Player One Podcast

Sweet episode, a great mix of the old style (a bit too long with a few too many tangents) and the new style (fast moving but a bit dry).

Super Metroid can be a bit obtuse, in fact I got stuck for the longest time at the point where you have to blow up the big glass tube, just because my mind was not searching for such a straight-forward solution. Obtuse might be what Ford would accuse some of my favourite sections to be, where the non-aggressive creatures in the world teach you how to do something just by doing it themselves. In contrast I consider those parts to be very elegant because the answer is not found coming out of a talking head that explains exactly what to do, nor from a manual, nor from an NPC back in a town. You are in a totally safe, small environment where you can practice the move for as long as you like until you get it perfect. What you discover is that the power to wall-jump was in Samus all along, just like how all along you had the power to figure it out! (sorry, sorry!)

Getting Samus to do an actual wall-jump is admittedly pretty tough, but what clued me in every time I got stuck there is how she clings to the wall for a moment, and as you use the d-pad to change direction, she shifts a bit while hanging on the wall. Once I saw her face the opposite wall as I slid my thumb across the d-pad, I knew exactly how to do the wall-jump. One thing I think you guys overlooked is how fluid and communicative the animation is in the game. I figured out a lot of moves just by watching Samus closely and being patient. The controls are weird and slippery at first, but once I get used to it it’s as if Super Metroid is the only game that was ever made. When I make a mistake I can see the point where Samus’s animation went wrong, envision what she would look like if I did it correctly, and then correct my input and feel the elation of success when I reach my goal.

Once you reach these goals you’re usually met with that awesome fanfare as you take your new power, like Peggle’s Ode to Joy but melancholy in tone as opposed to bombastic. I haven’t played Other M but being authorized to use powers by some talking head sounds very different than finding them in the hands of a Chozo. The Chozo are the makers of her suit, so it’s not a stretch that Samus can make use of their technology. What is a stretch is that Samus would consent to be put in extremely dangerous situations without full use of her equipment. In light of the multiple near-death experiences in she had in her previous mission it comes off as an extremely stupid risk.

Samus’s origins and the rest of her narrative is not what worries me so much about Other M. What I see as the bigger problem is that it looks like Team Ninja has removed what little identity Samus was left with after Metroid Fusion. People don’t get attached to Samus because she runs and jumps and shoots things; every game character does that. A lot of people say that they get attached to video game characters because they have a cool look or interesting narratives, but in Samus’s case I honestly don’t think that’s the primary reason. Super Metroid plays into the internal dialogue of the user by making the world lonely and filled with secrets. The lack of a fairy or commanding officer frees your mind to be constantly thinking about where the next secret is and how you will reach it. As you get deeper your thoughts get more complex, and you create your own lexicon (like Greg’s ‘spark jump’). I believe that Super Metroid is a beloved game because it does an excellent job of facilitating interesting and varied thoughts in the player, through its lack of dialogue, the amazing set pieces, and the core of its gameplay which is driven by taking countless moments to stop and think. I also believe it encourages a strong fantasy of being Samus, a person who explores captivating worlds, finds cool items, and uses those items to become vastly more powerful than how she starts. When you see Samus, you are peaking back into the book you wrote when you played the game.

Hearing something like Samus has a crush on someone sounds so ridiculous to me in light of what Metroid means to me. When CJ and Phil were worried that they would be killed by Mother Brain, and joyus when the baby metroid rescued them, it was because it was the climax of their fantasy of being Samus, not because it meant that Samus would surive to go to prom with Tad Spacerston. From what I’ve seen of Other M’s gameplay, it looks decently exploratory and lonely, but I’ve heard that the introduction is where a lot of story and dialogue takes place. I don’t need to remind you how incredible and central to the experience Super Metroid’s introduction is.

I’m mostly a PC gamer now and a lot of Japanese games that I used to consider masterpieces really don’t hold up for me today. Super Metroid has all the hallmarks of a great Japanese game: tight controls, great shooting and platforming, excellent pacing, an awesome (and varied) soundtrack, beautiful and communicative animation, and just a ton of polish. It also has a lot of things that you only get from certain western games: story told through game play, game play taught through the environment, non-linearity, and a great sense of place as well as loneliness and independence. When I think of Super Metroid I think of Fallout 1 and 2 as much as I think about Gunstar Heroes, which blows my mind a little bit.

Instead of ranting angrily about modern games I’ll just shut up now. Thank you for reading my dumbass yadda yadda! Stay positive P1.

I purchased Ufouria: The Saga because of this episode and I’m pretty darn impressed with this little NES game from 1992.