First off let me say:
I have never played a game in the Metroid series…
I never had the chance to play any console older than the Sony Playstation, and from what I hear that was a good thing. The ancient console war between Sega and Nintendo had spewed out some of the worst piece of shit games I have seen, I was glad didn’t have one of those early consoles as I dodged the chance of owning such abominations as “Wild Woody” or “Action 52”. I grew up on the Playstation as I was born in 1996 (which I guess was a major factor in dodging the shit released on the SNES and such) and my first game I played was at age 4, that game was none other than the Playstation port of the brilliant game known as Doom…
Yeah you know, that ultra violent first person shooter, but only one of the more intense and horror themed versions of the game released?
Playing games like Doom at the age of 4 and continuing to play progressively more violent and adult games (I.E Duke Nukem: Time to Kill and Quake 2) desensitized me to both violence and horror. I can play through entire horror games and only flinch when a jumpscare occurs (The cheapest trick in the god damn book!). Whilst that happened, somewhere down the line I became what only could be described as: “An asshole Retro-Gamer”… Must have been all that Duke Nukem.
Now I only seem to enjoy older games (Mainly older FPS games like Doom, Quake, Duke 3D, Wolfenstien and so forth, but I do enjoy some “modern” games) and enjoyed watching the shittier “Retro” games, I would end up watching hours of AVGN videos on shitty SNES games and would often watch Retsupurae videos tearing the shit out of abysmal games. One Retsupurae video intrigued me however, this video was where they covered the story of: “Metroid: Other M”.
The games story was utterly abysmal and hilariously bad as well as the Retsupurae… ers (?) commentary over the thing (Like most Retsupuraes). What got me about it though is how highly everybody spoke about the other Metroid games, like they were works of art… From what I saw, Metroid was far from a work of art in “Other M” but these “Classic” Metroid games sparked my interest. I have no idea what they look like, what they play like or what kind of game they were but the widely positive opinions of the game told me it was good, so I did a little research…
After a hardcore Wikipedia session I learned that the “Classic” Metroid games were 2D run and gun games, the first one was for the “Nintendo Entertainment System” and consisted of caves and shit where you kill aliens and shit… Sounded like my kind of game! I then searched Youtube for a “Reliable Nintendo Entertainment System Emulator download”.
After searching through all sorts of dodgy looking and often foreign bullshit, I found a reliable one, the comments section was certainly kissing the uploaders ass for putting up the link so it seemed legit enough… Although the standard procedure of having both an Anti-virus and Anti-malware program booted and ready to go was in effect…
Lucky me, the download was legit, the emulator was no fake. The emulator came with a ROM of some game I could care less about that was only there to test if this shit worked or not. I deleted the game that came with it and began searching for some ROM of Metroid. After some close calls with obvious virus downloads pointed out by the good people of the comments section, I got my hands on a ROM. I booted up the emulator after a full computer scan (Better safe than sorry) and loaded up that shit! At first the color spazzed the fuck out. This was a common problem with this emulator, restarting the shitty thing would fix this prevalent bug.
When I finally got into the god damn game, the title sequence started up. It showed some ship landing in those for mentioned caves to some cheesy cliché action music and then the main character (Who I recall being the most emotionally unstable mess of a “hardened bounty hunter” I have ever seen in Other M) jumped out of the ship and sprinted off screen. I was then prompted on my difficulty choice from the following:
Easy.
Medium.
Hard.
Die.
Now whilst that “Die” option was so appealing, it did make me wonder what the hell it was doing there, it was sticking out like a missile in a fruit bowl! Was it like Doom’s “Nightmare” difficulty? Ignoring the option that flat out says death, I picked easy… After all I am new to this game and selection “Die” would probably result in nothing but the title!
The game began with a rather neat looking fade-in sequence where the darkness faded gradually into what resembled a 2D cave (I guess?), this room had nothing in it but a few platforms and the bottom floor, the floors and platforms had a strange choice of colors: Green “rock” and purple “grass”. The background of the caves was stunning however, a beautiful set of dark blue and dark green cliffs covered in dark red waterfalls, I was impressed at these visuals judging from the time released! The main character ran into the room and the game gave me full control over her, I used this room to get used to the controls…
The controls were utter shit, I suppose that having no controller factored into this and the use of a keyboard would most probably be the reason why I couldn’t do anything for shit. It was next to impossible to jump up onto that dark green ledge in front of me in the first damn room, with some practice I was eventually able to control the character and get up on that asshole of a ledge.
The screen after the ledge was rather… Unexpected, to say the least…
As I crossed screens, I came to what could only be described as some sort of medieval castle like structure but more high tech metal pallet style… Seriously what the fuck was I looking at? The strange blue structure just had to be investigated so I walked inside that shit!
When I entered, a strange humanoid bird like creature stood beyond me in a purple, metal panel, tech base like room with various doors and apparatus you would expect to see in a ship, not a cyber castle! He turned 180 degrees and looked at the character… only to then squawk at me and rush my position. I then shot that mother fucker only to see his torso blow to pieces and splatter all over the place, which was awesome! I could just tell this game would be right up my street when that thing just blew to pieces and slid down the walls! The legs of the dude slumped over and his organs dripped out… I really like the attention to detail in this game so far!
The things friend came out of a side door and began to rush my location; I jumped over his stupid ass and blew him open too! I was a little disheartened when the same animation occurred for his death too but I guess that was limitations?
With those two squawking dickheads dead, I walked over to them, only for the bodies to quickly vanish like they would to cause less lag within the game system, still it was a cool effect though. I walked past the blood-stained walls and onto the next screen… Only to receive a jumpscare from what appeared to be a metroid (It looked different from the ones I had seen in that Retsupurae of Other M, but I could tell it was one by the shape), the little bastard shrieked at me and bit the screen of the emulator… What a cheap ass motherfucking trick!
After that little shit was done molesting my screen it then attacked my character, I remember seeing in the Retsupurae that you need to freeze that bitch and blow his ass up… But how? Rather than guess I just shot it and surprisingly it… Worked? The Metroid then, like the birds before it, splattered all over the walls, leaving only little pixels on the floor below where it once floated…
I began to think this was not the Metroid game I thought it was, I remember how much that freezing was emphasized as the metroids only weakness, I also thought about how this was a Nintendo game… The violence, the gore and the jumpscares didn’t add up. I thought the violence was awesome but now I have noticed how insane and out of place it is in a Nintendo game… I closed the emulator and loaded up Google Chrome. Once Google Chrome had loaded its slow ass up, I went to Youtube and typed in “Metroid NES”, what came up shocked me…
The title screen was completely different to the one I played, the music, the first level and even the graphics was different! This made my mind race, what the fuck was I just playing? I looked in the file where the ROMs were stored…
Empty. The ROM file was gone; panic surged over me as I thought I had just downloaded some form of sophisticated malware or a virus that is now running around in my system! Then I remember I didn’t put it in the ROM folder, it was still on the desktop and I loaded it by dragging it onto the emulator. A sigh of relief followed by a swift deletion of what ever the hell that ROM was followed.
I think the moral of this particular story is clear, I defiantly will do a little more research before I try and jump into a games series head first, who knows what I could end up playing…