Metroid: Hunted

I know this sounds cliché, but I'm a big fan of the Metroid series. I've played and beaten all but hunters on the DS. But, in my case, I could care less. Of course, my favorite of the series is fusion on the GBA. I've played and replayed it more times than I can count. I also have Zero Mission on GBA, but I play it less.

In an attempt to get a friend of mine hooked onto the series, I lent him my copy of Zero Mission. I said he could have it for however long it takes. He came to me the next day saying that I got him hooked. He even bought Metroid Fusion from Nexwave, the local second-hand game store (although they also get new games). I told him that he could've just borrowed my copy, but he shot down that idea right after. We went our separate ways and went home. I saw him the next day. He seemed distressed about something.

"What's the problem?"

"I need help with a section. I'm stuck in sector 2."

I knew what part he meant right away. He had yet to encounter the boss of sector 2. He brought out the game, showed me where he was, I showed him what to do. He thanked me and I continued watching. He died a couple of times when fighting Cyclops, which was no problem. He took him down and got the power up.

As he was leaving the boss chamber, the music never came back around. When he got back to the hallway, it didn't play the normal music. Instead, it played the music that played when the SA-X was around. We dismissed it as a glitch and kept going. It was an older game, after all. When he got to the end of the hall way, where the door was destroyed, the music was normal. The game played as normal, going through the sectors without problem. Up to the point in sector 6 going for the Varia suit. Halfway through, there's a hallway when the SA-X shows up after you drop into a small morph ball area. My friend dropped down where he needed to be, rolled to the door, and, as it should have, the SA-X entered the room. Only it destroyed the door rather than open it. We followed the SA-X to the wall it needed to destroy, it went into morph ball and destroyed the wall. Then the chase music played and it dropped down to where Samus was and killed her with super missiles and ice beam. The problem here was that we never left the hiding spot, so it could never have found her. Another problem was that the normal death animation was not there. Instead, Samus collapsed on the ground and completely disintegrated. Both of us found this very odd (then again, who wouldn't?). It let us reload the segment and tried again. Again, the SA-X destroyed the door, went to the wall, power bombed it, only this time it played out as normal. It went down and left through the door, destroying it too. We went down and out the door. Once we got to the next section, the chase music played again and the SA-X charged at Samus and started brutalizing her with the ice beam and super missiles again. This time, when Samus was frozen, it used its missiles and she shattered into a million pieces. From the speakers, we heard a high pitched scream. With the limitations of the GBA speaker quality, it sounded worse than it should have. We looked at each other, then back to the screen. We saw the face of the SA-X looking at us. Underneath it saying,

"You saw what happened. now it is your turn. I am the one who is made of fear. I am your nightmare. Watch where you step."

We looked at each other in fear. I could see in my friend's eyes how worried he was for our lives. I'm sure he saw the same in mine. I looked back at the screen and saw nothing. We turned the GBA off then back on again. The title screen came and it was something new. The stars were not there, the music was the SA-X music, and the title said Metroid: Hunted. We immediately decided to be rid of the game. The last thing we heard from the game before we turned of the system was the footsteps of the SA-X. We took a sledge hammer and smashed the game so that no one else would have to experience what we did. It's been a year since this happened, and I can never sleep without hearing the dreaded footsteps.