My time: 6 hours, 44 minutes, first time, no maps, no guides, no help. This is pathetic. I could have beaten the game on one weekend. I even could have beaten it in one sitting if I wanted.
To give you some context, my first Metroid was Zero Mission. I thought it was OK, but I didn’t get what all the fuss about Metroid was. Then I played Fusion, some parts I liked better (trapped on an abandoned space ship whith a super soldier at your heels), but other parts were even worse (the story, how Dark Samus was not really doing anything and the linearity – the computer would even lock doors just to railroad you). Again, I thought it was OK, but nothing more. Then one day I found the original Metroid as a GBA classics game for 5€; I figured I might give it a try out of curiosity at that price point. I ended up loving it. The only part I really hated was the password system and how you start out with only 30 health, no matter how many energy containers you had left, but it’s an old NES game, I can forgive some rough edges.
The main problem of Super Metroid is the fundamental level design. The game is very suggestive, it is not explicitly telling you where to go like Zero Mission or Fusion, but it is always designed in such a way that there is no ambiguity where to go next. A big part of the problem are the items themselves, they serve mainly as keys. In Metroid the first sector is like a tutorial. You go to the right, then you find a wall, so you go to the left and pick up the morph ball. Similarly the game teaches you about bombs, missiles, red doors and the ice beam.
The difference is that at this point Metroid is done teaching you. Once you have all the above items, which can all be found in the first sector, you are on your own and the entire planet is available to you. You can go anywhere and do the sectors in any order, there is no handholding anymore. Super Metroid on the other hand stays in tutorial mode. It keeps giving you new items to open new doors up until the end. After missiles you get super missiles for green doors. You get power bombs for yellow doors. After the varia suit for lava areas you get the gravity suit for water areas.
The same goes for blocks. In Metroid there were three kinds of blocks: solid blocks, destructible blocks and fake blocks. It didn’ really matter what you used to destroy a block, any weapon worked. In Super Metroid you have bloks that could be only destroyed by either bombs, beam, power bombs, super missiles, running or blocks that would only break if you stepped on them but not from below. It is true that it’s stupid how the game exactly told you what weapon to use on which block (and later even gave you the X-Ray), but in a way it was a necessity because no one is going to try six different things on every block.
My point is that this should have never been put in the game to begin with. There is no real reason to have super missiles or power bombs, the only time anyone would use them anyway was against bosses. Instead it should have stayed simple like in Metroid, but no, we have all these new weaps, so we will make you use them.
There is another thing that annoyed me: the sprite size. Everything is now larger, which means less stuff fits on the screen. Serously, load up a screenshot of Super Metroid and Metroid into an image editing appliction and compare them, Samus is twice as large. This means enemies can now ambush you from off the screen, which results in you getting hit more often, which the designers compensted by more frequent and larger health drops. However, this makes enemies a joke, getting hit is no big deal, because a health drop is just around the corner. I don’t know why, but a lot of games did this during the 16 bit era, and I hate it. In the case of Streets of Rage it even happened during the same generation. It’s like “now that we have the technology to make detailed sprited we have to use it”.
Other parts I downright hated were walljumping, shinespark, which doesn’ even make any sense, and the platforming in general. In Metroid if you missed a jump you fell into the lava, you got punished by losing health and then you moved on. In Super Metroid missing a jump means you fall all the way down and have to jump back up again (and pray you didn’t fall into the water without gravity suit). There is no real punishment, it’s just tedious backtracking through screens I already cleared. Combined with the smaller view port due to larger sprites, you often had to take leaps of faith and hope you wouldn’t miss the platform. Maridia was the worst sector of them all, the rooms were huge, there was quicksand and you had to platform a ton, especially with the grapple beam. My completion time would have been even shorter without all the platforming BS. Just punish me by taking away my health and let me move on, don’t make me go through all the empty screens again.
Still, aside from the platforming I did enjoy the game. Not as a sequel to Metroid, more like baby’s first continuous-world game. People tend to praise Super Metroid for its seqence breaking possibilities by exploiting the game’s movest, but they forget that the original Metroid didn’t even have a seqence to break. Once you had the essential weapons you could go straight to Kraid. Or Ridley. Or explore some more. whetever you wanted, you were on your own. I don’ think I’ll be replaying Super Metroid any time soon, it may be the last 2D Metroid to be free from Sakamoto’s corruption, but it doesn’t really have anything special to offer. No, not even the atmosphere; it’s not bad, but Metroid Prime nailed the alien world feeling way better:
Plus, it didn’t recycle the same planet as before. Prime also nailed the mystic aspect of Metroid. There was no mystic feeling in Super Metroid, but the original Metroid felt very… beyond humanity. When I bought the Metroid Prime Trilogy I could have just stared at the title screen all day:
In fairness, Metroid Prime was heavily modeled after Super Metroid.
Your complaints about Super Metroid were common among many Metroid veterans. It is not that Super Metroid was a bad game. It is that it is a very good rental game. The original Metroid was a game you could feast on for months. This may seem strange since the game seems so short, but people forget there were no maps. Look how long people played the original Super Mario Brothers. Metroid was the Dark Souls of its day. The game was brutally tough, had fake walls, fake bosses, and the game was just a mind warp. Of course, finding all the items makes the game much easier, but this was in the 1980s. Unless you had certain issues of Nintendo Power or called to the Nintendo Hotline, you were on your own.
What I remember with Super Metroid, aside being disappointed that it was a rental and how the game felt like “Metroid Remake Now In 16-Bit And Neutered For Mass Audience Appeal” since it was essentially the story of Metroid 1. Metroid 2 at least went to another planet and explored the Metroids. In Super Metroid, it felt like I was playing the old game since I was back on Zebes and all.
I eventually bought Super Metroid when retailers were trying to get rid of it at $20. Despite my disappointment with the game, I remember enjoying the FEEL of the game. And by feel, I mean the music and the lush colors. I won’t lie. I enjoyed 16-bit graphics and production over 8-bit graphics and production.
Maridia is one of the few places I liked in Super Metroid. It felt very interesting having those MASSIVE cliffs and areas you could only get through the Space Jump. I also kinda liked the fish swimming around instead of Yet Another Flying Enemy. I thought it was an interesting area. The Wrecked Ship, however, I could have done without.
I’ve been waiting for someone to make a game that recreates the phenomena of Metroid. It would be a 2d explorer game that is very difficult yet almost mystical. Metroid seemed like a trippy experience. It felt… like I was in a cathedral if that makes sense, as if the game was brimming with spirituality. Perhaps that could the theme when you obtain an item or with the regality of the Chozo statues. It was an amazing touch and something you never felt in games.
The final battle in Super Metroid was retarded. Ohhh, Mother Brain turns into a dinosaur! Who was the idiot who thought of that idea?
Reader, you never mentioned what you thought of the ‘maternal instincts’ that are present in Super Metroid. Sakamoto swears they are in there. Surely you understood Samus’s ‘maternal instincts’. Didn’t you, emailer?