Metroid

Genre: Platform

Publisher: Nintendo

Total time played: 10 Hours

Short review:  A truly open world game full of aliens, hidden passages and very creepy music.

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Interesting links related to Metroid

• Speedrun (50 minutes 18 seconds)
• Tool Assisted Speedrun (8 minutes 19 seconds)
• Soundtrack
• Metroid Acoustic Guitar Medley
• Metroid Piano Intro
• In Depth Guide With Maps
• Metroid Map

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Metroid was a game that my family rented over and over again.  My mom, brother and I all took turns trying to navigate the giant maze that makes up Metroid and at the time thought we had almost beaten the game.  But, we never found either of the two mini bosses, the high jump boots, screw attack or the white suit.  As it turns out we were just running in circles and making no progress.

A few years later my older cousin Jamie (who was probably 13 at the time) invited me over to spend the night.  I watched him beat Mother Brain and beat the game.  I don’t know how he did it because this was well before the internet and he didn’t have a Nintendo Power subscription.  I find it hard to believe that any child could beat this game without significant help.

I didn’t realize what I was getting into by playing this game.  I decided I would just draw the map as I played so I didn’t get lost.  I got this far before giving up on that idea:

 

I ended up watching a speedrun of the game that made me realize drawing the map was not going to be possible.  I decided I would just set up my laptop with the game map and use that as a reference to explore.  It didn’t take long before I was overwhelmed and decided to use a step by step guide.

But, that still wasn’t enough for me to beat the game.  When coming back to a saved game at least the first 30 minutes you play are spent entering the password and grinding enemies to fill your health.  This makes the game extremely hard to come back to as every time I turned it on I felt like I was backtracking.  This single fact discouraged me from playing the game at all for several years.

For my birthday I got a Retron 5 that allowed me to use save states to keep from having to enter passwords and spend wasted time building up my health every time I turned on the game.  So, I kind of cheated.  Now that I know what to do and how to play I could most likely go back and beat the game again the legit way…but, I am burnt out now and need some time away from Metroid.

Metroid was close to a perfect game.  Unique story, unique gameplay (one of the first open world games), haunting music that is some of the best video game music of all time, difficult but not impossible, awesome powerups, a surprising ending and tight controls.  But, the horrible password system, minimal life the game starts you with and no in game map make it hard to get into.

 

Note: since I was using the Retron 5 with HDMI output I played the entire game on my 100″ projection screen.  It looked and sounded amazing.