
A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid II - blackhole
http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?p=1384825#1384825
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danso
OT: This is a throwaway comment in a caption near the end:

> _Samus’ underwear are a reference to what Ellen Ripley wears at the end of
> Alien, but Alien had a reason for it._

A little OT, but I believe Alien and Aliens may be the only popular movies
we'll ever get in which the heroine whose gender isn't treated as anything
more than a matter of fact. In both movies, she has nearly zero amount of
dialogue relating to romantic interest, and acts and is treated as just
_someone_ , not specifically a woman, on the crew...which makes sense given
that the character was originally written for a man. Even her climactic
victories arise organically from her character background, not in a cartoonish
let's-see-women-kick-some-ass, as with the Bride in the Kill Bill
series...Early on in Aliens, she is shown proficiently operating a Power
Loader because of her past work experience, which foreshadows the final
confrontation...in fact, it's funny that Ripley is sometimes referred to as a
kickass gunslinger, when it is her inept use of flamethrowers and grenades
that inadvertently lead to the final fight.

Anyway, this is just a long way of saying that Alien and Aliens are still not
only two of the best action/sci-fi movies out there, but perhaps the only
times in a major movie in which the woman is so asexual (the closest
comparison I can think of is Marge Gunderson in Fargo)...So when that she does
appear in her underwear at the end of both movies...it feels _logical_ (she's
getting into the cyrochamber), and not as a contrived way to capitalize off
the sexiness of the actress. I guess it was "cool" that Samus was revealed to
be a woman at the end, but the race to beat the game to see more of her
underwear was an unnecessary bit of game design, IMO.

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bentlegen
Sure, if you ignore the mother/daughter relationship between Ripley and Newt
in Aliens, and the clearly-hinted-at-but-never-really-acted-upon romantic
connection with Colonel Hicks.

But for Alien, I would agree.

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growupkids
Minor point, Hicks is a private in Aliens.

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vanderZwan
> _Imagine a game where Samus’ goal is less about killing and more about
> exploration. She befriends the fauna and they help one another. Regardless
> of the designers’ intent, Metroid II ends on a promising note that implies
> murder mazes aren’t the future of videogames. Regrettably, the bulk of the
> game is still a maze where Samus does her murderscaping._

You know, this sentence made me realize that the game Waking Mars is
essentially Metroid without the murder. Quite the opposite in fact: you are
bringing an ecosystem back to life.

[http://www.tigerstylegames.com/wakingmars/](http://www.tigerstylegames.com/wakingmars/)

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dkersten
Good point.

As an aside, Waking Mars is one of few games[1] that I actually enjoyed
playing on mobile. It works well with touch and has a nice atmosphere to it
that makes exploration fun.

[1] Tower defence games are the only others I sometimes play on mobile.

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avinashv
This is a beautiful piece about a wonderful, wonderful game. As much as I love
Super Metroid (which, despite her criticisms, I think is superior in gameplay
and puzzle-platforming), she is spot-on about the ham-fisting of the story.

We should all write like this about video games from our past that made us
feel something special.

> Samus’ motives in keeping the last metroid alive are unclear: are they
> purely utilitarian, or has she had a change of heart? The game’s rules,
> possibly mirroring Samus’ wishes, don’t allow for the metroid baby to be
> killed—bullets seem to barely miss or pass through the metroid. Of course,
> killing the metroid would doom Samus to a slow death deep underground, but
> this is not immediately apparent.

I didn't ever think about that until just now!

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HCIdivision17
Ditto. One of her complaints is about the doors in Super Metroid, and I can
understand it. Thinking back, I think they may have been going for 'someone's
already been here' (which is done masterfully in Uru). But it's so relentless,
that it never sets in. Eventually you just gotta blame the goofy space
pirates. (In fact, I think this is lampshaded in Metroid Double Prime where
the pirate logs make note of how inconvenient the door mechanisms are.)

But especially in the two Primes, it feels contrived. I absolutely adored the
two games, but there's a feeling the whole thing is a setup for the character.
Too many special circumstances in the ice or rock that somehow awaited Samus
showing up at just the right time with the right weapon. The earlier games
don't have that, I think, and I can see how Super Metroid starts the trend.

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avinashv
I've long suspected that Super Metroid is my favorite--and I think this logic
applies for many other video game series--because it's not only the first one
that I played, but the first one that I beat. I find myself nodding along to
every criticism of the game, but there is just something special about that
first play through. That incredible sense of simultaneous delight, fear,
wonder, confusion, and suspense is still a really vivid memory for me two
decades later.

Believe it or not, I have never played any of the Primes.

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HCIdivision17
Totally understood. I feel that way about the first Prime: I'm slightly
embarrassed to say it was the first Metroid game I really played (the original
Metroid was just too much for little kid me). But I played it to full
completion; it's possibly one of the first things I ever really finished in my
life up to that point. I played MP at a friend's house, a couple hours at a
time, utterly losing myself in the graphical beauty of the game (dude you can
see her gun hand's gesture in X-ray mode!) and the calm exploration music. It
was soothing, and I appreciated it a lot. The friend was an older disabled
gentleman who kept his home open for the neighborhood kids to have a safe
place to hang out; I knew him from church and wasn't a part of any real social
group, but he thought I might enjoy it. And so I rode my bike over and played
and left in the cool evening. Often he'd be tidying up his Animal Crossing
dailies before or after.

I wish I was as eloquent as the OP in describing the experience, since I would
love to have that feeling again. Oh well.

The circumstances of a good game well played can burn in and amplify the
experience. So I consider myself lucky, since quite few games feel that much
deeper given the state of my life while playing them. I can see and agree with
all sorts of flaws in the games, but they'll remain special simply because at
the time, they were.

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avinashv
> I can see and agree with all sorts of flaws in the games, but they'll remain
> special simply because at the time, they were.

I don't really have much to add to that, except that this is a really succinct
way of describing, I think, what you, the author, and I are trying to say.

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flatline
RandomCode (dead comment): yeah, me too. I just lose interest in games so
easily any more, and with so many other priorities fighting for my time, game
playing seems needlessly wasteful. I just can't enjoy it unless it's a social
event with a bunch of people, which you see less and less after 30. But I do
remember spending hours obsessed with games like Metroid, and love the
nostalgia posts like this evoke.

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AnonJ
Well probably 90% of games are just brainless mass entertainment productions
and it's quite pointless playing them anyways. But a few games are true works
of arts and playing them, just like going through an insightful book/movie,
gives you a lot. This might be the most convincing reason if I were to keep
playing certain games.

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Terr_
> Metroids are a constantly exploited species that are incapable of
> interplanetary travel, but they’re frequently treated within the Metroid
> series as some sort of galactic threat. This is bullshit.

I disagree. Metroids are presented as ready-made bundles of destruction, whom
an enemy _send_ across the interplanetary gulf to a target planet.

The risk is not their agency, but their use as weapons. Their lack of
spaceflight is a _bonus_ to those who might exploit them, making it easier to
use them against only the desired targets.

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rtpg
This mentions the killing aspects of games multiple times, and does make me
wonder if we can make more games that aren't about overt violence.

I know a lot exist, but it feels like if a game has some "story-ness" to it
(so not a God game, but something with a narrative), and it has more than a
minimum of mechanics (unlike puzzle/adventure games) , the mechanics end up
having to be about violence. Maybe I'm wanting to come to this conclusion

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AnonJ
Well, after all most games are commercial projects using which you have to
feed a lot of people(investors, programmers, designers, composers etc.).
Therefore you cannot expect them to present really serious and deep stories,
in the way authors are able to do personally in literature. Therefore trying
to interpret too much into the story/taking them too seriously mostly won't
get you anywhere. There might be occasional strokes of excellence but in
general storywriters for games were just rushing to meet deadlines. In this
case, bringing back the last Meteor could be a touching story, however for the
sake of commercial production they couldn't really produce a coherent
narrative for it across all Meteor series games, and in the end Samus just
ended up being a self-conflicting and basically brainless and senseless
character. Yeah, games played at certain stages might bring deep nostalgia,
but those most likely come from personal experiences instead of the stories
themselves.

By the way, quite a remarkable story in terms of personal experience.

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mparramon
I'm about to buy a Gameboy Pocket just due to this post.
[http://www.developingandstuff.com/2015/02/lets-play-some-
gam...](http://www.developingandstuff.com/2015/02/lets-play-some-gameboy.html)

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nathanvanfleet
Honestly this is great. I just played through Super Metroid and I felt so
strongly about how we need a new Metroid that is 2D and has the same
aesthetic. There is no comparison to how clean and slick and original that
game feels.

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nazgulnarsil
Try the ROM hacks. Redesign (hard), Golden Age (fun) and Phazon (cool art) are
all great.

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derefr
Very good article.

Having played the Metroid games, but not II, reading this explained a lot
about the exact inspiration for REDDER
([http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=540](http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=540)).

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archagon
This one[1] in the same vein is pretty amazing, too.

[1]: [http://www.kongregate.com/games/CosmicMaher/after-years-
in-d...](http://www.kongregate.com/games/CosmicMaher/after-years-in-dark-
tunnels)

