
The Invisible Hand of Super Metroid - jsnell
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/HugoBille/20120114/90903/The_Invisible_Hand_of_Super_Metroid.php?hn=2
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erik_landerholm
I don't comment much here, but this is one of my favorite articles...ever. I
loved metroid as a kid. The idea that the game was deliberately leading me to
a solution, while making it interesting, exciting, and rewarding is what I do
with my children everyday. The fact I never noticed until now just shows how
great that game was. Amazing. Makes me feel 12 again just reading it!

~~~
randall
I last played it probably about 5-7 years ago (along with the primes and zero
missions, was on a metroid bender). Re-reading it as an adult with little
spare time, it was like playing the game but in a fraction of the time.

Thank you, poster, for preventing further loss of productivity.

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navait
One concept that's interested me is metroid as purgatory.

-Samus often repeats the same mission over and over with minor changes. Her enemies are generally Kraid, Ridley, Mother Brain, evil Samus(SA-X, Dark Samus)

-Samus is constantly repeating work getting the same power-ups and soon losing them after she completes the mission.

-Samus is mostly completely alone, unless saved by something else at the end. Everything in metroid's design emphasizes isolation.

-She blows up the planet/starship/space station, with a desperate race against time.

-Soon there is a new mission...

She's forced to repeat the same thing over and over. Perhaps she is stuck here
eternally, a hell created as a reflection of her life. Perhaps there is a
lesson to be learned, like with the infant metroid before she can live.

The game design emhasizes isolation - there are only enemies, except artifacts
left by the Chozo. Samus can only depend on herself. The world is designed to
emphasize isolation from the real world by putting her on caverns below the
surface of uninhabited planets. The art is designed to look like no human has
set foot here. The gameplay teaches you through the world.

~~~
kibwen
I think there's a fantastic parallel here to the Zelda series. Though there
exists an official (and humorously bifurcated) "timeline" that determines
where each game takes place chronologically, the fundamental premise, set
pieces, and objectives of most of the games all echo each other. Rather than
trying to fit all of these games into a linear narrative, I think it's more
fun to think of each game in the Zelda series as a retelling of the exact same
story, much as real-world legends change subtly over time as they are passed
down through generations and across cultures.

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bane
I never played SM when it was originally out for some reason that's long since
been forgotten. I first played it maybe 2 or 3 years ago and found it
fantastic. Completely divorced from any nostalgia, I found myself really
getting engrossed in the story, the environment and the design.

Even though it was 16-bit and 2D, I was completely absorbed in the
environment. It feels like almost every screen and task had been poured over
and over and polished until it was _perfect_.

It's actually kind of hard to play other games that haven't received that kind
of attention because you feel the subjective difference.

It's so wonderfully designed that, even though the game ends up being pseudo-
linear (everything you're going to do to progress has been more or less pre-
determined), it felt like a world I really wanted to spend more time in and
that I had an amazing amount of agency.

It's definitely one of those games that clearly qualifies as art in the sense
that it has a story to tell and emotions it wants to evoke, while at the same
time remaining interactive. I feel like this is the kind of level that Ebert
was challenging games to reach when he claimed they weren't art.

~~~
keeperofdakeys
While the game may feel linear from a casual play through, the speed running
community have developed many sequence breaks (intended or not), to finish the
game faster. With these you can grab items early, out of order, or not at all.
If you were curious, you should look up a super metroid speedrun on youtube.
Some of them even have a running commentary of glitches, techniques, or
general information while they are being played.

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jfarmer
As a counterpoint to this, I like this essay: _A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid
II_
([http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?p=1384825#13848...](http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?p=1384825#1384825)).
Regarding the level design of Super Metroid vs. other Metroid games, the
author writes:

> Return of Samus is the only 2D Metroid with buildings the player can walk on
> and enter. Every door in Metroid II is located in abandoned buildings, and
> behind every door is an item that’s been sealed away like a time capsule.
> Each door is a barrier that is hopelessly locked, necessitating that you
> blast through it with missiles.

> Compare this to Super Metroid, where the continuity of the map is constantly
> sabotaged by the ridiculous bottlenecking of doors meant to transition into
> the next room. These doors are, of course, the perfect size for Samus to
> pass through and only her arsenal can open them. Some doors are located in
> outside areas where the sky is visible, making the game world feel like a
> box with holes poked in the sides of it. This problem endlessly reveals the
> artificiality of areas intended to seem organic and makes the game
> designers’ guiding hands hamfistedly obvious.

> The Space Pirates—somehow an entire species—mill around inside rooms between
> these doors as if they’re doomed to wait forever. Space Pirates don’t have
> missiles or Power Bombs, so how would they be inside places where these
> weapons are needed to ingress? It doesn’t feel like aliens on Zebes built
> those damn mazes or that they’re natural formations; it feels like sleep-
> deprived game developers built them

And as far as essays about level design go, this one about the level design in
Super Mario Bros. is one of my favorite:
[http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=465](http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=465).

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nazgulnarsil
Also see: A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid II, a fantastic piece exploring the
earlier game.
[http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SRHoliwell/20150130/235329/A_...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SRHoliwell/20150130/235329/A_Maze_of_Murderscapes_Metroid_II.php)

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digi_owl
The 16-bit era seems like perhaps a golden age of console gaming. Enough
memory and CPU to do quite massive games, but still not burdened by 3D
graphics and movement.

~~~
cbd1984
The Golden Age is when you're twelve. Always. Regardless of generation.

~~~
kethinov
I dunno, that era of gaming seems to transcend nostalgia. It was basically the
peak of 2d game development. The switch to 3d after that changed gaming
forever in a way that seems to emphasize cinematic gaming over intricate
mechanics. For those that prefer the latter, the SNES generation has yet to be
topped.

~~~
jholman
> _emphasize cinematic gaming over intricate mechanics_

> _the SNES generation has yet to be topped [for those who prefer mechanics]_

Starsiege Tribes. Tony Hawk. DotA/LoL/HotS/etc. Dark Souls. Portal. N/N+/N++.

I believe that all of those games emphasize intricate mechanics over cinematic
gaming, though I admit that the majority of them are also hoping for
cinematics (as were most games of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras). To my mind, on
mechanics alone, the SNES generation has been topped. Of course, it's also
nice when a game is also beautiful (Dark Souls) or also has engaging story
(Portal).

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dietrichepp
Interesting article... I just made a Metroid style game for Ludum Dare, and
one of my key lessons from previous games was listed in the article: force
people to use new tools. I have a room with a double-jump powerup, and you
have to use it to get back out again. My experience was that otherwise, far
too many people simply didn't figure out double jumping.

[http://chaostomb.moria.us/](http://chaostomb.moria.us/)

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krebby
There's a fantastic series on YouTube that examines some of these types of
game and level design elements in a similarly academic way. The episode on
Half-Life 2's Invisible Tutorial
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMggqenxuZc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMggqenxuZc))
is particularly well done.

~~~
barrkel
One word: overdesigned.

One of the reasons I disliked HL2 so much was because my experience of it was
so controlled and funneled. I felt like the designers removed my agency, and
tried to ensure that there was one right way to solve a problem, to the point
of punishing me [1], or worse, main-routing[2] me when I sought an alternative
route.

[1] One location early on requires you to break into a tunnel to come up
behind and flank a guard shooting down at you with a mounted gun behind a
screen. The problem is that the fact that a flanking tunnel exists means that
the designers had no reason to make him possible to hit; it is actually
possible to kill him head on, but it's difficult, and you will almost
certainly take a lot of damage in the process (the punishment). The tunnel is
just too damn convenient though, and breaks the suspension of disbelief; it's
too obviously designed in.

[2] I invented the word main-routing to describe a situation where, when
you're exploring shady nooks that you spot out of the corner of your eye, they
look like they go somewhere interesting, so you go back to the main route to
find out what the main stream does. But instead it dead-ends, and in fact that
shady little corner you were exploring was the only way forward; what you
thought was a secret shortcut was just the main route again, in a different
guise. This is a double-whammy: not only does it break suspension of disbelief
again, but it also punishes exploration. It teaches you that nooks are either
dead ends that are pointless to explore, or that the main route will dead-end
itself and you'll be forced to explore the nook. Either way, you have no
choice in the matter, so you're better off sticking to the main route until it
forces you to explore.

I really did not enjoy HL2. It was a cripplingly disappointing experience,
especially after having played Deus Ex, which greatly increased my
expectations from a game. Going back to playing a mute scientist with an
alleged PhD yet whose only mechanism of interacting with the world is violence
was like going back to the 90s.

~~~
ehmmm
Dead ends are there for a reason to create a sense of a larger world. They are
usually blocked by some logical obstacle, and rarely actually lead to a short
alternate area, but not an alternate path. Half-Life is linear by design,
surely you must agree that a linear path that tries to create a bigger world
is better than one without. Those paths perhaps broke the illusion for you,
but at least there was some illusion and without the paths there would be
none.

I agree with the first paragraph, the first game was better since it didn't
constantly trap you in rooms, where you had to wait for dialogue to play out,
which were just glorified cut-scenes. For example, in the first game if a
friendly character tried to convey some dialogue you could ignore/kill/avoid
him, but in the second game you can only wait.

~~~
Narishma
There were plenty of situations in the first game where you had to wait for a
character to finish his dialog and open a door or something so you can
progress.

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aabajian
I agree with the content of the article, but there's one key secret that seems
next to impossible to find without cheating. To my knowledge the entrance to
Kraig is the only place in the game where there's a secret in an _elevator_
room. If you fail to explore the elevator room, the story won't ever move
forward. Here's a picture:

[http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/images/d/df/Super_Metroid...](http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/images/d/df/Super_Metroid_Walkthrough_Brinstar_Elevator_Room_Kraid.png)

Shooting a super-missile at that block eventually leads you to Kraig.

~~~
TillE
It's been years since I played it, but if you look at the minimap in that
screenshot, it seems you can get the area map before discovering that
entrance. The unexplored blue area is a huge clue.

~~~
ehmmm
Yes. And if I remember correctly, if you bomb the block, the super missile
logo appears on the block.

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ericdykstra
For anyone that finds this article interesting, I recommend the Retronauts
podcast. [http://www.retronauts.com/](http://www.retronauts.com/)

I started listening to it about a month ago, and immediately dove into their
back catalogue and have listened to about half of the episodes from their
current and previous season. Even when the episodes are about something I have
little knowledge of, hearing about a game or producer's impact and legacy is
really interesting and makes me want to go back and check the games out.

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DiabloD3
Super Metroid is easily in my top ten of greatest games ever, along with Zelda
3.

~~~
Retra
I also think it's one of the best games ever made.

I haven't played it in years, but I can still hear the sound of the power beam
when you first land on the planet, with the lightning in the background. It
sounds muffled and distant, like the atmosphere is really wet and heavy. They
really nailed the 'alien' part of the experience.

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ehmmm
Those mechanics are way too subtle. Today, the player must be explicitly told
how to overcome obstacles. Games have become mainstream and so did the target
audience, this caused a push towards the lowest common denominator in game
design.

~~~
white-flame
From the second paragraph:

"This analysis takes most of its material from the first playthrough of the
game by my friend Rufus, which I had the pleasure of observing from beginning
to end. Watching him, a complete newcomer to the genre, still find his way
around Zebes in pretty much the same way I'd do, almost never once getting
lost or stuck for any considerable amount of time, made me question how that
could be. This analysis is my answer."

I presume this happened recently, with a gamer of "today".

~~~
ehmmm
Your logical fallacy is, _drum roll..._ : Hasty generalization

Congratulations! You win nothing.

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VeejayRampay
I think Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap could be mentioned here for some of
the same reasons. The animal upgrades you get along the game open up new
possibilities and make the game awesome.

