Super Metroid spoiled me.

Super Metroid has to be the single GREATEST example of what a sequel can do for its series. I've been on a Metroid kick lately, and have been playing through any of them I can get my hands on. I've done pretty much everything I can in Fusion and Zero Mission, aside from Tool Assisted runs, and while I haven't 100% collected Super Metroid, I've loaned it to a friend for now, so this leaves me with the Original Metroid that came attached to Zero Mission. I gotta say, wow did NES games have the dumbest artificial difficulty.

You start with 30 energy, you can't aim down, or diagonally and enemies are always just short enough that you need to do that. Going through the areas feels like a Flintstones cartoon because every other room is literally a copy of a room before it. There's no recharging stations, so you have to grind infinitely re-spawning mobs if you don't have enough missles to open a door, or just want to be able to survive a hit from said infinitely re-spawning mobs.

Getting killed while going from room to room is a real threat. Enemies still spawn while you're walking out and can hit you, meaning that unless you want to take 20 out of 30 total health, you have to kill them until they drop something and don't pick it up before you go.

There's no explanation of what you even have to do, or where you're supposed to go. That parts fine, Super Metroid didn't really tell you where anything was either. Super Metroid also had a map that at least let you know where you've explored and where you haven't. Aside from being killed while you literally cannot do anything because you were punched through a door by a randomly spawning mob and it slapped you 4x while you were transitioning from room to room, you have no idea whether you've been in this specific room before or not. Door locations, item locations, even the color of the geography repeats itself so many times, you'll start to wonder if you've not just been going in a huge loop.

I'm only at Kraids lair so far, and I'm determined to see this through to the end no matter what. The main thing I can take from this game is a newfound respect for everything Super Metroid did. Mobs would health/missles 100% of the time as long as you weren't maxxed out on your current stock, and infinite spawn spots would have a small grace period before they spawned again, giving you time to move on. Each room had at least something about it that distinguished itself from the rest, so even if you didn't want to look at the neat map they gave you, you knew whether or not this was a new room you hadn't thrown power bombs to find any hidden items in yet.

Sorry for the rant. I just had to vent a bit because it seriously feels like I'm beating my head against a brick wall right now.

i have metroid zero mission for my gameboy sp. i killed a worm and a dino then got losted i feel you bro.

I grew up with the original. Those are the games that make me appreciate Dark Souls but not consider it terribly difficult. While a challenge, Souls games are logical.

Metroid, while the shizznit back in the day, was not. For more fun of this kind, please visit your local library and play Ninja Gaiden 1 or 2. For an even more illogical and difficult time, I suggest Battletoads.


Also, keep going, mother Brain is an epic showdown ( really)

skarekrow13 wrote:

Metroid, while the shizznit back in the day, was not. For more fun of this kind, please visit your local library and play Ninja Gaiden 1 or 2. For an even more illogical and difficult time, I suggest Battletoads.

Battletoads, the game made out of the anger of little eight year olds. I never played it when I was a kid but I picked it up a few years ago, still haven't beaten it. **** that game.

People think dark magic is cheap..... they need to experience the " joy" of those ****ing speeder bike second.

I think those things were made from a drunken night between the Roadrunner and Loki

I'm pretty sure they were, I need to pick it back up again I want to get through the rest of it to try out the "Silver Surfer" game.

I've been told I will have nightmares of it.

You will. Another "classic"

Souls games are kind and nurturing babysitters compared to the **** that used to go down.

I don't think I ever beat Shadowgate either. Maybe give that a whirl too

Never heard of it, I'll have to look it up once I get the chance. All I know is that a lot of the games from before make Dark Souls look like a walk in the park with body armor on.

Which is why I want to play them.

That's crazy. I've been doing the same thing recently. Started with Super Metroid, then went to Fusion, then Zero Mission, and now I'm on to Prime. I actually grew up with the original, and still play original NES games sometimes, and I just can't do the original Metroid. It was the catalyst for something spectacular, but it just hasn't aged well at all.

If it's consolation a lot of old NES games have extremely frustrating levels of difficulty. Metroid certainly isn't alone in that. Play some original Ninja Gaiden next. There's another one that'll have you pulling your hair out.

Edit: Didn't realize Skare pretty much said the exact same thing. Great minds

I never beat super ghouls n ghosts, even after picking it up again a year back.

Honestly, "casual gaming" is a very recent trend in gaming. Even the first Super Mario Bros had it's share of stupidly hard levels. Maybe that's why it's taken until now for a lot of people to accept gaming and not portray it as something "nerdy." Games have gotten significantly easier since old NES, and even Atari, games. Just my digression.

I've played some of the first Metroid games, but I never really got into them until Prime came about. PHAZON BEAM FTW!!!!!!!
Actually I thought the wave beam was the coolest.

Ninja Gaiden 3 actually might be the hardest since I think it's the only of the three that limits your amount of continues. The only reason I recall it being "easier" is because, by that time, developers were better able to use the hardware and it always felt like the controls were more responsive. Same thing with Mario games. I never felt like I could count on Mario jumping when I asked him to in the first game.

Also, keep going, mother Brain is an epic showdown ( really)

I'm not sure how the Mother Brain fight in the original is gonna top the one in Super Metroid. That fight was just...awesome. Her fight in Zero Mission had to be the second most frustrating part of that game though. Seconded only by the Zero suit sneaky part where you're forced to be chased by Space Pirates for the next 20 minutes.

Its not like I'm really blaming Metroid for being artificially difficult. I know that most Nes games just plain couldn't offer anything but this due to the limitations of the engine. Playing this just makes me appreciate just how far gaming has come in terms of being fair to its player. Its fair to be one shot by a giant dragon slowly winding up its fist at you and you not bothering to dodge. It isn't fair to be killed just for having the gall to not kill the pipe spawning enemies for 20 minutes until they hopefully drop something and you're safe to leave (maybe).

I don't know if I'd compare the epicness of fights across games. That probably would lead to some disappointment. But for NES, Metroid is a satisfying conquest once it's done. After you do that I challenge you to get Samus to strip off the suit and show off her goods kinda (no seriously)

for realz

I think seeing Samus take off her power suit in this one might just be out of the realm of possibility for me. I've done it multiple times on Zero Mission and Fusion but, I don't think I'll ever be able to master this one to that point. I've spent more than an hour just on Kraid's lair alone and haven't made an inch of progress.

I never was able to do it either. When the game was released it was one of those things that spread like wildfire but pretty much no one had actually seen outside of a picture or something.

The allure of 8-bit sex, while compelling, wasn't enough to make many of us master the freeze, jump, freeze, jump necessities of the game.