 Inori Says: |
| Axel-sama says you owe it to yourself if you have any remote interest in the Metroid series to look at the game that started it all and more. Pros Include
|
Naysayers: "WHAT? BLASPHEMY! METROID DESERVES A FULL-SCALE IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS! YOU GIVE ZERO MISSION A TWENTY PAGE ESSAY AND THEN COP OUT ON THIS??? YOU SUCK, AXEL! YOU CALL YOURSELF A METROID FAN??? YOU LIKENED METROID TO HALO, FOR FUCK'S SAKE! YOU ARE HORRIBLE!!! YOU MUST LOVE OTHER M!"
Now that I listed probably every hater's thoughts here, I believe I can proceed to write coherently now. Yes, Metroid is the game that set the legacy, obviously for being the first game in the series. Yes, Metroid is one of the first really big Sci-Fi console "shooters." Yes, Metroid is part of Nintendo's darling and glorious history. However, let's stop idealizing and look at some cold facts: 1) I already pretty much indirectly talked about this game through my post for Metroid: Zero Mission. 2) This is an 8-bit NES game (or Famicon Disk System if you're going to get technical on me). As fun and wonderful as it is, there is just only so much I can talk about, and you'll see as this post unfolds.
I wanted to sort of write a summarized "biography" of the game, but I really can't. I don't know if there is a "story" to how this game came to be, like how Final Fantasy was supposed to be Square's final game ever during a time when they faced bankruptcy and stuff. The only stories I sort of know are how Samus came to be, and I think that is best saved for the look at this game's "interpretation" of Samus at the end (that is to say, if there's much to even have to call it an interpretation).
Okay, since this is going at a painfully slow pace, let's begin. I'm going to mark each topic, unlike in the last post. Ready for it? First up...
The Aesthetics
This includes graphics, audio, art design, and so on. Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on all the other NES games of this game's time, so I cannot say how the graphics compare to them. I do know that this game is sort of minimal with backgrounds and such (actually I'm pretty sure every room just has a black background). For the most part, there are hardly any bright rooms or colors in this game. I liked this about the game because it was easy on the eyes, which I don't know for sure but I thought it made the game more comfortable to play. For an NES game, I think most of the sprite images are done nicely, particularly Samus in her power suit, the iconic Metroids, and of course Mother Brain. It's funny though to see Kraid at about the same height as Samus, and my god, if I thought Ridley looked weird in Fusion, this game changes my view of that to something more of fine art. Ridley in here reminds me of people with double-chins, for some reason. In the instruction manual for the game, he also looks horrific and completely different from how we recognize him today. I don't feel like pulling up a picture of him like that, but I can say his head was kind of like that of the Omega Metroids, or Xenomorphs from Alien, but imagine it with rows upon rows of eyes. It was actually kind of horrifying and yet silly at the same time. Not all sprites and stuff are all that great though. If I hadn't played Zero Mission, I would be wondering what the hell those zebetites were. To be fair, I still wonder what those things are anyway.
However, sprite images are sort of the tiniest issue with this game in terms of the graphics department. We may have a lot of pallet swaps of enemies and enemies that are hard to make out what they really are, but those come nowhere near close to this other graphical "theme" of the game that I found truly annoying: rooms that look exactly the same. This probably ties in with level design, but I think of it as a graphical thing too because the developers use the same "blocks" or textures or whatever in a lot of the rooms of Zebes. This is the criminal thing that made me initially hate Metroid II. I don't know why it didn't with Metroid initially, maybe it's because there are colors, but playing through this game again recently I just really looked into that and got kind of fed up with it. I want to give the game the benefit of the doubt and say it was done so intentionally to make you lost, but at the same time, this doesn't feel as meticulously constructed as the Lost Woods from the Zelda series. Hell even in Metroid II, the layouts of places did actually hold some distinctions from each other. In Metroid, in Ridley's Lair specifically, there are three rooms that are almost exactly the same. One of them is the elevator room, so it's just shorter, but by the time I got to the third room, I accidentally made a wrong turn. So when I tried to go back, I sort of forgot which identical room I was in, and this cost me some time in completing the game. And if you wander into Norfair without a guide or any prior idea of its layout, you are pretty screwed.
People like to say things like, "Oh, those graphics haven't aged well at all." Well, of course they haven't, they belong to some of the first video games ever made. So in spite of the same exact rooms and the funny-looking Kraid and Ridley sprites, there's something I like about this game and its pixel blocks, and it's strange because it's not just because they are unique to the NES Era. I can't quite put my finger on it, but if anything this is probably going into the matter of style and art direction, which I'll get to in a bit. First, let's briefly go over audio. I don't have much to say in the line of sound effects (and for the most part, I probably never will for any game), but I do want to touch on the music again. Once again, the music does a nice job of setting the tone throughout the game. I know I said this already in my essay on Zero Mission, but honestly I think most of the music in this game works better in the format of the NES. Right at the title screen, we have an ominous arrangement of notes coming in every couple to few beats or so, immediately fitting for a game where isolation is one of the things it's known for conveying. Then we have the actual title theme, which I think sounds better in Zero Mission since... I really don't know. I really like the title theme, it isn't something I think we really hear beyond the first few ominous notes. It's not upbeat like the Brinstar theme, but, even though I would call it somber, it isn't wholly dark either. I have no idea what to make of it really.
But I do know what to make of the other themes. As I said countless times, the Brinstar theme is a classic tune that welcomes players to the adventure. Seeing as how Norfair is technically the second place you're supposed to visit, we see a stark contrast in the much slower and quieter tune of the zone, which I feel conveys that sense of isolation. Yes, we are on a grand and wonderful adventure through a planet with the badass Samus Aran, but we (or Samus, or you, however you perceive it) are still one of the few lone sentient beings on this planet. The rest of them aren't even on our side, and our life is constantly on the line. This music really suits Norfair for many reasons. For one thing, there is lava all over the damn place. Okay, maybe not really, but really, for me at least. For another, it is so easy to get lost in there and feel like there is no way out. Finally, the enemies there are kind of annoying. Then we have the hideout themes for Tourian, Ridley, and Kraid... I don't have much to say about those that you guys won't expect (read: "They totally fit the tone"). I will say though that I love the Kraid theme, and not simply because I keep saying, "The music in this game sets the tone." I think the most brilliant theme in this game, though, is the "Chozo theme"(?). That tune is so quiet, ominous, and weird, it gives you a perfect sense of the mystery behind the Chozo. Who are these Chozo/statues of birds? Why do they have these helpful items for us? What is their presence on this planet?
Okay so maybe many of those questions are answered in the manual, I don't care.
This is going to lead me into style/art direction or whatever since I also had a point about the Chozo here. It is cool that the Chozo statues in this game have probably, next to Mother Brain, the most detail to their textures. They really draw the player's attention and, if that player is the kind of person to actually think about things, leaves them wondering what's with these bird statues. Not only are these statues present, but they are also always located in rooms where the blocks are textured with more metallic looking details and such, further implying the presence (or former presence) of a sentient civilization. When the game isn't recycling room layouts, we get quite a bit, if I can really call it anything, about the mysteries of this planet we're running through. Here is where I want to talk about Alien, which also runs on mystery and fear of the unknown... Well, rather, I mean I want to talk about the fact that this game is inspired by Alien, one of the greatest Sci-Fi horror movies of all time. The Chozo statues are very much references to the "space jockey" in Alien. For those who haven't seen the movie, basically a space crew has to land their ship on some unknown alien planet, and while on this planet, they run into another space ship, of alien origin, that is completely abandoned and unexplained. The movie never tells or shows where it came from. We just see, as the space crew explores this thing, a sort of facility where the monsters come from, and we see some humanoid lying dead in a chair with this kind of helmet on... Well, I'm bad at describing it, so here are some pictures.
 |
| Okay, so maybe not the best comparison, but the similarities ARE there. |
The Chozo are not the only references to Alien, either. The Metroids are also pretty much the "Facehuggers" of the Alien series. They both also go through metamorphoses and their later evolutions hold similar appearances to the stuff from Aliens, but that's a topic for Metroid II. Sure, the Facehuggers and Metroids may look completely different, but they are by nature the same thing. Also, the mere fact that Samus is a woman is in itself a reference to Alien's Ripley, especially considering how all the endings of the Metroid games have Samus strip down to undergarments as how Ripley does at the end of Alien (can't remember if she does this in Aliens. I would not be surprised, though, if she did this in Alien3 and Alien Resurrection, seeing as how those last films are considered more fanservice/cash cows than movies. So basically, the fact that this game was born out of love for and influence by Alien is an awesome stylistic choice.
Then we have the design of the enemies and stuff, and namely the Metroids and Mother Brain, which all really bring out the creepy-yet-entrancing Sci-Fi feel of this game. I am not going to get into detail of every sprite in the game... as a matter of fact, this is all I really have to say. The Metroids are weird floating jellyfish-like creatures with fangs, what isn't terrifying about that thought? The end boss of the game is a freaking brain in a jar. What the hell? Again with creepy mysteries (although now it is known that Mother Brain, and the Metroids, were indeed Chozo creations).
All together, while there may not be much to say about the technical aspects of Metroid's 8-bit graphics system, it's a little surprising to see that we can have a whole discussion about the game's style and "art direction" if you can call it that. Still, Samus's character design is.... Well, let's leave that for the end. We still have to talk about the game's "story" (HA HA HA HA HA) and the gameplay. I cannot believe I just used a "we still have to talk about" statement on this game, so let's move on.
The "Story"
Alright, so story in Metroid... Again, what? Well, Zero Mission says this game has a story, but Zero Mission also added details to the game's story. Let's use some quotes, yes? I think the introduction at the title screen is a good place to start.
"Emergency Order: Defeat the Metroid of the planet Zebeth and destroy the Mother Brain the mechanical life vein." - Galaxy Federal Police, M510"What's M510? Beats the hell out of me. I love all the translation errors here. I have this theory that back in the old days of the NES and possibly earlier days of SNES, nobody knew how to actually translate Japanese. Look at this nonsense, "Metroid." The one Metroid or the multiple Metroids? In Japanese, there is no plural form. People pass it off as Metroid being the original plural form, but I think they're giving the translators too much credit. Let's face it, Japanese translations in those days were, for some reason, terrible. "The mechanical life vein." What the hell is a "life vein?" I thought Mother Brain was, you know, a brain.
Well, putting shitty translations aside, that's the gist of the game. I don't think it ever explains who the hell Kraid and Ridley are, but because there are statues in of them in front of Tourian, I would assume they are in league with Mother Brain. When we beat the game, we get this:
"Great !! You fulfilled your mission. It will revive peace in space. But it may be invaded by the other Metroid. Pray for a true peace in space!"Actually, more interesting than anything else right now is this is probably one of the few games directly "requesting" players to make some form of religious act. Well anyway, as it's not so important, I love, "But it may be invaded by the other Metroid." Once again, bad translations. What is this "other Metroid"? Oh no, wait, no please don't tell me...
 |
| WE WERE WARNED THIS WOULD HAPPEN!!!!! |
Does that detract anything from this game at all? Absolutely not. If you're like me and don't stick around the title screens or instruction manuals for too long and jump right into the game, you will be thrown right into the gameplay for Metroid. Literally, the game just starts and off you go, no dialogue boxes or anything. If you stuck around, read that intro, and expected Bleak House, I have no idea what to tell you.
Hey look, I'm starting to talk about
The Gameplay
Here is the core of the Metroid game. This is the meat and potatoes, the bread and butter, the eggs and bacon, the slice and dice, the x and y, the A and B of this game. Like all Nintendo games, and especially of this game's time, Metroid boasts a bountiful gameplay experience. First off, we have it's platforming aspects. The platforming in this game seems a little basic. I mean, we don't have ridiculous platforming challenges for items like we do in Zero Mission. However, let's look at this game in comparison to Super Mario Bros. In Super Mario Bros., we have to run forward, jumping across rows of blocks to ensure we either don't fall or don't get killed by enemies in our path. Even the enemies served as platforms. We could take about as much time as we want, but, unless we're playing as Luigi somehow, we can't go back (I think that was Luigi's key difference if I remember right). In Metroid, we do the same thing of jumping across and over things to ensure we don't die, but there is one key difference: we also shoot things. Sure, Mario and Luigi had the Fire Flower, but that does not make SMB a shooting game. In Metroid, we can't jump on enemies (although we can freeze them and do so). We also have enemies flying at us in all sorts of directions. If none of this makes that much of a difference to you, well, when we get right down to it, the boss fights are straight up shooting... With a bit of platforming mixed in. Given that these threats are constantly around and we constantly have to watch our jumping and stuff, I think this sort of makes it a relatively fast-paced game on the NES, or certainly action-oriented.
However, this is simply just not all that Metroid is. This is one of the games that gave the subgenre Metroidvania its name. I don't think there was anything quite like this game before its time, where we go around finding power ups and then exploring the rest of the world to see what we can do with them. Maybe The Legend of Zelda? Still, Zelda wasn't a sidescroller, nor was it a platformer. The other game that makes up this subgenre is Castlevania, which I have actually never played. I am going to do that eventually though, because I hear these two games are incredibly similar. I think Kid Icarus, the NES game, might also be like Metroid a bit, I'm not sure. I do know, though, that Kid Icarus was made with the same engine the developers used to make Metroid. Getting back to the Metroidvania qualities of the game, though: because every item is out there with the only means of restriction being sometimes needing another item to progress, this is a game that opens up sequence-breaking. The seemingly set path is Brinstar, Norfair, Kraid, Norfair, Ridley, and then Tourian. However, this might just be the hand-holding in Zero Mission engraved into my brain. Metroid didn't come out with clear instructions on how to beat the game, I don't think. Maybe a strategy guide was released, but that does not detract the fact that everybody who played this game may have had their own way of progressing through it, simply because all the items are there and there are many methods to acquire them with. Maybe not as much as in Zero Mission, but it was still something for an NES game.
Anyway, so yeah, we have collectibles and exploring and stuff. This is quite a lot of complexity for an NES game considering other games that existed, like Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, Balloon Fighter, etc., where the goal was clear and the means are simple. In Metroid, we have a goal, but we haven't the slightest idea what the means are. Instead, we have an entire series of subterranean caverns to investigate and familiarize ourselves with. Then, when we find there are multiple endings for the game, we realize that Mother Brain is not the only goal of this game. I believe this is probably one of the first, if not the first of them all, games to gain this sort of mania over speed running. The fact that there's a speed running element to this game also pretty much makes it fast-paced as well.
Once again, we have something like Zero Mission when we combine item collection with time trialing. This is pretty much a theme in all the Metroid games, but the thing is that this is the first of all of these games. This is the game that devised the many different ways to play a single game type of thing. While it seems really simple now in comparison to Zero Mission, as we only get such fewer endings, it was something that added many levels of complexity to such a seemingly simple game.
However, Metroid is by no means a perfect game, and this is mostly and sadly due to the limitations of the time. Or at least I'm assuming so. Does making nearly all of Norfair a series of identical rooms sound like a good idea? Does making the transitions into other rooms open for enemies to follow you in and possibly kill you sound like a good idea? These have to be due to the limited resources back then, I just simply cannot accept that the developers would leave things like this happening. The boss fights are nice and challenging, especially Kraid (Kraid seems to have gotten revenge for how hard I laughed at him in Zero Mission), even though at the same time they can be really simple. For this game, that's okay with me since hey we have dynamic boss fights where we need to be moving to some extended degree relative to something like in Mario Bros.
However, Tourian is kind of where the game walks a fine line between screwing up completely and being really cool. So how about we get to Tourian and encounter the Metroids, the title enemy of this game, the menace of the galaxy whom we were sent to kill. You gotta freeze them AND spend some missiles before they unfreeze. If they get on you, they are hard to get off and can drain energy fast. If you run into like three of them, you may be screwed. All of this is true of the Metroids, but none of that is actually anything wrong. It sounds awesome we have challenging enemies that the game is named after, right? Now how about I tell you that you can skip all of these guys, potentially without freezing them, and storm right up to Mother Brain? Doesn't sound so great anymore, yeah?
As grateful as I was for not having to deal with the Metroids, I found it kind of silly that the title enemies of the game could be ignored so easily. Plus, killing them refills a lot of your health and ammo. Oh yeah, part of another issue with this game is that the health and ammo refills are completely random. You could spend hours grinding for missiles and getting energy instead. It is such a massive pain. You know what is a terrible pain? It's not as bad, but I'll tell you right now, Mother Brain is possibly one of the most annoying boss fights in the history of boss fights.
First of all, to get to Mother Brain, you have to get past the zebetites, which are barriers placed around where Samus is standing in the screen. These things take about eight missiles to kill, I think, but with those damn Rinkahs (the red O's in the screen) flying around, it's a little longer than that. Plus you have to avoid being shot by those turrets, which isn't too bad I guess. But then you get to Mother Brain, and do you see how many Rinkahs that guy has to dodge? It's ridiculous and annoying. The way to deal with them is to freeze them, but the thaw out and instantly respawn eventually. They never cease being a problem. If you get hit by one of them, the manual says it's not so bad, and the manual's correct. What the manual doesn't say, is that you'll be constantly getting hit by them repeatedly. Also, if you get hit and pushed off into the lava pit between you and Mother Brain, you can kiss maybe three energy tanks goodbye.
To be fair, I don't think this is anywhere near as bad as Mother Brain in Zero Mission, though. Mecha-Ridley is also significantly more annoying. I guess this is actually great that it's challenging because maybe other NES bosses weren't as difficult, but I don't care. It was really annoying. After killing Mother Brain, though, you can't rest just yet. A self-destruct timer starts counting down, further pressuring you and giving the game its fast-paced feel. The escape is pretty significantly easier than, say, escaping the space pirates on 15% Hard Mode Challenge in M:ZM, but if you're unused to the game, the platforming in a hurry will prove challenging a bit. However, nine-hundred and ninety-nine seconds is far more than you'll ever need to escape. The worst I've ever done was escape with just above six-hundred seconds left.
Still, all of it is a very memorable experience. Plus, this game holds something that makes it truly unique from the others: you can play as Samus without her Power Suit. I'm not talking Zero Suit stealth mode, I mean you can play as Samus in a sort of leotard through the entire game. It's kind of strange, I mean like how does she use her arm cannon, but it's also really cool and it makes me sad it's not in other games. This is the other thing rooted in the game's legacy: Samus's "Justin Bailey" appearance. Metroid is a game that runs on password saves, so to put down the game and pick up again later, you'd need to kill yourself, write down the password you get, and then put it in later. It's really stupid and I hate it, even though I never had a problem beating the game quick enough to not need it anyway. "Justin Bailey," then, is part of a password that allows you to play as Samus this way. There are other passwords that do this too, but this password is the most officially recognized variation. This was also only available for American versions of the game, because in Japan the save system was actually like The Legend of Zelda's. Hey, I liked Zelda's save system! Why did we have to have these long and annoying passwords to memorize? Well, we at least got something truly unique out of it. This, then, leads me to my final discussion point:
Samus's Design
So yeah... Samus in Metroid...
I know, so detailed, my goodness. It's like looking at the concept art for the Prime series, my goodness. Why are her eyes so low? Her hair is so bad Eighties. Is that a bikini or a set of pixels censoring private parts? Well at least she thought to keep her boots on.
To be fair, this is the NES we're talking about. I actually happen to love her depiction in the leotard though, because in this game when she gets the Varia suit with it, she gets green hair. That is just amazing because green is my favorite color. This is pretty much never seen again, which disappoints me because the green hair was just so cool!
 |
| Best, most well-detailed depiction ever. |
That's about all really. How much more in depth can I go on about a limited set of pixels? I can say that, while Samus runs side to side and shoots, you can make out that she has breasts. "Sideboob" in an NES game. Cool, I guess? Not as much as that green hair.
I'm ending this post with a picture of a sculpture somebody made on DeviantArt that I found was really cool.
 |
| Credits to Jenni/"Pixel Ninja." Love the eyes (and hair, of course). |
That's all for now. Tune in next time for loud screeching noises and really annoying boss battles! And wow, what do you know, I'm the one who turned out surprised by this post's length.
No comments:
Post a Comment