As we all know, there is a remake of this game coming in just a few short months. However, I often see Metroid fans mention they have not played the original two games in the series. Metroid is already being discussed in another thread, but I wanted to single out Metroid II as my favorite Metroid game and encourage others to give it a shot.
The game will run you a measly $3.99 on the 3DS eShop, and unlike the original, this version offers save states if that floats your boat.
Samus enters the caverns of the planet SR388. The figures on the bottom of the screen indicate her energy, stock of missiles, and remaining number of Metroids she must eliminate.
The game contains the same gameplay as in the other 2D Metroid, presented in stark black and white or gray and green.
Via GB:
Anyway, what makes this game special at all in the series? Well, for me, no other entry is quite as focused or engenders such a strong sense of stark isolation. In black and white the world of SR388 looks positively alien and unrecognizable in a way that colors for me diminish a bit. The music is spare and haunting. The receding lava serves as an elegant way to allow exploration of ever deeper areas. The game is quite short, clocking in at an average of 4 hours on HLTB, but it makes for a compelling and engaging brief experience, with the combination of brevity, focus and isolation providing to me the purest Metroid experience.
It also serves as a direct prequel to Super Metroid, so you can see where the events at the beginning of that game came from.
For $4, it's a minimal gamble and one I strongly recommend taking.
P.S. this is my 33,000th post. Eek.
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Bonus: here is a better and more articulate case for Metroid II from esteemed poster KYB:
Killer Yakuza B said:
I know "Metroid" and "under-appreciated" don't usually go together in the same sentence but this game is definitely not appreciated enough. How the first game gets more praise than the clearly superior sequel is a wonder to me. Well, OK, I know why that is, but still.
Metroid 2 plays somewhat differently from the rest of the series. Instead of exploring a huge map, retreading your way after getting new items and power-ups to find previously unavailable passages, this game has a relatively more straight-forward map, which doesn't mean at all that there's no exploration. In order to advance, you must hunt down and kill the different kinds of Metroid in each area before before moving on to the next. A counter at the bottom of the screen lets you know how many Metroid you have left and seeing it slowly go down throughout the game until only 1 remains is very satisfactory. There are more Metroid types than in the other games, from the classic round thing to some really freaky and scary looking creatures. As expected, the atmosphere is superb and the extermination twist on the Metroid formula does wonders for the usual horror theme the series has going on. Things can get quite scary and tense, maybe more so than in the rest of the series. Sometimes just finding the discarded husk of a Metroid cadaver is enough to raise the tension in preparation for the incoming boss fight.
Most of the usual power-ups from the Metroid series can be found here, some of them for the first time: high jump, different suits, space jump, screw attack, missile expansions, bombs, jump ball, and so on, with the addition of the awesome sticky ball or whatever it is actually called (me and my friends called it the fried egg when we were kids). This one lets you stick to the walls and even the ceiling when in ball form, leading to some "interesting" exploration sessions.
To top things off, the graphics are great, particularly the Samus and different Metroid sprites. The music, by Ryoji Yoshitomi, who later worked on the Wario series, is just plain awesome if a bit scarce. If the song from the beginning doesn't get you itching to kick some Metroid ass, I'd check for a pulse, and the title screen music is downright beautiful. The whole final part of the game is particularly well done, with a great final boss and a nice ending sequence that leads directly to the Super Metroid intro.
Music samples: Title Screen / SR-388
If you like Metroid and haven't checked this game out, you owe it to yourself. All in all, it feels like a much modern game than Metroid that advanced the series towards the fan favorite, wonderful Super Metroid. Metroid 2 Return of Samus is also available on Virtual Console.
