• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

What does "Other M" mean?

nkarafo

Member
It's a pretty good game but a terrible Metroid game. Combat was pretty good and it was fairly diverse and well paced.
Even the combat wasn't very good. The forced immobile first person perspective was bad, the concentration mode made missile upgrades meaningless and the D-Pad dodge was like a cheat that broke the game.
 

RK128

Member
Once again, I personally though Other M was a great game. I don't see what's so bad about it.

While I personally don't think its a great game at all, I'm happy you enjoyed the game that much :). I honestly think its okay/good once you completely flush the story out of my mind but that is a bit hard to do personally.

It is really boils downs to this; if you can ignore the story then the game is okay fun (more or less a Ninja Gaden Lite) and you will have a lot of fun! But if you come in expecting a proper Metroid title, you will be disappointed and can get downright angry at the game (with how is portay's Samus).
 
Fuck Other M and what it did to Samus' character. It singlehandedly murdered the franchise and I'll continue to declare that until a new mainline Metroid launches.

We went 8 years between Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. We're already 6 in since Other M but also we're 9 years since the last good Metroid game came out (2007's Prime 3). We've seen better days for this franchise.

Fuck Other M.
 

Astral Dog

Member
images
 

Opa-Pa

Member
RagnarokX I don't necessarily disagree with your explanations for those plot points in Other M, they're technically correct. Especially Samus following Adam's orders (hell, personally I thought it was a clever way to strip you of your powers at first), the problem is how exaggerated the points are. Samus following orders is fine. Samus not activating her Varia despite nearly melting iside a high temperature room tho? Same with her reaction to Ridley, which technically makes sense as well, but having a panic attack that deactivates her suits and almost makes her pass out, to then be rescued by a man (of course) was a bit too much for my taste.

And even if they weren't so over the top, they're still fucked up to me. It's a game where Sakamoto wanted to show "the real Samus", a "Samus with feelings and a motherly instinct" and it focuses heavily in mother and son symbolism which is pretty sexist. So the fact that they designed the plot to allow scenarios where she follows (ridiculous) orders by a man and freaks out in front of an enemy she had reasons to believe had been cloned... I dunno, it paints a pretty clear picture of Sakamoto's way of seeing Samus, so it makes sense that people don't want him anywhere near her ever again, despite past efforts.

Honestly I think even if Other M had a non intrusive story it'd still be a bad game (yes, bad game, not just bad Metroid). But people despised the story and characterization for pretty legit reasons.
 

Ritzboof

Member
i see a lot of people refering to mother brain and i dont get it. i really shouldnt be this familiar with the plotline of other M, but

in the game you encounter this lady thats like a big focus, and she has this hairpin with the little metroid tri-nucleus shape, and it turns out that she can control metroids. shes some humanoid recreation of the metroid queen; literally the other mother of the metroids
 

SoulUnison

Banned
What?
The game itself had a multitude of flaws, but the title itself is clever and sound.

"Other M"

You've got the M you can transpose to form "Mother."
You've got the literal "Other M" referring to the Metroids and a "new"
Mother Brain.
You've got how it makes the game's acronym "MOM."

It's extremely relevant, while being pretty darn classy.

Fuck Other M and what it did to Samus' character. It singlehandedly murdered the franchise and I'll continue to declare that until a new mainline Metroid launches.

We went 8 years between Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. We're already 6 in since Other M but also we're 9 years since the last good Metroid game came out (2007's Prime 3). We've seen better days for this franchise.

Fuck Other M.

This is like, the very definition of a drive-by/didn't-read-the-OP-or-the-topic-title shitpost.
 

Opa-Pa

Member
i see a lot of people refering to mother brain and i dont get it. i really shouldnt be this familiar with the plotline of other M, but

in the game you encounter this lady thats like a big focus, and she has this hairpin with the little metroid tri-nucleus shape, and it turns out that she can control metroids. shes some humanoid recreation of the metroid queen; literally the other mother of the metroids

Her initials are MB and was created to replicate Mother Brain and her powers.
 
Even the combat wasn't very good. The forced immobile first person perspective was bad, the concentration mode made missile upgrades meaningless and the D-Pad dodge was like a cheat that broke the game.
I didn't find the first person mode too different to say MGS2 but the overall control scheme was strange, not sure why it used a Wii remote on its side. I agree with a lot of the comparison complaints but judging Other M as an action game it isn't so bad. Concentration somewhat made sense, it wasn't designed like other Metroid games and was more in the realm of beat em up, it's difficult to concentrate when in battle and that's what the majority of the game is.

Terrible Metroid game, goodish game.
 

Garlador

Member
This whole "the technology wasn't ready" excuse is just that. An excuse. Super Metroid was as it was supposed to be. And even if limited technology was the reason why it didn't end up a stupid anime melodrama then let's be happy it was released back then and it turned up awesome.
Just a friendly reminder that Ninja Gaiden on NES had 20 minutes of cutscenes.

It was never a "technological" limitation. Even Sakamoto admitted that, prior to Other M, he never even really thought about the story or even Samus's character that hard before.

His treatment of her even runs completely contrary to what Retro said his suggestions to them about her personality were. For all the people who keep saying Tanabe is "in charge" of the Prime series, Sakamoto was still involved and Retro repeatedly stated they ran story and characters by him for his feedback and incorporated it into the games.
 

PtM

Banned
Sakamoto inserted himself into the game as Adam, the only person who truly "understands" Samus, and the result is a complete destruction of the character. That he gave a shit about her beauty spot...that says it all.
I'm entertaining the idea about what if he inserted his own father.
 

Ritzboof

Member
Her initials are MB and was created to replicate Mother Brain and her powers.

dont listen to me, im autistic. i forgot mother brain could do that thing. its all coming back to me now, after ive finally been able to suppress these memories
 

Freshmaker

I am Korean.
The thing that the manga and Other M have in common, the thing that causes both of her PTSD episodes, is that Samus thought Ridley was permanently dead. When she has her PTSD episode in the manga it's the first time she encounters him since that day when she was 3 and she finds out about his ability to heal his body. Every encounter with Ridley since then she knew he would come back and his appearance wasn't a surprise. In Super Metroid she blew up the entire planet Ridley was on and she states that she believed Ridley was gone for good.

Wouldn't the space dragon that murdered your parents coming back from the most insurmountable odds cause anyone's mental safeguards to drop. I mean what the hell do you have to do to get rid of the guy?
It was never established that Ridley killed her parents. This moment was never earned by the narrative of any of the games. So it comes off as trite and ham fisted.
 

Nerrel

Member
If you ignore the cutscenes is Other M worth playing? I've always heard that the story is terrible (almost offensively so), but I never really hear much about the gameplay.
It's fair. Fun enough to occasionally replay, anyway. The environments and music aren't great and it's painfully linear, but then again Fusion had the same problems and people still generally like it. There are some boneheaded decisions now and then, but for the most part it's a slick action game with some good set pieces. I absolutely love having fast Samus back in a 3D game, and people simply don't ever give the game credit for pulling that off. They nailed the feel of classic Samus in a way that the Prime games simply were never able to (and Retro tried, with the awful wall jumping panels and 5-jump screw attack).

The game isn't as good as a Prime game otherwise, but it's nowhere near as bad as it's been made out to be. If you can ignore the cutscenes, you can have a good time playing it.

After i experienced OtherM i am convinced that the late Gunpei Yokoi had a much bigger role in the early Metroid games that we thought. I bet he was keeping Sakamoto at bay whenever he proposed something stupid. With OtherM Sakamoto was in full control with nobody slapping some sense to him.

Sakamoto deserves the credit for his work on Super Metroid. He clearly was in charge of that game and giving the credit to anyone else is unfair, particularly Gunpei Yokoi since he wasn't really a factor in its development. There's an anecdote about him saying "what are you making, a work of art?!" after stopping in to check on the game and seeing everyone working so hard on it. Sakamoto was there every day working with the staff and made an incredible game. I don't care if you hate Other M, give him what he's due.

Bless mods and homebrew for exisiting
iiY5h1A.png
Ha, I think that's my mod. I've changed the hue since then:

Well they thought the gravity suit's purple made it stand out too much in cinematics and decided to just keep the iconic orange from the Varia Suit.
The pink glow only activates when there's gravity elements in play, like traversing water or out in space.

I really disliked that decision, which led me to mod it in for Dolphin. To the game's credit, it's really hard to balance that purple with so many over the top colors, so maybe it did end up looking goofy in cutscenes. I'm still not settled on the purple... I wish I could see how it looked in development to know how they were tackling it.


Samus is not a scared little girl. For 99.99% of the time she is badass. She appears as a little girl in a single scene because she has a PTSD flashback to the time Ridley murdered her parents as depicted in the manga, Fusion, and the commercial for Other M:

vzXlIrb.jpg

They could have eliminated half of the controversy of that scene by replacing the background during Samus' "crying little girl" transformation to a wasteland similar to the ad, just to make it clear to everyone that it was in fact a flashback and not Samus just breaking down like a sniveling child for no reason. Having seen the manga, I understood the scene as it was, but clearly a lot of people had no idea what was going on.
 

nluckett

Member
If you ignore the cutscenes is Other M worth playing? I've always heard that the story is terrible (almost offensively so), but I never really hear much about the gameplay.

Yes, if you are fine with it being more of an action game and less about the traditional exploration. It's fun in that regard. Samus is fast, stylish and lethal and I personally think the monster designs in this game are some of the best.

I appreciate that they wanted to have it work with just the wiimote, d-pad for movement along a mostly 2D plane and aiming at the screen to shoot. Not flawless, but pretty fun.

I wish Samus's internal dialogue had been about the mission, the metroids, the base... all of that, just not this obsession with Adam. Sakamoto clearly see's himself as some version of Adam and it just get's creepy.
 

nluckett

Member
There's no defending this scene, she wasn't surprised when Ridley returns at the start of Super, why now? The plot is not well thought out.

How many people have read the manga's? Or know any of the plot of the Metroid games? Other M, successful or not, was trying to go a bit more mainstream (actiony gameplay, lots of cinematics)... and none of those people know about Ridley. So a quick cut of her flashing back to being scared of the dragon creature that that killed her parents as a little kid seems appropriate.
 

Garlador

Member
Having seen the manga, I understood the scene as it was, but clearly a lot of people had no idea what was going on.
Having read the manga, I still didn't think it made any sense, especially factoring in all the other games.

I really could go on and on and on (and gladly will!) about Other M, but I DO think it deserves all the backlash it got and then some. To this day, I still have never seen a game just trample all over its heroine, one of the most progressive in the who gaming industry, and regress her - figuratively and literally - to such an incompetent, useless, and emotionally unstable wreck whose own greatest adversary wasn't Ridley or Space Pirates or Mother Brain but her own fragile, womanly emotions and unresolved daddy issues.

If anything, reading the manga made the scene even worse, because in the comic it's implied (more than implied, actually) that she manages to overcome those insecurities and fears, and she was still a child at that point, not a veteran survivor and experienced hero of countless adventures and wars.

How many people have read the manga's? Or know any of the plot of the Metroid games? Other M, successful or not, was trying to go a bit more mainstream (actiony gameplay, lots of cinematics)... and none of those people know about Ridley. So a quick cut of her flashing back to being scared of the dragon creature that that killed her parents as a little kid seems appropriate.
But there's no CONTEXT for players. Showing that quick flashback made no sense to new players because the scene is not explained or elaborated upon. Even if you've played the games, this scene is never experienced in any of the games. ONLY a little-read Japanese-only manga gives the merest hint of what she's experiencing, and even THEN, as I stated above, Samus in that story comes to terms with it and has growth through accepting the experience.

You can't just plop a random scene without any context in the middle of a game designed "for new players" and then be confused when none of them know what's going on. For a game meant for newcomers, a great deal of it is reliant on obscure material and lore that the majority of players never once experienced or read or played.
 

Jobbs

Banned
Sakamoto actually claimed that he wouldn't of made Super Metroid the same way he made Other M even if they had the technology back then. Having trouble finding the interview but he did definitely say that.

Sounds bullshitty to me. After Other M I only consider Super Metroid's greatness to have taken place in spite of Sakamoto and/or just been accidentally great
 

Boney

Banned
Even the combat wasn't very good. The forced immobile first person perspective was bad, the concentration mode made missile upgrades meaningless and the D-Pad dodge was like a cheat that broke the game.
Combat is ok. It's meant for you to be efficient and quickly dispatch enemies to keep the game moving forward and let you reduce your run time for speed runs. Shooting missiles starts a slow motion and a lock on so it's a quick back and forth from horizontal to vertical and back, it works especially well to stagger enemies in counter attacks that allows for melee strikes. Concentration mode doesn't make the missile upgrade worthless since you have to leave yourself open and waste clock time to charge them, it's basically a last resort for doing bad, hard mode makes you beg for more missiles once you get the super missiles. As for dodging, it makes you waste time since charge shots are the weakest attack in the game in terms of dps so you're not being efficient with the system in place, could be thought as a passive stylish meter from DMC.
 

nluckett

Member
Haven't read the manga, I still didn't think it made any sense, especially factoring in all the other games.

I really could go on and on and on (and gladly will!) about Other M, but I DO think it deserves all the backlash it got and then some. To this day, I still have never seen a game just trample all over its heroine, one of the most progressive in the who gaming industry, and regress her - figuratively and literally - to such an incompetent, useless, and emotionally unstable wreck whose own greatest adversary wasn't Ridley or Space Pirates or Mother Brain but her own fragile, womanly emotions and unresolved daddy issues.

If anything, reading the manga made the scene even worse, because in the comic it's implied (more than implied, actually) that she manages to overcome those insecurities and fears, and she was still a child at that point, not a veteran survivor and experienced hero of countless adventures and wars.


But there's no CONTEXT for players. Showing that quick flashback made no sense to new players because the scene is not explained or elaborated upon. Even if you've played the games, this scene is never experienced in any of the games. ONLY a little-read Japanese-only manga gives the merest hint of what she's experiencing, and even THEN, as I stated above, Samus in that story comes to terms with it and has growth through accepting the experience.

You can't just plop a random scene without any context in the middle of a game designed "for new players" and then be confused when none of them know what's going on. For a game meant for newcomers, a great deal of it is reliant on obscure material and lore that the majority of players never once experienced or read or played.

Yeah, I went and rewatched the scene and you're right. Earlier on in the game she talks about him as her long time nemesis. But I guess even I had heard before this game that he killer her parents and so I pieced it together. I think her reverting to the little girl was a good visual (I agree with whoever said it should have been on a destroyed battlefield), but there was no context really.

The worst part is, ok, she reverts to a child for a minute, then she should kick his ass. But Adam has to yell at her and then she gets grabbed. She should have been a child, then snapped to and started ass kicking.

Some of the weird story things I like to think are just based on how anime is usually edited and how the flow of stories works over in japan, more about eliciting emotion than purely the most literal and clear way to show things.
 

Haganeren

Member
Maybe it's sexist to have Samus having maternal instinct, i don't know but i would love to see more of that from others characters. I actually prefer that opposed to strip down a badass fantasm female character but it seems i'm on the minority on that one. It seems paternal instinct are quite accepted out there but maternal instinct a lot less for "heroes". Maybe i accepted the situation a lot more before i actually kinda feels like that for that baby Metroid ("No ! My Baby !") and having Samus having the same through as me was kinda cool. (Especially since i always though she had no personnality in the Prime series)
Granted, if the game didn't forced the whole "mother" thing with the name (so Other M), ship in the form of a baby bottle and some dialog, it would have been received a bit better. Not even mentioning some stupid stuff like the whole varia suit fiasco.

To be honest, it's the visible part of the iceberg, the one which stand out and which is easy to tell "See ! Look how ridiculous it is !". I can agree Sakamoto never had the subtly to make a deep story like he wanted to do with Other M.
Bur i also actually think the fact Samus can be a little weaker would have been just nearly as badly seen even if Sakamoto was a master in storytelling writing. Well, i have no proof here but the whole point of Samus is to be a badass, you just can't turn that concept around without disappointing a lot of people.

I really think if at the end of the game, Samus could go at that dangerous part of the base where Adam was going or even fight Adam in order to prevent him to go (and you can win !), player's would have been a lot more satisfied. I think if Samus had a more prevalent "role" during the whole story... like maybe Metroid are on the loose and you have to fight them Metroid 2-style. Player would also have been less frustrated about the whole Adam thing.
A Metroid fan usually love to wander in the game, researching secret with the liberty to do whatever they want, whenever they want... Or believing they can do that at some extend at least. Adam didn't only frustrated Samus in a father-daugter kind of relationship, he frustrated the player and he never had the chance to making him "pay" in some way. (At least in Fusion, you can have Adam as an antagonist at some point)
It's kinda interesting, not really well done but interesting... I have never seen players so concerned about a female character liberty than when they are the one frustrated on her stead.... Or so i think... Maybe i look too deep into the whole thing.

As for me, I actually liked the fact this Samus was weaker since she was always in her memories... Some kind of light depression which alter her abilities.... But i always liked weaker protagonist mayself so i am a lot more acceptant about misstep on that kind of trope that a lot of players. (I am a LOT less tolerant for badass characters though) I would love to have more male protagonist being weak like that... I can see that turning quite badly with the public though, ah ah.
 

Garlador

Member
Maybe it's sexist to have Samus having maternal instinct but i would love to see more of that from others characters. I actually prefer that opposed to strip down a badass fantasm female character but it seems i'm on the minority on that one. It seems paternal instinct are quite accepted out there but maternal instinct a lot less. Maybe i accepted the situation a lot more before i actually kinda feels like that for that baby Metroid and having Samus having the same through as me was kinda cool.
Perhaps focusing on "maternal instincts" other than "postpartum depression" would help next time...

I mean, most fans know that a HUGE chunk of Metroid was inspired by the Aliens franchise, including its strong, leading lady Ripley. And what is Ripley if not a badass woman with strong maternal instincts?

Ripley even has her own PTSD and freakouts over her experiences with the original Alien (granted, that was her first experience and she was never raised a soldier or warrior), which makes her descent into the Queen Alien's lair to rescue Newt such a kickass moment, because you have her confronting her own fears and terrors and looking them right in the eye, because her maternal care for Newt is stronger than any of her life-threatening terrors - both real and imagined - ever could be.

That was a prominent example of exploring "maternal instincts" with a female heroine from the original film and doing it justice.

Then of course there's this supremely badass mother who went through hell and back for her son:
She's allowed moments of vulnerability. She freaks the hell out when confronted with the returning Terminator and has a lot of issues of her own to work through. She's allowed to be afraid, to make mistakes, to break down, but she always picks herself up and dusts herself off and just keeps going - a human terminator if ever there was one.

So Other M could have handled it like these examples; to show the lengths a mother might go to for her child. Instead, it's just Samus moping about for most of the game because the baby is dead, and then acting like a child herself in the shadow of the "fatherly" Adam Malkovich (I won't even begin to go into how screwed up this relationship is, but he isn't worthy of her respect or reverence in the slightest).

I actually WOULD like a game with Samus going full Sarah Connor or Ripley, but we didn't get that in Other M. We got all the negative traits and none of the positive. All of the failings and none of the growth. That's only part of what made it so insufferably unsatisfying, but mishandling the "maternal" part was a huge portion of it and - intentionally or not - it played into some of the worst stereotypes of motherhood and womanhood. It comes to consume her and define her in unfortunate ways.
 
Nintendo isn't good at fleshed out stories. Zelda is very minimalist and, thankfully, has stayed that way. With Metroid, they tried to dab into something deeper and meaningful story-wise but they fell flat on their faces. The Mother series is probably their most literal work, simply because of the genius behind it, but that's only one.
 

Garlador

Member
Nintendo isn't good at fleshed out stories. Zelda is very minimalist and, thankfully, has stayed that way. With Metroid, they tried to dab into something deeper and meaningful story-wise but they fell flat on their faces. The Mother series is probably their most literal work, simply because of the genius behind it, but that's only one.

Don't forget their other RPGs. Fire Emblem, Golden Sun, and they even let the Xenoblade people have full reign over a truly epic story. There are Nintendo made and Nintendo published games with great stories. Other M just isn't one of them, and it's bad by even Nintendo's standards.
 
Don't forget their other RPGs. Fire Emblem, Golden Sun, and they even let the Xenoblade people have full reign over a truly epic story. There are Nintendo made and Nintendo published games with great stories. Other M just isn't one of them, and it's bad by even Nintendo's standards.

You're right. It seems with rpgs they hire quality storytellers which makes sense as the games are narrative driven. With Other M, seems like they felt the producer was good enough literally to weave his own tale and subjugated the game with it.
 

Opa-Pa

Member
To be clear, I don't think Samus or any main female character showing maternal feelings is bad. But when you make an established character who's never shown many emotions before into a textbook example of how women are 'traditionally' seen (overly emotional, unstable, submissive), then it rightfully comes off as sexist.

Make no mistake, though. Nintendo's handling of Samus while progressive in some ways, it was also already fairly sexist. Making her take off more clothes the better you do in the game is gross, and don't even get me started on the zero suit. It's just that Sakamoto somehow managed to outdo all that.

Personally I like when we can read Samus thoughts like in Zero Mission and Fusion, and I found the idea of showing that Samus was affected by the whole baby thing interesting when the game wasn't out yet. But then I got to play it and yikes. But yeah I'd be open to a new game exploring Samus personality and feelings further at some point... Just not with Sakamoto on board.

Actually, what Haganeren says is pretty interesting. I never thought about it before but this is pretty much the only time I've seen so many players concerned for the bad portrayal of a female character. It goes without saying but gamers generally don't care much about it, but the vast majority tends to see Samus' characterization on Other M as the game's biggest flaw. So I guess it was really that blatant lol.

Edit: I'm sorry your Metroid threads always devolve into this, OP. For real.
 

Haganeren

Member
Perhaps focusing on "maternal instincts" other than "postpartum depression" would help next time....

Well, yeah maybe... But i didn't though of postpartum depression when i saw the Larva Metroid died, i was thinking of maternal instinct.... So i don't "totally" understand why you bring that out... Or you are thinking about the Ridley scene ? That wasn't what i was talking about at this moment but yeah, why not. I'm sure you love you're idea of Samus = Ridley from Alien and i know you're basically right on the inspiration but i'm just saying this NEW idea (so the maternal instinct one) wasn't so bad in my opinion... Because i never saw it in videogames from a hero(ine).

But as i said, you can't turn your concept like that without disappointing a lot of the fan so i can understand you.
 

Garlador

Member
Well, yeah maybe... But i didn't though of postpartum depression when i saw the Larva Metroid died, i was thinking of maternal instinct.... So i don't "totally" understand why you bring that out... Or you are thinking about the Ridley scene ? That wasn't what i was talking about at this moment but yeah, why not. I'm sure you love you're idea of Samus = Ridley from Alien and i know you're basically right on the inspiration but i'm just saying this NEW idea (so the maternal instinct one) wasn't so bad in my opinion... Because i never saw it in videogames from a hero(ine).

But as i said, you can't turn your concept like that without disappointing a lot of the fan so i can understand you.

I actually think there are plenty of good examples of video game moms in the medium, of nurturing female leads, but Samus never really was shown to be that type of person. You're right in that it was a "turn" because it was atypical of her normal behavior (and it's a bit of a stretch to go from "having mercy on a hatchling you intended to blow up" to "it's my surrogate child, my baby, and I love it and care for it so much!").

It's not a problem to show Samus caring for others - and she was shown with this trait in prior games - but the way it's handled... I think we're on the same page here. The idea behind it isn't wrong, or the intent malicious, but the execution was so lacking and so butchered that it did the opposite of its intentions and was detrimental to the heroine and the Metroid universe at large.

Other M is this weird thing where the ideas behind it are actually very, very strong, but none of it mattered when it dropped the ball as hard as it did every step of the way. "The path to hell is paved with good intentions" and all that jazz.
 
It's Mother (Other M instead of M Other) rearranged...
Also, there was an AI Mother Brain or something... hence Other Mother

Honestly, I don't see how difficult it is to figure out... The acronym is Mom, a creature is called Mother Brain... you don't really need to play the game to understand the title...
 

Mak

Member
Sakamoto actually claimed that he wouldn't of made Super Metroid the same way he made Other M even if they had the technology back then. Having trouble finding the interview but he did definitely say that.

Sakamoto Metroid: Other M Interview - GamesTM 2010
https://www.gamestm.co.uk/features/...e-unwritten-future-of-the-warioware-series/2/

- One of the biggest differences between Super Metroid and Other M is a much greater emphasis on cut-scenes. If you’d had today’s technology in the Nineties, would Super Metroid have been as story-heavy, as character driven, as Other M is?

Sakamoto: As a matter of fact I think I made some basic comment about that in one of the official guide books to Super Metroid all those years ago. Specifically what I said was, the way we made Super Metroid was to try not to use dialogue or text at all and that everything should be conveyed through gameplay. We intentionally avoided direct narrative. Rather than have Samus talk about herself we preferred the player to feel things through the game. This even extended to navigation as, rather than tell people where to go using text messages, we would design the stages so that people could sense where to go next.

So, between Metroid: Other M and Super Metroid we had clearly defined concepts and even if we’d had similar technologies back then we would not have made Super Metroid the way we made Other M.



Super Metroid Staff Interview 1994
http://www.metroid-database.com/sm/interview.php

- Where will the Metroid series go from here?

Sakamoto: I think the series is basically finished. Metroids were basically destined to be exterminated in the first place. So, I wanted to finish it in the most beautiful form.

- So like that, it became the last one.

Sakamoto: It was kind of a gamble. From the beginning, it was decided that when the game begins, we wouldn't tell the whole story using text. The story had to be told in a minimal way. However, it wouldn't convey atmosphere. I thought the game's atmosphere was done completely through sound. I thought it would be good if we could do it like a silent movie. It means that inside Samus's helmet, she has a sober face. I wanted the player to think about that facial expression. Well, the culmination of that sort of thing was the final battle.

- What will Samus do next?

Sakamoto: I can't clearly say right now, but I think I want to make her the main character in an action game.​

One of the most bizarre things about this game is that it completely ignores how Samus was raised by the Chozo. The pathetic Samus of Other M really shouldn't have such mental issues after being brought up by magic bird people and being given superpowers. The obsession with Adam as a substitute father makes no sense when Old Bird already filled that role in her life, instead it comes of as a pseudo-incestual lust for a man who shows her no affection at all.

Old Bird was a grandpa figure, and Grey, who donated his DNA to Samus was a father figure of sorts. Samus staying with bird people for 10 years until joining the GF when she was about 14 isn't the same as being around her own human kind after loosing her human parents.

You also have to miss the Chozo scripture on Samus' ship and visor, and Chozo symbols on Samus' Zero Suit.


I loved Metroid since i played M2 on the Gameboy some 20 years ago. I played all, i love all. They are all unique in thier own way, Other M is different. I dont see it the way other people see it. Its more than just disagreeing.

Metroid: Other M is one of the best games on Wii, and I really enjoyed it. It's another facet of Metroid that built on the previous games in both gameplay and story, and does things differently as unique experience like each game in the series.
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
Bless mods and homebrew for exisiting

iiY5h1A.png

EoddwYZ.png

MczmAad.png
I kinda understand Sakamoto's opinion about the Gravity Suit. I dont really like the coloring either.
For example, I was super pissed when you get the Varia Suit in Zero Mission, but it immediately turns into the gravity suit, with no way to turn that off.
I just prefer the Orange Varia if i can choose, however, I can understnd that people would have prefered this over the purple glow as it is more true to the other Metroid Games.
 

Haganeren

Member
I actually think there are plenty of good examples of video game moms in the medium, of nurturing female leads, but Samus never really was shown to be that type of person. You're right in that it was a "turn" because it was atypical of her normal behavior (and it's a bit of a stretch to go from "having mercy on a hatchling you intended to blow up" to "it's my surrogate child, my baby, and I love it and care for it so much!").

I think we are on the same page but i would REALLY like to know an exemple of "maternal" mom in video games which is not a secondary character but a lead.

I can't think about a single one... In movie they are some as you said earlier though.
 
If you get a downloaded completed save (which gives you the ability to skip cut-scenes)

Is that as easy as loading a completed save onto an SD memory card? Either way, this is better than the Nights Journey of Dreams situation. If I remember correctly even when you beat that game you couldn't skip the awful cutscenes.
 

Rambler

Member
Sounds bullshitty to me. After Other M I only consider Super Metroid's greatness to have taken place in spite of Sakamoto and/or just been accidentally great
I kinda feel bad for the various programmers and designers who worked on 2D Metroid because now everyone thinks that all of their work was just a happy accident ever since Sakamoto decided to make the videogame version of A Burns for All Seasons.
 
I kinda understand Sakamoto's opinion about the Gravity Suit. I dont really like the coloring either.
For example, I was super pissed when you get the Varia Suit in Zero Mission, but it immediately turns into the gravity suit, with no way to turn that off.
I just prefer the Orange Varia if i can choose, however, I can understnd that people would have prefered this over the purple glow as it is more true to the other Metroid Games.

In Zero Mission you don't get the Gravity Suit until the pretty much the end. I mean, yeah, you COLLECT it way earlier, but you can't use it (and thus don't turn purple) until the last 10-30 minutes or so of the game.
 

Garlador

Member
I think we are on the same page but i would REALLY like to know an exemple of "maternal" mom in video games which is not a secondary character but a lead.

I can't think about a single one... In movie they are some as you said earlier though.

Well, off the top of my head...
(I kid, I kid...)

I will openly admit a frustrating lack of moms in lead roles. Almost always, if it is going to be a parent in a lead role, it's going to be the dad - Max Payne, Kratos, Joel, Booker, Dom, John Marston, Sam Fisher, etc. - and they'll typically either be out to protect their family, or avenge their deaths.

Really amazing moms do tend to be support characters or background characters, even IF they're amazingly competent and strong. Metal Gear has about three major warrior moms in the series, but they're never the leads.

And RPGs tend to spread the "lead" role out a bit, so they rarely get top billing either.

And there are a surprising number of mothers in fighting games or shooters as well...

But for a solo scene? Yeah. Get to work on that, games industry.

Is Polygon still banned her? Regardless, they ran a very interesting "Where are all the moms at?" topic just last month that, admittedly, was pretty insightful.
 
Top Bottom