I just played... Super Metroid

In space, everybody can hear that the last Metroid is in captivity.

                I could say that I don’t get chills every time I hear Super Metroid’s main theme, but I could also say that I am the crowned Queen of India. I’d scarcely believe that a game such as Super Metroid would need much introduction because its reputation and the internet far precede anything I could say. I could introduce Hitler to you, but I wouldn’t need to because the world is overly aware of who and what Hitler was, so unless I had something extraordinary to add, like ‘Hitler reared a squadron of Attack Squirrels’, introductions would be rendered rather pointless. So yes, Super Metroid, it’s a game and you know you know about it.

                Despite the above paragraph I will summarise it in brief – in Super Metroid you control Samus Aran (yes, Samus is a girl) who returns to the planet Zebes to track down the last Metroid after it was Metroid-napped by her old nemesis, who has a propensity for returning from the dead, Ridley. What follows is Samus’ jump and shoot exploratory alien genocide adventure across the planet. It’s a direct sequel to Metroid (hence the ‘Super’ in the title, since all games on the SNES decided to do that confounding thing of naming sequels by throwing ‘Super’ in the title – like ‘Super Castlevania 4’, is it Castlevania 4 or some other Castlevania featuring a kryptonian?) but is chronologically the 2^nd last game in the series (followed by Fusion… what is this 'other m' you speak of? A James Bond character?) – which perhaps explain why Samus doesn’t blaze through Zebes using déjà vu instincts, because Super Zebes is pretty darn similar to NES Zebes.

                Super Metroid, I feel (as I tend to feel), is a game that I find I can appreciate more now compared to when I first played it as a wee lad. What makes this point especially astounding is the fronts of this appreciation are numerous, be it from an artistic standpoint, from a raw mechanical standpoint or from a game design standpoint. This is a darn well crafted game, evident in the fact that it has aged near flawlessly through the years – a feat truly enjoyed by only an elite echelon of games numbering so few that you could count them on your hands. There is little I can point a definitively defiant finger at and go ‘Aha! Thou has not aged well in this department!’ and while there are things I can point a finger at, they really end up paling in the face of the bigger picture.

                “Super Metroid is the most atmospheric 16 bit game around.” – Volatile Seraph

                Playing through Super Metroid again helped affirm my beliefs (and made me feel like a substantial speck of dust in this greater universe named after a chocolate) that an integral factor in a game’s memorability, replayability and legacy is its ‘feel’ – a culmination of its story, atmosphere, control, art assets and so on. Yes, gameplay can almost take a step back when it comes to the ‘feel’ of the game and that is evident in many flawed (sometimes heavily so) games that are remembered with vehement fondness and zealous worship – Ocarina of Time, Planescape Torment and System Shock 2 popping immediately into mind. Now, I can really go on and on and on and on and on and on and on with this ‘theory’ but I’d rather save that for another article, so I’ll leave that at that.

Elevators are Samus' greatest companions. 

                So, going back on the point before I deviate onto yet another tangent like I just did right above – Super Metroid’s atmosphere. As a lone bounty hunter on a hostile planet you are really quite alone and the game does a great job of making you feel alone, the world is hostile and filled with danger even when it is beautiful. The slow, enemy-free build-up at the beginning helps suck you in slowly into the world as you trudge through what looks like a decrepit shell of a world… only for it to stir to life as you venture forward and, well… try to kill you. But what truly makes the atmosphere is the variety of it, the freshly awakened area of Crateria has a foreboding and hostile-to-the-point-of-feeling-spiky feel to it, and the fact that it goes completely silent when you enter the room that will eventually lead to the final area of the game just adds to it. Then there’s the highly energetic and ‘alive’ area of Upper Brinstar and its mellow and tranquil Lower area. Long elevators separate the various areas and help to both, load the next area and ease the atmospheric transition (note the fact that elevator rooms are comparatively featureless and share the same low-key music).

How ominous.

                Yes, it can be argued that the various energy doors separating the various parts of each area are a bit strange and don’t really add to the atmosphere – they are the same doors pasted everywhere and do admittedly serve a much more functional purpose (loading), though they compensate for this a tad by having a now signature opening and closing sound (zwoop!).

                The controls are one of the other interesting parts of the game, since subsequent (2D) games in the series have streamlined it and made it a tad tighter, but the controls in this game are one part ‘floaty’ and one part ‘too sharp’, an interesting paradox that makes getting used to it tedious but can be rather fun and almost rhythm-esque once you get used to it and even more so once you get good at it. Almost all of Samus’ actions have a slow start of sorts, be it running or jumping, which takes some getting used to – combine this with the fact that Samus’ jumps are part-time sharp when it comes to vertical distance (if you just tap the jump button she will do a little hop hardly worthy of note) and part-time loopy/floaty when it comes to moving sideways (mainly when she somersaults in mid-air). Combine this with the various techniques and upgrades through the game and you will find that Samus has both, a lot of kinks and a lot of options when it comes to mobility.

Wait 'n' Shoot.

                Talking about it techniques… boy, are there a whole freaking lot of them and most aren’t even hinted at. Some are obvious and often spelled out for you in some shape or form, but most are left to your curiosity. Many (hell, almost all) of these techniques aren’t even mandatory, you can clear the game only using jumping and dashing, and exist solely to give you more options or ways to discover secrets. What? A game that puts sincere effort into its secret content, to the extent of making the ‘secret’ content as rich as the obvious content? Pshaw, this can’t be! This adds another layer in this rich onion that is Super Metroid, since the way you are ‘normally’ intended to explore the world is turned inside-out once you discover, learn and master these techniques. One word: sequence-breaking.

                For those not in the know now be in the know: Sequence-breaking is the act of, as the name suggests, breaking the sequence in which you are intended to progress normally. Many times it is intentionally designed to be so, other times no and Super Metroid is an eclectic mix of both (a modern example of sequence-breaking is Dark Souls, which too combines intentional and probably unintentional sequence-breaking).

Creepy eye-doors before boss fights add to the tension.

                Super Metroid and sequence-breaking are pretty much synonymous, since there is a mind-boggling number of ways to sequence-break it. This is where the various ‘optional’ techniques come in, they can help you reach areas much earlier than you are intended to and generally come with one catch – you have to be good at it (well, not always). The most basic example of this is in wall-jumping, a thoroughly optional movement option (and one that can be aggravating to get used to owing to rather strict timing – for a reason) that can be used to scale various areas and reach upgrades earlier than you are meant to – the most standard example of this being an early beam upgrade, for which you ‘normally’ need the High-Jump upgrade, but if you execute a few wall-jumps you can get it a whole area before you get the High-Jump. Then there are techniques like Shinespark (using hyper dash to charge your suit, and then using this energy to fly in a certain direction) and Bomb Jumping (using bombs in Morph Ball to propel yourself upward) which require highly precise timing and control to pull off but can net you many, many early power-ups, and then there are other techniques (such as Mock Ball) which are rather clearly not intentional but can be used to reach many areas very early. Then there are various combat techniques such as Crystal Flash and the various beam shields that are cool but not necessarily very useful.

Looking for secrets? SHOOT EVERYTHING.

                But it’s really the sequence-breaking that makes Super Metroid so darn replayable, since you can essentially go through the game using various ‘routes’ and challenges, and also because they take skill and getting your hands on an upgrade much, much earlier than you are intended to is rather satisfying. The feeling of ‘discovery’ from your first time through is replaced with this feeling of ‘sequence’ – an almost RPG-esque feeling of preparing your character as you sweep out areas early and decide which upgrades you want to try to get early. The dizzying number of hard secrets (i.e. secrets with no hints to their existence) adds to this, and allows you to jumpstart the game’s ‘power curve’ much earlier.

                The game has a rather gratifying power-curve as Samus starts off in her pale yellow suit with a cannon that effectively fires energy pellets that hurt likes sparrow pecks, and by the end of the game she is a purple-suited goddess of destruction with a cannon that can raze an entire room of enemies in a heartbeat. She goes from barely being able to jump to being able to somersault for all eternity in mid-air.

                Parts of the game are brought down by sections of tedious platforming, sections that are difficult to just bypass and often respond to your failures by setting you back on time – most commonly by dropping you to a lower area, causing you to have to track your way back up again to give all the jumping another go, which can create an infuriating loop of jumping and falling that is really just tedious, not very challenging and not fun at all. These parts are thankfully few and often exist to only serve as a ‘definitive blockade’ of sorts for some parts of the game… which really did nothing to stop sequence-breakers.

I have come to talk to you about our Lady and Saviour, Mother Brain.

                The game is also rather easy, common foes are practically no threat to Samus even early on and finding early upgrades trivialises them even further, to the extent that enemies stop being any kind of threat and just end up being a nuisance and fighting them can become more tedious than enjoyable (once the joy of a new upgrade vanishes). The same goes for the bosses, who are big and imposing and interesting to fight but aren’t very dangerous… hell, the most dangerous element in them is the fear of running out of missiles, which just elongates the battle. Only the penultimate boss, owing to his combination of speed, high damage and high health, is a worthy challenge, the others are all more bark than bite… though that doesn’t stop them from being impressive encounters, and the first-time you fight them is bound to be fairly exciting.

Ridley is indeed a worthy nemesis.

                A mixed bag for many would be the factor of ‘getting lost’ since some people hate getting lost while some, such as myself, tend to enjoy getting lost and wandering about, trying to find their way. As a combination of an introvert and wanderer, I rather like games in which I can get lost since it satiates my wanderlust without the mandatory tedium of having to get outside and interact with human beings. I really wish I could use placards when travelling about instead of having to speak to others, would save me a lot of effort and let me enjoy the travelling a lot more.

             

                                                          *writes on placard*

All in all, Super Metroid has aged well, it’s a bit easy but it’s still really good and I don’t know if my lack of significant sarcasm and effervescent dialogue here is a sign of adoration or mental deterioration.