Instead, it harnessed the familiarity of its setting in the same way that Konami used the first stage of the original Castlevania in that game's many sequels: Revisiting a known location to contextualize and define each new work.Ĭastlevania had never reprised the first game quite so dramatically as we saw in Super Metroid's take on the corridors of its NES predecessor, though. Super Metroid may have reused material, but it certainly didn't play things safe. By 1994, we'd seen the dangers inherent in treading creative waters in video games: Formerly masterful franchises like Mega Man and King's Quest had grown incredibly stale by playing it safe. A sizable chunk of Super Metroid's otherworldly underground labyrinth comes directly from the NES game. Super Metroid's creators did an extraordinary job navigating the very narrow line between inspired reiteration and insipid rehash. And, as with A Link to the Past, this refine-and-expand approach resulted in a genre-defining work whose design principles continue to define gaming. Nevertheless, much as with this game's 16-bit cousin The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Nintendo consciously circled back around to the first game of the trilogy and applied more than half a decade of technological improvements and game design experience to the framework that had kicked off the franchise. Many of the previous game's quality-of-life elements carry over into this third chapter: Save stations, resource recharge depots, large rooms, and handy power-ups including the Spring Ball and Plasma Beam. On the contrary, the game begins with a brief sequence of exposition that sets the stage by building directly on Metroid II's finale. Even the game setting walked it back, returning to the first game's setting: The space pirate stronghold planet of Zebes.īy no means does that mean Super Metroid existed as some sort of repudiation of Metroid II. It saw the return of original designer Yoshio Sakamoto. It marked the return of the series to consoles after its journey into portable monochromia. ( Note: This week's Super Metroid review for Metroid Game By Game also doubles as our Super Metroid review for our ongoing SNES Classic Game By Game series!)ĭebuting midway through 1994 on Super NES, Nintendo's Super Metroid - also listed as "Metroid III" in the introductory credits - represented a return to the original NES game in many ways. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team. This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |