Up until this area with the battle against Spore Spawn, none of Samus’ new collectibles have diverged from the powers she acquired in Metroid and Metroid II. The Charge Beam offers the first new touch of variety, but it’s not until after you’ve devastated Zebes’ underground ecosystem by murdering Spore Spawn that you really get […]
Well, this is a little ahead of the usual schedule, but since the last book was a quite a bit behind schedule it all works out, I guess. I’ve compiled The Anatomy of Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Metroid II into a book that is now available on the site’s bookstore. My original intent was to […]
The freaky statuary room proves to be a dead end, so there’s no way forward but down. Samus takes the back door into Brinstar, and the linear tutorial phase of the game effectively comes to an end. The elevator from Crateria to Brinstar leads to a tall vertical shaft, a classic Metroid trademark. In this game, however, […]
Now that Samus has walked directly into a deadly waiting trap, springing its cruel jaws into action around her, how will she ever survive? Oh, right… by shooting everything in sight. The Space Pirates are an interesting bunch; they’re agile, capable of climbing walls and leaping around, and they can emit lasers from their bodies. […]
After Ceres explodes (because, as we’ll find out, that what happens to every place Samus Aran ever visits), the scene moves to planet Zebes, setting of the original Metroid. This makes sense, given that Samus just faced down Space Pirate commander Ridley and would naturally think to track him back to his hideout… or at […]
Sometimes it seems a little hard to believe that Nintendo created Super Metroid. It’s such an un-Nintendo-like game — so somber and moody, so straight-faced, so rich with narrative innovation that feels nothing at all like what we’ve come to expect from Nintendo. And yet, it’s quintessentially classic Nintendo in many ways: It leads you […]
As you move to hunt and destroy the final metroid and complete your dark plan of galactic genocide, the nature of the game changes. You enter a series of caverns devoid of all life, filled with rocky pools of a viscous liquid that does a bang-up job of giving the impression of alien slime with […]
As the metroid counter winds down, Samus Aran enters the final areas of the game. SR-388 offers one last cavern super-structure followed by a couple of smaller tunnel networks that house the climactic encounters. Now that Samus has every piece of gear in hand, the game doesn’t feel particularly compelled to play nice… Including this […]
Note to folks coming over from Giant Bomb: Hi! Thanks for visiting. You have been linked to the middle of this Metroid II series. You can start here at part one, or better yet, just go to the Anatomy of a Game page for the full rundown on this entire project, which also includes the […]
Besides grabbing the Spider Ball and Bomb, all there really is to do in the first little pocket of SR-388 is kill some alpha metroids and snag a few missile expansions. This first area gives you a pretty good sense of how the entirety of Metroid II‘s structure works. Generally speaking, each separate breakout area consists […]
It doesn’t take long for Metroid II to differentiate itself from its predecessor. About… five minutes, I’d guess? That’s about how long it takes, 10 at the outside, for you to encounter your first metroid. Despite its name, Metroid for NES wasn’t really about metroids. Those creatures only showed up at the very end as […]
Well, I guess I lied. I said I’d be shrugging off the shackles of 8-bit oppression with this entry, but here we are looking at a game on an 8-bit system with 2-bit color. I was going to dig into The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in honor of A Link Between […]