Super Metroid (SNES)and Metroid Fusion (GBA) are my favourites.

Metroid Fusion as a standalone is good. As it stood to set up for the events of the awful travesty and character assassination that is infamously known as Other M, I dislike it.

Indeed, there is even a video about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww_PjqYQi5E

It also applies to other games that made the transition from 8-bit to 16-bit. In Zelda: a Link to the Paste, how many times did anyone use any other weapon than the sword (unless you were forced to)? In Zelda 1 I used bombs, arrows and fire all the time, and I believe that was even the intended way to play. Heck, the entire game could be beaten without even picking up the sword, except for Ganon at the very end.

As i said before, having a large moveset is not bad, as long as you balance your game around it. Contra for example already ad all the cool moves like shooting diagonally, upwards, downwards and ducking on the NES, but the game was designed with that in mind. Your gun was the only weapon you needed, so it was also the only weapon you had. Since you could shoot anywhere enemies also spawned anywhere and your were actually forced to use all your moves all the time.

Is Sakamoto the authority behind the Metroid games? No, just look at Metroid Other M. The late Gunpei Yokoi is the man behind the Metroid games. Thus, with these facts in hand, I would say that Sakamoto is the one that isn't canon. :P

Sadly, as long as Nintendo is letting Sakamoto hold the series with an iron grip he is effectively the authority behind Metroid.

The game is designed to be beatable in 3 hours with 100% accomplishment. Past the music/story/setting/vibe, this is, I think, where the game shines.

In today's standards the SNES is very limited, don't forget that. 'Recycling' areas has gameplay and technological purposes.
Otherwise I don't understand how in Super Metroid "design" could have been "replaced with Metroidvania formula" ? Am I misunderstanding something ?

Bottom line, judging olden games nowadays is always something hard, I am completely aware that I feel (<= scratch that : am blinded by) a lot of nostalgia with SNES games.


(Edit typos/rephrasing)

That's not what i mean. In Metroid (NES) you can get ll the "tools" in the first sector, so once you have them all you can go anywhere. In Super Metroid on the other hand something is always blocking your progress so there is really only one way to go. That's the "invisible hand" that's guiding you through the game form start to finish. In Metroid there was an invisible hand as well, but only in the first sector to ease you into the game. Once you had the important items that let you past obstacles (all of which can be found in the first sector) you were on your own.

I was playing matroid on GA where it is running at its intended speed and i played the Japanese version of Super Metroid (which has Japanese and English screen text) on an emulator, so it was running at its intended speed as well.

On GA?

Ah, I was assuming you'd played Super Metroid on an actual SNES. :)

I meant GBA, missed a letter there. I have the NES Classics release of the game, like the OP.

Other M takes place before Metroid: Fusion in the timeline.

I still haven't beaten Mario 1. I beat 2 and 3, and that's it.

I couldn't beta Dark Souls. I couldn't figure out where to be at one point. Everything was just too hard to get past. Still, that was a fun/frustrating game.

I still haven't met anyone who beat TMNT for NES. That's got to be the hardest kid's game I ever saw. We maybe made it a few sewers in 90% of the times we played. Occasionally and rarely, we'd make a long stretch into uncharted territory.

I completely agree on your last paragraph. I didn't have a to draw a map of Metroid when I played it. It was the only game we (my bros and I) played for a few months. The map was in our head. And a thousand deaths didn't deter us.

I still remember the shock ending. It wouldn't be a shock now, but in the day, it was the the first ending that totally blew me away. And it only took a few additional pixels to do it.

Fusion paves the way for Other: M in stylistic choices, storyline, and having Samus monologue far too often.

You should try again. Every self-respecting gamer should beat it at least once! :P

It's actually one of the few NES games I played all the way to the end, several times. It's not so bad once you figure out where to find all the secret extra lives, or the hidden shortcuts. I think I discovered all of this stuff on my own, too, since we didn't have the interwebs back then! Hah.


That's too bad, how far did you make it? I'm currently making my way through Dark Souls 2, and trying to resist the temptation of online guides as much as possible. Recently played the original Demon's Souls again, too. The series has grown to be one of my all time favourites. Once you get into it, it's hard to stop playing, and there's hardly anything comparable out there.


I vaguely remember beating the last boss, but I have no idea if I used any cheat codes to make it through the game. It was pretty good though, by NES standards. Ninja Gaiden was really tough, too ( titled Shadow Warrior in Europe, I think ).


I never made it that far myself, but all things considered, that has to be one of the most remarkable endings in video game history.

For something completely different: Why is it that I seem to consistently vote for the underdogs in the current Battle promo? Like, literally all the time. Oh well, I guess someone has to, to keep things interesting.

I'll have to try Mario again some time. I tried it a few years back and still couldn't beat it. I'm just terrible at it. I have to admit that I go straight to 8-1 as fast as possible, so it's likely that I need to play more levels to get more 1-ups to get through it. I really should give it a go again.

As for Dark Souls, I beat the gargoyles (only the 2nd boss I think). I played a sorcerer for my longest play-through (I tried a few other classes without success). After that, I got to a bunch of places where everything killed me super-fast and I couldn't kill anything. I figured that I must have been missing a place, but I couldn't find it.

As for voting, a lot of folks love the underdogs or the underplayed. For the most part, I've voted for what I've played. Usually I'll have played one or more from one side and never touched the other side. It's funny how we polarize like that.

Thanks for all of the thoughtful replies!