However, in its place something new and exciting emerged: sequence breaks.
I remember playing the game after high school and feeling less dwarfed by the world than I had when I was younger. I can attest to this through my own experiences. This seminal, communal approach is, in my mind, a testament to why Super Metroid is such a classic: It's communities not only endure they evolve into 2020 and potentially beyond. This holds true many years later as players continue to play the game, albeit substantial amount of reinvention within speedrunning communities. In this respect, Super Metroid can be masted to an incredibly high degree without changing the basic nature of what it is: a maze to navigate through the collection of items, killing of enemies and solving of puzzles. Super Metroid took what Metroid introduced-a non-linear maze with a timed reward system-and expanded on it. It focused less on the reward of a naked Samus at the end, and more of Samus mid-game being controlled by the player. Yes, Metroid coined the system inside, a gameworld made to deconstruct, it rewarded players for quick, skillful, inventive play (titles like A Link to the Past feature gameworlds that must be broken much more forcefully and crudely by players). I can't think of any game more important to the concept than Super Metroid. It cultivated a perennial playstyle in a single videogame that would go on to influence how so many other videogames are played: speedrunning. The challenge becomes: design a game with a giant world that mostly can be skipped, but generally requires a "full" play-through the first time around.Īnd this is why Super Metroid is important to me personally. What made Super Metroid unique in its own right was the open-ended gameworld-its sheer variety of unessential items and optional exploration/encounters. I have played games that come close- Castlevania: SotN (1997) leaps to mind, or Hollow Knight (2017). That's partly what makes Super Metroid so good no one's really tried to copy it, because it did what it did so well. Even then, it's debatable how much Super Metroid is actually being copied when future Metroidvania-style games swap out pieces, and loosely rely on the formula rather than following it note for note.
SUPER METROID RANDOMIZER FIRST ENERGY TANK SERIES
It's the third entry in an unproductive series (relatively-speaking compared to Zelda or Mario) that until recently hasn't enjoyed the same number of copycats. Or, in this case, if the hero is the maze what happens if you try to rebuild that? Should you rebuild it enough times to perfect the model, will anything in the future come close at recapturing this accidental glory?Īnd that's what Super Metroid is: lightning in a bottle. What survives when you rebuild the hero? I'd ask myself. They weren't identical, mind you but the adaptation from one medium to the next taught me an appreciation of transmedial themes and devices that would carry over into my academic work. Furthermore, being a huge fan of Alien (1979) and the protagonist Ellen Ripley from that movie, I always enjoyed the deliberate parallels between her and Samus Aran.
Something about the non-linear world and lack of narration in-game was fascinating to me. But I remember always remembering Super Metroid fondly. Of course, as time went on my brothers' interests went onto other games. But after spending weeks trying to find power bombs, eventually Ben's patience wore out and I do recall have some opportunities to play (three save slots helped with this). There wasn't always time to share, and often Ben, the eldest, took control. Four brothers under the same roof, but only one controller. My twin received it for our eighth birthday and from then on out, we played it non-stop. I first remember it for the console itself.
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