Comments on: The Anatomy of Super Metroid | 18 | Zebessinia, Henry

By: J. Parish

J. Parish — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 22:06:07 +0000

Again, it’s all in the presentation. A one-way drop is functionally the same as a locked door accompanied by a computer voice announcing the lockdown, but as your comments demonstrate, it goes over very differently for most people.

By: Googleshng

Googleshng — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 09:30:34 +0000

Oh, if you’re lumping in stuff like “here’s a big shaft you won’t be able to get back up (yet) there’s a ton of points of no return. There’s a pretty significant difference though. When I first find, say, a leap of faith sort of drop, or one of those wave beam shutters, it’s immediately obvious that it’s going to be one-way, it’s clear I can’t return this way without some new power up, once I get it, if my memory doesn’t fail me, I’ll shortly realize that one-way status has been revoked, and the game has no way to toggle it back to “locked” status again later. I get what you’re saying now, design wise, but it’s stretching a metaphor a bit thin.

By: Super Boy Alan

Super Boy Alan — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 22:33:50 +0000

One of the things that I think makes this escape sequence work is the fact that, as you mentioned, the path forward is designed in such a way that you could end up accidentally ducking down a wrong path and wasting time. Despite being something of a walking, armored god, time is your final foe here, and making ways to whittle it away adds to the tension in a way that other escape sequences don’t always do well (i.e. that early one in Metroid Prime).

Also, the sound design and visuals. The original Metroid could only do so much back in 1986, and us Americans losing the extra sound channel from the FDS version meant that the escape alarm was seriously neutered.

Incidentally, that reminds me of your discussion on Retronauts about Wario Land IV. Now that I’ve gone back and revisited this game, maybe I should give that one a go…