Game EXP: Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)

Metroid: Samus Returns

System: Nintendo 3DS

Release Date: September 15, 2017

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: MercurySteam & Nintendo EPD

Time Spent: 17 hours 32 minutes / 25 hours 01 minutes*

A bit of context before we delve into the game itself, so skip the next paragraph if you want.

I previously sat on purchasing Metroid: Samus Returns, the remake of Metroid II: Return of Samus, originally released on the Game Boy in 1991, because at the time of its release I was happily playing the original Metroid II on my 3DS.  I was very excited by the surprise announcement of the game at E3 2017 and the only thing I can think of, is that because my 3DS became non-well functioning in the end of 2017, I did not see the point in buying a game (and also the very cool Metroid: Samus Returns amiibo, which now cost upwards of $200) that I could potentially end up never playing.  When Nintendo announced the closing of the 3DS (and Wii U) eShops to new purchases, I had considered buying the game digitally, but since the digital game ran $39.99 (with it rarely going on sale), I was able to justify paying the same price for the physical cartridge.  

So it was that in January I started up Samus Returns for the first time and while I regret not playing this game when it first came out, I am eternally grateful that I am able to play it now and that I have played it.  MercurySteam did a phenomenal job reimagining Metroid II as I was a little afraid that the level design and layout would be nearly identical, although with the added counter-attack mechanic.  That fear was laid to rest pretty early on.  The bones from the original Metroid II are here, but so are the early framings of Metroid Dread.

What I had originally feared, that this would be a room-for-room remake of Metroid II, being one of the reasons why I did not immediately preorder the game, but those fears ended up being completely unfounded, not that I had an issue with Metroid II's level design, but I wanted something more than just a remake.  I already knew about the melee counter (as was advertised during the E3 announcement), but I genuinely knew little else about how similar the two games were.  In the original Metroid II, there was a poisonous/caustic liquid that would prevent Samus from exploring past a certain point, and after all of the Metroids in the current area were destroyed that substance would mysteriously empty down to the next floor where you would then hunt more Metroids.  In Samus Returns, the caustic fluid is still there, but now there is a physical mechanism that requires a DNA sample from the Metroids that is fed into a machine that lets you know ahead of time how many, between one and ten in a given area.  The other difference is, is that there is a lot more backtracking here as Metroid II was more linear with few reasons to go back to previously explored areas.

Yes, there was Samus starting out barebones with just her Power Suit that you upgrade over time with all of the classics like the Morph Ball, Ice Beam, Phazer, Super Missiles, Varia Suit, but many other skills and abilities that were not in the original Metroid II.  Not all upgrades felt like they were treated equally though, like the Ice Beam and Grapple Beam.  Upgrades like the Space Jump, the Screw Attack, and the Super Bomb all felt like they were geared more towards exploring additional areas than being combat functional.  For the Ice Beam, it felt like an improvement from the standard beam shot, and there were several enemies that you could freeze and then perform the counterattack to shatter them instead of pummeling them with the Ice Beam, but that at times felt more time-consuming that pummeling them with the standard shot and taking a few points of damage. It felt that shortly after.  The Charge Shot I felt that I used it primarily to open doors that required the Charge Shot as opposed to regularly using it in combat.  I would still occasionally use the Ice Beam after acquiring the Wave Beam, but very rarely until towards the end of the game when you fought the quintessential Metroid.  And even then looking back, unless you came into the game with foreknowledge that Metroids are susceptible to the Ice Beam before being hit with missiles, I do not know how you would figure out that information aside from painful trial and error.

I was probably disappointed the most by the Grapple Beam as aiming at an angle while moving (often after jumping from one Grapple Beam point to another) with the controls on the 3DS felt very cramped, often needing to press/hold the button with the inner pad of my index finger.  The swinging mechanic did not feel good either, compared to the Grappling Beam in Super Metroid or even Simon Belmont's swinging in Super Castlevania IV.  Here, I felt more like Samus was swinging horizontally and that I could never get a decent arc going to launch myself.  And similar to the Ice Beam and the Wave Beam, the amount of time between acquiring the Grapple Beam and the Space Jump (which allows Samus to spin jump infinitely rendering the Grapple Beam essentially useless in a lot of situations.  There were other uses for the Grapple Beam though with moving or destroying specific blocks and so it ended up becoming another context-specific tool for exploring and very rarely about traversing.

The only mechanic I did not make extensive use of that was specifically designed with the 3DS in mind was using the bottom touch screen to use the Ball function.  The game prompts you to tap the side of the screen (as in on the area with the map on it) to immediately roll up into the Ball rather than tapping down twice on the directional pad (first to crouch, then into a ball).  I used it on a few occasions when I wanted to try to stick to the wall (using the Spider Ball) to avoid some environmental obstacle (spikes, slime wall) so that I could bomb a bombable section of the wall, but that action never really felt natural or comfortable, so I stuck to using the directional pad.  And honestly, there really were not any areas or tricks that would have required you to roll up into the ball while in mid-air.

Like most Metroid games, I took my pretty time, not really caring to try for a speed run, especially on my first run-through of the game, so I was not aiming to see Samus in her Zero Suit or whatever form of skivvies was designed for her to wear.  After every upgrade, I unabashedly would look at my map for any markings I made next to unexplored areas to see if I could possibly acquire more missiles, a new energy tank, or open up additional areas.  There was definitely more backtracking than in Metroid II, but with an in-game map to guide me this time, I never felt lost, or at least so lost that I needed to consult a walkthrough.  Scratch that, I did feel lost several times, but again, never so lost that I needed to consult an out-of-game map or guide.

I did however consult a guide twice in regards to two boss fights, partly because I apparently missed some on-screen visual clues as to what I needed to do during each of the boss fights, but also because I felt that the game was not obvious in what I needed to do.  For instance, during one fight, the enemy created a vacuum that if it sucked you into it, would chomp Samus a couple of times and then spit her out dealing a butt-ton of damage.  I thought if I fired missiles into the vacuum I could damage the boss, but that turned out to not be the case.  What you were supposed to do was use the Spider Ball function and drop bombs that would be sucked up and damaged that way.  The second time I consulted a guide for the final boss, as I was not sure if I was doing something wrong, or missing another visual clue (like using the Super Bombs in the final fight in Metroid Dread), but when I found out that you could also use the verticality of the stage, it changed my way of thinking about that fight and I was able to defeat the final boss on the second of two attempts.

I really hope that Nintendo decides to bring over Metroid: Samus Returns to the Switch since anyone who enjoyed Metroid Dread will immediately recognize the visual style and mechanics that MercurySteam brings to this franchise.  The touchscreen functionality could easily be mapped to any of the trigger buttons not on the original 3DS system, and that would really be it.  True you would lose out on experiencing a game that looks and plays great with the 3D slider cranked up to max (although I did turn it down during the two aforementioned boss fights), but the sales of the 2DS system prove that not everyone felt they were missing out on the 3D effect baked into the 3DS games.  I want more people who never had a 3DS/2DS to play this game because it is just an all-around great Metroid game from a company that has proven they know the Metroidvania genre.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Never Dreamed You'd Return

*P.S.  I also included the time pulled from the stats app on the 3DS system to show that there were a few times that I died and the game restarted either from my last save or just right outside the door to the bosses that I died against.  This means I spent nearly 4 1/2 hours backtracking and redoing the same thing (or nearly so) because I died.

Game EXP: Metroid: Zero Mission (Wii U)

Metroid: Zero Mission

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.

My Previous Expectations with Metroid Games and Why I Might Have Been Wrong

Now, do not take the title of this article at first glance, or at least do not read it that I have a negative view of Metroid games.  I bought Metroid on the NES I have no memory of when, and I may have even gotten it for a Christmas present sometime between 1987 and 1990.  I never bought Metroid II: Return of Samus on the Game Boy because either Dr. Potts or one of my neighbors had it and I played it a little bit but never got too far.  I played Super Metroid on the SNES a lot although I did not buy it until some time in 1999 or 2000.  I then bought/played Metroid Prime, somewhat excited by a Metroid FPS, but I stopped maybe 1/3 of the way through after becoming lost and annoyed with the control scheme.  That was where my adventures with Metroid ended until these last 30 or so days.

When Metroid Fusion came out in 2002, I had read reviews, some of which I already discussed in my Game EXP article.  But the gist of it was that I heard negative things about the game railroading you and I did not like Ridley's design from the picture I saw in Nintendo Power.  When Metroid: Zero Mission came out in 2004, I thought, "Well, I already have Metroid on the NES, why do I need a revamped version of this game?"  When Metroid: Samus Returns was remade in 2017, I had recently purchased the Virtual Console port of the original Game Boy game on my 3DS and had a similar, "I'll just play this and not pay $40 for a revamped version of this game" thought; although I was very excited when the game was first announced at E3 2016. Regarding the rest of the games in the Metroid Prime series (Echoes, Corruption, Federation Force, Hunters), because I did not like the first Metroid Prime, I saw no reason in continuing with that storyline either.  Also the focus on multiplayer for Metroid Prime: Federation Force and the generic-looking character design was a huge turn-off.

So jump ahead now to 2021 and Metroid Dread, developed by Mercury Steam (Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Metroid II: Samus Returns) announced that they were releasing a new 2D Metroid game on the Nintendo Switch, I felt like it was now time to get back into this franchise.  So I pre-ordered the game after only watching the announcement trailer and staying away from all subsequent trailers to keep the story as fresh as possible.  But then I got the hankering to play Metroid Fusion. . .although that desire had been around for a few years, occasionally looking at auctions on eBay, but never jumping on getting the game for the Game Boy Advance.  Then a month ago I began to hear rumblings that the Wii U and 3DS eShops were going to be no longer accepting payments in early 2022, that both Metroid: Zero Mission and Fusion were available on the Wii U Virtual Console and seemingly never coming to the 3DS and with time running out when Nintendo might announce a Game Boy Advance Nintendo Switch Online app akin to the NES, SNES, and now N64 versions, I decided to spring and buy a Wii U.

So my first purchases were for Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission, knowing that I wanted to play through Fusion before I started Metroid Dread.  15ish hours later, I finished Metroid Fusion, wrote my Game EXP article then jumped into Metroid Dread, only slightly afraid that I might be Metroided out, but that was not the case.  I have only gotten a few hours into Dread as Conklederp has been reinvigorated by Animal Crossing's update and DLC, but I did not mind because I then started Zero Mission on the Wii U.  Having now beaten that game, I feel like my previous held expectations about Fusion and Zero Mission are leading me to try and jump back into Metroid Prime and buying the Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii U rather than trying to find Metroid Prime: Echoes and Metroid Prime: Corruption on either the GameCube or Wii.  Maybe even do a chronology run through the entire series?  I have read that in Metroid Prime: Federation Force that the game is primarily multiplayer with very little to enjoy about the single-player campaign (or playing a multiplayer game as a single-player, although the Left 4 Dead series comes to mind as an enjoyable single-player co-op game), but with the game still averaging its $39.99 price tag, I would rather give that money to play Metroid: Samus Returns.

One last thing that I wanted to touch on about the Metroid series is its passive emphasis on completion time and item completion rates.  I knew that the faster you beat the original Metroid, the more of Samus you see at the end (when it is first revealed that this character is a woman), and even in Super Metroid, I never sought to beat the game faster than I needed to; exploration was always more fun than speed for me.  So with both Fusion and Zero Mission getting between 57-65% Item Completion in six to eight hours, I struggle to find any kind of desire to beat the game in fewer than 2 hours with 100% Item Completion.  That just seems bonkers to me and I am sure that I could find a video on YouTube [https://youtu.be/EfLwuWe_Qdk?t=24], but I do not really want to watch someone else play a Metroid game just to see an end screen I can easily look up myself.  I guess I will just need to work on my wall jump.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I'm Looking At Myself, Reflections of My Mind

Game EXP: Metroid Fusion (Wii U)

Metroid Fusion

Systems: Game Boy Advance, Wii U

Original Release Date: November 17, 2002

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Nintendo R&D 1

Play Time: 6h 37m / 14h 47m

I played Metroid Fusion on the Wii U using the Virtual Console version of the game, which is essentially the same game with all of the same mechanics, but the VC allows the player to create a single save-state that can be reloaded.  I mention this because I did reload save-states somewhat frequently although I did have some self-imposed rules that I frequently adhered to.  I also remapped the shoulder L/R buttons to the ZL/ZR triggers as my index fingers fell there more naturally on the Wii U's gamepad than the shoulder buttons; as well as making Y for attack and B for jump.  So for purists, I did not beat Metroid Fusion and for those who do not care, I did beat Metroid Fusion in 6 hours and 37ish minutes in-game time.  The 14 hours and 47 minutes is the amount of time the Wii U timed me as having played the game, so I spent nearly half of the game playing previously loaded save-states (more on that below).  Interesting to say the least.

Let us just jump to the conclusion.  I really liked this game.  Loved?  I might need to replay it or feel that I could replay it to feel that I love the game.   I am a little sad that I listened to whatever the negative reaction was that was so prevalent in my mind that convinced me not to buy the game when it came out in 2002. I also recall seeing promotional images of Ridley and apparently thought that because this iteration looked more cartoonist than previously depicted, that the game was designed for a younger audience.  And honestly, the only negative aspect that stuck with me before I started playing was that the story railroaded you into a linear game, devoid of exploration.  This critique throws me a bit.  The game takes place on a space station as opposed to a planet, so you are locked into one location, but you are also locked into a single planet in the previous games.  And the space station has six different biome-areas, so you are not exploring a space station environment the entire game.  The railroading in the story comes in because you are directed by the station's computer system to explore, repair, and investigate different areas of the space station.  But, you do not always have to listen to the computer either and there is a fair amount of backtracking to access previously closed-off areas as you unlock new abilities and access to previously locked doors.  I honestly did not mind how you were directed to different areas to a certain extent as it took a lot of the pressure of having to remember where to go once you unlocked a new ability and I still felt that there was plenty to be explored; although there still was a bit of that.

Story-wise, I enjoyed what was presented here.  The prologue I thought felt a little forced in that it could have been exciting to be playing a Metroid game that took a hard left turn, from playing a beefed up Samus to playing her with none of her equipment, similar to Metroid Prime, giving you a taste of your souped-up abilities as well as added fear for what you will be going up against.  The prologue starts out with Samus giving some general backstory from the Metroid series, then coming into the present with her being part of a scientific expedition on the Metroid home planet of SR388 when she was attacked by an unknown parasite.  Samus ends up crashing her ship during the mission due to the parasite taking over her central nervous system, is rescued and after some time, is administered a vaccine created from a Metroid culture (it was discovered that Metroids had been natural predators of the X-Parasite).  Post recovery, she goes to the scientific research station in orbit over SR388 where their samples from the initial expedition were taken where an explosion had just occurred.  As you progress through the game, more and more information comes to light regarding the X-Parasite, Metroids, and pulls even more influence from the Alien series that inspired the games in the first place.  There were a fair amount of callbacks and homages to previous Metroid games that felt pretty organic and not forced in the way that the entire Pirates of the Caribbean sequels felt.  

Jumping ahead a bit in the story, but because we are talking about the story here, this is where I am going to bring this up.  During the game, there were cutscenes with Samus talking/thinking to herself, and some of these monologues were about a member of the Federation that she had worked with in the past, a guy named Adam.  The way that Adam was first brought up seemed a little out of the blue, mainly because this was the first time I had heard of this character.  I thought maybe a flashback to this character was going to happen in the game, but that never occurred.  Then I thought that maybe it was a character in Metroid: Other M, but that game was released in 2010 so this was likely Adam's first occurrence in the game, but apparently was a significant person in Samus' life.  As you progress through the story, you do find out more about Adam, but for most of the game, I felt like I was missing out on information from a previous game, although this was not the case.

As for the gameplay, it did feel very much like the sequel to Super Metroid, all the way down to the wall-jump which was never featured like it was in Super Metroid and I still sucked at it; although I did manage to pull off a sequence of three or four consecutive wall-jumps to get an early Missile Upgrade.  One of the biggest Metroid-type mechanics that changed in this game was how you open doors.  You still shoot doors to open them, but in previous games that required either the standard arm cannon or a series of missiles (usually five I think) or a single Super Missile, the doors in this game were locked behind security access.  As you progressed through the game, you were granted access to increasing levels of security clearance, allowing you to open more and more doors.  Thankfully the game would mark on your map when there was a security door that you could not open so that once you gained that level of security clearance, you could return to an area and do some more exploring.  I do wish that you could have accessed the maps for different areas of the station regardless of where you were.  So for instance, once you gained Lock 3 access, you could look at the different maps for the station to find out where Lock 3 doors were and head there, without having to travel to each area independently.  Really it is just a complaint about time.

Speaking of time, as mentioned above, I did use the save-state and respawn feature as part of the Virtual Console, but I did not spam this mechanism.  Most of the time.  I had a few rules that I more-or-less abided by.  

1. I can create a save-state if I have to turn the system off and I am not near an in-game save spot.
2. I can create/load a save-state right outside a boss's lair, as long as getting to the boss is not a significant trudge and part of the boss battle experience.
1. For the battle against the fight against the spider boss Yakuza, but only after I died the first time.  More on that below.
3. I can create a save-state if there is a countdown timer immediately following a boss fight.

That was pretty much it.  But I did break the last rule during the battle against Yakuza.  That battle, in particular, was a pain in the ass; actually, from Yakuza onwards, the boss battles seemed out-of-sync with the difficulty of the rest of the game.  For the Yakuza battle, after dying the first time and making my way back to the boss's lair (because I did not realize I was going into a boss battle), I did spam the respawn feature.  This boss battle was brutal in that Yakuza would pick Samus up and continually deal damage to her and then body slam her doing more damage; I just discovered that you could wiggle your way out of its grip by just moving left/right on the control pad. . .oops.  I think I could survive, at most, four direct attacks before dying.  So what I ended up doing was I created a save-state upon being picked up the first time and reloaded from that point every time I died.  Once Yakuza took on its second form, I created a new save-state and would reload that one upon dying.  I finally created a third and final save-state when it reached the Core-X form.

For the penultimate boss battle in the game, I majorly broke this rule as I created multiple save-states as the fight progressed.  There was the first stage which required you to hit the boss around 10 times with a fully charged plasma/wave beam before it takes on its second form.  During this battle, I found that the boss would seemingly learn what you were trying to do, for example, I would hang out in a nook and shoot it when it jumped to get at you, and instead, it would hang out on the ground and take shots at you since its own ranged attack could pass through walls.  So I would load the game up outside the boss chamber, and once I had managed to damage the boss a few times without taking damage, I created a new save-state.  Then I would inevitably die a few times, reloading again and again, before finding a new tactic that worked for a couple of shots, then I would create a new save-state.  I would say that I would die no fewer than five times before finding out a new way to attack the boss.  The second stage of the boss's form I figured out purely by accident as I was on an elevated platform trying to stay away from it as I only had 32 hp left and found out that I could take pop shots at it as it was jumping at me.  The third form took on the familiar Core-X form but the attacks/counter attacks did take some time to figure out.

Lastly, I want to briefly touch on the music.  It was definitely not as interesting as either Metroid or Super Metroid.  There were no tracks as catchy as the Brinstar theme or the Norfair theme, but this game never felt as heroic in its exploration as those games.  To me, Metroid Fusion was not about exploration and possibly for the first time in the series, had some very real horror elements to it.  There are a number of sections in the game where Samus is actively hunted and all you can do is run away knowing that if you were to face your attacker you would be killed.  There were (at least) two sections when your hunter would appear on the same screen, but there was a wall separating you and them, an I did not move, out of fear that if I made a sound, that would attract attention and I could be killed.  I do not know if that was actually a possibility, but the fact that that was how I felt is a major kudos to Nintendo R&D1 for getting me to react that way.  The atmosphere in Metroid Fusion is one of frequent dread (eh!?) and worrying about what could be around the next corner and the music does a great job of representing that terror too.  One of the downsides of a lot of games that focus somewhat on fear and terror is that apart from a title theme, the in-game music tends to be subdued, more focused on adding to that feeling of fear than one of creating memorable melodies.

I very much enjoyed Metroid Fusion and it still makes me sad that there was a 19-year gap between the mainline Metroid games of Fusion and Metroid Dread, but I will be happy to be able to play Dread so close to having played and finished Fusion.  The last thing that somewhat surprised me, was that I had only a 56% item collection rate.  This could explain my trouble with some of the bosses, that I just did not collect enough Energy Tanks (I finished the game with, I think, 11?).  I know that there were breakable blocks that could only be broken by the Screw Attack that I did not go back for as there was a story-event that sounded urgent, but only urgent in the way that you are told that it was urgent, ie "You need to do this Samus."  So I could have diverged from what the computer system was telling me, and oftentimes I did to explore on my own, but towards the end of the game, and after picking up the Screw Attack, I mainly followed the story.  So maybe I will go back and see if I can pick up more items, or maybe I will go back through and see if I can actually be the game just to please the purists.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Found What You're Looking For

So I Bought a Wii U. Now What?

 

Well, the title pretty much says it, right?

Let us move back just a little bit.  I bought Metroid Dread which came out on the Switch on October 8th.  This is, technically speaking, Metroid 5 in the numbered Metroid series which does not take into account the Metroid Prime series.  I have played (although not beaten on my own) the first Metroid game, but I have beaten Metroid II - Return of Samus (being Metroid 2) and Super Metroid (being Metroid 3).  I have not played Metroid Fusion (being Metroid 4) and I really wanted to play that before jumping into Metroid Dread.  Metroid Fusion originally came out on the Game Boy Advance 19 years ago in 2002 and I think the reason I did not buy it at the time was that I was heavily influenced by the negative reviews, that it differed too much from Super Metroid.  I also have heard nothing but good things about Metroid: Zero Mission, a retelling of the first Metroid game and was also released on the Game Boy Advance in 2004.  

Now, I still have my original Game Boy Advance, but earlier this year, I discovered that the unit would not power on, even with a healthy set of new AA batteries.  I know of a person online (Gametracks) who has been doing Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance repairs and glow ups, but the prices are a little out of my price range; not to knock their work, which is pretty amazing and it looks great and I have read nothing but good reviews of their work.  I also have access to Conklederp's DS lite as my unit is a bit busted, so I do have a way to still play some of the GBA cartridges I still have.  I mention this because I could look into buying the physical cartridges for both Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission, but with the release of Metroid Dread, prices for those games has skyrocketed from around $20 to anywhere from $40 to $212 to say nothing about them being authentic copies and not the Chinese fabrications being sold for $10; the same goes true for Metroid: Zero Mission.

There had been, and I believe continue to be, rumors about Nintendo releasing a Game Boy Advance Online app akin to their NES, Super NES, and now Nintendo 64 on the Switch, which might include either of these Metroid titles, but they are both also currently available on the Wii U's Virtual Console.  So I started looking into used Wii U consoles sort of absent-mindedly.  But then I looked up the longevity of the Wii U's eShop as the Wii U officially ended production in Japan in 2017.  From the multiple sources I read, both official and on Reddit said that Nintendo had made a statement that as of January 2022, that Nintendo would no longer be accepting payments on the 3DS and Wii U eShops effectively making purchases impossible although you can still download already purchases digital titles.  This moved up my timetable a bit if I really wanted to purchase a Wii U for the two Metroid titles.

So last Friday (October 15th) I pulled the proverbial trigger and bought a used Wii U (the deluxe 32GB version) on eBay (my first purchase in about seven years).  So now I am creating spreadsheets to crosscheck, cross-reference, and cross off all digital Virtual Console games that I already have access to on either the NES or SNES Classic consoles, or on the NES, SNES, and soon to be N64 Switch Online apps.  And because the Wii U is gloriously backward compatible with Wii games, I now have another whole new console's physical library available to me, which means I am going to pick up Dead Space: Extraction at the very least.  But at least for the time being, my focus is going to be looking at which Virtual Console games I would like to have access to.  

But other digital games as well?  Most likely.  Metroid: Other M has always intrigued me and the Metroid Prime Trilogy is a tantalizing $19.99 rather than a whopping $65-$140.  I will have to do some scouring of the Wii U eShop after I get the system and register it to my existing Nintendo account because apparently, you cannot add games to your wishlist if you do not have the system.  So, Google Sheets it is with the lists.  And for those of you who like lists and reading lists by other people, I present to you a shortened (and likely ever-lengthening list, at least until January 2022) list of Wii U Virtual Console games that I am 69.47% likely to throw my money at.

• NES
• Duck Hunt
• Gargoyle's Quest II
• GBA
• F-Zero GP Legend
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade
• Golden Sun
• Golden Sun II: The Lost Age
• The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
• Mario Kart: Super Circuit
• Metroid Fusion
• Metroid: Zero Mission
• NDS
• Mario Kart DS (turns out the one I bought on eBay in 2007 was a fake from China)
• Metroid Prime Hunters
• New Super Mario Bros.
• N64 (I may have to wait on some of these if they get announced for the N64 Online App)
• 1080 Snowboarding
• Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (No idea this was on the VC. 100% buying)
• Wave Race 64

I know I completely skipped out on the SNES portion of the Virtual Console, but there was not anything that jumped out at me that I felt I would be sad about missing if I did not pick it up before January.  And again, this does not include any physical Wii U or Wii games that I am now going to be in the market for.

One of the things I am actually most looking forward to, is actually figuring out how to play the Wii U.  Do you just put the disk in and play off of the screen or the GamePad?  Can you choose which one to play and not the other?  If you are playing a Virtual Console game, can you just play on the GamePad without turning on the main system?  Otherwise, what is the range that the GamePad has to be within of the base unit before it disconnects?  Can the GamePad disconnect from the base unit?  Can you only play Wii games if you have the Wiimote and Nunchuk attachment?  How important is it that I get a Wii U Pro Controller and will it work with regular Wii games?  I have never seen a Wii U in action, so the next month is going to be interesting to say the least.

Leave it to us here at Stage Select Start to jump in on a console nearly a decade late and then purchasing nearly nothing but ports of games released on older systems.  Classic.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Born of No Love

P.S.  According to the email I received, the Wii U should arrive sometime between Tuesday, October 19th, and Thursday, October 21st, so it will be likely I will answer a number of my questions in November's Monthly Update article.

P.P.S.  Because obviously, the thing I need to do is add to my already growing backlog of video games with ever-increasing amount of free time.

What It's Like Being A Bad Nintendo Fan

Yesterday while on my break, I was browsing the Nintendo Switch subreddit and came across a post about what Nintendo was going to be bringing to PAX Prime (or PAX West I guess).  So I clicked to open up the tweet, and my honest to Michael Bublé reaction was "Huh.  I absolutely care about none of these games."  For those who have chosen not to click, the games highlighted on the official Nintendo of America's Twitter account were (in this order), Smash Bros. Ultimate, Pokémon Let's GO, and Super Mario Party.

There was also an ". . .and more" to be presented at Nintendo's booth, but since there was no official word on what those more games are, I see no point in speculating (cough-cough, 1080 Snowboarding, cough-cough).  But for me, none of the first party games mentioned interest me.  I have never been into Smash titles (the two or three times I have played them on Game Cube).  I did not really like whatever Mario Party game(s?) was on the N64 and as all of the other titles seem to be similar iterations of the same premise, I see no point in acquainting myself with Super Mario Party for Switch.  And while I still do play Pokémon GO quite a bit, I find myself not really interested in the premise and mechanics behind Pokémon Let's GO.

This got me thinking a bit.  I have not been excited for a Mario Brothers game since New Super Mario Bros. on the DS, and before that, the last Mario Bros. title that I enjoyed was Super Mario World.  There is something about 3D Mario games that just has not stuck with me.  Do I actually like Nintendo games?  Sure, there is Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe but aside from that, I cannot remember the last time I bought a first party Nintendo game.  I was then overcome with a mild to moderate feeling of guilt, that while I love Nintendo products, maybe I don not like Nintendo games?  That was when I decided to look at Nintendo EAD and Nintendo EPD's list of games.

Nintendo EAD

Sure, I already mentioned the Mario Kart series, and the Legend of Zelda series, and New Super Mario Bros., but there does not appear to be much else.  I've never felt drawn to Animal Crossing, Splatoon, Nintendogs, although Pikmin does look somewhat intriguing, but unless there is a rerelease, that ship might have proverbially sailed long ago.

Nintendo EPD

Okay, yeah, The Legend of Zelda series again, and while I haven't played a Star Fox game since Star Fox 64, I still like the idea of the series.  I also love the idea of Nintendo Labo, but I recognize that I am not the target demographic and I do not know if we need cardboard peripherals around the house.  And, if I had not already been playing Metroid II: Return of Samus on my 3DS (and had my 3DS B button not decided to crap out on me), I probably would have picked up and tried out Metroid: Samus Returns.  The same goes for WarioWare Gold on the 3DS, but And that seems to be about it.  

Maybe, my lists may not be exhaustive and I would rather not just list games, which is something that I have already done.

I guess you could say that my preliminary conclusions is that I do enjoy Nintendo's products and platforms, but their first party games, I am interested in maybe 25%.  That is not a great percentage of interest, but I have not done an actual calculation to figure out what the real percentage is based on the developer, which might be something that I do at a later date, but for now I will continue to feel just a little bit guilty in my lackluster interest in the games that Nintendo is presenting during their trade show circuit.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I Want My Money Back

Game EXP: Xeodrifter (NS)

Xeodrifter from Atooi, the same company (guy) who developed Mutant Mudds, Chicken Wiggle, and Totes the Goat, is the brainchild behind this wonderful Metroid-esque game (I guess you could say Metroidvania, except that this game is already pulls more from Metroid than it does from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which took a lot from Super Metroid, but anyway) that has been released on the 3DS, Wii U, and recently, the Nintendo Switch.  I picked it up during their most recent sale for and very happy about everything about this game.

Except the frustration I felt when I realized, after defeating one of the bosses, that checkpoints do not function the same as saving your game when you turn the system off.  Thankfully by that point, I had managed a pretty decent system of killing these bastards off.

Something that may not be talked about too often, is that even though Xeodrifter is pretty light on story, that does not mean that it takes anything away from the game.  You play as an unnamed, un-gendered astronaut whose ship breaks down and you have to scour four planets in a small system for the part that will fix your ship.  That is basically it.  There is no further explanation as to the planets, why the inhabitants are as hostile as they are, or why you're gung-ho in killing everything you come across.  And honestly, it was kind of refreshing not to have to worry about if I was missing some deeper, hidden meaning somewhere.  You have your goal, and you go for it. 

So almost right off the bat, as you enter one of the four stages, it is pretty obvious that Xeodrifter was designed with the 3DS in mind, using the similar background and foreground jumping mechanic that was used in Mutant Mudds.  However, not having a 3D effect when you jump back and forth between screens in no way deterred from my enjoyment of the game.  There were a few times when you had to jump to the background area and your vision was partially obscured by creatures or terrain in the foreground, but it was never so bad that it felt like Mr. Watsham was being unfair in his level design.

Easily my favorite feature of Xeodrifter was the weapon customization.  Throughout the game, you find nodes that you use to modify your gun, and here is where it gets wacky so try to keep up.  You have five different types of ways your weapon fires.  From a larger shot that increases damage, to increasing your rate of fire (in two different ways mind you!), to a scatter shot (which I didn't really explore too much), to a wave beam type shot.  Each type of shot has up to five slots for the nodes which increases its prevalence in your shot.  In the above screenshot, I have one node each in damage, rate of fire, and wave beam; although looking at this now, I think that the damage beam requires two nodes to actually have any effect, but oh well.  Then, you are able to have not just one, but three different weapon loadouts.  And at anytime during the game, you can change the layout of any of the loadouts, so you are never stuck with a weapon customization that you are not happy with.  By the end of the game, I had my exploration loadout, boss loadout, and random silly/experimental loadout.  The other great thing, or at least I thought so, was that there was only minor explanation as to how to use this screen and modify your weapons, unless it went into detail in the digital manual that I have not bothered to look at (if it even exists).

I feel like I should also mention the music, because it fit the visual aesthetic perfectly.  I cannot be sure, but the sounded a lot like SNES era music, but had a lot of NES-ness about it, especially the title theme which reminded me a lot of the music from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  There was also a lot of similarities to Hirokazu Tanaka's music from the original Metroid, which is always a good thing.  Re-listening to the soundtrack, some tracks stick out more than others, but all-in-all, it is a perfectly composed soundtrack for what the game is.

In the end, I spent around four hours playing through Xeodrifter, and I felt that that was a perfect amount of time with this game.  I did not find/acquire all of the health nodes, but I did have all of the weapon nodes; so I guess you could say that I did not 100% the game. Could it have been a few hours more?  Sure, but it did not need to be, and maybe a few more hours might have made the game less fun.  However, I would be very excited if Atooi began development on a Xeodrifter 2 in the future, and I might even pay retail for the game (I blame Steam for my penchant for only buying games on sale these days).

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

When All Is Gone

P.S.  I just wanted to add, which I do not feel is a spoiler, that at the end of the game after the credits, there was something that I grew up seeing a lot of in NES games, but feel like I have not seen in a long time.  A "thank you" from the developer.  It just gave me a warm feeling, deep down in the cockles to see something that I apparently had unconsciously attached meaning to.  

And thank you Jools Watsham for creating a fun game.