Metroidvania is a weird word to begin with, who decided castlevania and metroid should be combined to make a genre? It works, but why is not just an action-exploration genre or something generic? Name works now though, gets the message across, so I guess it works.
@@sparemobius7430 The Term originated when Catlevania adopted Metroid-like exploration rhythms. They called Symphony of the night "Metroidvania" because, back in the day, it was quite different from the rest of the series. Since Metroidvania sounds a lot better than "Metroid-Clone" the name stuck for a pretty explicit sub-Genre of the action adventure. I like the name, though it implies that Castlevania helped creating the genres defining features, when it merely adopted it.
TheSorrel Only sort of though, as Simon’s Quest was the first open world Castlevania, and predated all but the first Metroid. I seem to recall not only hearing the term “Castleroid” but there was a time in the late 90s in which each of the two were interchangeable when it comes to awareness. Castleroid doesn’t seem to be well known in today’s video game scene though, and I don’t think I’m clever enough to have come up with it on my own either, so wonder what happened to its use?
On the whole, I totally agree with most of your criticisms - but I actually like how Metroid handles its enemies. They feel more like animals, rather than "bad guys." Most of them are basically just chilling and doing their thing, with only a few actively trying to attack Samus. And I think it was 100% deliberate that, much of the time, you can bypass them unless you need items. Samus is on a mission, and she has no reason to stop and kill every single living thing. Dodging them makes sense, contextually. . The funny thing actually is that to me, as someone who grew up on the early games in the series, Samus Returns was annoying specifically because of how often it forces you to stop and precision-shoot stuff, breaking up the flow of the exploration and platforming. I prefer the og Metroid's way of making enemies more like moving barriers that you're free to avoid if you can, which keeps the overall pace up.
If you thought the grinding for energy/missiles in Metroid is bad, you should try playing Dragon Warrior. Anyway: as a 7-8 year-old in 1988/1989, Metroid was mind-blowing. The things you find fault with were some of the stuff I loved the most: The exploring, the backtracking, finding hidden rooms - back then, without a map, it would literally take days for us to find things like the Wave Beam. Once we did, the sense of accomplishment was unparalleled. The repetitive nature of the rooms is actually due to memory issues - Metroid was insanely expansive for its time and used a mapping trick to program rooms (the entire game is under 150k, miniscule but massive for its day). In essence: rooms from the different areas are clones from other areas with a different palette. The game would have been a fraction of its size without this programming trick (and this is also why there are a large number of stable 'hidden' rooms you can only access with the door jump glitch - they're literally rooms from, e.g., Brinstar with Ridley's Lair mapping). I owned Metroid II and Super Metroid and could just not got into them. I'd much rather play a Nestroid hack.
This video was great. As someone who has been thinking about how to get into the Metroid series, this video has helped me see pros and cons of the original NES game. Also quick question, do you intend on mentioning the fan made remake of Metroid 2 called "Another Metroid 2 Remake"? I figured I'd ask ahead of time rather than wait and see you get bombarded with several comments asking the same question but maybe a week or so later. Keep up the awesome work on your videos.
For now no, AM2R is not planned to be included. If I get enough requests I will cover it, but since it's not an official release, it's hard to fit it into this. (Not to mention I already have to play Metroid 2 twice. XD) But regardless I'm glad you enjoyed the video. =D
DuoStuff i highly recommend AM2R even if you already played samus returns. Although they are based on the same game they both have vastly different takes on the original and really don’t feel like the same game at all
To this day I still wonder how much would I liked original Metroid as a kid. I've played it somewhere around 2007, but gave it a proper run only after getting it for Wii U Virtual Console. And even then I've stuck quiet a lot and mostly abandoned it for Super Metroid's playthrough. Kraid's lair was ridiculous with it's map design and enemy placement and the fact that they can hit you, when going to another room annoyed me quiet a lot. And then there was Norfair where you need to bomb that one specific block to progress toward Ridley's lair. There was some points when I've got to look over the internet to understand what I was missing. Compared to Super Metroid where Maridia almost drove me crazy, I actually beat entire game by myself. And then there is gameplay quirks. Most annoying is, of course, no sit/crouch button. And for me personally ice beam isn't worth using until final stage or getting some secret items earlier. While I certainly don't hate this game, I'm sure don't like it now. As a kid I would probably enjoyed it, but not on the same as many other games on the system.
Great analysis!, Metroid is a childhood classic of mine and honestly I feel like your retrospective does it justice (for all the game did right and wrong). Looking forward to the next video!
Okay, I can explain. A lot of people were hoping for Retro's new Wii U game to be a Metroid Prime game, and it turned out to be "another Donkey Kong game" which made people unhappy. I still remember in 2013 at the Game Awards nintendo had a "big" announcement and it turned out to be Kranky Kong is a playable character in Tropical Freeze and people lost it. Now, personaly, I think DKC TF is one of the best 2d platformers ever made, but at the time it just seemed like they were making a standard DKC sequel as opposed to a new Metroid game at a time when Metroid's last released game was terrible.
@@Cheesehead302 I saw some other videos on Tropical Freeze after making that comment and saw it for myself. It's a shame such an amazing game had its reputation tarnished because people were hoping for something else.
@@100organicfreshmemes5 Luckily, most people I see nowadays praise it, and it helps that now it doesn't have the problem of "releasing in place of something else" since that was so long ago already.
Now, I’m not accusing you of anything or something like that, but this sounds kiiind of like the geek critique’s whole story, but only a bit like it, not explicitly. Just saying
It had no map because you had to make one on your own. I thought I was the only kid who did that but it turns out other kids did that as well. Ha Ha Ha. It frustrates me personally to hear that if a game doesn't do everything for you that kids lose interest in them. They think they are good players when in reality they are not because they can't do real challenging games.
It's inaccurate to say "it had no map because you had to make your own." It would be more logical to say, "You had to make your own map, because the game was limited by its time and didn't have one built in."
The Legend of Zelda, Kid Icarus and Goonies II, those are games from 86-87 and they all have a map from the maingame or the dungeons, one of them even share the same engine with Metroid, so the lack of a map was not a limitation, It was a game design choice, and a bad one.
@@RandyRydberg hate that people think metroid sucks because they don’t spend any time exploring or learning the game. It’s really not that hard of a game if you’re decent at it which you should be by the time you get the varia suit and move on to norfair or kraids lair it’s not the games fault if you skip the exploration in an exploration game and die in kraids lair while only having 2 e tanks and no varia suit, and yes drawing the map is fun and I did not grow up with these games I grew up with gamecube and beyond. Speaks to how great of a game metroid and super metroid are
@@Practicalinvestments but Metroid still isn't good The copy pasted rooms are inexcusable, and so is the health spawn, and the way you start with a fraction of your health after dying
@@Mqstodon The excuse is that it was made for the Famicom Disk System and had to be contained on a 112 kb file to fit on a disk. The health issue is a huge pain in the ass, completely agree there.
There really is no reason to get the Nes Original in my opinion. Zero Mission even allows you to play the Nes Original after beating it so just get Zero Mission.
@@silverbasscross That's a pretty lame statement. Would you say the same thing if it was an old movie? An album? A game like Metroid is one of the most important games of all time. It may be dated, but it deserves to have the proper historical context.
It isn't that you are getting old it is more the fact that video game designers have made games easier for fear of customers getting so frustrated that they don't buy it. Younger generations have gotten use to this and it is sad that many very good games have literally had the challenge factor stripped out of them just so they won't lose customers.
I'm finding it refreshing to get a different perspective on games I grew up on... interestingly, things that are glaring shortcomings of classic games in retrospect weren't always lost on those of us who had little alternative at the time, but we lacked the 'future history' of games for comparison. Many of the refinements that are par for the course now just didn't exist, and we took many of the bitter frustrations with the sweeter aspects of a given title.
@Bertrum Arthur i mean, that's completely wrong Metroid is still incredibly flawed in a vacuum, no matter it's sequels and other metroidvanias that came after
I mean it's not hard. Dk you think grinding is hard? It just takes long, but shooting at respawning enemies is incredibly easy Metroid in general is imcredibly easy aside from the grinding, as the bosses die in an instant and mother brain doesn't attack you like in the remake
Ugh, kids are so lazy these days. "Oh there's nothing pointing me in the direction I'm supposed to go :( :( :(" that's the whole point, you get to explore on your own and not have everything handed to you on a script. The instruction manual tells you to make your own map on paper.
First: great job liking your own comment there buckaroo. Second: thanks for dismissing literally every bit of criticism the video laid out, no matter how actually true it is. Ugh, adults these days are so whiny and protective of their childhood nostalgia. "Oh no, someone said a game I played when I was a kid has aged and may not be flawless. :( :( :(" that's the whole point, people are supposed to critique things in an analysis video. The video thumbnail literally shows it'll be critical.
@@DuoStuff No, stupid, he explained why you didn't have fun. You hate thinking. You hate remembering. You hate making maps. You hate being punished for mistakes. You hate getting good. You want a game to hold your wittle bitty hand all the way to the end and tell you what to do. You are as the man said: lazy.
Whilst I agree this original Metroid is quite dated, I found a rom hack for it that adds a bunch of quality of life changes to the game to make it much more playable. It is called Metroid Mother. It adds a save system, a map, stackable beams, restarting a death with not just 30 energy. Honestly, I highly recommend it as it feels way more streamlined whilst also feeling not like a totally new game.
As much as I often disagree with your conclusions, I admire your willingness to give games a shot and offer your genuine feelings towards games released decades before your time. If I could give a bit of advice, several of your criticisms owe simply into the fact that the game is nearly 30 years old. Keep this in mind when thinking about developer choices. The NES and Famicom standard chipset was designed to play an optimized game of NES Donkey Kong at best. Anything beyond that required additional chips which added cost. NES games often cost $30+ in the late 80s ($70+ in today's dollars) which made adding more expensive chips hard to justify - hence no map. Difficulty owed to the lack of memory and games being relatively short once the challenged was mastered. Watch a 100% no skip speed run of Metroid and see it barely runs an hour. Again, however, I admire your willingness to take on challenges simply for the sake of your own curiosity. Best of luck!
The NES games era were, mostly, all completely beatable. Growing up in the Gamecube era, sadly, made you weak. (Not flaming you, it's just how it is.) And it's been a steady slide down-hill for gamers, ever since. Still, enjoyed your video...
I think the most frustrating part about the game is if you have low Health and missile's you have to go farming for it to you reach a comfortable amount of Health and ammo which can waste time
The original metroid is the most annoying game in the series and my least favorite. I love Zero Mission yet, I hate the original. And metroid is one of my top 5 favorite game series.
My first Metroid game was this one, and it was the NES version. It was a gift from my nephew, back in the 1980s. What surprises me is that you did not mention the way you saved your game. It was a code based save system, in which upon quitting or a "Game Over" event, a code would pop up and you had to write it down. When you wanted to continue from the point your game ended, you had to use the code entry screen and enter the code you got in your earlier play. It was a tedious way to save, but it allowed you to start from the exact place you were in when your previous play was ended. Also, there was a special code "Justin Bailey". If you are playing on the NES, I suggest you try that code to see what it does. As for game play, yes it is seriously outdated compared to most later games in the franchise. That said, for its time, the game was actually groundbreaking. Most games at the time only allowed moving along a set path, with no way to go back to areas already visited. This is known as linear game play. Metroid on the other hand was the first to introduce nonlinear game play, as you could return to any area already visited at any time during a game. This was a purposeful design that allowed certain upgrades and pickups to be unreachable in a given area until you got something that allowed you to finally reach them. The game quickly became my favorite for the NES. A close second was The Guardian Legend, but only because the playable character could transform. Samus, as we all know can morph into a ball, which allows her to move through narrow tunnels. Samus's Ball form has additional abilities, such as the Morph Ball Bomb, and the Spider Ball. Other upgrades are to her Suit or Weapons. In the original game, certain beam weapon upgrades would replace the one you currently had. Knowing where to find those was paramount to successful mission completion, because you might need the Ice Beam to perform a certain task, but you had the Spazer Beam instead. Finding your way back to where the Ice Beam is located was something you had to do. What really nailed Metroid as my favorite was finally beating the game in under 2 hours and learning that the character I was playing was a woman.
i love listening to a millenial critique games that came out before he was born. You cant give an accurate critique unless you also have a good understanding of the time the game was released as well as the people and circumstances contained in that time. People that grew up in the post PS2 video game era have a hard time being critical of games from the 8 and 16 bit era because they expect too much. They dont understand or appreciate the limitations of the hardware, software, and game developers at the time.
I've been watching a few of your videos now and I think your critical thinking is very good. However I think your letting your disdain for NES clouding your judgement. "The game has no map and its entirely unsure where to go. Wandering aimlessly without knowing where to go is poor game design" Not true. It encourages you to actually think and remember where you have and haven't been. Yeah they reuse assets but EVERY NES and SNES. And I would dare say N64 game reuses assets. Its all about not having the memory of a goldfish and remembering where you have and haven't been....unlike modern games which highlight everything for you.....which according to your logic makes them ultimately superior.....of course they are. They have over 20 years of experience and inspiration. Metroid wasn't the first for exploratory gameplay.....but one of your main complaints is that its exploratory.....trying things....figuring stuff out. But there is a reason we call it "Metroidvania" today
As an enormous Metroid fan (it's my second favorite VG series behind Pokemon) I'm so glad to see you cover them. Really hope going full time goes well for you! I'm rooting for you!
Glad I have a couple big fans of the series. I hope the rest of the videos end up being entertaining. And thanks! I'm hoping the full-time thing goes well. =D
I had Metroid for my GBA (NES Classics, grey cart) when I was in Iraq 2007-08. Even with very little to do except work and work out... I still could not get into this game. Too boring. Super Metroid is amazing, though.
The original NES game has nostalgic value for some of the older fans of the series, but as a gameplay experience, the fan made Super Metroid/SNES remake of the first Metroid game is a better and more enjoyable game than trying to play through the NES version of the game. The original Metroid is also artistically unique, both in the designs of Samus (as depicted in the 80's artwork) and the overall world design which is very atmospheric; it captures the quality of "ancient extraterrestrial ruins" very well, which also translates excellently into the SNES remake. There's also an MSU-1 patch that is an updated analog synth rendition of the original soundtrack.
As an OG gamer who started with pinball in 1975 then PONG soon after I gotta say something. If you are going to nitpick the failings of games that were on a console 2 generations before the one you started with, try going back to the consoles that came before the NES. Try your hand at Adventure or Superman on the Atari 2600. Give Smurf Adventure a shot on the Colecovision or one of the AD&D games on the Intellivision. Familiarize yourself with the limitations of those games. I guarantee you're going to hate them since they are so damned awful. I'm suggesting you look at the games that came before the NES only to understand what they grew out of. Then when you step up to the NES you'll see what we saw in the improvements at the time. Games with music AND multicolor sprites! Games we could PAUSE when mom called us to dinner! Games we could write down a passcode and turn off the console then come back the next day after school and pick up (almost) exactly where we left off! 14 YEAR OLD MIND BLOWN. Mind you, the C64, Apple computers and IBM clones were doing most of this from the start... Adventure had a little under 30 non-scrolling screens off the top of my head. Metroid had over 200 screens! I don't blame you for not being as enthused about NES games when you grew up with the GameCube and beyond. My kids are spoiled as hell with the current generation of consoles but I've made sure they at least appreciate how far games have come by playing a few old school games with them.
I agree with you. Metroid on NES is absolutely outdated, like Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros 3. Only for the nostalgics! The SNES versions of these games are a too much progression of what those games should have been...
Video games are going to be as important as films and books. There are some really important early books that are hard to read but still very rewarding to learn about and appreciate. Those important early books are utter marvels, inventing and/or popularizing so many conventions of the medium in one go. Hundreds, even thousands of other books published in their era have already been long forgotten. No, these important early books are not going to please our modern whims. Video games still market themselves as fun ways to spend your time. This is so flawed, because it assumes a flipside where if they're not fun, then they're not worth your time. If we're going to spend thousands or more on a sealed copy of an old beloved video game, then we're going to need to recognize that those early games are utter marvels. A sealed SMB sold for 2 million this year. Money like that does not come from nostalgia. There are some (not many) Charlie Chaplin films that will blow your mind and make you cry, and it would be a bonkers criticism to say the silent, black and white style was just too hard to sit through. With all due respect - I enjoyed the quality of your video, I appreciated your sincerity for Metroid - this game does not "struggle with a number of issues because of the console." This game is 35 years old and will continue to be played and talked about by generations beyond our years.
To me, NES hard isn’t hard, it’s -bullshit- unfair. If you want hard, go play cuphead, hollow knight, some obscure Jrpg series that defined some genre Idk, or Dark souls.
I like your video, but its hard for me to take criticism about a 30+ year old game when comparing it to newer games. It seems like you didnt grow up during that time and understand the gaming industry at that time. Imagine reviewing a computer from 1987 and comparing it to todays computers.
I grew up in the NES era and I played this game a lot as a kid despite never beating it. I agree with your opinion that it isn't necessary to play unless you're a die hard fan. Super Metroid is essentially a perfect remake of it even before Zero Mission was made. So there ya go. 2 remakes of the same game and both are much more fun.
I think most would prefer a map, but I much prefer not having one. It seems like not having a map would be a subtraction of content, but when you consider what happens when you don’t have one you might make the argument it actually adds to content. Think of it this way: imagine you got lost in the African Jungle somewhere. If you have a map then you can just go straight back to civilisation while knowing where vital resources are along the way. Without a map it becomes a memorable struggle for survival and you have to find ways to keep hope with no guarantee you’ll make it out. Some challenges added from the lack of a map: * Remembering your general location while everything seems the same. * optional pencil & paper activity for kids where they need to draw their own map. * Feeling lost and alone. * No clues to spoil where your next health upgrade will be. * Respawn locations become an important landmark. * Dying and retracing your steps incorrectly can lead to new discoveries (like falling in fake lava). * No need to be constantly checking a map. * Discovering, on your own, a shortcut or loop around to the same part of the game. * Finding key areas is a complete surprise. * Having to pay attention to and learn subtle differences so you don’t get too lost.
As much as I want to shake my fist at you and tell you to get off my lawn, I feel like I need to address your concerns about this game. I grew up in the Nintendo era. I loved SMB, Zelda, Tyson’s Punch Out, etc. I’ve never played a Game Cube game. Here’s what you missed playing it now: the instruction manual. Reading that thing was critical to game play, and something that is a complete afterthought in today’s games as the game walks you through the mechanics in some kind of tutorial. That wasn’t possible on the NES. That and the social aspect of this game before the Internet or social media were a thing was what made it a hallmark. Before this game it was all about how many points you scored. Now it was all about who found what power up, who had the Nintendo Power magazine, whose map drawn on notebook paper was best, you get my drift. Bitching about the graphics from today’s perspective seems a bit unfair, as this is going to happen with any game. Did I ever beat this game as a kid? No. Did I love discovering Metroid Zero Mission recently on an emulator and having it fix all the broken stuff on the original? Absolutely. I did enjoy your analysis of this game though and to see it from different eyes. I hope this provides you some chronological context though.
Yeah I didn’t really get the comment “The graphics aren’t befitting of a Metroid game....” Dude it was the FIRST Metroid game, there was no style guide or examples to go by.
If you understood the limitations of the first NES games, I think you’d be way more forgiving. There was no advanced stuff like Super Mario 3, but instead they had the same limits of Super Mario 1. They also had a rather short time to make it in.
Ironically, I think I have the reverse opinion. Im glad this was my first Metroid game, because after playing newer Metroid games, Im too spoiled by quality of life to ever go back. But I enjoyed it a lot on my first playthrough.
@@DuoStuff I think one of the hardest things was not having the 8 directional aim of Super, if I remember correctly NES Metroid was only 4 directions. That and having a map in game. Super really kills any enjoyment I could get trying to go back and play the first one. But Im happy I started with NES, because it hooked me on the series.
This is another old game where I'd forgotten that it could be cryptic as far as navigating through it goes. It's alot more fun once you've got it memorized... but whose looking to do that these days...
People who want to get 112% on Hollow Knight. Trust me when I say you need your reactions to be based on memory or instinct to get all the endings in that game.
I feel bad because I beat this game 100% and enjoyed it, however I played it on Nintendo switch and constantly used the rewind feature all the time and I used a a 100% guide
While I honestly have a ton of problems with the original Metroid, I can almost forgive all of its shortcomings besides one and that is that moronic decision of starting every game with 30HP, regardless of how many Energy tanks you've acquired. When you die and are already feeling frustrated, why in the world would any developer even back in the day think that I would now really enjoy wasting another 15 or more minutes farming respawning enemies for health pellets before I can even proceed to start over with retracing my steps? It's padding and the worst kind there is :/ Something else that served as kind of a roadblock for me the first time I played it was the red doors you need missiles for. After firing 3 missiles at one to apparently no effect and with a sound that sounds like they are just reflecting off, I thought I was on the wrong track and needed some other means to get through. I don't see any reason why they couldn't just require a singular missile to open? And that's without getting into any of the cumbersome stuff where you have to bomb unassuming walls and floors everywhere to move forward. The game is also just littered with too many knee-high enemies that are just begging for a crouch function that isn't there -_- This first instalment really doesn't hold up very well, despite it being an important step for better things to come. But Zero Mission is really the only proper way to enjoy this. There ARE some really nice hacks of the game out there though than introduces a lot of much-needed quality of life stuff like introducing an in-game map and save files over Passwords (So no more 3DS killing codes here xD) Metroid: mOTHER is a particularly good one www.romhacking.net/hacks/1988/
You know I didn't even think about it, but yeah, requiring 5 missiles is really dumb combined with the lack of feedback given by the doors. I guess having experience with the other games just kind of clued me in, but I probably should've mentioned that. (It was the first video of this type I made though, so I'm not too surprised.)
@@DuoStuff I think the only reason I even made any progress in the less obvious parts of the original Metroid was because I had just played through Zero Mission so I had an idea of where to go and what random floor tiles needed bombing. This seemingly endless climbs throughout the game sure is a chore as well. I think your video was excellently done though and you got around to a lot of good points. It was a once watch.
There's also a fantastic fan game that combines classic Sonic gameplay with metroidvania world: Sonic Chrono Adventure. However, I recomend playing Sonic After the Sequel first to understand what is that owl thing. It's more traditional Sonic fan game with unique zones. I find it as good as official classics.
Great video! I grew up in the SNES era. I played this game in like 1997 and I felt the same: I was really surprised at how good it felt considering the year it was made in, but I got lost the more I explored. In the end it was a fun experience but after playing it for a day I decided I was never going to finish it.
And now with Zero Mission there's really no reason to revisit the game other than for novelty reasons. Still has some rather impressive attributes though.
I'm finally playing A Link to the Past, and I've had the strategy guide for 20some years, just never had an SNES (until the last 2 years or so, I have a Retro-Bit Super Retro Trio and Trio+, an SNES Mini, and finally a real SNES, which I removed the tabs so I can play Super Famicom games, as well). I still feel like I need someone to walk me through every step of the game... but I'm dumb.
@@LunalynDragon The thing about Zelda puzzles is there is basically like a language of Zelda puzzles, the more you do them the easier they are. My suggestion would be to give the original Zelda on NES a shot or Link to the Past on SNES a shot (Zelda 2 also has a limited amount of puzzles, but brings a whole plethora of other "issues").
If anyone wants to experience a slightly better version of the original Metroid, there is a fan rom hack called Metroid mOTHER, Samus has a better model, there's a map, etc.
We had no issues with no map, or repetitive rooms back in the day this was new; we only had a couple of games, so if we didn't like it, TOO BAD. So we played everything all the time and didn't recognize it's 'faults'. I went from Atari 2600 to this, which was an incredible step up. The 'faults' of this game weren't faults at all. Especially if you've played 'ET' on the 2600. We never would have finished Mega Man if we'd had all the options people have today; we were stuck? Try again. And again. Don't like it? Keep going, there's only a couple of other games that we've already played to death, might as well. Now, if someone comes across something tough, they quit. If they find a fault? They quit. We were forced to persevere, or go outside and jump on the trampoline or something. This is 'old man' talk, but there is a lesson here; keep going. Persevere. Don't give up, recognize how fantastic we have it now, and appreciate what we have... things in the video game world actually keep getting better, whether one realizes it or not.
Props to you for completing the game that started it it all, it's been over 30 years, and I haven't had the will or patience to do it, yet I still have so muh admiration for this game (and series overall). I did a similar playthrough before Metroid Dread dropped in October '21, but I replaced Metroid and Metroid 2 for their superior offiial remakes. This is a beloved series of mine, and I've thoroughly enjoyed your analysis of it.
NES Metroid was an extremely difficult, never-ending grind for more health and missiles, but it was a very clever and unique concept for its time. I love the music in this game so much. There isn't any direction on where to go and that was frustrating. The music really did instill the creepy atmosphere and it sunk in that you are ALONE and left to fend for yourself.
It's so weird to hear so many people try to play Metroid without a map just because it's not an automated function. Trust me, no one who made the game expected you to memorize it in full as you played. Drawing your own map was a more widespread practice in games back then, and they fully expected you to do it. I know you eventually used one you found online, but making the map is part of the fun. So was sharing secret areas and hidden item locations with friends to try and find everything. A lot fewer games came to market at any given time, and you can bet dozens of kids at your school were playing and talking about this game after its release. At this point I would definitely just look up a complete map for 100%, but it's perfectly beatable with far less than that with a homemade map. The complaint about shared rooms is valid, but keep in mind this full game is smaller than any given Win10 desktop icon on your desktop and had to fit on a 112kb Famicom Disk. The health issue is 100% crap, especially if you die after getting a lot of energy tanks. No excuses, that does suck. It's cool to hear impressions from newer fans that grew up on GC games, lol. Metroid has always been a mainly niche, mostly US audience so it's pretty unique for Nintendo properties.
The NES era at the time was revolutionary. For most people they went from the primitive Atari 2600 or arcade games that weren't really that in depth but more for trying to get a high score to this. It doesn't seem like much now but it was a huge leap forward. If you had money maybe you played some games close to something like NES games on the Commodore 64 or the Colecovision. If you were in the U.K. you had the ZX Spectrum or Amstrad and between those you may have played games like Impossible Mission 1 and 2 or Nodes of Yesod but this took it to the next level and made a huge impression world wide. But, yeah, like most NES games of the era it's hard as balls and frustrating as Hell. But we also were young, having tons of games or collecting them wasn't a thing yet, so if you paid $50 in 1986 money you wanted a game you could play for a while to feel like you got your moneys worth. Nowadays we have so many options we don't need that so much and can go the opposite route and say a game is wasting our time. How things have changed.
LMAO - You're biggest complaint about every old game is that it's hard... regardless of the reason(s) why the bottom line is that it's "hard". It's just funny because I hear it from younger people all the time and somehow that then becomes "bad game design". To also say that it doesn't hold up to "modern game standards" due to that is silly because by definition one would have to lower standards to make the skill level required easier. From my point of view modern games don't hold up to vintage game standards - which many times means players don't have to be as good to beat them. Regardless, all of our views have their place. I just come from a different time. The beautiful graphics and overly powerful hardware of today have led way to a whole new world in terms of gaming and watching that evolve led to me being a computer technician and programmer so I can definitely respect that... and honestly even now I like to just sit and basically experience it all as a whole without having to feel "stuck" forever on some part so I get that too. Back then the time spent was an adventure and the difficulty in beating enemies, even the small ones, was rewarding when your abilities rose to the level necessary to readily handle them as you traversed your way through the game - it made you feel good and made you better and separated you from other players (I suppose that sentiment may be a byproduct of the arcade culture I grew up in). All that said, it helped getting a few tips from a friend or from Nintendo Power magazine back then to find things as you'd likely never find them all without being obsessed and playing 24/7 for months on end, LOL. I'm just as guilty as the next guy for taking any tips I could get back then. There was no internet, etc. back then... now THAT was hard! :-)
One thing was way back then us old timers had the 800 number to call. And there was the players handbook, which DID have a map. In retrospect, it kinda was the original DLC that you had to pay for to make games worthwhile. A spot later filled by Nintendo Power magazine.
I never go hard on games like this or Simon's Quest. It was the nature of adventure games of the time to be cryptic guide sellers. Zelda 1, as much as ppl deny, is also a cryptic guide game. It's like lives in games: "Lives are bad game design so old games are badly designed"...... no, it was just what developers knew, it was the law of the land and difficulty was a big part of gaming. That's why we have progress. It's not like the majority of games still do this. Old games should be judged by context before asking whether or not they're enjoyable today. They're not "bad games" as much as they were games of their time.
This is why our entertainment industry sucks today. The audience of today is so fuckin jaded its unreal. The tech was still being explored and it was back in 1986 when Apple II was still relevant. No one needs an explanation. There is no point in picking apart the game.
I absolutely despise a part of this comment section, forgive for the cringy word selection but holy fuck, bunch of boomers shitting on his review just because he's a millennial Yes, we know, the game was innovative at the time, but times change, standards get higher, it's not really good nowadays, and that's fine, it's old, please stop trying to shield it from criticism just because not everyone has nostalgia goggles
Something easy to forget about the NES era, is that while the design could often be obtuse and easy to get lost in, strategy guides and other publications like Nintendo Power abounded. Or, god help you and your parents’ phone bill, the Nintendo Power hotline....
The reason a lot of rooms are identical is pretty simple: every single room in the original game is built not of individual tiles, but of _chunks_ of tiles that were quite large, to save on memory as you guessed. I forget the size of the chunks (a quarter of a screen maybe?) but it's large enough that none of the rooms are really unique.
This was a gem of his time ...centennials don't understand that, their typical criticism is always about how hard and inconvenient it is ...you can't judge technology from the past with your modern standards ...that's idiotic
What I *still* don't get: is Space Pirate supposed to be a species or an occupation? Because all of them who aren't Mother Brain seem to be the same type of creature. In every game I remember seeing "space pirates" appearing.
Metroid was a game where kids had the advantage if they got video game magazines like Nintendo Power that provided maps.I beat the game in a day because of what I got from those magazines. I continued playing it and made my own maps , and improved to beating it in time to get the special ending.
None of your opinions about this game are wrong, but I was around when this game came out. I was so young, this game used to scare the shit out of me. Anyway, I actually didn't come back to this game until after Super Metroid came out, cuz it reminded me of this game. And despite all of its flaws, I still look back on this game finally, even with Metroid zero mission out. My favorite games are still super Metroid, and most recently, Metroid Dread, but I still love this game
First: that's.... That's the entire point of making a video covering the whole series: to analyze each one. Second: dude if you knew the video was going to be critical and you can't handle it: don't watch the video.
A good analysis, but a lot of your gripes come down to, "I wanted a bunch of things that it was literally impossible for an early NES cartridge to do." The NES is even more limited and primitive than you THINK it was, and the only reason games got so much better over time is because companies figured out that you could make chips and add them to the basic cartridge. Those chips allowed Nintendo games to be bigger, have more music, have better music, have scrolling in all directions, and even have save files (another special chip, powered by a long-lasting battery, again attached to the game's circuit board). And pretty much none of those chips are on a Metroid cartridge. The technology for that game to do the things you wanted it to do literally did not exist at the time. You analysis is still correct - the game IS flawed - but the *reason(s)* it's flawed almost always goes back to "the technology just wasn't there yet". The difference between what was possible on a launch-day NES cart - Super Mario Bros. - and what you could do with a chip-laden, post-SNES-launch cart - Kirby's Adventure - is STAGGERING.
The original Metroid certainly did push the NES to it's limit because of how ambitious it was. The game's ambition is both a blessing and a curse, as the first game was the first step in making a beautiful new genre of games, yet literally couldn't live up to its potential due to technology at the time.
In 1986 this game was unbelievable. The other day I defeated Mother Brain for the first time since I was a kid. I have been patting myself on the back ever since.
Oh yeah there was. People were really mad that Retro Studios were making another DKC instead of Metroid Prime 4. It was a weird time. Thankfully the Switch port didn't get the same treatment.
I like some of the things you verbalize. Like games that start or really evolve a genre are going to age badly, because sequels and copycats will refine all the rough edges. It makes sense, but I've never heard it verbalized that well. It explains why Mario 1 is definitely important and was a great game, but is not a very good game anymore.
Yeah it also took me a while to really be able to verbalize it too. Though I will say I still like Mario 1, mostly because on a basic level it's still an enjoyable game, just a bit simple.
@@DuoStuff Yeah, Mario is still fun. I'm not trying to say it's bad. It set the bar for platformers really high and had a lot of minor nitpicks and a small scope as the only negatives. But 30 some years later, the platforming genre has just been refined so much and the bar raised higher that Mario 1 is outdone comparatively.
Oh if you thought this was bad, take a look at my Zelda NES comment section. It's absolutely full of 40 year olds calling me derogatory names because I didn't think it was a flawless masterpiece. XD
Perhaps, but I feel like I need to give it a genuine critique. I don't think it would make sense if I didn't criticize it, because I critiqued the other games.
![Tee Grizzley - Blow for Blow (feat. J. Cole) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wNLN5xsx5dc/mqdefault.jpg)
Calling Metroid games “Metroidvania” sounds ridiculous lol
Also funny when you can't call the first Castlevania game a metriodvania.
Metroidvania is a weird word to begin with, who decided castlevania and metroid should be combined to make a genre? It works, but why is not just an action-exploration genre or something generic?
Name works now though, gets the message across, so I guess it works.
@@sparemobius7430 Why it's not called Metrovania is beyond me, rolls off the tongue better.
@@sparemobius7430 The Term originated when Catlevania adopted Metroid-like exploration rhythms. They called Symphony of the night "Metroidvania" because, back in the day, it was quite different from the rest of the series.
Since Metroidvania sounds a lot better than "Metroid-Clone" the name stuck for a pretty explicit sub-Genre of the action adventure.
I like the name, though it implies that Castlevania helped creating the genres defining features, when it merely adopted it.
TheSorrel Only sort of though, as Simon’s Quest was the first open world Castlevania, and predated all but the first Metroid.
I seem to recall not only hearing the term “Castleroid” but there was a time in the late 90s in which each of the two were interchangeable when it comes to awareness.
Castleroid doesn’t seem to be well known in today’s video game scene though, and I don’t think I’m clever enough to have come up with it on my own either, so wonder what happened to its use?
On the whole, I totally agree with most of your criticisms - but I actually like how Metroid handles its enemies. They feel more like animals, rather than "bad guys." Most of them are basically just chilling and doing their thing, with only a few actively trying to attack Samus. And I think it was 100% deliberate that, much of the time, you can bypass them unless you need items. Samus is on a mission, and she has no reason to stop and kill every single living thing. Dodging them makes sense, contextually.
.
The funny thing actually is that to me, as someone who grew up on the early games in the series, Samus Returns was annoying specifically because of how often it forces you to stop and precision-shoot stuff, breaking up the flow of the exploration and platforming. I prefer the og Metroid's way of making enemies more like moving barriers that you're free to avoid if you can, which keeps the overall pace up.
Contextually, but still not...really exciting
If you thought the grinding for energy/missiles in Metroid is bad, you should try playing Dragon Warrior. Anyway: as a 7-8 year-old in 1988/1989, Metroid was mind-blowing. The things you find fault with were some of the stuff I loved the most: The exploring, the backtracking, finding hidden rooms - back then, without a map, it would literally take days for us to find things like the Wave Beam. Once we did, the sense of accomplishment was unparalleled. The repetitive nature of the rooms is actually due to memory issues - Metroid was insanely expansive for its time and used a mapping trick to program rooms (the entire game is under 150k, miniscule but massive for its day). In essence: rooms from the different areas are clones from other areas with a different palette. The game would have been a fraction of its size without this programming trick (and this is also why there are a large number of stable 'hidden' rooms you can only access with the door jump glitch - they're literally rooms from, e.g., Brinstar with Ridley's Lair mapping). I owned Metroid II and Super Metroid and could just not got into them. I'd much rather play a Nestroid hack.
This video was great. As someone who has been thinking about how to get into the Metroid series, this video has helped me see pros and cons of the original NES game. Also quick question, do you intend on mentioning the fan made remake of Metroid 2 called "Another Metroid 2 Remake"? I figured I'd ask ahead of time rather than wait and see you get bombarded with several comments asking the same question but maybe a week or so later.
Keep up the awesome work on your videos.
For now no, AM2R is not planned to be included. If I get enough requests I will cover it, but since it's not an official release, it's hard to fit it into this. (Not to mention I already have to play Metroid 2 twice. XD)
But regardless I'm glad you enjoyed the video. =D
DuoStuff i highly recommend AM2R even if you already played samus returns. Although they are based on the same game they both have vastly different takes on the original and really don’t feel like the same game at all
To this day I still wonder how much would I liked original Metroid as a kid. I've played it somewhere around 2007, but gave it a proper run only after getting it for Wii U Virtual Console. And even then I've stuck quiet a lot and mostly abandoned it for Super Metroid's playthrough. Kraid's lair was ridiculous with it's map design and enemy placement and the fact that they can hit you, when going to another room annoyed me quiet a lot. And then there was Norfair where you need to bomb that one specific block to progress toward Ridley's lair. There was some points when I've got to look over the internet to understand what I was missing. Compared to Super Metroid where Maridia almost drove me crazy, I actually beat entire game by myself. And then there is gameplay quirks. Most annoying is, of course, no sit/crouch button. And for me personally ice beam isn't worth using until final stage or getting some secret items earlier.
While I certainly don't hate this game, I'm sure don't like it now. As a kid I would probably enjoyed it, but not on the same as many other games on the system.
Great analysis!, Metroid is a childhood classic of mine and honestly I feel like your retrospective does it justice (for all the game did right and wrong). Looking forward to the next video!
Thanks I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm also really looking forward to the next video, as I have a lot I want to say about Metroid 2. =D
I'm a Metroid fan, but DKC: Tropical Freeze is my favorite Wii U game. Since when was it a punching bag for Metroid fans?
Okay, I can explain. A lot of people were hoping for Retro's new Wii U game to be a Metroid Prime game, and it turned out to be "another Donkey Kong game" which made people unhappy. I still remember in 2013 at the Game Awards nintendo had a "big" announcement and it turned out to be Kranky Kong is a playable character in Tropical Freeze and people lost it. Now, personaly, I think DKC TF is one of the best 2d platformers ever made, but at the time it just seemed like they were making a standard DKC sequel as opposed to a new Metroid game at a time when Metroid's last released game was terrible.
@@Cheesehead302 I saw some other videos on Tropical Freeze after making that comment and saw it for myself. It's a shame such an amazing game had its reputation tarnished because people were hoping for something else.
@@100organicfreshmemes5 Luckily, most people I see nowadays praise it, and it helps that now it doesn't have the problem of "releasing in place of something else" since that was so long ago already.
Now, I’m not accusing you of anything or something like that, but this sounds kiiind of like the geek critique’s whole story, but only a bit like it, not explicitly. Just saying
"For some bizarre reason, the game has no map."
Because 1986.
lol... It's always fun to hear young people try and understand games from a period they didn't grow up in.
It had no map because you had to make one on your own. I thought I was the only kid who did that but it turns out other kids did that as well. Ha Ha Ha. It frustrates me personally to hear that if a game doesn't do everything for you that kids lose interest in them. They think they are good players when in reality they are not because they can't do real challenging games.
It's inaccurate to say "it had no map because you had to make your own." It would be more logical to say, "You had to make your own map, because the game was limited by its time and didn't have one built in."
@@chucksucks8640 drawing a map ain't challenging
It's just bothersome, it's in no way hard just dumb
The Legend of Zelda, Kid Icarus and Goonies II, those are games from 86-87 and they all have a map from the maingame or the dungeons, one of them even share the same engine with Metroid, so the lack of a map was not a limitation, It was a game design choice, and a bad one.
Great game. I drew my own maps at the time, so it was not a very hard game until the last level. I just replayed it, and it's stll great.
Drawing your own maps was part of the fun. That's what actual explorers do, they don't expect it all to be easy and laid out for them!
@@RandyRydberg hate that people think metroid sucks because they don’t spend any time exploring or learning the game. It’s really not that hard of a game if you’re decent at it which you should be by the time you get the varia suit and move on to norfair or kraids lair it’s not the games fault if you skip the exploration in an exploration game and die in kraids lair while only having 2 e tanks and no varia suit, and yes drawing the map is fun and I did not grow up with these games I grew up with gamecube and beyond. Speaks to how great of a game metroid and super metroid are
@@Practicalinvestments but Metroid still isn't good
The copy pasted rooms are inexcusable, and so is the health spawn, and the way you start with a fraction of your health after dying
I think Metroid is still fun for the right kind of person
@@Mqstodon The excuse is that it was made for the Famicom Disk System and had to be contained on a 112 kb file to fit on a disk. The health issue is a huge pain in the ass, completely agree there.
There really is no reason to get the Nes Original in my opinion. Zero Mission even allows you to play the Nes Original after beating it so just get Zero Mission.
You mean besides the fact that they're very different and one gives zero historical context?
@@thechrononaut1 as if historical context even matters lols it's a videogame not a history book man
@@silverbasscross That's a pretty lame statement. Would you say the same thing if it was an old movie? An album? A game like Metroid is one of the most important games of all time. It may be dated, but it deserves to have the proper historical context.
@@thechrononaut1 who's talking about being dated? I'm saying it's a videogame, not a history book, be it a newer or old game, it is what it is
Although Zero Mission is considered a Remake of the first game you will notice that Zero Mission is practically a different game.
We are getting old....i remember making maps, calling a nintendo counselor, meetings on the schoolbus....boy scout metroid think tanks....wow
We are also having more games than time.
Better times, eh.
@@jimreid5 i hear that
It isn't that you are getting old it is more the fact that video game designers have made games easier for fear of customers getting so frustrated that they don't buy it. Younger generations have gotten use to this and it is sad that many very good games have literally had the challenge factor stripped out of them just so they won't lose customers.
@@chucksucks8640 cant u guys that want a hard game for play on hard mode?
I'm finding it refreshing to get a different perspective on games I grew up on... interestingly, things that are glaring shortcomings of classic games in retrospect weren't always lost on those of us who had little alternative at the time, but we lacked the 'future history' of games for comparison. Many of the refinements that are par for the course now just didn't exist, and we took many of the bitter frustrations with the sweeter aspects of a given title.
@Bertrum Arthur i mean, that's completely wrong
Metroid is still incredibly flawed in a vacuum, no matter it's sequels and other metroidvanias that came after
Metroid II Return of Samus will be out next week! =D
yay
Can you make JoJo Bizarre Adventure videos
I mean on the anime channel sure, but not likely on this channel. XD
Is it out yet?
"The game is too hard, that makes it a bad game!"
---Every gamer of the current modern era.
There is a fine difference between challenging and unfairly hard
Dude that is fucking insulting
@@maryl1889 is it insulting because you know that’s you? 😂
I mean it's not hard. Dk you think grinding is hard? It just takes long, but shooting at respawning enemies is incredibly easy
Metroid in general is imcredibly easy aside from the grinding, as the bosses die in an instant and mother brain doesn't attack you like in the remake
Ugh, kids are so lazy these days. "Oh there's nothing pointing me in the direction I'm supposed to go :( :( :(" that's the whole point, you get to explore on your own and not have everything handed to you on a script. The instruction manual tells you to make your own map on paper.
First: great job liking your own comment there buckaroo.
Second: thanks for dismissing literally every bit of criticism the video laid out, no matter how actually true it is.
Ugh, adults these days are so whiny and protective of their childhood nostalgia. "Oh no, someone said a game I played when I was a kid has aged and may not be flawless. :( :( :(" that's the whole point, people are supposed to critique things in an analysis video. The video thumbnail literally shows it'll be critical.
@@DuoStuff No, stupid, he explained why you didn't have fun. You hate thinking. You hate remembering. You hate making maps. You hate being punished for mistakes. You hate getting good. You want a game to hold your wittle bitty hand all the way to the end and tell you what to do. You are as the man said: lazy.
@@BeegtymeRawkstah OK Boomer 😄
Nah game sucks. You just got bad taste lol
Whilst I agree this original Metroid is quite dated, I found a rom hack for it that adds a bunch of quality of life changes to the game to make it much more playable. It is called Metroid Mother. It adds a save system, a map, stackable beams, restarting a death with not just 30 energy. Honestly, I highly recommend it as it feels way more streamlined whilst also feeling not like a totally new game.
The remake released 18 years later on far superior hardware fixed the issues??!!? YA DONT SAY!
silent hill 2 remake was worse than the original, so yes, it is valid
@Kelly Hansen hey if u like re2 as well, u would be pleased by the remake,,, does that ocunt for something?
@Kelly Hansen i didnt understand shit of that game lol, can u explain it to me?
@Kelly Hansen what an imagination xD
do u hate ppl that dislike this game?
As much as I often disagree with your conclusions, I admire your willingness to give games a shot and offer your genuine feelings towards games released decades before your time.
If I could give a bit of advice, several of your criticisms owe simply into the fact that the game is nearly 30 years old. Keep this in mind when thinking about developer choices. The NES and Famicom standard chipset was designed to play an optimized game of NES Donkey Kong at best. Anything beyond that required additional chips which added cost. NES games often cost $30+ in the late 80s ($70+ in today's dollars) which made adding more expensive chips hard to justify - hence no map. Difficulty owed to the lack of memory and games being relatively short once the challenged was mastered. Watch a 100% no skip speed run of Metroid and see it barely runs an hour.
Again, however, I admire your willingness to take on challenges simply for the sake of your own curiosity. Best of luck!
The NES games era were, mostly, all completely beatable. Growing up in the Gamecube era, sadly, made you weak. (Not flaming you, it's just how it is.) And it's been a steady slide down-hill for gamers, ever since.
Still, enjoyed your video...
I disagree. With games like dark souls and cuphead modern gamers can play difficult games.
I think the most frustrating part about the game is if you have low Health and missile's you have to go farming for it to you reach a comfortable amount of Health and ammo which can waste time
The original metroid is the most annoying game in the series and my least favorite. I love Zero Mission yet, I hate the original. And metroid is one of my top 5 favorite game series.
How dare you insult the Mother Brain fight like that!
"Dumb rings"? Pah!
They're Froot Loops.
My first Metroid game was this one, and it was the NES version. It was a gift from my nephew, back in the 1980s. What surprises me is that you did not mention the way you saved your game. It was a code based save system, in which upon quitting or a "Game Over" event, a code would pop up and you had to write it down. When you wanted to continue from the point your game ended, you had to use the code entry screen and enter the code you got in your earlier play. It was a tedious way to save, but it allowed you to start from the exact place you were in when your previous play was ended. Also, there was a special code "Justin Bailey". If you are playing on the NES, I suggest you try that code to see what it does.
As for game play, yes it is seriously outdated compared to most later games in the franchise. That said, for its time, the game was actually groundbreaking. Most games at the time only allowed moving along a set path, with no way to go back to areas already visited. This is known as linear game play. Metroid on the other hand was the first to introduce nonlinear game play, as you could return to any area already visited at any time during a game. This was a purposeful design that allowed certain upgrades and pickups to be unreachable in a given area until you got something that allowed you to finally reach them.
The game quickly became my favorite for the NES. A close second was The Guardian Legend, but only because the playable character could transform. Samus, as we all know can morph into a ball, which allows her to move through narrow tunnels.
Samus's Ball form has additional abilities, such as the Morph Ball Bomb, and the Spider Ball. Other upgrades are to her Suit or Weapons. In the original game, certain beam weapon upgrades would replace the one you currently had. Knowing where to find those was paramount to successful mission completion, because you might need the Ice Beam to perform a certain task, but you had the Spazer Beam instead. Finding your way back to where the Ice Beam is located was something you had to do.
What really nailed Metroid as my favorite was finally beating the game in under 2 hours and learning that the character I was playing was a woman.
I think biggest flaw is having to refill after you've died, it takes forever
i love listening to a millenial critique games that came out before he was born. You cant give an accurate critique unless you also have a good understanding of the time the game was released as well as the people and circumstances contained in that time. People that grew up in the post PS2 video game era have a hard time being critical of games from the 8 and 16 bit era because they expect too much. They dont understand or appreciate the limitations of the hardware, software, and game developers at the time.
You mean have nostalgia
I've been watching a few of your videos now and I think your critical thinking is very good. However I think your letting your disdain for NES clouding your judgement. "The game has no map and its entirely unsure where to go. Wandering aimlessly without knowing where to go is poor game design"
Not true. It encourages you to actually think and remember where you have and haven't been. Yeah they reuse assets but EVERY NES and SNES. And I would dare say N64 game reuses assets. Its all about not having the memory of a goldfish and remembering where you have and haven't been....unlike modern games which highlight everything for you.....which according to your logic makes them ultimately superior.....of course they are. They have over 20 years of experience and inspiration. Metroid wasn't the first for exploratory gameplay.....but one of your main complaints is that its exploratory.....trying things....figuring stuff out.
But there is a reason we call it "Metroidvania" today
As an enormous Metroid fan (it's my second favorite VG series behind Pokemon) I'm so glad to see you cover them. Really hope going full time goes well for you! I'm rooting for you!
Glad I have a couple big fans of the series. I hope the rest of the videos end up being entertaining.
And thanks! I'm hoping the full-time thing goes well. =D
I had Metroid for my GBA (NES Classics, grey cart) when I was in Iraq 2007-08. Even with very little to do except work and work out... I still could not get into this game. Too boring. Super Metroid is amazing, though.
The original NES game has nostalgic value for some of the older fans of the series, but as a gameplay experience, the fan made Super Metroid/SNES remake of the first Metroid game is a better and more enjoyable game than trying to play through the NES version of the game. The original Metroid is also artistically unique, both in the designs of Samus (as depicted in the 80's artwork) and the overall world design which is very atmospheric; it captures the quality of "ancient extraterrestrial ruins" very well, which also translates excellently into the SNES remake.
There's also an MSU-1 patch that is an updated analog synth rendition of the original soundtrack.
As an OG gamer who started with pinball in 1975 then PONG soon after I gotta say something.
If you are going to nitpick the failings of games that were on a console 2 generations before the one you started with, try going back to the consoles that came before the NES. Try your hand at Adventure or Superman on the Atari 2600. Give Smurf Adventure a shot on the Colecovision or one of the AD&D games on the Intellivision. Familiarize yourself with the limitations of those games. I guarantee you're going to hate them since they are so damned awful. I'm suggesting you look at the games that came before the NES only to understand what they grew out of.
Then when you step up to the NES you'll see what we saw in the improvements at the time. Games with music AND multicolor sprites! Games we could PAUSE when mom called us to dinner! Games we could write down a passcode and turn off the console then come back the next day after school and pick up (almost) exactly where we left off!
14 YEAR OLD MIND BLOWN.
Mind you, the C64, Apple computers and IBM clones were doing most of this from the start...
Adventure had a little under 30 non-scrolling screens off the top of my head. Metroid had over 200 screens!
I don't blame you for not being as enthused about NES games when you grew up with the GameCube and beyond. My kids are spoiled as hell with the current generation of consoles but I've made sure they at least appreciate how far games have come by playing a few old school games with them.
I agree with you. Metroid on NES is absolutely outdated, like Legend of Zelda or Super Mario Bros 3. Only for the nostalgics! The SNES versions of these games are a too much progression of what those games should have been...
Video games are going to be as important as films and books. There are some really important early books that are hard to read but still very rewarding to learn about and appreciate. Those important early books are utter marvels, inventing and/or popularizing so many conventions of the medium in one go. Hundreds, even thousands of other books published in their era have already been long forgotten. No, these important early books are not going to please our modern whims. Video games still market themselves as fun ways to spend your time. This is so flawed, because it assumes a flipside where if they're not fun, then they're not worth your time. If we're going to spend thousands or more on a sealed copy of an old beloved video game, then we're going to need to recognize that those early games are utter marvels. A sealed SMB sold for 2 million this year. Money like that does not come from nostalgia. There are some (not many) Charlie Chaplin films that will blow your mind and make you cry, and it would be a bonkers criticism to say the silent, black and white style was just too hard to sit through. With all due respect - I enjoyed the quality of your video, I appreciated your sincerity for Metroid - this game does not "struggle with a number of issues because of the console." This game is 35 years old and will continue to be played and talked about by generations beyond our years.
To me, NES hard isn’t hard, it’s -bullshit- unfair. If you want hard, go play cuphead, hollow knight, some obscure Jrpg series that defined some genre Idk, or Dark souls.
I like your video, but its hard for me to take criticism about a 30+ year old game when comparing it to newer games. It seems like you didnt grow up during that time and understand the gaming industry at that time. Imagine reviewing a computer from 1987 and comparing it to todays computers.
I grew up in the NES era and I played this game a lot as a kid despite never beating it. I agree with your opinion that it isn't necessary to play unless you're a die hard fan. Super Metroid is essentially a perfect remake of it even before Zero Mission was made. So there ya go. 2 remakes of the same game and both are much more fun.
I think most would prefer a map, but I much prefer not having one.
It seems like not having a map would be a subtraction of content, but when you consider what happens when you don’t have one you might make the argument it actually adds to content.
Think of it this way: imagine you got lost in the African Jungle somewhere. If you have a map then you can just go straight back to civilisation while knowing where vital resources are along the way. Without a map it becomes a memorable struggle for survival and you have to find ways to keep hope with no guarantee you’ll make it out.
Some challenges added from the lack of a map:
* Remembering your general location while everything seems the same.
* optional pencil & paper activity for kids where they need to draw their own map.
* Feeling lost and alone.
* No clues to spoil where your next health upgrade will be.
* Respawn locations become an important landmark.
* Dying and retracing your steps incorrectly can lead to new discoveries (like falling in fake lava).
* No need to be constantly checking a map.
* Discovering, on your own, a shortcut or loop around to the same part of the game.
* Finding key areas is a complete surprise.
* Having to pay attention to and learn subtle differences so you don’t get too lost.
I don't really understand the "no direction, lots of backtracking" criticism. That's literally the point, explore and solve the puzzle.
As much as I want to shake my fist at you and tell you to get off my lawn, I feel like I need to address your concerns about this game. I grew up in the Nintendo era. I loved SMB, Zelda, Tyson’s Punch Out, etc. I’ve never played a Game Cube game.
Here’s what you missed playing it now: the instruction manual. Reading that thing was critical to game play, and something that is a complete afterthought in today’s games as the game walks you through the mechanics in some kind of tutorial. That wasn’t possible on the NES. That and the social aspect of this game before the Internet or social media were a thing was what made it a hallmark. Before this game it was all about how many points you scored. Now it was all about who found what power up, who had the Nintendo Power magazine, whose map drawn on notebook paper was best, you get my drift. Bitching about the graphics from today’s perspective seems a bit unfair, as this is going to happen with any game. Did I ever beat this game as a kid? No. Did I love discovering Metroid Zero Mission recently on an emulator and having it fix all the broken stuff on the original? Absolutely.
I did enjoy your analysis of this game though and to see it from different eyes. I hope this provides you some chronological context though.
Yeah I didn’t really get the comment “The graphics aren’t befitting of a Metroid game....”
Dude it was the FIRST Metroid game, there was no style guide or examples to go by.
That's cool insight!
The NES has a kinda weird set of games.. but much fun could still be found on the old brick! Especially Kirby's Adventure!
If you understood the limitations of the first NES games, I think you’d be way more forgiving.
There was no advanced stuff like Super Mario 3, but instead they had the same limits of Super Mario 1.
They also had a rather short time to make it in.
you think this game hard? i beat it 20 times bro...
Ironically, I think I have the reverse opinion. Im glad this was my first Metroid game, because after playing newer Metroid games, Im too spoiled by quality of life to ever go back. But I enjoyed it a lot on my first playthrough.
Yeah, having to go backwards to it was definitely not ideal if I'm being honest. It is what it is though.
@@DuoStuff I think one of the hardest things was not having the 8 directional aim of Super, if I remember correctly NES Metroid was only 4 directions. That and having a map in game. Super really kills any enjoyment I could get trying to go back and play the first one. But Im happy I started with NES, because it hooked me on the series.
Same, I grew up during the PS2/GameCube era, I never owned a GameCube though, I had a PS2
Obviously, this game seems outdated by today's standards. It's a 1986 game, lol.
Facts. I've tried so many times to play these games over the years because they looked fun, but they were hard has freak!
Yeah it's really difficult to get into NES era stuff if you didn't grow up in that era.
This is another old game where I'd forgotten that it could be cryptic as far as navigating through it goes. It's alot more fun once you've got it memorized... but whose looking to do that these days...
Travis Speer me! Finally beat it on NES and keep going back. Just memorize where the screwball is and you’re set (psst. It’s just after the boots)
People who want to get 112% on Hollow Knight. Trust me when I say you need your reactions to be based on memory or instinct to get all the endings in that game.
Calling Metroid the first Metroidvania is like calling Demon's Souls the first Souls Like, or Doom the first Doom Clone.
Doom was just a Wolfenstein 3d clone.
@@TheChuckFina
True. But all FPS games were known as Doom Clones until Halo was released and the term 'first person shooter' was coined.
I'm 40. I've never played this game! Guess it's time!
Actually, Metroid wasn't exactly the first of its kind. Pitfall! is often regarded as the first one.
Pitfall! The Metroidvania...
The problem is that Zero mission is way to expensive
I feel bad because I beat this game 100% and enjoyed it, however I played it on Nintendo switch and constantly used the rewind feature all the time and I used a a 100% guide
Nah it's all good. As long as you enjoyed it, it doesn't really matter how you played it.
1:37 Nah I dont play no weebshit... then again I watch anime and ur main channel...
*damn it*
XD
While I honestly have a ton of problems with the original Metroid, I can almost forgive all of its shortcomings besides one and that is that moronic decision of starting every game with 30HP, regardless of how many Energy tanks you've acquired.
When you die and are already feeling frustrated, why in the world would any developer even back in the day think that I would now really enjoy wasting another 15 or more minutes farming respawning enemies for health pellets before I can even proceed to start over with retracing my steps?
It's padding and the worst kind there is :/
Something else that served as kind of a roadblock for me the first time I played it was the red doors you need missiles for.
After firing 3 missiles at one to apparently no effect and with a sound that sounds like they are just reflecting off, I thought I was on the wrong track and needed some other means to get through. I don't see any reason why they couldn't just require a singular missile to open?
And that's without getting into any of the cumbersome stuff where you have to bomb unassuming walls and floors everywhere to move forward.
The game is also just littered with too many knee-high enemies that are just begging for a crouch function that isn't there -_-
This first instalment really doesn't hold up very well, despite it being an important step for better things to come. But Zero Mission is really the only proper way to enjoy this.
There ARE some really nice hacks of the game out there though than introduces a lot of much-needed quality of life stuff like introducing an in-game map and save files over Passwords (So no more 3DS killing codes here xD)
Metroid: mOTHER is a particularly good one
www.romhacking.net/hacks/1988/
You know I didn't even think about it, but yeah, requiring 5 missiles is really dumb combined with the lack of feedback given by the doors. I guess having experience with the other games just kind of clued me in, but I probably should've mentioned that. (It was the first video of this type I made though, so I'm not too surprised.)
@@DuoStuff I think the only reason I even made any progress in the less obvious parts of the original Metroid was because I had just played through Zero Mission so I had an idea of where to go and what random floor tiles needed bombing.
This seemingly endless climbs throughout the game sure is a chore as well.
I think your video was excellently done though and you got around to a lot of good points. It was a once watch.
The only people who whine about the fire emblem series are salty smash brothers fans.
If you're Sonic fan, the Game Gear game Tails' Adventure is classified as Metroidvania
There's also a fantastic fan game that combines classic Sonic gameplay with metroidvania world: Sonic Chrono Adventure.
However, I recomend playing Sonic After the Sequel first to understand what is that owl thing. It's more traditional Sonic fan game with unique zones. I find it as good as official classics.
Great video!
I grew up in the SNES era. I played this game in like 1997 and I felt the same: I was really surprised at how good it felt considering the year it was made in, but I got lost the more I explored. In the end it was a fun experience but after playing it for a day I decided I was never going to finish it.
And now with Zero Mission there's really no reason to revisit the game other than for novelty reasons. Still has some rather impressive attributes though.
Metroid is the most immersive game on the nes.
Actually that's probably true. For an NES game, Metroid has an impressive atmosphere and a sizable world.
the "can't get into it" struggle for me is Zelda. *crowd gasps...*
I'm appalled....lol
I'm finally playing A Link to the Past, and I've had the strategy guide for 20some years, just never had an SNES (until the last 2 years or so, I have a Retro-Bit Super Retro Trio and Trio+, an SNES Mini, and finally a real SNES, which I removed the tabs so I can play Super Famicom games, as well). I still feel like I need someone to walk me through every step of the game... but I'm dumb.
@@JonathanMartin884 tbh the puzzles just never click with me, and once i solve them, i leave feeling infuriated instead of satisfied XD
@@LunalynDragon The thing about Zelda puzzles is there is basically like a language of Zelda puzzles, the more you do them the easier they are. My suggestion would be to give the original Zelda on NES a shot or Link to the Past on SNES a shot (Zelda 2 also has a limited amount of puzzles, but brings a whole plethora of other "issues").
If anyone wants to experience a slightly better version of the original Metroid, there is a fan rom hack called Metroid mOTHER, Samus has a better model, there's a map, etc.
We had no issues with no map, or repetitive rooms back in the day this was new; we only had a couple of games, so if we didn't like it, TOO BAD. So we played everything all the time and didn't recognize it's 'faults'. I went from Atari 2600 to this, which was an incredible step up. The 'faults' of this game weren't faults at all. Especially if you've played 'ET' on the 2600. We never would have finished Mega Man if we'd had all the options people have today; we were stuck? Try again. And again. Don't like it? Keep going, there's only a couple of other games that we've already played to death, might as well. Now, if someone comes across something tough, they quit. If they find a fault? They quit. We were forced to persevere, or go outside and jump on the trampoline or something. This is 'old man' talk, but there is a lesson here; keep going. Persevere. Don't give up, recognize how fantastic we have it now, and appreciate what we have... things in the video game world actually keep getting better, whether one realizes it or not.
Props to you for completing the game that started it it all, it's been over 30 years, and I haven't had the will or patience to do it, yet I still have so muh admiration for this game (and series overall). I did a similar playthrough before Metroid Dread dropped in October '21, but I replaced Metroid and Metroid 2 for their superior offiial remakes. This is a beloved series of mine, and I've thoroughly enjoyed your analysis of it.
NES Metroid was an extremely difficult, never-ending grind for more health and missiles, but it was a very clever and unique concept for its time.
I love the music in this game so much. There isn't any direction on where to go and that was frustrating. The music really did instill the creepy atmosphere and it sunk in that you are ALONE and left to fend for yourself.
It's so weird to hear so many people try to play Metroid without a map just because it's not an automated function. Trust me, no one who made the game expected you to memorize it in full as you played. Drawing your own map was a more widespread practice in games back then, and they fully expected you to do it. I know you eventually used one you found online, but making the map is part of the fun. So was sharing secret areas and hidden item locations with friends to try and find everything. A lot fewer games came to market at any given time, and you can bet dozens of kids at your school were playing and talking about this game after its release. At this point I would definitely just look up a complete map for 100%, but it's perfectly beatable with far less than that with a homemade map.
The complaint about shared rooms is valid, but keep in mind this full game is smaller than any given Win10 desktop icon on your desktop and had to fit on a 112kb Famicom Disk.
The health issue is 100% crap, especially if you die after getting a lot of energy tanks. No excuses, that does suck.
It's cool to hear impressions from newer fans that grew up on GC games, lol. Metroid has always been a mainly niche, mostly US audience so it's pretty unique for Nintendo properties.
The NES era at the time was revolutionary. For most people they went from the primitive Atari 2600 or arcade games that weren't really that in depth but more for trying to get a high score to this. It doesn't seem like much now but it was a huge leap forward. If you had money maybe you played some games close to something like NES games on the Commodore 64 or the Colecovision. If you were in the U.K. you had the ZX Spectrum or Amstrad and between those you may have played games like Impossible Mission 1 and 2 or Nodes of Yesod but this took it to the next level and made a huge impression world wide. But, yeah, like most NES games of the era it's hard as balls and frustrating as Hell. But we also were young, having tons of games or collecting them wasn't a thing yet, so if you paid $50 in 1986 money you wanted a game you could play for a while to feel like you got your moneys worth. Nowadays we have so many options we don't need that so much and can go the opposite route and say a game is wasting our time. How things have changed.
LMAO - You're biggest complaint about every old game is that it's hard... regardless of the reason(s) why the bottom line is that it's "hard". It's just funny because I hear it from younger people all the time and somehow that then becomes "bad game design". To also say that it doesn't hold up to "modern game standards" due to that is silly because by definition one would have to lower standards to make the skill level required easier. From my point of view modern games don't hold up to vintage game standards - which many times means players don't have to be as good to beat them. Regardless, all of our views have their place. I just come from a different time. The beautiful graphics and overly powerful hardware of today have led way to a whole new world in terms of gaming and watching that evolve led to me being a computer technician and programmer so I can definitely respect that... and honestly even now I like to just sit and basically experience it all as a whole without having to feel "stuck" forever on some part so I get that too. Back then the time spent was an adventure and the difficulty in beating enemies, even the small ones, was rewarding when your abilities rose to the level necessary to readily handle them as you traversed your way through the game - it made you feel good and made you better and separated you from other players (I suppose that sentiment may be a byproduct of the arcade culture I grew up in). All that said, it helped getting a few tips from a friend or from Nintendo Power magazine back then to find things as you'd likely never find them all without being obsessed and playing 24/7 for months on end, LOL. I'm just as guilty as the next guy for taking any tips I could get back then. There was no internet, etc. back then... now THAT was hard! :-)
One thing was way back then us old timers had the 800 number to call. And there was the players handbook, which DID have a map. In retrospect, it kinda was the original DLC that you had to pay for to make games worthwhile. A spot later filled by Nintendo Power magazine.
You gotta pull out that graph paper and map things out manually. ;)
I love the game but you're not wrong about it aging poorly.
I never go hard on games like this or Simon's Quest. It was the nature of adventure games of the time to be cryptic guide sellers. Zelda 1, as much as ppl deny, is also a cryptic guide game. It's like lives in games: "Lives are bad game design so old games are badly designed"...... no, it was just what developers knew, it was the law of the land and difficulty was a big part of gaming.
That's why we have progress. It's not like the majority of games still do this. Old games should be judged by context before asking whether or not they're enjoyable today. They're not "bad games" as much as they were games of their time.
This is why our entertainment industry sucks today. The audience of today is so fuckin jaded its unreal. The tech was still being explored and it was back in 1986 when Apple II was still relevant. No one needs an explanation. There is no point in picking apart the game.
I absolutely despise a part of this comment section, forgive for the cringy word selection but holy fuck, bunch of boomers shitting on his review just because he's a millennial
Yes, we know, the game was innovative at the time, but times change, standards get higher, it's not really good nowadays, and that's fine, it's old, please stop trying to shield it from criticism just because not everyone has nostalgia goggles
Even back in 86 I never thought of Metroid as ground breaking in the same way Mario and Zelda's original games where. Well not until Super Metroid.
Something easy to forget about the NES era, is that while the design could often be obtuse and easy to get lost in, strategy guides and other publications like Nintendo Power abounded. Or, god help you and your parents’ phone bill, the Nintendo Power hotline....
The reason a lot of rooms are identical is pretty simple: every single room in the original game is built not of individual tiles, but of _chunks_ of tiles that were quite large, to save on memory as you guessed. I forget the size of the chunks (a quarter of a screen maybe?) but it's large enough that none of the rooms are really unique.
This was a gem of his time ...centennials don't understand that, their typical criticism is always about how hard and inconvenient it is ...you can't judge technology from the past with your modern standards ...that's idiotic
What I *still* don't get: is Space Pirate supposed to be a species or an occupation? Because all of them who aren't Mother Brain seem to be the same type of creature. In every game I remember seeing "space pirates" appearing.
Metroid was a game where kids had the advantage if they got video game magazines like Nintendo Power that provided maps.I beat the game in a day because of what I got from those magazines. I continued playing it and made my own maps , and improved to beating it in time to get the special ending.
None of your opinions about this game are wrong, but I was around when this game came out. I was so young, this game used to scare the shit out of me. Anyway, I actually didn't come back to this game until after Super Metroid came out, cuz it reminded me of this game. And despite all of its flaws, I still look back on this game finally, even with Metroid zero mission out.
My favorite games are still super Metroid, and most recently, Metroid Dread, but I still love this game
I get it, trust me.
And as far as my favorites go, mine are probably Dread, Fusion, and Prime 1.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but Super Metroid is the only Metroid game you need 🤷🏻♂️
Impressive! Even some of us long time fans never beat the original NES game. That's what Zero Mission is for.
I like the Ridley theme. Yeah it's repetitive but it's creepy and ominous as hell and perfectly fits the atmosphere.
Do you also watch movies from before you were born and complain that they didn’t use technologies we have today?
okay but
i couldn't get through the first missile door because i didn't have enough missiles and the enemies only dropped health
While I don’t necessarily agree with you on a lot of this, it’s still a quality video. I’ll hit that like button 👍
NES Metroid is confusing af, also same, I’ve never really played Metroid
Dude if you know the game is outdated don't complain
First: that's.... That's the entire point of making a video covering the whole series: to analyze each one.
Second: dude if you knew the video was going to be critical and you can't handle it: don't watch the video.
Okay, zoomer.
Hey! I’m scared of Luigi’s mansion to this day!
Not me. I ain’t afraid of no ghost! 🚫👻
H o w?
Anth A I let myself be scared, it makes a much better experience.
Eat me. Not one bad game, until After Metroid Prime...
A good analysis, but a lot of your gripes come down to, "I wanted a bunch of things that it was literally impossible for an early NES cartridge to do."
The NES is even more limited and primitive than you THINK it was, and the only reason games got so much better over time is because companies figured out that you could make chips and add them to the basic cartridge. Those chips allowed Nintendo games to be bigger, have more music, have better music, have scrolling in all directions, and even have save files (another special chip, powered by a long-lasting battery, again attached to the game's circuit board).
And pretty much none of those chips are on a Metroid cartridge. The technology for that game to do the things you wanted it to do literally did not exist at the time.
You analysis is still correct - the game IS flawed - but the *reason(s)* it's flawed almost always goes back to "the technology just wasn't there yet". The difference between what was possible on a launch-day NES cart - Super Mario Bros. - and what you could do with a chip-laden, post-SNES-launch cart - Kirby's Adventure - is STAGGERING.
The original Metroid certainly did push the NES to it's limit because of how ambitious it was. The game's ambition is both a blessing and a curse, as the first game was the first step in making a beautiful new genre of games, yet literally couldn't live up to its potential due to technology at the time.
0:00 yeah that's zelda for me
This video is my exact thoughts T-T
In 1986 this game was unbelievable. The other day I defeated Mother Brain for the first time since I was a kid. I have been patting myself on the back ever since.
That's cool :) I'm 23 and i've been doing that too with my childhood games, like rayman. I'm pretty proud as well hahaha
Does anyone know what he's talking about at 1:18? Was there some sort of drama with the DK and Metroid fanbase over Tropical Freeze???
Oh yeah there was. People were really mad that Retro Studios were making another DKC instead of Metroid Prime 4. It was a weird time. Thankfully the Switch port didn't get the same treatment.
I like some of the things you verbalize. Like games that start or really evolve a genre are going to age badly, because sequels and copycats will refine all the rough edges. It makes sense, but I've never heard it verbalized that well.
It explains why Mario 1 is definitely important and was a great game, but is not a very good game anymore.
Yeah it also took me a while to really be able to verbalize it too.
Though I will say I still like Mario 1, mostly because on a basic level it's still an enjoyable game, just a bit simple.
@@DuoStuff Yeah, Mario is still fun. I'm not trying to say it's bad. It set the bar for platformers really high and had a lot of minor nitpicks and a small scope as the only negatives. But 30 some years later, the platforming genre has just been refined so much and the bar raised higher that Mario 1 is outdone comparatively.
I heard the famicom version was better.
hey you're like me o: , except ginger.....
Wow this comment section is full of toxic people throwing shit, and not only at the review but you...
Oh if you thought this was bad, take a look at my Zelda NES comment section. It's absolutely full of 40 year olds calling me derogatory names because I didn't think it was a flawless masterpiece. XD
What Metroid are you playing at 2:00? I lost interest in the series after Prime. Not big on FPS.
Don't know if you still care, but it's Samus Returns, a remake of the second
I think you're too hard on it. It was a product of its time, and it was trying a lot of new things.
Perhaps, but I feel like I need to give it a genuine critique. I don't think it would make sense if I didn't criticize it, because I critiqued the other games.