Super Metroid (SNES)

I'm a big fan of Metroidvanias, that portmanteau'd genre of side-scrolling exploration, so it might surprise you to hear I've never really played either of its eponymous series. I could wax lyrical about Guacamelee's wrestling moves, Yoku's pinball gameplay fusion, and pretty much every aspect of Hollow Knight, but the most I've ever played of a classic Metroid game is 20 minutes of the less fondly remembered Metroid II on the Game Boy. Until this weekend, when with all the hype around the release of Metroid Dread, I played GRcade's greatest game of all time Super Metroid via Nintendo Switch online.

Let's be clear, Super Metroid is a good game. At times it is a very good game. It's a darn sight better than A Link to the Past. But like A Link to the Past, what flaws it has often come down to the game showing its age and origin in the SNES era.

Take the controls. Most obvious is the way that various weapon types have to be cycled through by pressing select. I'll admit that the SNES controller was probably better suited to this than the small and spongy select button in the corner of my Hori d-pad joy-con, but it's still an approach that feels very dated. I can't let this itself cloud my judgment of the game - I'm a huge fan of Link's Awakening and that has some very archaic item switching thanks to the Game Boy's lack of buttons (thankfully addressed in the remake on Switch). However, where I felt this really impacted Super Metroid was in those moments where I wanted to quickly switch from one weapon type to another. Using the grappling hook is more awkward than it needs to be, while the Metroids you fight near the end of the game were most threatening because of the need to constantly switch between the beam and the super missiles. So too when I came across a door with an eyeball-like enemy attached to it, it only having time to shoot me because my thumb was away from the d-pad and tapping select instead to get to my missiles. Strangely the game doesn't even use the Y-button, while B is reserved for running (thankfully I discovered this myself, I wonder if that was a case of expecting you to read the manual), and it makes me think the buttons could have been much better arranged even within the limits of the SNES controller. In fact I'm told later games in the series do adopt a better approach, so this criticism seems pretty well backed up.

When it comes to character movement and general gamefeel, throughout my eight hours of playtime I never quite got my head around how Samus moves, especially when it comes to air control. Momentum in Super Metroid feels inconsistent - at times very prominent, like when jumping after dashing, but at other times nonexistent as I jump from swinging on a grapple hook and stop dead in the air. I took damage a lot from missing jumps because I either over or under adjusted mid-air, and I found the difference between a regular jump and a spin jump never quite clear, the former only seeming to exist to occasionally trigger when you'd really always prefer the latter. Don't get me started on trying to jump out of sinking sand.

The approach to tutorialising game mechanics is an interesting one. In many instances, especially early on, the game is designed superbly, teaching the player without taking them out of the game. A door set into the floor of a pit prompts you to shoot downwards. A gap above a block you need to destroy after picking up the morph ball bombs ensures you see how the explosion makes you jump a tile upwards.

In other cases, a bird runs off screen.

It's these forced tutorial moments, happening twice in the game, I take real umbrage with. First they lack the elegance of the other examples, requiring the introduction of random non-playable characters to try and demonstrate the move being taught. Even if they were effective - which they aren't - it's a decidedly ham-fisted approach to tutorialising that the game otherwise avoids. Second is that lack of effectiveness. In the case of the bird, trying to teach a technique I have since learnt is called "shine sparking", while the input is relatively forgiving little clue is given as to what that input actually is. Good luck, the game essentially wishes the player, as it traps them in an otherwise inescapable pit, their only option to randomise their inputs until they stumble upon the need to crouch and then jump after reaching full charge from their dash.

Wall jumping, the other technique that relies on some forced NPC demonstration (this time in the form of a gang of mocking space monkeys), offers an interesting comparison. Here the actual end result is at least more clear - the player can clearly see that they are supposed to take a run up and jump from wall to wall. Unfortunately the actual input required to achieve this is so precise, and unintuitive, it's a bit like showing someone stock footage of a plane taking off and then expecting them to pilot the next 747 out of Heathrow. This was probably the point I was most tempted to quit the game and never touch it again, if only I weren't so stubborn.

That these techniques exist in the game isn't itself a bad thing. That they are somewhat arcane and tricky isn't an inherent problem either, and that's fitting to them being almost entirely optional to finish the game unless you want to collect all the hard-to-find upgrades and reach 100% completion. The problem is that the game does require you to learn them and execute them once and once only - in the forced tutorial moments where it dumps you in an otherwise inescapable position with its infuriatingly vague animal tutors. It's unnecessary, annoying, and soured my whole opinion of the game's design philosophy.

Talking of design, one of the things I love about Metroidvanias is the way you slowly but surely gather more powers and build up your repertoire of moves, allowing you to access new areas, and I love that moment of finding a new power and returning to all of those places I remember being unable to progress but knowing I now have the tools to do so.

Super Metroid has that in spades, but I found its powers varied in how much I appreciated them. The grappling hook was probably my highlight, having come across plenty of locations where it was clear I would need something of its sort I was excited and happy to finally unlock it. The high jump and the suit upgrades I'd put up there too for expanding my exploratory options.

Less exciting were things like missiles, super missiles and the super bomb, and the reason for that is the same - they all just open different coloured doors. Yes, they have other uses, and the power bomb especially has some great moments (figuring out I could destroy the glass pipe in Maridia was genius and a game highlight), but when it comes to doors specifically as progress gates that's probably the least inventive a metroidvania game can be. I want to learn new abilities that increase my mobility, and then use those abilities in interesting ways to overcome a variety of obstacles. I don't want to just shoot different coloured doors with new weapons.

The other issue I had was that backtracking, while at the heart of the genre, just isn't that fun in Super Metroid. Moving around the map is quite slow, and it was a bit annoying I'd only ever see the map on the pause screen for the current area I was in. Fast travel between save points is a more modern game design quality of life feature, and often one I'm not actually that bothered by, but here I really felt a desire to have some quicker options for moving around.

I'm not entirely sure that complaint is fair, as where I think it comes from is actually a separate issue, and that's how the way to progress is hidden in Super Metroid. In Metroidvanias I like to see where I can't get. I find it easier to recall all those locations where I could see something I couldn't reach so that when I get the necessary power, I remember those places and return to them. That's very satisfying. Super Metroid has a lot of this, but it also just straight up hides a lot of stuff.

There were two points in the game I got stuck not knowing what to do (as opposed to being stuck trying to figure out wall jumping). One was trying to progress through Maridia, me trawling the map trying to find the way I had missed, and it reached the point where I convinced myself I needed to go and get an item from somewhere else to progress. Hence a fruitless tour of the entire map open to me, hence finding the lack of fast travel and labyrinthine map frustrating. As it turns out I had simply missed a section of floor I needed to shoot to destroy. Not a flooded passage I needed a suit upgrade to get through, not a tunnel I needed a grappling hook to reach - not even a coloured door I needed the right weapon to open. Just two tiles on the ground, identical to any other two tiles on the ground, that I hadn't tried shooting.

Super Metroid trains the player to be meticulous in searching for things like this, because searching for things like this is often necessary to progress, and this just isn't something I enjoy. Hiding optional secrets this way is one thing (and the main reason I finished the game with only 66% item completion), but gating progress behind secret hunting is quite another. It brings me full circle to my A Link to the Past comparisons, another game of the same era I hold a very similar complaint against as it expects you to lift every rock and bomb every surface. In Super Metroid's defence, at least its bombs are unlimited - something I was frequently thankful for as I traced the edges of the screen, bombing every tile and crevice. One of the game's later powers, an x-ray scanner meant to help the player in finding those secrets they'd missed, also came up short in being almost just as slow and awkward to use.

The other point I got stuck, after finally finding the way to progress through Maridia, was in that area's boss. In general I found the bosses in Super Metroid quite uninspiring, never forcing me to learn how to fight them so much as being a DPS race between tanking as many hits as possible while spamming all of my missiles (against Ridley especially). I'm not sure whether to praise or deride Maridia's boss for not following that trend. Instead I found myself repeatedly being grabbed, helpless and unable to do anything for what felt like a full thirty seconds, to the point where I was sure I was missing some input or mechanic to break free. Finally I relented and looked it up, learning that the whole boss has a gimmick that trivialises the encounter. Frustratingly, I thought I had actually tried what that gimmick was (in using the grapple hook to channel electricity), but had obviously not quite done it correctly, so I was robbed of even discovering it for myself.

Those two instances aside I did mange to make my way through the game without resorting to guides and, despite the bosses feeling much more like I blundered my way through rather than earning my progress, there were frequent satisfying moments when I discovered how to progress. Two of these particularly stand out - one I have already mentioned, in using a super bomb to blast open a glass tunnel. The other was in finding a statue, usually found holding an orb-like upgrade, but this one having an empty hand. Turning into the morph ball and placing myself on the open palm, that was probably one of the most satisfying puzzles I've ever solved in a game. Too often frustrating then, but Super Metroid isn't all that bad.

7/10

Ban request

I loved Super Metroid but your review is a very good well written review its a lot better than the ones I read on professional sites, I played this last I think when I did my review for it for my 150 snes games thing and I really really enjoyed it. The one complaint you put down that I really really agree with is that progress should not be behind invisible hard to find doors those should be kept for bonuses and Easter eggs.

If your into your emulation try Hyper Metroid

Orange, I see you're giving GG a run for his money with that long post there.

kerr9000 wrote:

FYI: Youtube URLs with a timecode don't embed. Remove the '&' and everything after and then it will work.

OldSoulCyborg wrote:

kerr9000 wrote:

FYI: Youtube URLs with a timecode don't embed. Remove the '&' and everything after and then it will work.

Thanks no idea how I messed that up but thank you for the heads up.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:You have made a powerful enemy

I only just realised I didnt comment on you giving A Link to the Past Grief that games one of my fave zeldas ever booo booo lol

This might be controversial but I think most older "classics" feel 7/10 at best if you play them for the first time in 2021 without the intoxication of nostalgia to go with them.

Super Metroid for sure has some clunky movement, though I feel like that's part of its unique charm in learning how to operate efficiently. However some things like you said, the space jump, and the shine spark, are definitely too finnicky. For the space jump I think it relies too heavily on certain timings, like I think it's only active for certain frames after descending from a jump. The shine spark too I think has to be executed specifically from a neutral jump press whilst standing still and then pressing a direction quickly after, iirc. In Dread, this window is much larger and clearer. Actually a lot of the issues you've mentioned I think are resolved in Dread (though it loses some of Super Metroid's freedom, more on that later in the Dread Thread). I thought the animal tutorials were fine, but you're right, it is more the game explicitly showing you what to do rather than just figuring it out yourself. The difference between a jump and spin jump, I believe, is just that a spin jump is when you jump during movement. i.e. you have to hold left or right first before jumping. It's incredibly strict, no leniency, so if you try to do both at the same time and happen to jump first, you get a regular jump, which is generally never what you want lol. But yeah, I found jumping with the grappling bream pretty frustrating at times too.

Thought progression was overall fine tho, only got stuck at one part in the room before the grapple beam. You're just meant to run and jump basically over a large pit of lava, but I kept shine sparking instead, forgetting that regular jumps were a thing lol. I played this for so many hours even after beating it, trying to 100% complete it, checking every room meticulously, using the xray visor, doing this maybe 3 times, being as thorough as I thought possible, but I still missed like 5 missile upgrades and I think an energy tank and not a clue where lmao. Great review, 7's a fair score.

And yeah, strawberry float the quicksand.

Victor Mildew wrote:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:You have made a powerful enemy

I mean I can't say I agree with RKN and his very wrong opinions, but he's certainly articulated them well.

It's hard for me to really argue with what is the opinions of a first playthrough. I've been playing Super Metroid on and off for 27 years, so I've long since forgotten the frustrations and issues that I would have had with it all those years ago. My experience of the game now is very different to the experience someone coming to it completely fresh would have.

I'll counter some of them, but a lot of it I can see where RKN is coming from.

Controls - I would argue this is a highly subjective thing. Personally I much prefer the toggle for items and missiles than I do the current trend for "Hold R". It can be something you can trip over in Super, but I prefer it to the alternatives used in later games where I find it can be quite fiddly to get in the heat of the moment. I'm so used to cycling through them as necessary which free's up the R-Button for more aiming options. The Y-Button is used to cancel out of the item sequence if you need to quickly get back to the basic beam, or even switch to missiles.

Character movement - Again, subjective. I'm a fan of the floaty jump and the heavier feel to Samus. She's manueverable enough that you can place her exactly where you need her to be. Later games tend to make her a bit too zippy for my liking, especially considering she's wearing a suit of power armour. The Prime games get the movement correct for me as well. She should control like a tank. I will agree that the momentum for Grappling is inconsistent and annoying, but again you get better at it with practice, and eventually you can get to the point where you essentially never really need the grapple beam at all (I don't even bother collecting it when I play).

Tutorials - I would disagree slightly that they're not effective. The shine-spark bird shows you step by step what to do. It runs-it crouches-it jumps. The trick is in noticing that. I would also say that the difficulty in wall-jumping in this game is really blown out of proportion. Yes it's a bit more in-depth than more modern wall jumps, which require nothing more than pressing into the wall and pressing a button, but even then it's not that hard. It takes a little practice, but its one of the easiest tricks in the game to do.

Progression items - I'm not sure I understand your complaint about missiles and power bombs. Most progression is locked behind getting certain items, and the coloured doors represent only three of those (Missiles, Super Missiles and Power Bombs), and two of them you get reasonably early on in the game. Most progression is behind getting bombs, new suits, beams, the space jump, screw attack, speed booster etc. I can agree that it's' a bit anti-climactic to reach an item and it's "just" a missile expansion if that's what you mean, but not every pick-up can be game-changing.

Back-tracking - I mean it's Metroid. It's all about the back-tracking and re-exploring spaces. But I can see where you are coming from to an extent. I know the game like the back of my hand so I know the fastest way to get wherever I want and I know how to manuever through all the rooms. A first time player won't have that.

Block-Hunting - Metroid has always had an element of this but I must say that I've never found it to be overly obtuse in Super. Certainly when re-playing Fusion a few weeks ago I found it far more guilty of this with completely unmarked blocks all over the place that you need to destroy to progress. I'm struggling to think where in Maridia you were talking about as it has a fairly linear path through to the boss.

Bosses - I can't say I agree that they're all just DPS races (Mother Brain aside). Kraid, Phantoon and Draygon all have different ways to fight them and all of them give you the chance to replenish health and ammo. Certainly you can just spam missiles at them and brute force your way through, but that would lead to less interesting fights. Ridley can be a DPS race certainly, but again if you know how to fight him it doesn't have to be like that. Even I still struggle with Ridley at times. Talking about Draygon specifically though, yes she does have that trick-kill with the grapple beam, but her normal kill isn't too difficult once you figure it out (I tend to crouch in the centre of the room sticking missiles into her, destroying the goo she shoots out, and then more missiles). Mother Brain is a DPS race though. You just need to get her health down to the point where she does her big rainbow beam attack before you drop before 3 e-tanks. Go below 3 and you lose.

Again, I can see a lot of these from the point of view of someone who's never played it before, so I get the criticisms. No-one is obligated to like the same stuff as me. Though they should be.

Super really is one of those game that gets better and better the more you play it and the more you learn it.

Honestly RKN I would suggest playing through it again with the knowledge that you've got now to see how you get on this time.

I can't really disagree with any of those criticisms, especially as you're playing it for the first time in 2021. The movement physics and control of Samus in Super are always one of the biggest blockers for me whenever I return to the game, for me it's just straight up bad. Fusion massively improved this area IMO.

I acknowledge that it wouldn’t exist without Super Metroid, but Gato Roboto is a better game.

[7]

The 7 at the end there felt generous if anything given the text!

Jezo wrote:For the space jump I think it relies too heavily on certain timings, like I think it's only active for certain frames after descending from a jump.

I found the space jump finicky too and never nailed down why. If I was using it to fly horizontally across a room that was generally ok, I think because the timing is easy to keep consistent, but using it to move upwards and gain height I'd struggle against seeming to vary in the height of each jump I was making and then losing the ability to jump any more without any apparent reason. The actual reason is probably similar to the problems I had with the spin jump.

Jezo wrote:The difference between a jump and spin jump, I believe, is just that a spin jump is when you jump during movement. i.e. you have to hold left or right first before jumping. It's incredibly strict, no leniency, so if you try to do both at the same time and happen to jump first, you get a regular jump, which is generally never what you want lol.

I worked out you need to moving for the spin jump, but even when I was moving I could swear that occasionally I would still perform a regular jump (and this would invariably not be what I wanted to do, and a problem if I was a trying to wall jump, screw attack or space jump). I think you're right that the input is very strict, I think partly I was doing what you suggest as a problem (trying to do both at the same time), partly releasing movement a fraction before jumping because I was already anticipating the air movement, and partly I think you will cancel out of spin jump (or space jump) mid-air if you press up or down on the d-pad, which I naturally want to do if I'm trying to jump up for example. If this isn't the case then I'm not sure what was causing my spin jumps to cancel in mid-air and it might be down to some loss of momentum which is even less clear to me.

Jezo wrote:Thought progression was overall fine tho, only got stuck at one part in the room before the grapple beam. You're just meant to run and jump basically over a large pit of lava, but I kept shine sparking instead, forgetting that regular jumps were a thing lol.

I did this too! I think the problem there is that part of the game comes after the forced shine spark tutorial, which feels more "advanced" than just jumping while dashing, and also just jumping while dashing isn't something that has been previously taught or required, so my brain immediately went to assuming I had to shine spark like the game had taught me. You get rewarded for this too if you shine spark upwards and get a missile upgrade, so it even feels correct after trying it, and I thought I was onto something because I worked out how to shine spark diagonally - it just wasn't giving me enough distance. I was then convinced I had to move with the shine spark charged and ready, as you can a little, or maybe jump and then shine spark horizontally (which I managed but wasn't actually sure the input for). Luckily I did then try just jumping!

Jezo wrote:And yeah, strawberry float the quicksand.

I'm glad I'm not the only one Getting constantly dragged down and having to tap jump wasn't so much the issue, but the inconsistent jump height I could get from the surface was. Most of the time I'd only manage small jumps, often not enough to get out, but then occasionally I'd just do a full normal height jump, and I have no idea what the difference was.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Controls

I didn't know you could use Y to cancel out of the weapon select and quickly get back to beam, that would have actually been really useful As for "Hold R" as an alternative in later games, that's what I'd heard as a change that probably addresses my complaint about cycling through, but on the other hand I did think R and L worked very well for diagonal aiming. Even if Y had been the cycle button that would have been much better, my main issue with it being select was that I couldn't cycle through while on the move as my thumb had to come off the d-pad to press select, so that's what made it feel most clunky, especially in the heat of the moment.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:I would also say that the difficulty in wall-jumping in this game is really blown out of proportion. Yes it's a bit more in-depth than more modern wall jumps, which require nothing more than pressing into the wall and pressing a button, but even then it's not that hard. It takes a little practice, but its one of the easiest tricks in the game to do.

Honestly, it took me forever. I actually thought of you specifically when I was trying and failing to learn the mechanic, thinking about my Mario Maker level with the bullet bill mask wall jumping and thinking it was insane you struggled so much with that and yet a game with this in it is your favourite of all time

The lack of feedback on execution or instruction in what input is required is the real killer. When I eventually got it (mostly) figured out was later on when trying to reach the spring ball, and the key trick was to release forward direction on the d-pad before hitting the wall, and then hit the wall with no input, and then press back direction on the d-pad, and then press jump. That lets me wall jump more (but not completely) reliably, but it took me a long time to figure out that chain of input. I might be wrong, but I think one of the problems I was having was that if you hit the wall while still moving towards it you won't be able to wall jump. I was naturally trying to change direction in one movement, so instantly switch from forward to back on the d-pad, and this would only rarely work - I think by chance of frame alignment, as in that case you probably have to be pretty frame perfect to change direction at the moment you are about to touch the wall, as obviously once you start pressing back direction if you haven't touched the wall yet you're going to start moving back away from it.

This was all compounded my my inconsistent experience with the spin jump, as you need to be spinning to wall jump, and I'd frequently when trying to learn to wall jump accidentally cancel out of the spin jump into a regular jump without really knowing how (see above reply to Jezo).

But really what I'd complain about is how it's just unnecessary to force the player to learn how to wall-jump or shine spark. Other than the forced tutorial moments you don't need these techniques to complete the game, it would have been better if the game just didn't require you to learn them at all. It doesn't need to dump a new player into inescapable pits just to teach them advanced techniques they don't need.

Cheeky Devlin wrote:I'm struggling to think where in Maridia you were talking about

After you blow open the pipe there is a long climb upwards and then a door through to the top left of a large room. That room has an exit top right you have to grapple across to, and through that door is a short vertical climb up to another area. Instead of going up to that area, there is a section of floor you have to shoot to progress. That's what I missed!

Jenuall wrote:The 7 at the end there felt generous if anything given the text!

An Orange 7 is like a 9

Tomous wrote:

Jenuall wrote:The 7 at the end there felt generous if anything given the text!

An Orange 7 is like a 9

I rate this game Hollow Knight out of Celeste

Hollow Knight is still the best Metroidvania I've played

Hollow Knight was good but I got strawberry floating bored