A few housekeeping notes following up on the previous entry. First, I forgot (or maybe never realized) that you can temporarily freeze the SA-X to give yourself a moment’s respite during the big chase scene. This doesn’t do that much to help, but some help is better than none whatsoever in such a deadly sequence. […]
I always like to see developers making conscious, and conscientious, use of their selected platform. For example, here we have the real path to Sector 5’s objective tucked behind a hidden block that offers a small, discreet visual cue at the very right edge of the screen. This is something that wouldn’t really have worked in console Metroid games […]
Yesterday, I hosted a one-hour live stream of the original Metroid for USgamer. It went pretty OK. I mention this here because, for all intents and purposes, this is a rough draft of a video version for The Anatomy of Metroid. Until I can actually put that together, this has a lot of the same information arranged […]
Up until this area with the battle against Spore Spawn, none of Samus’ new collectibles have diverged from the powers she acquired in Metroid and Metroid II. The Charge Beam offers the first new touch of variety, but it’s not until after you’ve devastated Zebes’ underground ecosystem by murdering Spore Spawn that you really get […]
Well, this is a little ahead of the usual schedule, but since the last book was a quite a bit behind schedule it all works out, I guess. I’ve compiled The Anatomy of Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Metroid II into a book that is now available on the site’s bookstore. My original intent was to […]
After Ceres explodes (because, as we’ll find out, that what happens to every place Samus Aran ever visits), the scene moves to planet Zebes, setting of the original Metroid. This makes sense, given that Samus just faced down Space Pirate commander Ridley and would naturally think to track him back to his hideout… or at […]
As you move to hunt and destroy the final metroid and complete your dark plan of galactic genocide, the nature of the game changes. You enter a series of caverns devoid of all life, filled with rocky pools of a viscous liquid that does a bang-up job of giving the impression of alien slime with […]
As the metroid counter winds down, Samus Aran enters the final areas of the game. SR-388 offers one last cavern super-structure followed by a couple of smaller tunnel networks that house the climactic encounters. Now that Samus has every piece of gear in hand, the game doesn’t feel particularly compelled to play nice… Including this […]
Note to folks coming over from Giant Bomb: Hi! Thanks for visiting. You have been linked to the middle of this Metroid II series. You can start here at part one, or better yet, just go to the Anatomy of a Game page for the full rundown on this entire project, which also includes the […]
Besides grabbing the Spider Ball and Bomb, all there really is to do in the first little pocket of SR-388 is kill some alpha metroids and snag a few missile expansions. This first area gives you a pretty good sense of how the entirety of Metroid II‘s structure works. Generally speaking, each separate breakout area consists […]
It doesn’t take long for Metroid II to differentiate itself from its predecessor. About… five minutes, I’d guess? That’s about how long it takes, 10 at the outside, for you to encounter your first metroid. Despite its name, Metroid for NES wasn’t really about metroids. Those creatures only showed up at the very end as […]
Well, I guess I lied. I said I’d be shrugging off the shackles of 8-bit oppression with this entry, but here we are looking at a game on an 8-bit system with 2-bit color. I was going to dig into The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in honor of A Link Between […]