I think your question is mostly rhetorical, but just to be explicit:

“What in the world is this ‘modern perspective’? Do you mean the ‘present’?”

Yes. 

And again, I’m not talking about all modern perspective. Just simply his specific criticisms as applied to a game being released today. 

I know your main concern is about how others opinions will be shaped based on how he represents the game. But I think you’re overthinking it. He’s the Angry Video Game Nerd, he’s supposed to get mad about games even if it’s a stretch, it’s just for laughs. This is not serious criticism. And so he will only do so if he doesn’t think he’ll get too much blowback for it… So it just seemed very logical that the original Metroid was going to get the fall for most of the “anger” in this episode. Because unlike you who will just react on your own blog, the unhinged Nintendo zealot will reach out to him and attack him personally for the “wrong” Super Metroid opinion.

I know he actually loves the original, but i don’t doubt that he prefers Super Metroid either. He had a similar opinion on Zelda 2. Mike Matei streams a lot of Zelda 2 and he repeatedly says it’s his favorite Zelda, him and James (the AVGN) are very in sync with each other’s opinions in what they really think… But expecting them to be like Rush Limbaugh instead of Johnny Carson is going to be an exercise in disappointment.

I’ve beaten the original about 5 times. I’ve gotten the “good” ending (full bikini samus). But I never did as a kid — mostly because i never had serious time with the game. My uncle owned the game and I gave it a serious go when i would go over to his place. But the getting raped by enemies in between the doors turned me off. I remember having the express thought that “if the game is doing this to me now, it’s going to get much worse if i try to keep progressing”

I later came back and beat it without too much difficulty when it was included with the original Metroid Prime. At that point I have never even yet played Super Metroid either (I ended up getting that on the Wii virtual console). I would go on to replay it several more times on other re releases such as the wii virtual console.

A Metroid All Stars would have been amazing. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this before, but this is essentially the vision you had for the Metroid 1 version of that game: https://youtu.be/5MJAnDQhwHs

Many, many young people believe the ‘AVGN experience’ of a video game is the genuine actual experience of the game. I’ve spoken to them in real life.

“I never played that old NES game, but I did watch the AVGN video about it.” And then the young person just spouts off whatever he saw.

Young gamers don’t actually play the games. They just watch someone else play them and use that opinion.

Take Chrono Trigger. I’d have mad respect for a young person to PLAY the game, and then they drop it quickly because they hate it. This is in contrast to someone who doesn’t play the game but saw so many videos about it that they join the chorus that ‘the game is the best game ever! OMG!’

And now a reader might ask, “Are you dissing the Chrono Trigger?”

No. I am saying these games need to be judged by playing them, not judged by videos of them. The virtue of 8-bit and 16-bit games is that they are very short and very undemanding in terms of gameplay sessions. Even an epic RPG like Chrono Trigger is only about 20-30 hours. Compare that to 100+ bloatfest games of today. I think people should play the Chrono Trigger and come to their own conclusions.

The same way about Metroid. It’s not like the game is inaccessible or demands hundreds of hours of commitment. Nearly all the NES games are very accessible in that manner today.

Then you have blind people who walk in with their special dogs. Someone will go, “It’s not fair that the blind get to bring their dogs into the store, and I cannot!” This is the type of humanity we’re dealing with here.

Even as someone who doesn’t need a service dog, this one frustrates me to no end.

I can’t even begin to tell you the frequency with which people will blatantly walk to my workplace with what are obviously pets, despite the fact that my workplace’s official policy is that only genuine service animals are allowed. They justify it by claiming the pets are ’emotional support animals’, which as far as I’m concerned is a complete BS classification. Unfortunately, my workplace doesn’t even bother to enforce the policy unless said pets are actively causing disruption, such as barking. This, in spite of the fact that there’s been at least one or two instances I know of where a pet has gone to the bathroom inside!

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, my workplace doesn’t bother actually enforcing the rule (which as far as I’m concerned means the ‘rule’ isn’t actually a rule, it’s just a guideline) because of government regulations that prohibit asking anyone to officially prove that their “service animals” are actually genuine service animals. Which as far as I’m concerned shouldn’t even be that big a deal since typically, genuine service animals wear vests that clearly state that the animal is a service animal (Do not pet the service animal, it would be bad for the service animal’s training). Obviously, if no one is allowed to prove that a service animal is a genuine service animal, then rules about service animals – same as any rule that can’t be officially enforced – relies entirely on the honor system. And when something relies on the honor system, then obviously anyone who primarily cares about what they officially want is going to exploit the system to take their pets with them wherever they while wielding the threat of the government investigation and lawsuits.

I swear, the concept of “emotional support animal” is one of the worst ideas devised by modern civilization. And the whole modern lawsuit system is frustrating as can be as well, as much as anything it’s basically become a ‘get rich quick’ tool where anyone with a halfway decent excuse can just threaten someone with enough money as a path to easy riches (to say nothing of the lawyers to profit off the whole thing).

As much as I sympathize with people who have genuine disabilities, it’s one of those things that made me wish that people who weren’t obvious disabled did have to actually prove it the same way people who aren’t obviously over 21 have to prove they’re old enough to buy alcohol. I don’t like it, but if society isn’t willing to enforce its own boundaries then outside boundaries become necessary to keep everyone from going off the rails.

— Longtime Reader

I agree. My example was a blind person needing an animal. Obviously, that is not an ’emotional support’ animal.

I think it is Human dignity that someone should be allowed to be productive despite whatever ailment they have. It’s like hundreds of years ago, a blind person was making nets or something of the like. Other people could make nets, sure. But allowing the blind person to be productive and not be a burden on society is a major thing for both the blind person and for the community.

Another example would be teachers. Who should be a teacher? People who have tons of experience. Teachers should be older people. And it would make sense that the teacher’s duties would reflect that of an older person’s lesser stamina.

What we get, instead, is people becoming teachers who have no life experience. They desire to become teachers because “the job is easy”. Now I have teachers who do read this blog so I probably just offended them. And I do know that teaching is not ‘easy’ especially with the youth of today… such brats. What I am trying to contrast is the grizzled veteran who cannot do the same type of work he did, but he can teach. In my example, I am thinking of an electrician whose ailment no longer allows him to have dexterity with his hands so he can no longer work. But he can teach. That is different from the electrical teacher who has never gone outside and has no field experience.

Hello Master Malstrom,

I was just browsing on Twitter and came across this thread about World of Warcraft and wheelchairs:

Literally every single person on a wheelchair I have asked told me they would rather NOT see that thing in a game.

The game is their medium to dream of running again, it's an opportunity to see on screen what they long for and escape from reality.

These clowns know it, but… https://t.co/4ehc85Plfy

— Metatron (@pureMetatron) June 28, 2025

I didn’t even know the game was still alive for real!

Going by the reactions there, that wheelchair game from Nintendo is probably going to be their biggest game misfire since Wii Music.

Out of all the things they could have done for a new game, why would they settle for wheelchair basketball?! If they were going to be experimental, Star Fox was sitting right there. They’ve struggled to make the non-Arwings feel good and fun, they could have done something with mechs. It probably would have been crap too, but at least we would still have the arwing portions to enjoy.

-The Kingbreaker Reader

Look at this! It is the Kingbreaker Reader, ladies and gentlemen. My readers have gone crazy with their names!!!

I’m not far from being in a wheelchair myself. That is the inevitable destination I will go with my condition. I don’t want to see anything to remind myself of my affliction in a video game! They think they are being ‘sensitive’, but they aren’t!

You know what is helpful for those in wheel chairs? To be able to work from home.

“Oh no, we can’t do that, Malstrom,” declares the reader. “You see, the idea of working from home is not for disabled people or sick people.”

Then who should it be for?

“Why, ME, of course! I am too lazy to go out of my home. I don’t want to commute. I don’t want to show up at an office. I don’t want to talk to anyone! So all those work from home jobs should go to ME!!! Fuck those sick, wheelchair bound people. THEY still ought to go to work. But not me.”

People will think I am making an exaggeration. But I am not.

Then you have blind people who walk in with their special dogs. Someone will go, “It’s not fair that the blind get to bring their dogs into the store, and I cannot!” This is the type of humanity we’re dealing with here.

Do they not realize that the disabled would give up on all these ‘privileges’ to be normal again?

Dear Master Malstrom,

Hopefully I have passed the “Find my E-mail” test, and am not dropping this in the wrong inbox.

I have enjoyed the blog for a number of years now, ever since someone linked an archived version of the original Birdmen article.  It helped me make some sense of Nintendo’s absolutely insane and incomprehensible “business strategies” like abandoning gamers in favor of marketing a TV remote to their disinterested grandparents.  I still have questions about that subject, but the Fired Customer’s Lament is likely best left for another time as the topic of the day is Super Metroid and it’s problems.

I should lead with that I agree with your criticisms of AVGN’s video.  It was highly annoying to watch and AVGN’s Metroid and Metroid 2 footage was beyond terrible, and plays out like a bad comedy punchline.  It has to be acting, because he’s visibly sandbagging and struggling in ways no player his age still capable of breathing without a ventilator would ever struggle in.  I feel bad for the ignorant taken in by this act, and would point out the moment during the Metroid 2 segment where he drops the act while spazzing about the Spazer to admit he isn’t a Nerd and doesn’t know what one sounds like, he just plays one on TV.  (Just… what?)

In your quest to remind people of the truth and true common wisdom of that time, I think you swing a little too far in the opposite direction, making almost the inverse mistake of AVGN and the common wisdom.  You say “Super Metroid is baby easy” and “Metroid is a hard game”, but I think this does both games a disservice as both are roughly the same difficulty once you peel back the onion layers of Metroid’s technical limitations and later games’ quality of life improvements.  That said, you are absolutely right that when we were kids, we certainly would all have agreed with the undisputed common wisdom that NES Metroid was “hard” and Mario was “Easy”.  Somehow we all missed that Metroid had no bottomless pits, let us get hit dozens of times, we only took damage from spikes, and let us take as much time as we needed aside from the escape sequence itself.  I cannot think of a single measure by which NES Metroid is harder than any NES Mario game… and yet we all firmly believed the opposite to such a degree that even kids that didn’t like or play Metroid would have gotten into a playground fight to prove it.

But anyway, your comment about LttP not having a second quest finally made something that’s long bothered me about Super Metroid click.   You see, while I think Super Metroid is the definitive and core Metroid experience, I see its flaws, too.  It attempted to increase the difficulty, but the quality of life improvements canceled it out.  This leads to what you experienced, as the experience is smooth enough now that your attention is drawn to how forgiving the Metroid formula of “fighting mostly disinterested wildlife in an otherwise safe cave” is, which is essentially unchanged from the original game.  The Metroid series is an Oroboros, the formula leaves it with- even in Metroid 2- no option but to either change or be cursed to forever devour its own tail.  (Sakamoto’s Mochtroid games only make this worse by trying to add cinema rather than fix the underlying defects, because like the rest of post-Yokoi Nintendo, he is a cargo cultist.  If he actually understood Metroid, he would have made a Metroid game into something like Rain World, with a vast persistent wildlife simulation which wants to either hole up and fight predators like you off, or is hungry to eat you and will chase you from room to room, and not Mochtroid Fusion.  Ironically this would give him the horror stealth game out of Metroid he wants so badly, but cannot make.)

Greatest of those flaws is that Super Metroid raised Samus’ gameplay potential above and beyond what the game ever requires.  Outside of the any% category and Randomizer runs, no room in the game even comes close to requiring the level of player skill and system mastery that is possible in Super Metroid.  I think this suggests that Super Metroid was not “too easy” but rather “incomplete” and needed a second quest designed for Samus’ actual limits.  Change the map, add some bosses and enemy types that can follow you through rooms in accordance to rules, shuffle up the order of upgrades, remove a few that work against the core of the game like Space Jump (which is probably the reason Wall Jump was left in an unreasonable state) and X-ray scope.  Add in some areas where you have to turn off upgrades to successfully navigate. (because it’s strange that feature exists but is never actually used outside of glitches like Gravity Jumping and the occasional “use the right Charged Shot for the job” skill flex.) 

Ideally, it should have been called “Normal Mode” to provoke gamers into immediately starting it and not giving up.

Because Fans do what Nintendon’t, it’s rather easy to find a demonstration for this: Look at Fanmade Difficulty hacks and Randomizer hacks like the SMZ3 combo randomizer that links Super Metroid and LttP into one big hybrid game.  These effectively freshen up the existing game in the same ways as the classic Zelda “second quest”.  SMZ3 in particular can be quite the wild ride, forcing you to jump back and forth between the games because you’re missing one upgrade or another that’s hidden under a rock you missed.  Nintendo should have released that game themselves when the SNES was still current.

Sadly and Foolishly, all Metroids expect the “clear it faster for more reward” aspect to fill the role that a Zelda style second quest would traditionally fill.  Few people enjoy doing the same thing a second time for completion stats and a new ending wallpaper of Samus. (And that’s making the generous assumption they didn’t quit halfway through the first run.)  With the benefit of hindsight and the data survey tool that is Steam Achievements, we have evidence for what everyone intuitively knew back then: You don’t replay games for a challenge when you have untouched games on the shelf.  Considering the competition dense market the SNES had at the time of Super Metroid’s release, the lack of a second quest was directly responsible for the high trade-in and rental rate that Super Metroid suffered.

The recent discussion that the SNES watered games down is interesting.  I might want to weigh in on that at some point, but I need to mull over the subject more.  Getting addicted to FF1 and FF Legend during the 8-bit era put my attention on JRPGs during that generation, which likely says something I have not properly considered about how poor my favorite platformer series were at making the hardware jump.  I am right with you on lamenting that we never got Super Blaster Master.  That game needed an amazing sequel and it took decades to get the mid tier reboot trilogy it ended up with.

In any case, I think I should probably hop off the soapbox and get back to work on making my own RPG, I have tortured my writing skills enough for one letter.  I hope your move goes well and that your new job leaves you the opportunity to finish your RPG as I look forward to playing it some day!

Signed,

The Gaming Luddite

PS – You know, all this Metroid talk has me wanting adapters for my old NES Advantage so I can use it on my SNES, PC, and Gamecube’s Gameboy Player.  I haven’t used that controller since I got my SNES.

Fear not, Emailer. Your email appeared in the inbox.

This is a big email. Where to begin?

Metroid was definitely harder than any NES Mario game (maybe not the Japanese Super Mario Brothers 2). The bottomless pits of Mario are a blessing. In Metroid, when you fall down a hole, you stay in the hole. If you fall down a corridor, you fall all the way down. It is very frustrating. I’ve noticed the 2d Mario games shy away from such game mechanics though I think would be very cool (a gigantic interconnected Mario level). Kinda like Mario Kart World but for 2d Mario! You could even argue that Metroid was Mario Kart World for platformers. The long vertical corridors were the ‘intermission’ zones between other levels. Certainly, the elevators performed that role. Metroid was clearly an interconnected world.

Metroid was hard in that there was no direction. You were allowed to go the wrong way and to get stuck. Outside a few maze fortresses in Mario, there was never anything like that.

Speaking of Second Quest to Super Metroid, that couldn’t happen due to the massive disk space Super Metroid demanded. But I will up your ante. What should have appeared, perhaps on N64 or Gamecube, is Metroid All-Stars.

Metroid All-Stars would have the three Metroid games.

The NES Metroid game would be modified to be 16-bit. The saving would be restored. Some modifications could be included where one can refill ones life and missiles as a quality of life boost. I wouldn’t even oppose auto-mapping. Some of NES Metroid’s caverns can be differentiated with different tiles or something.

The Metroid II would be upgraded to 16-bit. It would be the largest graphical overhaul.

And Super Metroid would be there largely unmodified. Perhaps the Second Quest could appear as the reason to get the collection. I imagine the Second Quest to really be additional areas to the game. Maybe some new enemies to replace the old.

I prefer the above to what we got. What we got was another remake of Metroid 1 with Metroid: Zero Mission with Samus running around like a ninja and stupid cinematics because Sakamoto says so. And we got Metroid 2 Remake which completely retools the gameplay in a way I find unplayable. I really, really hate Samus ‘punching’ aliens or parrying. SHE IS NOT A NINJA.

I think both Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission are complete jokes. I honestly think they are terrible games. They do have beautiful sprites though. I will grant them that. I think the storyline of Fusion is so terrible that it should have barred Sakamoto from ever writing on Metroid again.

Instead of getting Metroid All-Stars, we got Fusion and Zero Mission. Why? Because Crazy Sakamoto is hell bent on turning Metroid into a cinematic story time manga fest.

“get back to work on making my own RPG”

Wait a minute. You just lay down that line and walk away? You’re not going to tell us more?

And why on Earth are you making a RPG? Do you hate yourself or something?

I watched the AVGN Metroid episode almost immediately when it was released (I’ve watched most all of his content), and I never really took him as attacking the original Metroid. It was obvious to me he loved the game, and he made a point to show footage of him as a 6 year old in Tourian fighting the Metroids. A kid simply does not get to Tourian back in the 80s and is not absolutely enthralled with the game. 

But it was obvious he was painting a theme for the episode that games have evolved significantly over time, which is why he started with the comparison against the early navigators. And his criticisms were clearly from a modern perspective, which are valid when looked at in that way (seriously the enemies hitting you while you have no control in the doorways was always my biggest “F U!!!” moment while playing that game) 

But he is definitely trying to avoid controversy. His close friend who has collaborated closely with him on his videos since before he became a channel, Mike Matei, has his own YouTube streaming channel and he has bitched about this exact topic. Basically saying that “too many of y’all get too butthurt and offended by opinions, so I don’t like sharing them”. I have always felt this sentiment from his channel — he is injecting his personal opinion only insofar as he doesn’t think it will get him any blowback that he really doesn’t want to deal with

“His criticisms were clearly from a modern perspective, which are valid…”

What in the world is this ‘modern perspective’? Do you mean the ‘present’? So I, being a member of ‘the present’, say, ‘All these new 3d games are so boring and bloated.’ No one ever says, “Say more. We need to know where you are coming from.” What is said to me is, “Fuck you! You’re a retro fag! Etc.”

Footage of himself playing the game at 6 years old doesn’t mean shit. Streamers today, who clearly grew up with Zelda 2, will trash the game and propagate the usual lies about it. The lie being that it is a ‘broken game’ as if no one enjoys the game then or now. It is clearly a fake reality. If it wasn’t for this blog and some others, Nintendo would never acknowledge there is a huge fan base for Zelda 2 even to this day.

Someone waving a hand and saying, “Metroid is broken,” is clearly not representing the game correctly. There are quality of life issues such as lack of saves and needing a long time to recharge your health. Saying ‘modern perspective’ is a cop out. The ‘modern perspective’ will even cry that there are only two action buttons to control Samus.

No mention of the game’s strengths such as the challenge, the music, the atmosphere. Just bitching about having to refill the energy bar. What Metroid badly needed was a NES sequel (which, strangely, went to Gameboy).

The reason why this bothers me is that during the latter 16-bit Era onward, absolutely no one defended 2d Mario. “Everything must go 3d, Malstrom.” I was told this. It was so prevalent that Nintendo was not even conscious of a 2d Mario genre. Somehow, NSMB DS wormed its way out and sold very big. Then, NSMB Wii was made which also sold very big. It showed 2d Mario wasn’t a fluke, a retro title, or something like that. There was not only a major market there, it was a market that Nintendo didn’t see because they didn’t want to see it. Why did they ignore it? Because everyone said 2d Mario was ‘old’ and ‘broken’ and ‘part of the past’. But that 3d Mario? Oh, that is the only Mario.

If I was developing a Metroid type game, I would emulate the first Metroid, not Super Metroid. For one obvious reason is because Metroid is simpler. In all honesty, I truly do believe NES Metroid is the better game. The game requires skill and memorization. Super Metroid is a skill-less game. That game came out around the time where gamers became entitled that they should be able to finish every video game(!). This is definitely not the mindset of the 8-bit Era.

Beating NES Metroid is an achievement. Beating SNES Super Metroid is something anyone can do. Just because you can’t beat a game doesn’t mean it is broken.

Hi Sean,

Over a year ago I emailed you at the start of the Stop Killing Games initiative. Since then an official EU Citizen initiative had launched and now it’s approaching the end, just one more month to go for it to reach its goal. Due to drama involving Pirate Software the initiative slowed down, but now it’s gaining traction again, so I would like to ask you to share this message on your blog. You do have quite a lot of readers outside the US, and I’m sure there are enough of us in the EU.

EU Initiative: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

Stop Killing Games in general: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

Here are a few cliff notes:

– This is an official EU petition, not some change.org nonsense,   regulators will have to address it if it passes (and EU regulations do matter, e.g. they dragged Apple kicking and screaming to use USB-C   everywhere and allow sideloading apps)

– This is not a law proposal, citizen initiatives are meant to open up  discussions

– Pirate Software early on spread a lot of FUD and completely   misrepresented what the initiative was and what it was asking for;  since he had quite and audience back then this put a lot of people off from signing

– Ross Scott, one of the people who started SKG, was trying to avoid drama, but a few days ago with nothing more to lose he finally addressed the elephant in the room and directly tackled all the misinformation

The relevant part begins at 17:00. Here is a TL;DR:

– It will not apply retroactively for games which are already released

– It is not asking publishers to support a game forever, to the contrary, it is asking for the server binaries (or any other solution) so the community can take over support without the publisher

– It is not asking for source code

– It does not ask to turn multiplayer games into offline single player games (how do you even come up with something this asinine?)

– Yes, games often use 3rd-party middleware the publisher can’t just give away under *current* contracts, but this initiative is not retroactive and when a law is passed software suppliers will adjust their contracts. This thing happens with suppliers in every other industry all the time, suppliers do know about laws and they do want to keep making money

There is also an older general FAQ which addresses all the misinformation and counter-points for people who don’t want to sit through the drama:

Thanks for taking the time to read all this, I hope you do put this message up. Let’s get this over the finishing line!

The European Reader

Oh dear! It’s the European Reader!

Well, Mister European Reader, did you know that Pirate Software was a QA member of Blizzard? OMG! He is so wise and has that ‘second puberty’ deep bass voice. And he doesn’t have a job! But he does have ferret rescue farms.

In all serious, I *did* publicly declare something was fishy about this Pirate Software guy when he made it big. Really smart people don’t go around talking all authoritatively (unless it is a persona). That guy always felt ‘off’.

Here you go, emailer. People will read up on the ‘Stop Killing Games’, and hopefully will no longer listen to Pirate Software.

His thoughts on NES Metroid really confused me, considering he actually liked games like Zelda 2 (a unique pov in the modern era where people still blindly brought/buy into that “black sheep of the series” bs) and even had a mixed, yet positive-leaning reception to Ghosts ‘n Goblins 

This email was saved from the oblivion of my SPAM folder. I suspect all new emailers get automatically sent to SPAM purgatory.

My suspicion is that big youtubers like AVGN wet their finger, hold it up to the wind, and go where the direction is. This way they can avoid ‘controversy’. But they also become less interesting.

In entertainment terms, consider Johnny Carson and Rush Limbaugh. Both talked about politics. Bother were funny. But Rush Limbaugh was deemed ‘controversial’. Why? The difference was that Johnny Carson only did his skit when the public direction was already going a certain direction often in the present or the past. Rush Limbaugh would jump in early even before any sentiment was settled and tried to influence it.

If you said, “I love playing my video game console,” no one bats an eye today. However, if you said that in the 1980s, people would say you were being controversial. There was heavy stigma attached to gaming back then. If you said, “I love 3d Mario,” you are the hit with the N64 crowd. But if you say, “I hate 3d Mario,” are are going to be despised by the N64 crowd.

AVGN is not going to go against the crowd. If the mob says Ghouls and Ghosts is good because of its difficulty, then its good. If the mob says Metroid is bad because of its difficulty, then its bad.

AVGN is not the personality that can buck the mob.

“Like you, Malstrom?” snorts the reader.

I do not rely on advertising or money for this site. I do not have to say things that placates the audience.

Look at movie reviews. You don’t see people pissing on the mob’s favorite movies, do you? Of course not. The Youtube movie critic only pisses in the same direction its audience does.

Gaming Media of the past (such as IGN and game magazines) were funded to create opinions and content to deliver gamers to the publishers (who were funding them). Youtube and Streaming, being directly funded by views of the audience, will not cross that audience. This is why you have all this streaming everywhere, and yet none of it is interesting.

Hi master Malstrom. You’re right in saying Metroid was targeted towards the advanced gamer. High difficulty was a feature or bullet point in games during that time. Just check out the box of Ninja Gaiden II:

It says “Hard to beat!!”, like it is a FEATURE, something that the customer looks for. In an age where games basically play themselves it’s no wonder people don’t want to put in the work. And I believe it is a generational thing, people don’t want to make an effort in their lives for anything.

People love to claim that FromSoftware games are difficult, which initially they are, but since they have an RPG system, the more you play them the easier they usually get.

There is a reason why these 8 bit games are showcased on speed-runs and the like, pulling off all the tech and skill to beat the games is an actual achievement, a showing of SKILL not a sinking of time.

I really need to replay the NES Ninja Gaiden games. My hesitation for doing so is obvious. They are very difficult.

Above: Now THIS is an intro…

In terms of backwards engineering FUN, I have learned one of the most important factors to a FUN video game is that it be CONSISTENTLY FUN, in other words, low amounts of frustration spikes or slow pacing. It’s not so much the game is ‘sweet’, it is that all the sour is removed from the game. It is why Mega Man 2 remains the most ‘fun’ Mega Man because the game is so incredibly consistent.

NES Ninja Gaiden is fantastic but becomes very inconsistent especially in stage 6 with the birds. Fuck those birds.

Ninja Gaiden 3 becomes even harder and rougher despite being very well programmed as a latter NES title.

So Ninja Gaiden 2 is the sweet spot for me. I love its story. I love the Ninja ‘shadows’ (Ryu duplicates). I love everything about the game.

It’s a damn shame this IP just went flat line into the 16-bit Era. I DO have a copy of the 3d Ninja Gaiden Collection, but I doubt I’ll enjoy it. In the 8-bit Versions, Ryu is not a god. He gets shot.

But anyway, one historical problem we might be doing is grouping the 8-bit Era with the 16-bit Era and act that the games are very much the same. There is reason to say they are more distinct than the 3d Era that followed.

“What could you possibly mean by this, Malstrom?” sniffs the reader.

8-Bit games are largely defined by their programming, not their artists. You can literally FEEL the programming in the 8-bit games. The 8-bit games that controlled really well were also programmed very well. The distinctiveness of the 8-bit game wasn’t their ART, it was their PROGRAMMING. I can’t think of art heavy 8-bit games. Some might point to Castlevania, Mega Man, Super Mario Brothers, Adventure Island 2+, or Batman, but those also have heavy programming skills behind them. I’d argue the MUSIC had more impact than the ART. While Mega Man 2’s art is very distinct and robot designs are interesting with cool animations, the music is really what captures people’s hearts. But the programming makes these 8-bit games control so well.

Contrast this to the 16-bit generation. The 16-bit Era was literally games trying to out ‘art’ one another. Here is 3d graphics as sprites for Donkey Kong Country. Here is FX chip for Star Fox. Super Metroid is very heavy on the art. Yoshi’s Island is WAY too heavy on its art. While I liked the art of Contra 3, for example, I felt the programming was so much better because the game PLAYED well.

I prefer PC-Engine shmups compared to SNES shmups because SNES shmups focus on art showcases instead of getting off the stage and letting the player have control with tight programming. Axelay and R-Type may be great shmups, but they are largely artistic showcases.

With the 3D Era, games still kept trying to be artistic showcases and haven’t stopped since then. This might be why the DS and Wii Era really appealed to me because being art showcases aren’t why we played those games. The Wii Sports with its Wii-Mote was some truly wicked programming going on there. Note how both the 3DS and Wii U reverted back to being ‘art showcases’. Switch wasn’t about being ‘art showcase’ which I really liked.

Anyway, a ‘challenging game’ was a well designed game. And it is not about ‘button pressing’ as the good reader may suspect. Final Fantasy 1 was challenging.

“That game was buggy!”

“Yeah! And it is full of tropes like four elements!”

“The graphics of the game are so terrible.”

And yet, the game SOLD.

“It is because the 8-bit gen were a bunch of retards who could only handle two action buttons! We, of Modern Gamers, can handle controllers with 16 action buttons! Clearly, we are the superior.”

But you, the Modern Gamer, just cry like a bitch when I put an 8-bit game before you. And it isn’t just the intense action. Even Final Fantasy 1 will make you its bitch.

And people STILL cry about Zelda 2 today. I mean, really?

Making a FUN game that is CHALLENGING is very, very hard. Metroid 1 was designed to be a challenge, which is why it is fun. The ‘challenge’ doesn’t mean the game is ‘broken’ as Modern Gamers think.

And when the ‘challenge’ is taken away, like in baby mode Super Metroid, I never thought the game was worth buying, ONLY RENTING.

The AVGN Metroid episode seems to have sparked some discussion. In a way AVGN is right about the Super Metroid, it did fix issues (rather “issues”) the previous games had, but while doing so, it made the game easy – too easy. When I had Super Metroid, I skipped school and beat the game in a weekend, which was a huge disappointment. Super Metroid is a spectacle, no doubt, that looks, controls and sounds amazing. It would have had more attention due to it’s visual and aural presentation if it had not been for Donkey Kong Country that was released at same time but looked and sounded better – and had actual challenge.

Back in the NES days sequels were games that were released for people who played the original games, but had more challenge. The genious of Yamauchi was that after the US videogames crash, he started marketing and selling NES for kids. The majority of popular games before NES were mostly endless games that speed up where you aim for high score, but with games like Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, you got to play a story on a game that was quite easy and had an actual ending.

Why SNES sequels were so disappointing for us NES gamers back in the day was because we expected the games being “super”: harder and more challenging versions of their NES counterparts, but they were just easier and watered down. Generally it seems that NES games that are harder and more challenging get some sort of hate online these days. But before SMB3, what was the best game on NES? There was the debate whether was it Zelda or Zelda 2. 

Metroid was hard and challenging game, because it was made for the arcade and Atari gamers, either it was kids’ parents or older siblings. Metroid, Kid Icarus, Megaman, Castlevania, all were for the experienced gamer. Faxanadu was marketed towards the Zelda gamer, just as a more sophisticated game, even the box art resembled Zelda and Zelda 2. 

Donkey Kong Country games and Yoshi’s Island were challenging games on SNES and suited for the NES gamers, unlike Super Mario World that was way too easy.

I think separating the historical and nostalgic systems was pretty spot on. Also some readers have pointed out that SNES beat Megadrive in sales, but it happened AFTER the support for MD had factually ended when Saturn was out. Sega released Saturn in 1994, which means that no heavy hitters was coming for the previous system anymore, whereas SNES had DKC games, Yoshi’s Island, Super Metroid in 1994 and later, DKC even looked so amazing that everyone thought it was coming to Nintendo’s new system. The console wars was pretty entertaining back in the day, but it also sparked Nintendo and Sega competing for who made the best games and this is what people remember from early 90’s. 

A Reader

Yamauchi was not responsible for the NES. His son in law was. In fact, market tests NOA paid for said that the American markets hated the NES games and said “the games suck!”. Arakawa actually ignored the market tests and trusted his gut. He saw American kids in the arcades. So he and Yamauchi made a deal. They would do a few test markets in the hardest hit cities. New York was the first city. NES was NOT a hit. However, it did sell enough to be seen as a viable product. This allowed more test markets in other cities to be done. I believe this was all in 1985 with only the Black Box Games.

Your recollection of gaming is correct. During the 8-bit Era, video games could be beaten. It became a yardstick among gamers about what games they could ‘beat’. “Oh, I beat that game.” This gave us social pressure to really finish some of these tough games! There was no way to truly beat them in the Atari Era. How do you beat Space Invaders or Pac-Man? You really can’t. You just played for high score. There was Pitfall and Adventure on the Atari 2600, but those were not like most games.

Metroid was designed to be the anti-Super Mario Brothers. In Super Mario Brothers, you avoided enemies. But in Metroid, they specifically designed the ‘screw attack’ so you would jump INTO enemies. Metroid was, in many ways, designed to subvert how you played in Super Mario Brothers.

And you were right that so many Super Nintendo ‘NES sequels’ seemed very watered down. Your reaction to Super Metroid was similar to mine. It could be beaten very easily. Let’s go through some of my recollections:

Super Mario World- Baby game compared to the earlier Mario games. Very fun launch game. Certainly OK while we wait for the inevitable Super Mario Brothers 5! (It still hurts, reader.)

Contra 3- This game was very different from Contra and Super C. Very, very different. However, it was also very, very cool. I really dug Contra 3 and still do to this day. Fantastic sequel.

Super Castlevania IV- I was never a big Castlevania player, but this game seemed somewhat flappy compared to the excellent Castlevania III. It was more ‘swing your whip in every direction’. So… OK? Seemed more like an exploratory software for the hardware than anything else.

Super Ghouls and Ghosts- Yeah, this game was super tough. I was never a Ghouls and Ghosts fan so I rented the game, gave me the same distaste as the original did, and didn’t pick it up again. I thought it was a slick game.

Super Adventure Island- This game seemed very much watered down compared to the original. And where was the dinosaur mounts and the maps? Perhaps I am remembering it wrong.

Super Double Dragon- Oh, this is a painful one. Double Dragon trilogy was awesome on NES. But the series just went to blah on the SNES. I’d have to play it again to find out why. Part of it could be due to the Final Fight and Street Fighter 2 craze that blew away Double Dragon series.

Battletoads in Battlemaniacs- Yes, this was lame. I did enjoy Battletoads and Double Dragon though. But the games did feel watered down. Fun rentals.

Tetris and Dr. Mario- I own this one along with the NES versions. I think it is fantastic. But it isn’t much of a sequel. More like a port.

Super Punch Out- I don’t remember this one, but I remember not being impressed by it. Mike Tyson’s Punch Out was incredibly intense. Super Punch Out seemed… goofy.

Final Fantasy 2- I’ve written extensively on this game. I was truly blown away by it. But I was also an avid fan of the original Final Fantasy 1. I didn’t know this was actually Final Fantasy 4. I thought it was an incredible sequel. Final Fantasy 3 (6) did even better in my experience. I love, love, love the SNES RPGs and still play them to this day.

Mega Man 7- Fuck this game. When I rented it, I knew it sucked because it had the tutorial beginner stage complete with a Hard Hat joke.

Mega Man X- Very, very slick and cool game. However, I hated the animals as robot masters. I need to play this more. The animal robot masters keep making me bounce off it.

Zelda: Link to the Past- Very, very fun game. However, very, very easy. I thought there would be a Second Quest. But there wasn’t! I felt ripped off! And I still feel ripped off to this day. This game needed a Second Quest!!!

Gradius 3- I liked this one a ton. But it did feel easy compared to the original Gradius. I actually thought Life Force was Gradius 2 so I was disappointed that Gradius 3 didn’t have co-op play.

Some franchises became huge disappointments. Where was Super Blaster Master? Blaster Master put out its sequel on the Genesis (traitor!). But Blaster Master 2 sucked so the franchise died.

And where was Super Guardian Legend? THAT would have been cool.

The incredible Ninja Gaiden series was absent on the SNES outside the trilogy collection (which was very poorly ported). I think that killed the series. A shame.

I would agree that part of Donkey Kong Country’s appeal was that the game could be very challenging. Note the sequel was even more challenging.

NES to SNES franchises seemed a complete mess most of the time. It was extremely disappointing being a die-hard NES fan. The SNES soured me so it was easy for me to walk away when the Nintendo 64 came around.

Hi Malstrom, I hope this email finds your way before you move!

It’s been said before in your blog that Nintendo seems out of touch with their audience as of late, but have you seen what happened to Mario Kart World these days?

From what I gather (I do not have the game or a Switch 2 or a Nintendo Online account), when people went to race online, everybody wanted to completely skip the “commute” tracks and go straight to the… actual tracks. Sadly, whenever players chose a track, there was a considerable chance they’d have to commute to it instead. Random chance. And speaking of chance, there was a basic workaround to it, where if the chosen track was Random instead of a specific one, it would guarantee a race in a circuit, no commute. EVERYONE used it.

Then a recent patch just got rid of that and forced a commute probability for random as well. Let’s see how the community is taking that change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reLvwEv8p1E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZFJ5aqx9pU

Keep in mind this is the FIRST Nintendo game for the Switch 2 and they’re fucking up this bad. Do you think gamers will start realizing what kind of company it has become?

Have a good day!

People keep sending this to me so I need to post an email on it.

The Internet is making outrage over this. But is this actually true? The original news post was updated. Give it a couple of weeks and see if it this is actually true.

I think people are risking making reaction videos to something that may not be true. If it is true, then there it is. But if it isn’t, these reactionaries are becoming jokes.