A great moment from the Metroid series

Normally I would go for game play when selecting great moments but this time round I've gone for a cut scene and a recent one at that.

The moment is the Other M version of the ending of Super Metroid as it took a great battle and pulled it stunningly into this generation of consoles.

Even though the pictures don't really do it justice you can get the gist of the differences.



Seeing the ending of one of my all time favourite games re-done sixteen years later, three generations of consoles later was absolutley briliant which is why it was chosen as a great moment.

Why I love the Metroid series

Atmosphere, a key word when people talk about the Metroid series, but the game offer so much more than that.

My first experience with the Metroid series was my favourite game Super Metroid and what a great experience it was. It had the aforementioned atmosphere, great graphics and sound and the most important thing, great game play. The really great thing about the game was the fact that anyone could pick up and play it, not really a gamer and just want to run through it? Fair enough. An experience gamer who wants to hunt down everything? Go for it. The backtracking to collect items to upgrade your missiles and suit was absolutely brilliant and instead of feeling boring and repetitive really added depth to the game and the bosses, the bosses were just great and each one was so different to the other.

But enough about Super Metroid, although it did get me into the series one game doesn't make a franchise and luckily the rest of the games that I have managed to sit down and finish have been just as enjoyable. The two GBA games Zero Mission and Fusion are brilliant additions to the series and are held in high esteem by fans and non-fans alike. If you can find copies at cheap/reasonable prices they are definitely worth buying. One really good thing about them is that though the basic formula is the same as Super Metroid the games are quite different and a lot easier in difficulty which is good for when you just want to play the handheld for short bursts.

Like the Zelda series the move into 3D added whole new layers to the Metroid games with the Prime trilogy and Other M adding new depths to the games with scanning your environment and a new control scheme to allow swapping between 2D and 3D. Other M even added speech for Samus and a background to the hardened Bounty Hunter.

Like the Zelda series the main reason that I love the Metroid series so much is because I just want to go back and play the games over and over, that and the atmosphere.

Why you should play....

So, Metroid Other M, a bit of an odd choice for why you should play, what with it only being released last year. I suppose really I should have gone for Zero Mission or Fuison or Prime but I feel that Other M gets a bit of an unfair kicking which is why I selected it for this post.

Yes, by all means Other M is not a perfect game and it does has its faults but it's far from the bad game that people make it out to be.

I'll get what I would consider the faults out of the way first which for me are not that many. I'll start with what tends to get the biggest criticism which is the story. The graphics are gorgeous for the cut scenes but unfortunately the majority of the back story in which the cut scenes are based around are to put to it bluntly a bit ridiculous. It's one thing to give Samus a back story but to give her one that basically turns her into a petulant whiny love struck teenager is a step too far. This is the mysterious, lonesome, hard-hitting bounty hunter that we have known for nine games previously. It's like if someone made a back story to Darth Vader that showed hime to be a whiny, petulant love struck teenager.......

Another 'fault' for me is also related to the story which is that Samus switches off all of her weapons at the beginning of the game as one of the characters deems them to be too dangerous and will only allow her to activate them if she obeys every command. Again it just seems to go against everything that Samus is and unlike Prime which had an explosion to knock out her suit and weapons just seems like a very lame way to go about it.

The final thing I have to say about the 'faults' and this one will be on more of a personal level is that the game is a bit too easy for my liking, partly due to the fact that there are a lot more save points then previous games and also you don't need to kill enemies to collect missiles and energy as shaking the Wii remote will refill both. This however is rectified if you collect all 100% of the missiles etc as you open up a harder version of the game which is a lot harder as the collectables are removed meaning that you pretty much play the entire game with what you started with, fine by me.

But enough about that, the post is called why you should play, not why you shouldn't play and the main reason is because once you look past all of the above Other M is actually a really good game and is definitely worth playing.

Lots of people criticise the game for the control scheme as to switch between first-person and third-person mode you need to swap the way that you hold the Wii remote and also in first-person mode Samus does not move meaning that you are more vunerable to being hit. Well in all honesty this didn't cause any problem at all for me and for people to criticise and talk negatively about the game because of it is just absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. It's defnitely not a reason to not play the game.

If you can handle the control scheme what you will find is a fast paced, enjoyable and fun game that is worth taking the time to play. The graphics in both the game play and cut scenes are brilliant, the sound is great, the melee attacks add a new element to the series as does the switching between first and third-person mode which is great when fighting the bosses (which as per usual are interesting and great to fight.

Metroid: Other M whilst not the best game in the series is definitely a worthy entry so ignore the criticisms, pick it up for cheap and be prepared for a thoroughly enjoyable game. Any game that recreates the ending of Super Metroid is definitely worth a play.

My favourite Metroid game

Super Metroid

The Metroid games are great, but for me Super Metroid has just never been beaten. There is no single reason why it's a superb game, it's atmospheric, has great music and graphics and most importantly excellent game play. It just has everything that adds up to make it a great gaming experience.

Happy 25th Birthday

What I've finished - June 2011

Gunblade NY and LA Machineguns Arcade Hits Pack - Wii
Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker - GameCube
Tomb Raider: Legend - GameCube
Klonoa - Wii

Four games completed this time and four good games they were. I remember playing Gunblade NY in the arcades and with not having to pump in 50p's I found the game to be a little bit easier when it came to using continues. Never played LA Machineguns but it wasn't that different from NY though just as fun.

I've started Wind Waker two or three times previously but for some reason have never been able to get into it, this time round I stuck with it and what a brilliant game it is. It just really drew me in and I spent god knows how much time just sailing around exploring islands.

Tomb Raider: Legend was the first TR game that I sat and properly played and what a great game it is. Very smooth with interesting puzzles and good action but unfortunately just a little on the short side, definitely worth playing though.

Finally onto Klonoa which was good but after a while I just found it to be a little repetitive which was a shame as I did start off really enjoying it, still worth a play through though.

What I've finished - May 2011

No More Heroes - Wii
P.N.0.3 - GameCube
Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon - Wii

Three games finished in May and three that unfortunately I was rather disappointed with as I was expecting a lot more from them. No More Heroes just didn't grab me like I thought it would, it had it's moments but overall I just found most of it to be a bit of a chore. P.N.0.3 was both an interesting game and a repetitive game, interesting in the fact that it relied more on stealth and skill than just straight shooting but repetitive in that every single level was pretty much exactly the same. Finally Fragile Dreams was the biggest disappointment this month as I was expecting/hoping that it would be a really good game and what I found it to be was very repetitive with too much running around trying to find people/objects and way too many long ladders/corridors/stairs that just started to grate after a while.

What I've finished - April 2011

Goldeneye: Rogue Agent - GameCube
Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap - GBA
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Wii

Only the one GameCube game this month and a poor one at that. I do actually like the Bond games on the Cube but Rogue Agent was terrible, very long and very repetitive. Followers of my blog will already know about my love of the Zelda franchise and after writing a post about Minish Cap I had to play it again and Twilight Princess after an eleven month break finally got finished and whilst not as strong as some of the earlier games is still a worthwhile addition to the series.

Wii time

So today on the Retro Gamer forum in the Wii Collecting Thread people started listing the amount of time that they have spent playing Wii games according to the records collected and stored on the console.

Of course I had to have a look at mine and I was rather surprised by what I saw. What I saw was this (correct on 11/05/2011):

Guitar Hero III - 88 hours 16 minutes
Twilight Princess - 56 hours 59 minutes
Guitar Hero World Tour: 33 hours 47 minutes
Metroid: Other M - 30 hours 37 minutes
Guitar Hero: Metallica - 27 hours 15 minutes
Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 25 hours 25 minutes
Mario Kart Wii - 24 hours 38 minutes
Red Steel - 22 hours 54 minutes
de Blob - 20 hours 5 minutes
Tatsunoko Vs Capcom - 19 hours 34 minutes
No More Heroes - 19 hours 11 minutes
Super Paper Mario - 16 hours 15 minutes
Metroid Prime 3 15 hours 15 minutes
New Super Mario Bros. - 11 hours 34 minutes
Wii Play - 10 hours 25 minutes
House of the Dead: Overkill - 8 hours 29 minutes
Zack and Wiki - 7 hours 21 minutes
Raving Rabbids TV Party - 6 hours 15 minutes
Wii Sports - 4 hours 56 minutes
Boom Blox: Bash Party - 4 hours 25 minutes
Madworld - 2 hours 29 minutes
Sega Superstars Tennis - 2 hours 24 minutes
Super Mario All Stars - 2 hours 16 minutes
Okami - 1 hour 54 minutes
Punch-Out - 46 minutes
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games - 36 minutes
Sonic and the Secret Rings - 34 minutes
Mario Party 8 - 18 minutes
Link's Crossbow Training - 3 minutes

Nearly 90 hours on Guitar Hero III. Now this pretty much was the first game that I ever got for the Wii (I picked it up along with the console, Mario Kart, Sega Superstar Tennis and Wii Play), so it would have a few hours racked up on it and the girlfriend also plays on it but I was still very surprised to see the amount of hours racked up on the game.

Twilight Princess is probably the only one I'm not surprised at as it is/was a very long game and I knew that I had put the hours in but the rest, well all I can think is that I must leave the console on quite a lot when I should be turning it off as there is no way on this earth that I played Red Steel for over 22 hours and still never completed it.

Carboot bargain

So, Saturday gone I was nearing the end of wondering round my local car boot, yet again wondering where all of the retro games had gone, when as I passed one seller I notice under his table a box with the words Commodore Amiga 500 written across it.

Ooooooh, I think, a boxed Commodore Amiga 500, wonder how much he wants for that. Now I've been wanting one of these for years, ever since a friend of mine growing up had one and I thought that this was going to be out of my price range. So I stop for a few minutes to have a think and eventually I dare to head over to ask how much he's wanting for it thinking that he's probably going to ask for a fair bit. So I ask and he tells me that he's looking for £12 for it, I be cheeky and ask if he'll take a tenner and he answers yes as he just wants rid of it.

I pick up the machine and behind it is two boxes of games which the seller tells me is included in the price, sweet. So for £10 I walked away with the following boxes:


I then had to go out on Saturday so didn't actually get to test the machine until the next day and very happily I can report that it worked perfectly fine. After testing it I unpacked everything that was in the two boxes of games to find the following:


Everything is in great condition and all the ones I looked through contained the disks and the instructions and Street Fighter II worked fine, though it took some getting used to after only playing it on consoles all these years. I also gave Captain Planet a whirl just because it was Captain Planet (it wasn't that great a game).

So all in all I am now one very happy chappy, very pleased to finally pick up something I've been wanting for years and especially as it looks like I picked up a very good bargain and it certainly makes up for the last three/four weeks of wandering round the same car boot and picking up absolutely nothing in the way of retro gaming.