Metroid II: Return of Samus

Metroid II: Return of Samus was released on 3DS Virtual Console this week, and I promptly grabbed it on Wednesday. Three hours and twenty minutes of gameplay later, I've finished it for probably the third or fourth time in my life.

This game is considered by many to be the black sheep of the Metroid series, and, as much as I like it, that is probably correct. It's an oddball little game, that's for sure. But it is not a bad game, which is what many people paint it as. It certainly has some issues, but the game is worth playing overall.

One of the issues with making games for the 8-bit Game Boy back in the early 90s was that despite its (relative) power, the screen resolution was tiny. This meant that although the system could display pretty detailed sprites, they either had to be incredibly small or way too large. One of the primary complaints people have about Metroid II is that Samus' sprite is way too large on the screen, which means that the player has a limited amount of time to react when enemies appear. While this is true, Metroid II does mitigate this by being predictable - and not in the "oh I know what is going to happen, BORING" way, but in the way where the player can recognize the room and enemy type and predict what things he'll likely encounter. The game will occasionally throw you for a loop, but most of the time you can predict what sorts of things will happen given the room. This fits with the overall theme of the game, as well - you are exploring a wild planet, after all, and you are a foreigner invading an ecosystem that has creatures who have behavior patterns and follow rules (the designers of the game, though, most likely just made the enemies behave the way they do to, again, mitigate the problem of there not being enough screen real-estate for the player to react to them).

Another major complaint about the game is the lack of free form exploration. In Metroid II, Samus is tasked with obliterating the Metroid species on SR-388, and so the whole point of the game is to track down every last Metroid and kill them all. There is a counter in the bottom right of the screen that tells the player how many Metroids are left. Also, when paused, that counter switches to tell you how many Metroids are left in your current area. "Areas" are divided into sections where the player must kill a certain number of Metroids, after which the planets lava will drain a little, allowing Samus to explore deeper into the planet. This doesn't really make any sense - why does the death of a certain species cause lava to drain? - but because of this, the player is limited to these areas until they clear out the Metroids.

This wouldn't be much of a problem to most people, I'm sure, if the level design wasn't so odd. It's unclear if the designers really were trying to make the underground caverns of SR-388 feel natural to the point that there are very few landmarks and thus it's very easy to get lost, or if they were constrained by the shortcomings of the Game Boy (probably a little of column A and a little of column B). The player will encounter very tight passageways filled with enemies that are hard to hit (depending on their current beam weapon, anyway) and then all of a sudden they'll be in a wide open cavern with very few enemies and tons of empty space they can jump through. These rooms are usually where players get disoriented, and they are actually my biggest complaint about the game. Because they are so large and empty, it's easy to confuse one room for another, and most of the time, they have little to no background - which means you can't tell how far Samus is falling when she jumps off a ledge into the blackness. This disorientation is further exacerbated when you realize that each of these enormous rooms are slightly different, but not in immediately obvious ways. So you might think you're in one large room, and start heading in a certain direction, when you are really in a different room. This is why an in-game map would be great, which is another complaint people have (myself included).

The 3DS version, though, is nice because you have the ability (as with any 3DS game) to go to the main menu by hitting home, hopping on the internet, and pulling up a map of the game (which I did when I got lost right at about the halfway point - didn't need to use it again after that, though). You also have the ability to use savestates, which make the battles against the Omega Metroids a bit more manageable (bastards). It is for this reason that I'd say this is the best version of Metroid II - sure, it's not the Super Game Boy version, but who cares? I played through this game on my original brick Game Boy when I was a kid, and if I could beat it on that impossible to see screen, anyone can beat this game on their beautiful 3DS screen.

My favorite thing about Metroid II, though, is the atmosphere. This is a creepy game. The few actual songs the game has are great, but most of the time there is just this weird set of atonal beeps and bloops. It sounds as alien as one could imagine. Since there are sometimes seconds long periods of silence, where you can only hear Samus' footsteps, the fact that Samus is alone in the middle of nowhere is really driven home, even more so than in the original Metroid, which I also think is good at reinforcing the feeling of loneliness. And when you encounter a Metroid, it is genuinely scary - they usually pop out of an egg or mutate when you first see them, and then they come at you with everything they have while creepy music plays. The game won't let the player control Samus as they mutate, so they are forced to watch this grotesque evolution play out (the player is allowed, however, to switch to missiles during this time). The power of the Metroids is also readily apparent, what with the fact that every other enemy in the game is some small, easily swatted away insect that probably only survives on SR-388 because the Metroids have no interest in eating them. There are a few larger creatures, but they are usually heavily armored and can only be damaged by shooting them from one side, suggesting that these enemies developed some sort of defense against the predatory Metroids.

The game is also really challenging. Not just because it's easy to get lost, either - as you get farther into the game, the Metroids get tougher and tougher. The Omega Metroids take a whopping 40 missiles to kill, and they spend a lot of time flying around the screen erratically! Luckily, they too have patterns, so if the player is observant they can be exploited.

Metroid II is also, as far as narrative is concerned, the most important game in the series. It's ending is the catalyst for Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, and Metroid: Other M - which is near half of the entire series created up to this point, including the Metroid Prime series. If you take that series out of the overall narrative (as the Japanese creators of the series apparently have at this point) Metroid II's events are crucial for the narrative of all the rest of the following Metroid games. Pretty neat for a little black and white Game Boy game, huh?