for it to agro and then counter and then kill. But I feel like this has a lot of problems. One, like, it really bogs down the play when you're doing backtracking. Like, you know, it's fine when you're exploring someplace and every enemy you face is kind of like, oh, I haven't seen this enemy before or I haven't dealt with this placement of an enemy. And so you're kind of like fighting through that encounter for the first time.

But when you're going back through a space, you've already sort of mastered and conquered and you still have to pause and wait for an enemy to attack you, it's frustrating. It's also frustrating because this game keeps that zone. zoomed-in viewpoint. So a lot of times you'll like jump up or, you know, even pull yourself up onto a cliff or something or onto a ledge. And as soon as the camera

zooms up, like to catch up with you, there's an enemy diving at you. And before you even have a chance to respond, it's hit you. And when enemies agorat you, it hits you for like 30 or 40 or 50 hit points. Yeah, it's heavy. They hit really hard. Like at the beginning of the game,

you take two or three of those hits and you're dead. so you have to really like I don't know there's no way to really counteract that I would say well you have to remember where the enemies are but you're covering so much space and so much of it is arranged sort of the same it's not really realistic to expect people to know like oh well I'm in the space that looks exactly like this other space but there's going to be a little flying guy here that I'm not going to see

until I've jumped up onto the legend it attacks me so I don't know it just it's kind of frustrating and sometimes enemies don't aggro at you so you're like like standing there waiting for it to agro, because if you take the initiative and shoot at it, then when it does agro, like you're in the middle of a shot and you haven't, there's like a little bit of recovery time before you can do the counterattack move. So you're like standing there waiting for it to agroo and it just like jumps into you. And it doesn't hit you as hard as if it's aggrowing, but it still causes damage. So then you're like taking hits while waiting for

the enemy to do its little program charge attack thing. That sounds like garbage. It's It gets better as you go along and you become stronger. Any game mechanic that makes you wait and then also you take damage while waiting sounds very bad. You can't take damage. It's just sometimes the agro attack doesn't trigger the way it's supposed to. That doesn't happen a lot. But it's just like an example of something that's kind of annoying. I don't want to misrepresent this.

It's not like the worst thing I've ever seen in a game. I just feel like it needed a little more time in the oven. Like they needed to rethink it a little bit. I was going to ask you if you think that's a function of essentially taking, you know, remaking Metroid 2, which is a game that came out on a system that has a Dpad and two buttons and putting it on a system that has a Dpad, a analog stick, four face buttons, two shoulder buttons. And if you've got a new 3DS like a C stick as well. And a touchscreen.

And a touchscreen. We got to have something. for all this stuff to do. Well, I feel like this game, with Sammons Returns, they try to make it sort of like a holistic Metroid. They wanted it to be a little bit Metroid 2, a little bit Metroid Fusion, a little bit OtherM. Like, the melee counter thing is very, very much like OtherM's

Dodge reaction ability. I still haven't played that. That's the only one I've never played. It plays pretty well, but the story is terrible. So I feel like it's an attempt, They made an attempt to, like, bring all these different Metroid influences together into the remake. And it works for the most part, but there are definitely some hangups where I'm like, I wish they had spent a little longer sort of, you know, like another six months to say, let's really make this work and didn't quite pull it off. My other big frustration with the game is that I'm 10 hours into it and it's just so exhausting because there's no, there's no change in the pace.

of the game. It's just constantly like finding your way through these convoluted environments. There's like one event where a thing chases you through a room, and that's pretty much it. But if you look at, you know, Super Metroid, you have all kinds of different spaces to explore. Some of them are very straightforward. And then you

have, you know, you get underwater and the underwater zone, it has these enormous open areas where you're like navigating it with a space jump. And then you go into like some sort of lab or something. thing, where there are biological experiments, and then you dig underground. So, like, the feel of the environments constantly changes, like, the flow of everything in the better Metroid games, whereas in this one, it's just convoluted maze after

convoluted maze. Do you feel like in this Samus Returns, you know, we're talking about the distinctive areas with the different colors. If you're thinking about an older game, that's more of a cartoonish illustration. compared to this new game has a more sort of realistic graphical style. You know, it's more, it's 3D modeled and it's... I mean, every area has its own kind of vibe. Like, up near the surface, there's, you know, temple ruins.

And then you go down further and you're, like, in a mine area where you see machines in the background, like, digging and, you know, collecting Earth and that sort of thing. And then you get into more like volcanic zones and poison miasma and so forth. I get to like a hot area or something. I just couldn't get into this game. I feel like it's a competent game that's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I just didn't feel it.

And I felt like you feel 10 hours in. I felt like that like one hour in. And I really haven't been able to force myself to play it again. Yeah, I liked it for the first hour. And then after that, I started to get weary. And I really, like, I stopped playing for about a month and a half after, I don't know. I got to sort of halfway where I am now and was just like, oh, God, this is really irritating. and it gets a little better after that.

You get some equipment and some weapons that make things a little livelier, and that's better. But it is still very repetitive and monotonous. I guess that's keeping it true to the Metroid 2 experience, but I just wish that they had stepped back and said maybe the whole game shouldn't be just these convoluted puzzle areas. Maybe we should have some big open spaces.

Maybe like even, you know, in Metroid 2, you have those bases with the save points and there's kind of like a large space around them. Here, even those don't feel open like they did in Metroid 2. Each of those areas is very broken up and puzzle-like

and it's like, oh, well, you need to get one of 12 different weapons or abilities and then come back once you have that ability. Like they give you more stuff to arm Samus with, but then they break up the world with different kinds of doors

and obstacles and so forth that you have to have that make use of those new abilities she has. So it becomes very segmented and very sort of slow-paced to get those. Was this new game developed by Americans? Spaniards.

Mercury's team is based in Spain. But it was overseen by Yoshio Sakamoto, the original designer of Metroid, for Metroid. Someone who did not work on Metroid 2. What's that? So what happened, Yoshio? What happened to this game?

I don't know. I mean, he also oversaw other films, so he's not infallible. Well, I feel like the perfect Metroid remake was Zero Mission. They did it so well. I loved that game. Yeah, they brought in a lot of elements of Fusion to Zero Mission. But it was still a free exploring Metroid game, and it had a new area at the end and stuff. Well, it had several new areas.

It had Super Metroid elements, too, right? Like, couldn't you shoot diagonally in that one? Right. I mean, Fusion built on Super Metroid, but simplifying. it for a system with just two face buttons. And that was developed by it. And Zero Mission did the same thing. Well, was Fusion developed by Nintendo

in Japan? Okay. I can't remember. I didn't like Fusion that much because it wasn't, it was more linear, too. You had an area you beat it, and you went to the next area and you beat it. Right, but I'm talking just in terms of mechanics and like feel, like the way Sammas controls. They really brought in

you know, like the wall grab and the building to pull yourself up and so forth. Yeah. And the simplifying weapon system. This tries to do something similar, but it, you know, also brings an other M. And then it adds new stuff. So it becomes a little convoluted. I don't know.

Like, I was, I was really, like, positive about it at first. And then I was really down on it. Now I'm somewhere in between. Like, I would give it a solid seven out of ten. You mellowed in your old age. No. I'm actually grumpier than I used to be. I'm just less sarcastic about it.

But, yeah, I would say it's, it's good, but it really kind of misses the point in a few areas. And if Mercury Steam does develop any further Metroid games, I would like for them to stop and step back and say, wow, maybe this experience shouldn't just be the same thing for 15 hours. Maybe we should, you know, try to vary things a little bit. It's okay to mix things up. Metroid is not just solving, you know, puzzle platform riddles.

Like there is more to it than that. and I would like for them to get some of that into their next game. And they say, okay, Jeremy, we'll do it for you. That's right. They will. So any final thoughts. Whatever that is in Spanish. C.

C. C. C, signor. Any final thoughts on Metroid, Samus Returns, et cetera, before we wrap up this overly lengthy micro episode. Micro. God, we did it again. Yep.

Ten hours. You chuckleheads. I'm excited because this means our Metroidvania 3 recording is going to be eight hours long. Oh, gosh. It'll be just like Samus Returns. It'll be way too long and it's all the same thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you have any thoughts? No, like, I just, as someone coming to it now, I was genuinely impressed with Metroid 2. Like, feels good to play. But what about Samus Returns? Have you played it yet? I had not played it. Okay. Are you interested in playing it after hearing me talk about it?

Not after that melee counter thing. That's something I was really curious about because I thought like it's, if it wasn't a, the idea of like melee counter stuff being necessary to deal with enemies is one that always turns me off. Like even in Bayonetta, you could like kill something without doing the dodger. You can kill stuff, but it just takes a long time and it's not efficient. I feel like Samus Returns lacks joy. It doesn't have the joy that makes you want to play the game that's exciting and fun. It's like, it's just like I'm just showing up. just play through me already do it get over it it's not like let's do this together and have fun

and explore this wonderful environment it's like no you got a melee encounter everybody all the time like do this dumb thing and aim 360 degrees and you can't duck I I think it plays well I would I would like to them to dial way the hell back on the melee counters but yeah it's the it's the exploration of it something about it's missing to me you know your taste may vary and it does I'm speaking to everyone out there. Fortunately, I have another game to get through now, as listeners know. Okay. Because they've listened to our third Metroid-A-episode.

Speaking of which, why don't we wrap this and record that third Metroidvania episode that we keep referring back to we chronologically... Time is an illusion. It is. It's all wibbly wobbly. All right. So, for Retronauts, this has been Jeremy Parrish and Ben Jedwards and Chris Sims. Chris assumed. It's also at the same time.

Yes, no. Retronauts, of course, is a podcast that you are listening to, and you probably found it at iTunes on Retronauts.com at Podcast 1 or on the Podcast 1 app. You found it someplace else? Wow, crazy. That's cool. Thanks. For myself, you can find me writing at Retronauts.com. That's what I do. I'm on Twitter as GameSpite. I also make videos on YouTube. Look for Jeremy Parrish. That's one hour. And it's called Retronauts Video Chronicles. I recently have made videos about Super Mario 64, paving the way for the release of Odyssey, which is now out. And there will be a 64 versus Odyssey comparison, possibly by the time this episode goes live. I don't know. Probably.

But you should check it out. It's cool and stuff. So, yes. Benj, what about you? I am a guy who writes articles, and you can read my stuff at Benjedwards.com and click on a list of everything I've written. and vintagecomputing.com. And you can find me on Twitter at Benj Edwards and Patreon.

Patreon.com slash Benj Edwards. And Chris? You can find links to everything that I write at the dashisb.com or head over to your local common bookstore where you can get stuff like SwordQuest, Ash versus Army of Darkness, Deadpool, Bad Blood, X-Men 92,

downset fight if we're going to go back to 2014 on that. I also write columns online, which you can find linked at the aforementioned address. And I'm on Twitter and Tumblr. as the ISB. T-H-E-I-S-B. All right. So thanks everyone for listening. We'll be back on Monday with a very marginally lengthier episode that we will call a full episode. And Bob will be posting another

micro in two weeks that will probably actually be closer to micro than this episode. Thanks for your patience. With Domino's week-long With Domino's week-long carry-out deal, you can carry out large, three-topping pizzas, and now, medium three-topping handmade pan pizzas for $7.99 each. It's fantastic news. Put puns? You mean pans? Calling all panatics for two layers of cheese on crispy golden crust.

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I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it.

In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder.

I'm Ed Donahue.