Retro Fix:- Super Metroid
Name: Super Metroid
Format(s): SNES, Wii
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Xbox Live’s summer of arcade has recently finished and one of its key highlights was the incredible Shadow Complex, regularly described as a ‘Metroidvania’ style game and if you’re one of the many people who look at the word Metroidvania and have no idea what the hell they are on about then we are here to help.
In short metroidvania is a term used for a 2D action game with a heavy emphasis on exploring. They usually don’t follow a strictly linear and sometimes don’t always point to specific objectives allowing the player to find upgrades and content for themselves. One of the best examples is Super Metroid, which unsurprisingly has given it’s name to the term metroidvania itself. Whilst Super Metroid is most definately not the first (It is in fact the 3rd game in the Metroid series) it is easily one of the best.
Super Metroid was released in 1994 on the SNES and at the time was one of the largest, best looking and all round best games of its time. It follows the adventures of Samus Aran, a kickass bounty hunter, in her mission to track down and eliminate all the metroid (An energy sucking killing machine) from the galaxy. This is pretty much the same story as most other Metroid games, Nintendo do seem to have a knack for releasing games with very very similar storylines to previous iterations but it still manages to keep you interested. However, the story, whilst being a decent story, is not the one thing that made Super Metroid the best in the series and one of my favorite games in history.
At the time Super Metroid was a big step forwards in the series and in gaming, it had incredibly detailed graphics and featured possibly the largest world for players to explore. Whilst not a srticly open world the sheer size of the world and the ability to go pretty much anywhere at will. This is something that now we all take for granted with games such as Grand Theft Auto popularising the concept of an open world, whilst Super Metroid does not have an open world in the Grand Theft Auto sense it could be argued that the exploratory nature of the Super Metroid is very much a precursor to open world environments.
It is worth noting that as this is an older game it does get very hard, it is from an age where developers could only increase the length of their game by making it hard as possible. This means if you’re up for the challenge then you will spend many hours playing Super Metroid and since the internet became popular many groups appeared who compete in completing Super Metroid (along with other games) in the quickest possible times by playing the game in a different way than the developers intended in order to skip areas and post seemingly super human times.
So if you enjoyed Shadow Complex and want some retro awesomeness then you should definately check out Super Metroid as it is pretty much the starting point to that style of game. Yes Metroid and Castlevania 2 were out before this but no game did it as well before or really as well since. An essential game for anyone to have in their collection.
Super Metroid is avaliable on the Wii’s Virtual Console for 800 Nintendo Points.
Or if you’re awesome you might be able to find a cart for the Super NES.
Ahhhh brings back so many memories