PixlBit

To wrap up the week and put a bow on the fine work of JD, some of the staff have contributed their first encounter with the series and some unique memories of their experiences.

Nick's Memories

Metroid holds a special place in my heart, despite having no real nostalgia from my youth attached to it. It wasn't until my senior year in high school that I really got into the series. Honestly, I had tried Super Metroid as a kid at various retailers via an in-store demo booth, but never had an undying urge to get it. I always thought it seemed like a pretty cool game, but I just never asked for it for Christmas or my birthday. Needless to say, time went by, and I forgot about it entirely - until the announcement of Metroid Prime.

It was clear from footage and screenshots that the game was going to be something special, and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to finally jump into the Metroid universe. If you remember correctly, Fusion came out on the same day, so I decided to pick up both, jumping head first into new territory. I played through Prime first and it completely changed my perception of what a game could be. Every inch of the game was designed with intent. Special items were stashed in obscure locations, but they were often in sight, tempting you to figure out how to get to them. The enemies were interestingly designed and the 1 stick control mechanism helped bolster Nintendo's claim that the game was indeed a first person adventure and not a shooter at all.

I'm sure I'm not alone, but one of the most striking moments of the game for me was encountering Phendrana Drifts for the first time. The unique combination of the environment and the amazing soundtrack made it unforgettable. This also happened to coincide with my first winter back in New York and the game's snowy visage made me feel right back at home. It's easily one of my favorite moments in all of gaming, which is a stunning achievement considering the sheer volume of games I've played at this point.

After completing Prime, I was hungry for more and I quickly played through Fusion, marking my first true experience with the 2D games of the series. While not the quality of Prime, it was still an extremely enjoyable game, which in turn finally motivated me to play Super Metroid, which proved to be another game of unbelievable quality.

Like Prime, Super Metroid understood how to construct extremely loaded worlds wherein secrets were all around, but weren't often obvious how to reach them. While my first play through was straightforward, I did use some of the sequence breaking tricks my second time through. The concept of sequence breaking is extremely appealing to me and I had often loved breaking out of a game's constraints when possible to discover something new. Super Metroid almost seemed to embrace this concept and it gives it unbelievable replayability.

Nearly insatiable, I went through and played Metroid on the Metroid Prime disc after thoroughly completing Super Metroid. It clearly wasn't the same experience I had become accustomed to. Surely if I were to have played it back in the NES days, it would've been a far different experience, considering nothing like it had ever existed before. Regardless, it was clear it had laid the groundwork for all of the wonderful experiences I had with the subsequent games in the series, so I couldn't help but appreciate its concepts.

With a strong love in place, I've gone on to purchase and play all subsequent games in the series, and while some have let me down (I'm looking at you Other M), all of them have still been exceptional experiences (yes, even Other M). I can only hope that one day Nintendo manages to top Metroid Prime and Super Metroid, but I'm not sure anything could ever surpass the extremely high bar set by both of those titles.