Systems: Game Boy Advance, Wii U
Release Date: February 9, 2004
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo R&D1
Play Time: 5 Hours 24 Minutes / 9 Hours 8 Minutes*
I am currently planning for this to be a shorter article, partly because it is a 17-year-old game, partly because it is a re-imagining of the 1986 NES game Metroid, but also because.
Before starting, all I really knew about the game was that it was, as mentioned in the previous sentence, that it was a re-imagining of the original Metroid game using a similar engine and graphics to Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion (it is the same engine as Metroid Fusion). I also knew that this was the introduction of Samus's Zero Suit (hence why it is called the Zero Suit and not just a Suit). Lastly, I knew that the original NES Metroid was unlockable after beating the game. I figured that there would be expanded areas or completely revamped based on how Zebes looked in Super Metroid compared to the original areas, so I did not go into Metroid: Zero Mission expecting a 1:1 remake with just a different coat of paint. What I was not expecting was the introduction of new bosses, new and established abilities along with an entirely new section that finally allowed Samus to crawl.
There was quite a lot in
Metroid: Zero Mission that I could talk about and only so much time I want to devote to this article, so I am going to ignore all of the cutscenes that appeared at various times of the game (which were great because 2D
Metroid games have not always been heavy on story or exposition outside of the manual). I am also going to only mention here the changes to the maps by not having the two column-tubes in Brinstar that divide Crateria and Norfair were welcome rather than their original straight up/down design from the original. That goes the same for the rest of the game, that adding definition to various regions and maps to make them more interesting, although I did miss a lot of the translucent business in Norfair as the design went more for an opaque bubbliness (credit for the pictures from the
Metroid.fandom.com page for
Metroid: Zero Mission because I was not about to go back into the game to play for a combined two hours when I could just
borrow two images to try to make my point). Aside from here, I am also going to not bring into detail the inclusion of a lot more environmental puzzles, such as the giant grubs in Norfair and how to get around using enemies as frozen stepping stones after you gain the Screw Attack and just pulverize them while trying to jump out of the sludge.
So then what have I left myself to talk about? Primarily the gameplay I think. The gameplay felt 100% like I was playing the NES Metroid but with all of the quality of life improvements that came along with Metroid II: Return of Samus and Super Metroid, although some took a bit of time to get used to. Oddly enough, kneeling/crouching was introduced in Metroid II on the Game Boy and thankfully was brought back here, which meant that some enemy designs had to be revamped to take into account Samus' two heights of firing; at times I had to remind myself that I could crouch and fire. I was kind of surprised that Wall Jumping was kept in because it could have meant a lot of redesigning areas to prevent players from exploring out-of-reach areas too early. Although it still felt as difficult as ever, being similar mechanically to the Wall Jumps in both Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion; read: I find it pretty difficult to pull off. I loved that could again cling to the sides of ledges but that was a skill that you learned along the way and did not start off with, introduced in Metroid Fusion and just saves so much time when climbing those vertical tubes and not having to bomb-jump your way into the tiny MorphBall-sized tubes; and especially so once you get the Space Jump and can jump in MorphBall form.
I was very much surprised that the game did not end after killing Mother Brain and exiting the escape tube/chamber behind Mother Brain leading back to the surface. Let me move back for a second. That Mother Brain fight was a lot more difficult than I remember it being on the NES. Maybe I did not have enough Energy Tanks, but I found myself constantly getting knocked off the two small platforms by either the line-energy-shots, the freezable circular projectiles, or Mother Brain's eyeball blast. After dying a few times (at least five), I realized I had forgotten about the Screw Attack, but once that kicked in, I still found it difficult to Screw jump my way out of the muck that causes Samus to move slower and jump less high even with the High Jump Boots. There is a lot of on-screen noise here and that makes sense for the final boss fight, or at least that was how it was supposed to feel because Mother Brain is the final boss in the game, but the level of difficulty I felt in this fight felt significantly higher than any of the previous bosses, requiring not so much figuring out a puzzle-of sort to damage Mother Brain, but an all-out battle requiring the player to keep track of so many on-screen elements that it felt reminiscent of a boss fight from 1942 or other shmups; I am not great at those games because of all of the on-screen noise/elements. This was that moment in the game where I questioned if I was going to be able to beat the game without spamming the Save State Respawning mechanic that is a part of Virtual Console games. I did not resort to that tactic and instead took on Mother Brain's final chamber from the save room, aptly placed two rooms prior. But that is somewhat beside the point. The point is, after the battle with Mother Brain, the game is not over.
So Samus flees the self-destructing planet and is attacked by the chitinous Space Pirates that were first introduced in Super Metroid, and their inclusion here in the end-game, I was pretty excited by. When used in Super Metroid, it felt like the player should have already been familiar with them three games in, but for whatever reason, it was not until game 3 that they were first introduced, now retconned to be included in Samus' first mission (or at least her first video game representation of this mission). The majority of this epilogue mission, Samus' ship having crashed on Chozodia, the Chozo homeworld, is to again strip Samus of all of the upgrades you had grown accustomed to, take her out of her Power Suit, and introduce her Zero Suit and a weak stun gun. This mission being all about speed and stealth was a drastic change of pace when normally the game is literally run and gun, and I was pretty excited about it. Add in Samus crawling, being what the original Metroid developers could not do on the NES hence the origin of the Morph Ball, was pretty exciting too.
This whole area, Samus working her way through the Pirate mothership and through Chozo ruins is broken up into sections bookended by save rooms, and there were a number of these areas that contained new elements meant to force Samus to not trip electronic sensors which would send a flurry of Space Pirates towards Samus' location with their clawed-plasma-canon's blasting. Out of her Power Suit, Samus is soft and bleedy, often dying in only a few hits from the Space Pirates, so there was a lot of restarting for me, but each area functioned as a larger puzzle to work your way through without tripping any of the sensors. There was one large open area that I could consistently make about 2/3rds of the way through before a higher-than-I-wanted jump was always made, setting off the alarm and starting the foot race to escape the Pirate pursuit. Eventually, Samus regains her Power Suit through some backstory telling and it is genuinely satisfying being able to take out the Space Pirates with one shot after spending the last hour or two avoiding them.
Oddly enough, there was another final boss battle here fighting against a robotized-version of Ridley (Mecha-Ridley?) and I am now wondering about Ridley's return in Super Metroid if he/it/they were destroyed when ZR388 blew up (or when Samus killed them, or when Samus killed whatever robot Ridley's mind/consciousness was uploaded into). But that fight took place (again) because it is written that following Metroid II: Return of Samus, every Metroid game must have a Ridley boss fight in it, and then you flee the exploding Space Pirate Mothership. Overall, I have mixed feelings about the end of the game. First off, this post Mother Brain ending felt a little anticlimactic, I think because you just destroyed Mother Brain and an entire planet, then you are attacked and have to survive without your Power Suit and then fight the second version of Ridley. And while Ridley is a recurring boss in the franchise, this battle did not feel like the ultimate boss battle that the game was leading up towards. And while I do enjoy the subverting of expectations, here it just felt like an excuse to have Ridley in the game again. I honestly feel like it could have been a better ending if there had been something to activate that triggered the ship to self-destruct. That being said, I loved the change of pace in this new section of the game. I loved having Samus out of her Power Suit and going up against the Space Pirates with only a stun pistol and while feeling a little lost on the general geography of the stage, I loved the inclusion of Chozodia and the flashback to Samus' childhood.
So I guess that went on a bit longer than I had originally anticipated, but the whole gist is that I thought Metroid: Zero Mission was a great reimagining of the original Metroid to make it more accessible to then and now modern audiences and retconning some of the character and enemy designs from Super Metroid on. If you can find it on the Game Boy Advance, great. If you can only get it on the Wii U, I would say even better because the screen is bigger, it is backlit, and you have the save-state options, whether or not you decide to use them.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconain
Rapture of the Empty Spaces
*P.S. The 9 Hours 8 minutes time is the time recorded by the Wii U that I spent on the game, so it appears that I spent nearly twice the amount of time either reloading previous saves that did not count towards the in-game time (probably some of that was from the Mother Brain fight), or some other combination of that and just messing around in the game.
P.P.S. I should also mention that it was not until I beat the game that I realized that breaking hidden blocks, a lot of which is done with the Speed Boost ability and "shinesparking", counts towards collecting items, or at least I think it does; this is what I gathered while briefly watching a 100% walkthrough after finishing the game. I also realized how many hidden areas I did not find because I did not use the Shinespark ability apparently as frequently as you could. Ah well.
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