Chairman Yang said:
Another cool retrospective. Hopefully GT will get some PC games in there (an Infinity Engine or Bioware RPG retrospective would be amazing).
Also, I'd like to add something.
I think Super Metroid sucks.
I freely admit that I just don't "get" the game. It seems like a below-average sidescrolling shooter mixed with an average platformer mixed with really boring adventure elements. The graphics are dull, with lots of samey, generic-looking backgrounds. The level design isn't much better; it mostly consists of randomly scanning/blasting/bombing things without much in the way of clues or puzzlesolving to make your exploration meaningful. What am I not doing right in this game?
By contrast, I think Metroid Prime, Zero Mission, and to a lesser extent, Fusion are all enjoyable games. They solve all of my problems with Metroid Prime (and Metroid 1 and 2).
I'm not going to argue with you, and the reason I'm not going to do it is because you don't just think it's not the best Metroid, or aged in some meaningful way, but because you think it sucks. Super Metroid is not for everyone. I
will say that the sprite work and animation is generally agreed (not just by SM fans) to be some of the best the era had to offer, and the variety of backgrounds and visual effects is truly stunning if you get far enough in the game. And I can't explain what you're "not doing right" because there is no one right way to play Super Metroid. But I can relate my own personal first experience with the game, which is still fresh in my mind from this winter.
After the first half-hour, I was tempted to stop playing. Like you, I was a little put-off by the much-acclaimed graphics, and confused by the gameplay. Only the music stood out--the ethereal, haunting soundtrack was what first interested me in the game, the second being its popularity in the speedrunning community. I started to wonder why the game had received so much praise.
But the deeper I descended into Zebes, the deeper the game became. The sense of isolation increased, the environments got progressively more fantastic, the graphics that had at first seemed cartoony started to look startlingly realistic, and I was soon lost in it. The sense of exploration
is what makes the game meaningful, and I'm someone for whom exploration--doing things your own way, discovering rather than being led--is the number one element that I love in games.
And you can't play Super Metroid for any length of time without admiring the game's polish. In brief, Super Metroid is probably the most carefully designed game I've ever seen. From the incredibly detailed enemies and the huge, powerful boss fights to the hidden elevators, myriad secret passages and densely packed levels to the amazing physics engine and in-game cutscenes, the attention to detail and overall quality--the creator's clear refusal to do anything the "easy" way, the way that might compromise the gameplay at the cost of immersion--oozed from its every pore. Little things like the power bomb beam stacking working differently, the bosses not simply requiring the most recently acquired item, the world design that was so
different from the classical platformer, like seemingly useless tricks like holding down cancel while selecting to select an item for one use, like the shinesparking and walljumping techniques that were not bugs as they were in so many other games, but features explained by the creatures of the world, made the experience all the more unique and compelling. And the powerups--the Speed Booster, Screw Attack, the Gravity Suit, the Grappling Hook--make the already deep game even deeper, adding wonderful complexities to every route and opening up new gateways to new areas that were almost like new worlds. My quest to find the missile packs and my determination to complete the game with as high a percentage as I could manage meant that I had the opportunity, and the desire, to pour over every nook and cranny in the game, to go through every room and explore the haunting, fantastic, living, breathing planet.
And it all contributed to the sense of truly unmatched immersion that was begun when I set foot on Zebes, and didn't end until I got to my ship--no long stretches of text or pretentiously drawn-out dialogue interfered with my experience, no occasions on which I lost control of Samus made me passively watch the game instead of playing it, and, in short, nothing made me play the game the "right" way. The very idea that there is one valid way of playing Super Metroid is alien to the game's very concept.
But what finally pushed the game, for me, from mere greatness to untouchable perfection was the way that the game's depths--its elaborate physics engine, its freedom from unnatural barriers, its huge world and its keen, urgent call for exploration--led naturally into speed tricks, sequence breaks, and out-of-"order" playing. Even something as simple as infinite bomb jumping--trivial from a timing perspective compared to many of the other tricks--opens up hundreds of new routes and new gameplay ideas, and makes every out-of-reach item not just a trophy to be returned for later, but a fresh challenge. Can I get super missiles without fighting Spore Spawn? What about
his Super Missiles? Without power bombs? Can I get those two missile upgrades I've been longing for in Crateria before I even enter? With walljumping? Do I
really need the High Jump boots to get to Kraid, or is there another way? The answers to every question on that list is yes, and they're just a few of the questions that can pop up
in the first ten minutes of the game (if you're a speedy, anyway).
I don't even want to think about how much time I spent on those tricks, since I usually didn't save. By the end of my first game, the in-game clock reported that it had taken me over fourteen hours. My rate of item completion? 87%. After all my combing and searching, after spending literally over a month on the same game, I had missed
13 items, and as I later found out hadn't even discovered every room yet.
That's my story. For me, Super Metroid was (and is) an unparalleled, infinitely replayable experience, every runthrough fresh and meaningful in its own way, its every aspect polished until it
gleams. And that's why I can't argue with you--because while normally I would say that I love the game so much that I can overlook the few flaws it has, when it comes to Super Metroid I have a hard time even spotting any flaws. I don't know if this story was helpful or confirms your suspicion that this game is not for you in any way, but if my experience was anything like that of the many Super Metroid lovers here, it should at least explain to you why we value it so highly, and why we are so devoted to it.
(Unfortunately I don't have time to watch it now, so I'll watch it later!)
