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| Cover Art |
Time for another retro review (I really like playing retro game!). This time on Super Metroid (just in you didn't see the title) on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in North America on April 18th 1994. It was developed by Nintendo R&D1, most famous for the Ice Climbers, Kid Icarus, and Wario Land series, and Intelligent Systems, most known for the Fire Emblem and Paper Mario series. This game is the third installment to the Metroid series. I recently got a SNES and I was told this game was one of the best on the system. So I plugged everything in, and knew this would be my next review. Without hesitation, lets begin.
Visuals
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| Samus in her Gravity suit |
I have to admit, this game looked phenomenal! The franchise has evolved very nicely since its 8-bit days and I think this is the pinaccle of the pixelated Samus sprites. Samus has 3 different suits (being the one she begins with, the Varia and the Gravity suit) and each of them are given plenty of color. This easily makes Samus completely stand out from the background. I always look for this in games and Super Metroid definitely got it right. The sprite work is also phenomenal. The developers took the sprite work from Metroid II and went all out, definitely taking advantage of the SNES's hardware. I have to admit, for a game that is over a decade old, it definitely looks great and some might even say it looks better than the GBA Metroid games. As for the environment, that too looks great. Each area has a different general color, much like the original, except far more detail was put into them. Next are the enemies. They too look so much better than previously. The amount of color and pixels that the SNES was capable of seriously helped the visuals of the enemies. They look a lot cleaner than the previous enemies and I couldn't get enough of them.
Music
I honestly don't know what to say about the music besides WOW. After playing Metroid II, I almost forgot that the series had music. But Super Metroid definitely delivers a great sound track. Each area had exclusive music and each was extremely catchy. Almost all the music were remastered tracks of the original NES game. My only problem is very nitpicky. I really didn't like the music in the areas where the power ups were. It sounds like someone is just is hitting the number keys on an old phone. Unfortunately for me, it has become a staple in the series, so I will just have to get over it.
Gameplay
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| The equipment toggle screen |
To try and not repeat anything I might've already mentioned in my Metroid NES review, I will try and focus mainly on the changed from the others. The biggest change was in the weapon types. In previous games, you would find a weapon type such as the ice beam, long beam and wave beam. Each time you picked one up, the previous one would no longer be equipped and you would have to go back and find the beam type all over again (with the exception of the long beam). In Super Metroid, once the weapon has been obtained, it can be toggled on and off, and even in combination with other weapons. Finally you have the usefulness of the ice beam and still have the attack pattern of the wave beam.
Next was the inclusion of new items. These were mainly the reserve tanks and some new power-ups and some skills. With the reserve tanks, now when Samus's energy depletes, depending on how many reserve tanks you have collected. With a total of four reserve tanks you can have 400 points of back up energy. The energy can also be used manually to refill any energy you are lacking. Unfortunately this feature is exclusive to Super Metroid, which astounds me. The reserve tanks have saved me dozens of times until I reach my ship or energy refills. It's a real shame because I personally think it this was such a great idea, because I would occasionally run out of energy and forget about my reserve tanks and it was always a great surprise when I randomly see my energy regenerating when I was expecting to have to start from a save point again.
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| Samus finding the Speed Booster |
Next are some of the upgrades. First off I will mention the run feature. I felt this really didn't make too much of a difference for me except being able to make some long jumps. It just felt so out of place mainly because there were always obstacles in the way to stop me. I at first hated the run...until I found the speed booster. Running soon became the best part to me.
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| Samus using the Shinespark horizontally |
The Speed Booster would let Samus run even faster, after running for a certain distance. And when she speeds up, Samus is allowed to run straight to enemies and some walls that can only be passed using the Speed Booster. I honestly never had seen this mechanic before, especially in a game this old. I was just so impressed at the change from the boring Metroid II to this game. And when I thought I found the end of this power up, I fell into a hole. There I found out (thanks to a subtle tutorial that teaches you without saying a word) that the Speed Booster can turn into a Shinespark. This allows Samus to stop running at a moments notice, but still retain the potential energy from her run and then use it to launch herself at the cost of some of her suits energy. Soon I was just looking for any opportunity to use the Shinespark to find treasures that I could never reach or accidentally found. At this point, my mind had already been blown! I could go on about the excellent level design to incorporate the Shinespark, but then this review would be way too long.
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| Samus finding the Space Jump |
Next was the grapple beam. I found this one pretty cool but in the end, very useless. There were dozens of rooms I found where there was nothing but death waiting for me at the bottom and I knew I couldn't cross them naturally and there wasn't enough room to start a Shinespark. Eventually I found the grapple beam, and I found these rooms to be very simple to cross. There was even a boss battle that could only be beaten using the grapple beam. This made it feel very useful...until I found the Space Jump. The Space Jump, introduced in Metroid II, allows Samus to do an infinite amount of spin jumps. They were a little more difficult to perform than in Metroid II, but easy to learn. This made the grapple beam useless. I know this because eventually I found another room designed for the Grapple Beam and I preferred to Space Jump across mainly because it made it much easy and faster to cross. This essentially ruined the grapple beam.
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Samus using the X-Ray Scope to discover
a wall that can only be destroyed by Power Bombs |
Next was the X-ray scope. Oh this. This was SO useful. With it toggled on, Samus sacrifices her ability to run for the ability to see secrets in her sight. This easily extended my play time because it encouraged me to re-explore every nook and cranny I had previously explored just to make sure that I didn't miss a missile expansion or one of the new Super Missile expansions or Power Bomb expansions. Oops, almost overlooked these. Super missiles are essentially a single missile with the power of 5 regular missile These came in handy whenever I encountered a boss. Power bombs are bombs that you can only use in morph ball mode that explode and kills all weak enemies and clear all obstacles on screen (omitting some obstacles that can only be passed by other specific items such as the Speed Booster walls). These I didn't use too much because it was safer and faster to just attack with my regular attacks. These later became a pain because there would constantly be obstacles that require a Power Bomb. But I will give them credit because they definitely found me plenty of expansions.
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| Me finding the "tutorial aliens" teaching Samus to wall jump |
And finally, the biggest of them all. A skill that I was completely oblivious until I reached a trap. If you have played this game before, you know what I'm talking about. The Wall Jump ability. I was strolling along in Brinstar when I found an energy tank just lying around with nobody defending it. I walked over to it (expecting nothing) and I FELL INTO AN INVISIBLE HOLE! No it wasn't a glitch, it led me to a save point (knowing I would save before continuing down an unknown corridor). After saving I go down an enemy filled room and reached a wall that had a hole going upward. This is where the game introduced another one of those speechless tutorials. It was a bunch of small aliens jumping from wall to wall until out of my sight, only falling down later to start the tutorial again. This led me to HOURS AND HOURS in this hole. I had absolutely no idea how to pull off this maneuver, I, usually trying to avoid it, HAD to look up online how to pull off a wall jump. This didn't even help that much either. I literally was in that same spot for days, trying to go up a wall. And one day I finally pulled a SINGLE wall jump and fell. Later after a few more days of practice I finally started pulling off wall jumps like they were nothing. I don't know whether I hate the developers for this or love them. They ingeniously planned out what I would do. And, although the wall jump is one of the most difficult things to pull off in this game (next to the infinite bomb jump) I felt completely satisfied knowing I made it up this obstacle without the game just giving me the victory (I may have cheated just a little bit but it doesn't matter to me xD). And luckily I did it because later on, I noticed that I could constantly wall jump and make the rest of the game so much easier.
Other than those and the upgrades from previous games, that's all of em. I am impressed by the amount of things they could put on an SNES.
Story (some spoilers)
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Samus donation the baby metroid to a scientist
on the Ceres Space Colony |
Luckily, I don't have too much work to do in this section, because the game does it for me. The game shows a short cutscene explaining the events of the last two games and where Samus is now. Just in case, I will further explain for you. After Samus defeated Mother Brain in the original (oh yea, Spoiler Alert xD), she was contracted to eliminate all the metroids from their home planet due to their destructive nature (whoops, more spoilers). After defeating the queen metroid, Samus finds an egg which hatches upon her arrival. A baby metroid comes out of the egg and follows Samus out from the planet. This is where she currently is. She takes the baby metroid to a space colony to some scientists as a donation to science. Just as she leaves, she recieves a distress signal from the colony, so she heads right back.. upon arrival she notices that everyone is dead and the baby metroid is missing. As she continues into the colony, she finds the baby metroid (still in its container). After a few seconds you learn that Ridley (I thought I killed him in the original [psst...spoiler]) was the cause of the destruction. After a small tussle with him, he sets off an explosion on the colony on a timer and takes off from the colony with the baby metroid back to planet Zebes to the ruins of the Space Pirates hideout. Your job is to go back to Zebes and retrieve the baby metroid before something happens to it...or the world. I found this story so nice that it encouraged me to keep going forward until I have found that baby metroid. In my opinion, the best part is that they use the baby metroid as inspiration by putting it on the game over screen with the text "Find the baby metroid!" followed by "try again?". This had me keep going at all hours of the night. Very smart choice by R&D1 and Intelligent systems.
Overview
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| The Rating screen and percentage |
Honestly this game was amazing. Although I have some mixed feelings on some parts of it (mainly the difficulty to pull off some stunts), overall its a phenomenal game. Although it only has one difficulty, I think it is just right. Due to its non-linearity, you will occasionally get lost or not know what to do, especially if you do not memorize where the areas that you couldn't previous access were. And the smart choices don't end there! After you finally finished the game, it gives you your completion time and rating (how many collectibles you found in a percentage). This was a much needed addition. It actually had me go back and try to find more with the x-ray scope instead of writing this review.
This game is the perfect example of a great sequel. It avoided every mistake that was thrown at it. Sequels are supposed to expand upon what the originals laid out. This it did with the graphics, sounds, and weapons. Not to mention adding more to not make it feel too much like the original, which it did by adding many more bosses and mini-bosses along with new items and the rating system. I honestly don't know how else to praise this game.
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| Ridley flying away with the baby metroid |
I rate this game 9.5
baby metroids out of 10.0
Notes: Thank you everyone for all the views. I do take requests xD plus I am really hoping to take advantage of my new SNES. If you have a request, feel free to send me an email at gabezune.1@gmail.com. See you next time
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