This is my favorite game of all time for a reason. They did everything perfect tbh.

I have the entire metroid franchise sitting at number 2 on my list of favorite games of all time- but I put an asterisk for Federation Force for the simple reason that by the time I got around to playing it the online was dead and the single player was near impossible on my own. I have a massive soft spot for Other M so I hope Federation Force is given a second chance on the switch (or the sucessor) and I can give this game a fair shake and be able to confidantly say that the entire Metroid Franchise sits at number two on my list of all time favotire games

You’re the only other person on the planet that thinks Prime is an alternative almost “timeline” to the 2D series, besides me. How does it feel? 😅

What people need to understand is that it is not possible to be objective about a video game unless you are desccribing its attributes. For example, calling Metroid II a side scrolling game or pointing out that the game has music or that it tells a story partially through visuals. The moment you start making claiming that the videogame is fun or not fun from an objective standpoint, what you are essentially doing is measuring a person's joy, which is impossible. There is no way to measure joy in any capacity because everyone enjoy's different things and in different amounts. There is no such thing as a game that is "good" or "bad" because that is relative to the person. Anyone that is making a claim that a game is fun or not, good or bad, is a liar or their comprehension of understanding the media they are "reviewing" is deeply flawed.

Any chance you could do a prime 2 video?

18:07

I think the story in Zero mission is not really black and white, it's about samus fulfilling a mission that ties close to her childhood. The Chozo took her in, raised her to be a machine and she was never truly disconnected with her humanity. The Chozo were obviously a normal society. Having a mixed culture of various elements. Peace and war exist together, the story is through her own naive eyes.

I always saw Samus story as being about her having stuff thrust upon her and her just making the best of it. Parents died ? Oh well, guess these bird people are raising me now and i'm getting some cool stuff out of it. Chozo died ? Oh well , guess i'll get some upgrades from my homeplanet while i fullfill this contract. Baby Metroid thinks I'm her mom ? Oh well lets hand it over to some scientists for the good of humanity. Almost get the shit beaten out of me by a resurrected mother brain ? Oh well my adopted metroid larva gives me super strength. A super dangerous virus tried to take over my body ? Oh well, seems like that metroid dna from the baby metroid i donated to the scentists was used to make a vaccine for the parasite and now i can basically walk around a space station that is infested with these flying blobs and suck em up through a straw. METROID 6: Whoopsy daisy, saved the galaxy again.

Still remember when I was a kid. It was early December, my mom put the game under the tree. I snuck it and played it on my GBA-SD and I recall her saying, "what game is that?" cause it sounded way different than all my other games (Super Mario World, Terminator 3 and some other games)

Dude you put DK64 and a rush of memories came back about my first run in MP. It's my most replayed game and my favorite game of all time. I value your critique. And now my experience feels like a shared experience 😂

Listened to all of your videos while working awesome work!

Regarding sound: Metroid Fusion has great footstep sounds which are perfectly matched to the walking animation. Most 2D platformers up to that point had no footstep sounds at all, including Super Metroid. It's baffling that it took game developers so long, they make a huge difference in immersion in my opinion. Then again, I never heard anyone mentioning them.

I think the controls are challenging, but rewarding. I just refused to let the controls kick my butt, and now I love them. I still have my little frustrating moments, but I'm still amazed that I keep getting better everytime I beat it.

One thing I found missing is that the gameplay has an entirely different feel when using the nun-chunk input. The most significant difference is that you walk, rotate, and aim simultaneously when you run around. While using the controller input, I often only performed two tasks simultaneously (such as walking and rotating or walking and aiming). Although the controller input is far more precise, the fluency of the nun-chunk is a better match for the level design. With only a few exceptions, most areas’ paths are curved and don't contain hard 90-degree corners. As such, you were always aiming your gun at your next destination, which might or might not include a threat. When an enemy did come into view, you could choose to lock on, allowing you to orbit (useful in open areas), or use the manual aim to use the tank controls to move back and forth. From what I recall, the Switch’s nun-chunk input does differ from that of the Wii U version.

6:05

I was born in 1980. One needs to look at a game versus its contemporaries. There was Nintendo seal of approval, but there were so many unplayable games back then. This was a great game that stood out so much. The music and atmosphere gave me such a weird uneasy feeling. It’s so easy to judge this one against its “super “ sibling.

this video is amazing, so many things that I overlooked as I child that you are now making me notice. Please continue making videos like this!!

I understand why you feel the way you do about the Metroids story, but honestly, it's one of my favorite things about the franchise. I'm personally a huge fan of how the story centers around Samus Aran, but I also do agree that it makes the universe feel smaller; however, I think having a more personalized story is worth the trade-off of a less mysterious universe. At the end of the day, it's a personal preference thing; the story may work for some but not for others. I'm trying to make this comment not seem like I'm saying, "Well, you're wrong because I like it!" Because I definitely think that your perspective on the story is completely valid and understandable, even if I personally disagree. Either way, I love your videos on Metroid, they are extremely well done and made me love these games even more!

my only complains are the non existent difficulty and that the game always tells you where to go next. this stuff kills any metroidvania, i just wanna explore on my own

Based review

Loved this game as a kid, it was very unique at the time it came out but playing it today there's too many areas that look exactly like other areas and without a map it becomes a bit of a headache. Also it uses old school NES secrets where there's no hint at all and you just had to find it by accident or by spam bombing every block in the entire world.

I feel like I'm the only person ever to like the chozo temple song :( I honestly like the droning nature of the song, Idk what it is it just clicks. Also I love the Metroid Theme too.... the steady rythmn makes me bop!

Ok now beat it without a map

Great video, but when you brought up the bombable walls issue you forgot that they have alot of dead ends where you find a bombable floor, get 3 tiles down, but its a dead end and you have to go up.

I simultaneously love this game and am a little disappointed by it. My two biggest problems are the wave beam/ice beam trap and the overall map design. Having an "upgrade" that actually set you back in game progression is just bad design. If they let you switch between the two guns I think it would help a lot. And the overall layout is less than ideal with too many time wasting tall vertical sections and copy paste rooms. This game feels like it should be a top 3 NES game but instead I find it falls around 15-20th best. Which is still fantastic (falling within the top couple of percent), but it feels like it falls a little short of what its greatness could be.

I've just formed a thought on the ending of Fusion: Given that it has higher intelligence and also copies the memories of its victims, I can come up with a few reasons the SA-X helps Samus without it being about the Omega being the greater immediate threat. It has seen Samus eject the restricted area (which had Metroid on them) and decided Samus = kills Metroids = now on our side (for some reason). I mean, you literally are fighting the omega Metroid here as well. It has also looked into Samus' memories and it has seen her commit genocide against the Metroids before. So maybe the SA-X decided they'd need a "Metroid Hunter" out in the galaxy to remove any last threat to their own propagation. This does include the Omega Metroid in Fusion, yes, but also any other Metroid that might exist out there.

I have now with this video watched everyone one you’ve uploaded. I’ve been playing most of these alongside watching them . Cannot wait for the next installment

The breakable block in norfair is actually hinted at, but it's still unintuitive. First, there's a very basic map in the manual that shows that there's a hallway underneath norfair. Secondly, the floor pattern, it has a repeating pattern that doesn't repeat on the breakway block.

I didn't like how linear fusion felt compared to super metroid back then...

i can’t wait for you to cover dread

*Pretty* good? Fucking Zoomers.

i dont like metroid nes because she's 3 pixels thick, approximately

Since I only ever play Super on a CRT on my SNES i thought there was something wrong with the visuals for a bit. Graat video. I agree on the bosses and mostly on movement. The movement feels so satisfying sometimes and annoying others. Space jump is something i to this day suck at.

My favorite thing about Zero mission is as a kid i didn't even know the flying insect boss existed because my cousin and i convinced ourselves the intended way to get super missiles was the morphball shinespark in Brinstar. So i literally found out about that boss probably 2-3 years later doing ny first 100% run. Blew my mind that we'd managed to fully avoid a boss on accident.

I just don't think I can subscribe to a channel named Pipi DaFeces but good video

I just fot back into my GB/GBA collection from building a backlit GBA. I have been beating all my favorite childhood games like Zero Mission, Fusion, FFTA, etc. Fusion was always a game i favored over Zero Mission despite zero also being amazing. Great video! Also, as someone who looooves the GBA, i never knew about the oversaturation of the colors. Ya learn something new everyday.

Edit 2: Further into the video, odds are if someone needed that cutscene to look at the finer details of maybe the federation is bad were not paying attention in the first place. If you don't get subtley, you should miss out on it so that others who enjoy it don't have it ruined by throwing the story right in your face. Edit: I should preface with the fact that Metroid Fusion was my first Metroid game and my introduction to the franchise, so it's not like my opinion is tainted by nostolgia of the more traditional Metroid games, as I played them later and found them to be generally superior, but Fusion still holds a special place in my heart. I love Metroid Fusion, it's one of my favorite games, but it is objectively the second worst Metroid game. There is too much hand holding and too many long breaks from gameplay. The story and game is still really great, but it would have been absolutely better and better than Super Metroid if they cut down on the amount of times you have to talk to that annoying computer. It was also the start of the era of game devs treating their audience like they have an IQ of a Koala. It really sucks because a lot of the physics and certain mechanics are objectively better and feel better than Super Metroid, and the story is really good, but that story does heavily and negatively affect the most important part of the game: The gameplay. The best way to tell a story in a game is through the gameplay and design, which Metroid Fusion does utilize, just not to the extent that it should have. Metroid Fusion is the game in the metroid franchise that most heavily needs a remake to fix it's core issues so that it can actually be the best Metroid game, because I do love it and I feel that the hand holding and too much restriction is really the only thing holding it back from being the best Metroid game. Other M on the other hand just needs to be retconned, that was irredeemable. This was also the first game without the late series creator Gunpei Yokei as well and it did almost feel like a spit in the face to his legacy. While I used to absolutely hate Yoshio Sakamoto, I understand he does have good ideas, he just needs someone to tell him when his ideas are shit. Having the player stop playing the game to be told where to go every 5 seconds is not fun and a stupid idea, especially if where you can go is more of a linear path. Not being able to explore and affect the story and have different experiences than other plays is not fun and not a good way to make a game. Games should ALWAYS have loose enough stories where players can play how they want and have a completely different experience than someone else playing the game, that's what makes games such a unique form of art because it is just as much the players canvas as it is your own.

You know a Metroid video's gonna be good if the video's longer than it takes me to actually beat the game Really good video! Never thought about the SA-X being a literal reflection of Samus in the first 3 games like that. VERY interesting stuff!

The linear aspect goes hand in hand with the loss of Samus’ agency. Nothing more or less to it. Otherwise, yeah chill out on the Samus reward ASSpect, it’s basically tradition at this point, it’s not like she’s starting an only fans .

Saying that Super Metroid simultaneously has some of the best movement and also the clunkiest movement is one of the truest, most accurate statements I heard. I love speedrunning this game but man, it can also be frustrating for someone new. On your point about sequence breaking, I think it’s unfair to compare Dread’s variety of developer-intended flashy sequence breaks to Super’s. Many of these were not “intended” although the developers knew they might be possible, so it’s just a reward for the player. No one in 1994 was worried about coding new and interesting ways to get items; it was left to player imagination and experimentation with the mechanics.

I can’t wait for your next video!! Will it be prime 2?

Federation Force is one of the greats for Co-op FPS's like Deep Rock Galactic or Payday, eviscerated by the ire of fans for it not being a "real metroid game" and being stuck on the 3DS, which is one of the least comfortable ways possible to play an FPS short of being shot IRL every time you take damage.

You can actually hurt the Omega Pirate while his hand is up. He can't absorb your shots from behind and beside him. I actually don't like the power bomb change because now you can just cheese the entire fight. The pirates get one shot by it so you're effectively just locking the Omega Pirate in a cycle of getting blown up by power bombs until he dies. You pretty much have to actively avoid getting power bomb expansions to make the fight even remotely difficult.

You say that this lore is new to Zero Mission, but I can’t help but notice that your example was super selective in only listing games that don’t really physically mention the Chozo or her backstory. You also can’t say that Super doesn’t contain any lore when the accompanying NP comic that you already mentioned directly states she was raised on the planet. As far as other games go, Metroid Fusion was very heavy on Chozo history, as it’s the first game to establish that the Metroids were created by the Chozo. Metroid Prime is awash with Chozo history and the notion of Samus being a chosen one of sorts. There have been multiple references in the past to Samus having been rescued from K-2L and being raised on Zebes. And while you did introduce the manga, you’re neglecting to mention that yes, Samus was infused with Chozo DNA as a protector/warrior by Old Bird (or Grey Voice, take your pick), but with warrior DNA (which Dread then clarifies as coming from Raven Beak) because the sentient AI Mother Brain was already planning a revolt and planned to utilize Samus as a means to control the Metroid army. This lore is nothing new and completely predates Zero Mission’s release. Zero Mission is not a “revenge story”, but it is a retelling of the original game with a lot of new motivations thrown in. Samus was not powerful enough to prevent the massacre at K-2L, but she’s sure as hell going to avenge them and Ridley/Mother Brain pay for what they did now that she is. Anyway, I don’t mean to pick this apart - it’s a wonderful video for sure. Just wanted to address those couple points. All that aside, 1% Fusion runs and sub-9% Zero Mission runs can suck my left nut. Never again hahaha.

1:33:30 I have to assume they are referring to the end of Alien 1, where Ellen Ripley strips into her underwear towards the end of the film despite being actively hunted by the xenomorph. They still miss the actual point of it being a weirdly objectifying reward to get and I very much doubt it is a nod to Alien in any way lol, but yeah.

What's the map app you're using at 30:44? I'd love to mess with that sometime!

you and i have the same exact mouse pad except mine has DK wearing booty shorts that say ONCE

Some key counter arguments about your Immersion segment: -Space Pirates are able to move and leap way further than normal human capabilities. It would help explain why their rooms tended to have odd platforming segments. It also helps that they have jetpack equipment for navigation. -There were a few scannable "doors" in the Space Pirate areas that explicitly mention in their scan logs: Space Pirate genetic code required for entry. There was also another Space Pirate log mentioning that Samus was infiltrating their base through vents and hatches. This helps explain why Samus enters some rooms through awkward tunnels or segments. Other than these two noteworthy points, I do agree that Tallon IV didn't seem like a place going into "biological extinction". Admittedly though, this would be hard to visualize, since we would need context on how the world looked before the impact of the leviathan, but that would have likely been beyond the scope of the development limitations. It was probably easier and still "good enough" to mention it only in the scan logs.

On the topic of your critique of the scan visor being a necessary tool for progression; I'm of the opinion that it's simply the design of the game to use the scan visor and trying to avoid it is an unwise way to try and play the game. Your main critique is that this design de-emphasizes player agency, which is fair, but the way the game designs its visuals, they seem to have intentionally gone the route of not giving any visual indications of places where you would use various items and instead have the player rely on the scan visor. An explodable morph ball tunnel entrance, for instance, may just look like any other texture until you use the scan visor. Like it or not, I think the whole point of these parts of the game are that you need to use the scan visor, otherwise it would've been simple enough to put some kind of visual indicator there as to what to do instead. So while you seem to believe that the design is a puzzle you're meant to figure out on your own with the scan visor only being a hint system if you're lost, I think the design is a straightforward discovery of a new path or secret that's not meant to be a puzzle as a puzzle isn't meant to give you the answer whereas Prime simply does. Looking at these bits of the design through that lens I think makes me more forgiving of them. I mean, it's not all too exciting or interesting to simply be told that you can access a new thing when it could instead be a more interesting puzzle, but my point is that it seems to me to be intentionally not a puzzle. Meaning they executed their idea just fine, it's simply not a design choice that everyone likes, which is valid

It's funny looking back. As a kid the first time seeing the SA-X, and knowing they were space blobs, when I saw the face reveal I thought the nose was a mouth. It looked like OnO to me