Stuck in Super Metroid!

[JB]

Point 1 is mistaken, unless you reversed the DS screen numbers. SNES displays are 256*224, so the DS is too wide.

Oops! I meant to say 256x192, not 192x256. Sorry, my mistake.

Okay. That'd work, then.

 

Point 3... Just because you CAN move a HUD item doesn't mean you should. I agree with the touchscreen item activation, particularly since SM had so many items to cycle through. But health and weapons counts should be overlaid onto the game area. Doing it like in the original and Primes would be better, though. Have it floating in the corner of the gameplay area.

I agree, but I figure some players might find it more immersive to have no icons or meters at all on the top screen. Like I said before, this could be configured in the options menu (which unlike the original game, would be accessible at any time during the game, not just before you start a game; it's one of SM's silly quirks that the player can't change the button assignments in mid-game).

Yeah... that was standard for the time, though.

 

The always-available controller config is one of the modern generation's nicer touches. Lets you try something without committing to it, which is a major plus when you aren't sure how well it'll work.

 

But DON'T let the GBA Metroid team do this one. The GBA team has proven they don't understand what makes Metroid great, and they have no respect for established continuity(Hell, Zero Mission breaks Prime, and that's positively recent).

How does it break Prime's continuity? And what exactly makes you say they don't understand what makes Metroid great? I assume you're mostly referring to Fusion... If yes, then I'd say they learned from their mistakes with Zero Mission, wouldn't you say?

Zero Mission breaks continuity because Prime takes place IMMEDIATLY after Metroid 1. Zero Mission leaves Samus stuck in an escape pod. She can't very well go to Tallon in it, and even if she could, Prime has her in a variant of the ship we saw in Return of Samus and Super Metroid.

 

 

 

Zero Mission didn't really do it for me on gameplay terms either. It was better than Fusion by far, but not as good as the other offerings in the series.

Maybe they'll get it right on the third try, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

Fusion is weak in terms of its Metroid feel, but I think Zero Mission is superb. I'm not sure how it breaks the story line of the other games; I guess I don't really care that much about continuity between games in the "Metroid Universe," as long as the games themselves are good.

I can make a full list of continuity errors.

Zero Mission:

Samus ends with no ship, and thus no way to reach Tallon for Prime.

 

Samus has the "shinespark" and wall jump, which Fusion says she learned from the dachola and etecoons in Super.

 

The self-destruct explosions in Tourian and the wrecked ship were powerful enough that they shouldn't have remained for Super.

 

Fusion:

Cold hurts metroids, which have historically ONLY been injured by explosives. As a subset of this, the omega metroid is immune to missiles, and can ONLY be hurt by the ice beam.

In Return of Samus, omega metroids shrugged off ANY beam weaponry, as did all metroids except for the original "jellyfish," which could only be temporarily frozen by the ice beam, not injured.

This is a MAJOR continuity issue, and really speaks to how little the dev team knew about the license. It implies to me that they had NO experience with the franchise past a brief outline of the plot.

 

The Fusion Omega is also much larger, slower, and lost its fireball-throwing ability.

 

There's four times more coccoons laying around the map than there should be, since the only metamorphosis a metroid leaves a coccoon for is the jellyfish->alpha transition, and there was only one metroid loose on the station.

 

 

 

It's really tangental nitpicking. I don't like the games for other reasons.

The continuity issue just annoys me, as Metroid had a fairly solid one up to that point.

As a sidenote: Prime 1 had continuity issues with ITSELF, but was consistent with the rest of the Metroid franchise.

 

Yeah I think continuity is negligible.. especially as far as videogames go. They're games, not really stories... so who cares

I like an effort to maintain a cohesive world across the franchise.

And since they're adding more plot to the franchise as time goes by, the effects of discontinuity start to become an issue.

[Room 34]

...

 

 

It's a friggin' VIDEO GAME!!!!

 

 

I just like exploring, solving puzzles and shooting at stuff. If you want to criticize anything, why not start with the fact that 99.9% of the landscape is completely impervious to any known form of weaponry. What the heck are these planets MADE of???

 

 

Edited April 30, 2006 by Room 34