Another fantastic video I don't care what content you create, I will genuinely watch and enjoy anything you put out. You seriously do a great job my friend.
I dont know if you will see this but something you forgot to mention with the final scene with the x parasite is it also ties directly to super as it shows that ridley dropped off his mechanical pieces and regenerated back to his normal self(as we will see in super). it can also explain a bit how ridley knew where the baby was cause its reasonable to infer that he tailed samus
I absolutely see this message! One of the perks to being such a small channel is that I get to chat with everyone. I definitely forgot to mention this because I didn't even think of that. Very good catch on those details! This does help bridge that gap even more cleverly than I originally thought, and I already thought it was damn good. Thank you for this!
@@Zerbraxi no prob really enjoyed the video too. i always love hearing talk videos about metroid games and thats how i stumbled upon your channel. your work gets a big thumbs up from me
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed. While it might not be for a little while I'm EXTREMELY excited to get back to the Metroid franchise at some point.
I had originally passed on it when it released. Partly because the Switch was already out and I passed on basically anything 3DS related at the time. Also because...well, as I mentioned quite a few times I had STRONG feelings about MercurySteam lol. I'm still genuinely surprised by how much fund I had with it especially given the general reception I had seen at the time. Great experience I'm glad I had and even better music!
So nintendo didn’t actually come to mercury steam first. Mecury steam came to sakamoto for a fusion remake, and while sakamoto turned that down believing fusion didn’t need a remake, he was impressed by their passion and hired them for samus returns.
That's an awesome bit of info! Thanks for sharing that. It ended up working out pretty dang well for everyone involved. *obligatory Lord's of Shadow joke*
33:00 It's a weak explanation, to be sure, but beating the game and unlocking the artwork galleries shows the Chozo losing control of the Metroids after they start mutating, and being forced to set up the contrived shrines to flood the planet behind them as they fled to the surface in order to get away from the unbeatable evolved Metroid menace. The final unlock also shows Raven Beak arriving to "help", tying this game directly to the events of Dread. 42:00 Regarding the final two boss fights: In the Queen Metroid fight, you show the sequence where you get her to lay her head on the ground and the camera locks; what you're SUPPOSED to do - although the game doesn't make it very clear - is roll into her mouth, all the way down her throat, and lay a Power Bomb in her stomach; this deals a TON of damage and makes the fight much shorter if you can pull it off. The only reason you might know to do this is because it's something you can do in the original GameBoy title. So it's a callback to that, but not very well hinted at during the chaos of the boss fight. As for the new Ridley fight, it's a cool inversion of every other Ridley fight in that your Missiles do jack-all to him and you're forced to use nothing but Beam attacks to win. The best strategy is actually to use the Machine Gun Aieon ability OR charge up your Charge Beam while dodging his attacks, allowing you to unload on him when he's recovering from a big attack and is temporarily more vulnerable/stationary.
So after some time away from this, I think I understand what they were going for in terms of tying the shrines into the evacuation. You're right about the galleries being a deeper insight and in seeing that the shrines were effectively a way to systematically wall off sections of the subterranean layers in the planet is a rather interesting rationale to that gameplay mechanic. It's definitely still a bit odd to me, but it's too late to change the core gameplay of Metroid 2 so they had to come up with something. I never thought of that with the Queen Metroid fight. Considering I had played through Metroid 2 AND AM2R, I totally should've realized that Power Bomb trick. Clever. This Ridley fight became my favorite boss fight in terms of mechanics in the entire series after playing this for the first time. Granted it quickly got dethroned by Raven Beak in Dread, but yeah, I love how much this Ridley encounter forces the player to approach it so differently compared to his other encounters.
"The forgettable Fusion soundtrack" I beg to differ, while I personally believe only a select few tracks in SR are great, I do think a majority of the soundtrack is forgettable... Fusion's soundtrack REALLY stuck with me though. Partially being that it's my entry point into the entire genre. And it's also the first taste I ever got of a "horror" game, so the music just added to it for me. Ultimately I have a soft spot for Fusion because it was my first Metroid(vania) and my first "horror" game. That cold, isolated feeling you get when you hear "Environmental Mystery", after the station powers down... The intensity from "X Invasion" just fills you with a certain fear, like something bad is gonna happen if you don't GET OUT OF THERE... The low humming from "SA-X", combined with the hollow footsteps... is haunting and you feel paralyzed with fear every time you hear those... "Sector 1" is great as it's the intro track to the game, and it sets the mood for the rest of the game as well... "BSL Ambience" is just really great. It's calming, like it's time to relax. But, it's also a bit haunting, it's quiet, too quiet... The rendition of Ridley's theme when you escape from the BSL when changing its trajectory to crash into SR388 is so hype... and the fact that there's no enemies en route to your ship made it MORE stressful for me, because my thought process was "Where are all the X? You'd think they'd try to stop me, but they're not... something is VERY wrong here..." and it made me scared to return to my ship, I felt something was waiting for me there... and when I got there, I WAS RIGHT. As well as the fact that, I've come this far, I've done all this work, and I'm going through the same place I went through at the start of my adventure, with a much more badass soundtrack, saying goodbye to everything. There's so much info you can gather from JUST music in games, and I think you should look a bit deeper into this kind of thing, you might find a different opinion.
This was a wonderful response to read. I love the expression of your experiences and how music and sound design played such a deep role there. There's definitely a lot to the sound design of Fusion that I could've gone deeper into. I found your last line a bit amusing. Not because I take offense or anything, but because video game music and video game music is a topic I'm often obsessed with. I listen to game soundtracks more than regular music, podcasts, and audiobooks combined. I can often "feel" so much from a game I've never played just by hearing the original compositions or from remixes on OCRemix or Rainwave.cc. There are countless games I've played for no other reason than I heard their music and NEEDED to know what the story and gameplay was behind the emotion I was already feeling. I'm genuinely obsessed with video game music and it's why in my videos I always make a point to focus on that topic specifically even if not every title has a lot to say about it. Regardless, I definitely miss certain experiences for sure and perhaps Fusion is a good example of that. Honestly though, you mention all of those moments from Fusion, and I can not put a single track or sound to any of those experiences BESIDES the SA-X footsteps. I'll totally give that haunting sound its credit. I still don't remember any of the music from Fusion even after having listened to it on repeat during the editing. Another thing I love to do is listen to a game's soundtrack while I'm writing and editing to help force me into that experience again. I probably hear a game soundtrack about 10 times during the process before publishing and I still can't remember more than 1 or 2 songs from Fusion. I remember more from Samus Returns for sure. A close friend of mine had a similar experience you did with Fusion, and he also disagreed with some of my thoughts towards it. Perhaps its that I had played so many games like Fusion before touching it upon release that things never clicked the same. There could be a plethora of reasons that our experiences in this regard but I love to hear those experiences because it inevitably makes me appreciate a game more even if it did little for me personally.
@@Zerbraxi I, too, am borderline obsessed with video game music, and I often listen to it for atmosphere. Hell, I play the BLADE Barracks theme from Xenoblade X on repeat, in my apartment over a bluetooth speaker because it just has that homey vibe to it, and I consider it MY theme song when starting streams. And listening to a track from a game you've never played, feeling emotion, and wanting to play the game itself to experience the track in its original form, that's how I felt with a ton of games over my lifetime, the most recent being the final dungeon from Skies of Arcadia, I went to play that just to reach that dungeon and feel exactly what it was trying to convey in its home setting. It's a phenomenon that I love experiencing again and again. It also ultimately puts a lot of games on my backlog. But yeah I get it. People have different tastes, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Yo that's awesome! I've still not played through Xenoblade X yet...it's the only Xenoblade I haven't played which I really regret. I do have the game and have the optimization patch downloaded on my WiiU so I do plan to rectify that one day. This conversation though ahs given me an idea. I wonder if a video focused solely on games I played strictly because of hearing the soundtrack first would be an interesting topic.
Awesome Video! I avoided Samus Returns I got the original size 3ds And after the switch released I allways thought they would release it on switch too but they never did so I played Am2r instead After almost beating Metroid Dread... I kinda want to play this ... Should I?
I would've said it's MORE worth it to play before going through Dread so you can see the evolution of the gameplay. The core story beats of Metroid 2 go largely unchanged from AM2R outside the very end. I'd recommend playing it as long as you're ok with the relatively linear nature and the repetition of many of the Metroid encounters. If you want to have some fun with some very solid gameplay on the 3DS then it's definitely worth checking out.
@@Zerbraxi Yes, all of them, from start to finish (at 1X speed, I don't mess with playback speed). I appreciate how you stick to your opinions and occasionally try new things in the videos. Some parts seemed a little longer than they needed to be, but I enjoyed the series and am looking forward to your next videos. It feels weird watching videos with less than 100 views, especially with this level of quality. The effort you put in shows.
@@WyvernDotRed Again, thank you so much. I also really appreciate the feedback. I'm for sure still figuring out more effective ways of communicating and illustrating points and I am thankful for any criticism that comes. I hope you enjoy what's to come.
The questions you have about the chozo and the Metroids are answered by the Chozo memories by unlocking 100%
Ahhh shoot. I'll have to go back and look through them all then. I should've looked further into that.
Thanks for the heads up.
Another fantastic video I don't care what content you create, I will genuinely watch and enjoy anything you put out. You seriously do a great job my friend.
Careful being that positive, gonna boost my ego through the roof LOL
I dont know if you will see this but something you forgot to mention with the final scene with the x parasite is it also ties directly to super as it shows that ridley dropped off his mechanical pieces and regenerated back to his normal self(as we will see in super). it can also explain a bit how ridley knew where the baby was cause its reasonable to infer that he tailed samus
I absolutely see this message! One of the perks to being such a small channel is that I get to chat with everyone.
I definitely forgot to mention this because I didn't even think of that. Very good catch on those details! This does help bridge that gap even more cleverly than I originally thought, and I already thought it was damn good.
Thank you for this!
@@Zerbraxi no prob really enjoyed the video too. i always love hearing talk videos about metroid games and thats how i stumbled upon your channel. your work gets a big thumbs up from me
@@Pokejon2000 I really appreciate it. Thanks!
I know this was 2 years ago but I love that they made the title the non-abbreviation of the word "SR" in SR-388
Omg!!! I didn't notice that!
Wow i really enjoyed this video! Thank you, i really like your metroid videos!!
Thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed. While it might not be for a little while I'm EXTREMELY excited to get back to the Metroid franchise at some point.
Fantastic video! I really liked SR. It's a solid game and a nice side take from the other two M2 games.
I had originally passed on it when it released. Partly because the Switch was already out and I passed on basically anything 3DS related at the time. Also because...well, as I mentioned quite a few times I had STRONG feelings about MercurySteam lol. I'm still genuinely surprised by how much fund I had with it especially given the general reception I had seen at the time.
Great experience I'm glad I had and even better music!
The Gravity Suit in this game looks so sick
One of the coolest looking suits in the series by far. The glow is just beautiful.
Love the beard/hair btw, you look kinda like Emperor Hadrian
Lol!!!
I actually quite hated the counter spam in SR3D but it was much better in dread
Definitely better Dread for sure.
So nintendo didn’t actually come to mercury steam first. Mecury steam came to sakamoto for a fusion remake, and while sakamoto turned that down believing fusion didn’t need a remake, he was impressed by their passion and hired them for samus returns.
That's an awesome bit of info! Thanks for sharing that. It ended up working out pretty dang well for everyone involved.
*obligatory Lord's of Shadow joke*
33:00 It's a weak explanation, to be sure, but beating the game and unlocking the artwork galleries shows the Chozo losing control of the Metroids after they start mutating, and being forced to set up the contrived shrines to flood the planet behind them as they fled to the surface in order to get away from the unbeatable evolved Metroid menace. The final unlock also shows Raven Beak arriving to "help", tying this game directly to the events of Dread.
42:00 Regarding the final two boss fights:
In the Queen Metroid fight, you show the sequence where you get her to lay her head on the ground and the camera locks; what you're SUPPOSED to do - although the game doesn't make it very clear - is roll into her mouth, all the way down her throat, and lay a Power Bomb in her stomach; this deals a TON of damage and makes the fight much shorter if you can pull it off. The only reason you might know to do this is because it's something you can do in the original GameBoy title. So it's a callback to that, but not very well hinted at during the chaos of the boss fight.
As for the new Ridley fight, it's a cool inversion of every other Ridley fight in that your Missiles do jack-all to him and you're forced to use nothing but Beam attacks to win. The best strategy is actually to use the Machine Gun Aieon ability OR charge up your Charge Beam while dodging his attacks, allowing you to unload on him when he's recovering from a big attack and is temporarily more vulnerable/stationary.
So after some time away from this, I think I understand what they were going for in terms of tying the shrines into the evacuation. You're right about the galleries being a deeper insight and in seeing that the shrines were effectively a way to systematically wall off sections of the subterranean layers in the planet is a rather interesting rationale to that gameplay mechanic. It's definitely still a bit odd to me, but it's too late to change the core gameplay of Metroid 2 so they had to come up with something.
I never thought of that with the Queen Metroid fight. Considering I had played through Metroid 2 AND AM2R, I totally should've realized that Power Bomb trick. Clever.
This Ridley fight became my favorite boss fight in terms of mechanics in the entire series after playing this for the first time. Granted it quickly got dethroned by Raven Beak in Dread, but yeah, I love how much this Ridley encounter forces the player to approach it so differently compared to his other encounters.
"The forgettable Fusion soundtrack"
I beg to differ, while I personally believe only a select few tracks in SR are great, I do think a majority of the soundtrack is forgettable... Fusion's soundtrack REALLY stuck with me though. Partially being that it's my entry point into the entire genre. And it's also the first taste I ever got of a "horror" game, so the music just added to it for me. Ultimately I have a soft spot for Fusion because it was my first Metroid(vania) and my first "horror" game.
That cold, isolated feeling you get when you hear "Environmental Mystery", after the station powers down...
The intensity from "X Invasion" just fills you with a certain fear, like something bad is gonna happen if you don't GET OUT OF THERE...
The low humming from "SA-X", combined with the hollow footsteps... is haunting and you feel paralyzed with fear every time you hear those...
"Sector 1" is great as it's the intro track to the game, and it sets the mood for the rest of the game as well...
"BSL Ambience" is just really great. It's calming, like it's time to relax. But, it's also a bit haunting, it's quiet, too quiet...
The rendition of Ridley's theme when you escape from the BSL when changing its trajectory to crash into SR388 is so hype... and the fact that there's no enemies en route to your ship made it MORE stressful for me, because my thought process was "Where are all the X? You'd think they'd try to stop me, but they're not... something is VERY wrong here..." and it made me scared to return to my ship, I felt something was waiting for me there... and when I got there, I WAS RIGHT. As well as the fact that, I've come this far, I've done all this work, and I'm going through the same place I went through at the start of my adventure, with a much more badass soundtrack, saying goodbye to everything.
There's so much info you can gather from JUST music in games, and I think you should look a bit deeper into this kind of thing, you might find a different opinion.
This was a wonderful response to read. I love the expression of your experiences and how music and sound design played such a deep role there. There's definitely a lot to the sound design of Fusion that I could've gone deeper into.
I found your last line a bit amusing. Not because I take offense or anything, but because video game music and video game music is a topic I'm often obsessed with. I listen to game soundtracks more than regular music, podcasts, and audiobooks combined. I can often "feel" so much from a game I've never played just by hearing the original compositions or from remixes on OCRemix or Rainwave.cc. There are countless games I've played for no other reason than I heard their music and NEEDED to know what the story and gameplay was behind the emotion I was already feeling. I'm genuinely obsessed with video game music and it's why in my videos I always make a point to focus on that topic specifically even if not every title has a lot to say about it. Regardless, I definitely miss certain experiences for sure and perhaps Fusion is a good example of that.
Honestly though, you mention all of those moments from Fusion, and I can not put a single track or sound to any of those experiences BESIDES the SA-X footsteps. I'll totally give that haunting sound its credit. I still don't remember any of the music from Fusion even after having listened to it on repeat during the editing. Another thing I love to do is listen to a game's soundtrack while I'm writing and editing to help force me into that experience again. I probably hear a game soundtrack about 10 times during the process before publishing and I still can't remember more than 1 or 2 songs from Fusion. I remember more from Samus Returns for sure.
A close friend of mine had a similar experience you did with Fusion, and he also disagreed with some of my thoughts towards it. Perhaps its that I had played so many games like Fusion before touching it upon release that things never clicked the same. There could be a plethora of reasons that our experiences in this regard but I love to hear those experiences because it inevitably makes me appreciate a game more even if it did little for me personally.
@@Zerbraxi I, too, am borderline obsessed with video game music, and I often listen to it for atmosphere. Hell, I play the BLADE Barracks theme from Xenoblade X on repeat, in my apartment over a bluetooth speaker because it just has that homey vibe to it, and I consider it MY theme song when starting streams. And listening to a track from a game you've never played, feeling emotion, and wanting to play the game itself to experience the track in its original form, that's how I felt with a ton of games over my lifetime, the most recent being the final dungeon from Skies of Arcadia, I went to play that just to reach that dungeon and feel exactly what it was trying to convey in its home setting. It's a phenomenon that I love experiencing again and again. It also ultimately puts a lot of games on my backlog. But yeah I get it. People have different tastes, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Yo that's awesome! I've still not played through Xenoblade X yet...it's the only Xenoblade I haven't played which I really regret. I do have the game and have the optimization patch downloaded on my WiiU so I do plan to rectify that one day.
This conversation though ahs given me an idea. I wonder if a video focused solely on games I played strictly because of hearing the soundtrack first would be an interesting topic.
Awesome Video!
I avoided Samus Returns
I got the original size 3ds
And after the switch released I allways thought they would release it on switch too but they never did so I played Am2r instead
After almost beating Metroid Dread... I kinda want to play this
... Should I?
I would've said it's MORE worth it to play before going through Dread so you can see the evolution of the gameplay. The core story beats of Metroid 2 go largely unchanged from AM2R outside the very end.
I'd recommend playing it as long as you're ok with the relatively linear nature and the repetition of many of the Metroid encounters. If you want to have some fun with some very solid gameplay on the 3DS then it's definitely worth checking out.
55 minutes well spent
Now you're just being too nice :)
195 minutes well spent
@@WyvernDotRed Good lord!! All of them?! Wow, I'm very humbled to hear that.
@@Zerbraxi Yes, all of them, from start to finish (at 1X speed, I don't mess with playback speed).
I appreciate how you stick to your opinions and occasionally try new things in the videos.
Some parts seemed a little longer than they needed to be, but I enjoyed the series and am looking forward to your next videos.
It feels weird watching videos with less than 100 views, especially with this level of quality. The effort you put in shows.
@@WyvernDotRed Again, thank you so much. I also really appreciate the feedback. I'm for sure still figuring out more effective ways of communicating and illustrating points and I am thankful for any criticism that comes.
I hope you enjoy what's to come.