Where Metroid Gained Its Magic

From this story, we hear the origin of several things of Metroid.

The name ‘Metroid’ came from a combination of Metro and Android. Samus Aran name came from a sports player. And SR388 came from the name of an engine.

So where did the magic of Metroid come from? If the source wasn’t with Sakamoto or another developer, how did the game become magical?

The magic came from you.

It is your imagination that fleshed out Metroid. The music, the imagery, the atmosphere, your actions- all these flared your imaginary sun and made the game very bright in your mind’s eye.

The difference between a good entertainer and a bad entertainer depends on whose imagination they find important. The bad entertainer thinks his imagination is extremely important. He will do strange things to fire up his imagination. But the good entertainer knows that it is the audience’s imagination that is the true target. The good entertainer’s craft revolves around sparking and fueling the audience’s imagination. The bad entertainer tries to replace the audience’s imagination with his own.

One of the reasons why people like Shakespeare were very, very good was because they understood the art of flaring the imagination.

Above: The content of King Henry V’s battles are too much for the stage. In the Prologue, Shakespeare beseeches the audience to use their ‘imaginary forces’.

If video games are to have a future, it will not be found in better processors, in unique hardware and software synergy, in ‘better graphics’, in online platforms, or the dream-like mental vomit that we label ‘developer’s visions’. The future of video games will come from harnessing the imagination of the gamer. That is the sail that propels the boat of the consumer experience.

Every medium has tricks and strategies to ignite imagination, like kindle and logs are to fire. Theater has its tricks. Novels have their tricks. Movies and television have their tricks. But what are the tricks in the video game form?

You don’t know, do you? You have been so obsessed over theorycrafting about gameplay and dreaming new business models that you forgot where the true game engine exists. Not in the software. Not in the hardware. But in the gamer’s heart.