Forum Overview :: Deleted Posts :: Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA)

[quote name="Voyons Donc"]I guess what happened is that after Nintendo rehabilitated the Metroid franchise with Prime for Gamecube and Fusion for GBA, they went back and looked at the earlier games. If you bust out the SNES emulator and play Super Metroid you'll find that it still holds up really well and is still enjoyable almost ten years after its release. Metroid for NES has aged so badly that it's basically unplayable. For example, you have to toggle between beam and missiles with the select button. After playing Super Metroid (which lets you switch between the different weapons with the shoulder buttons) and Fusion (in which you hold R to fire missiles so that you can alternate beam and missiles on the fly) you just can't go back. They must have realized that though those of us who played it remember Metroid One though a rose-colored haze of nostalgia, a sizable portion of their audience wasn't alive yet when the NES title came out, and that they had no memory of it and wouldn't be able to enjoy it on the off chance that they tried it using NESticle. They also must have realized that they could sell these kids a brand new Metroid while getting the over-25 crowd with the nostalgia angle. So they made Zero Mission, which is a remake and modernization of Metroid One. The game opens with a paragraph of introductory prologue text from Samus, in which she explains that this is the story of her first mission against the space pirates, which is apparently supposed to give us the impression that we're getting the true full story that we weren't prepared for back in 1986. Now it can be told! The level design is based on Metroid One and it more or less recreates the same series of worlds or levels, but it doesn't conform exactly to the original maps. For example, the area that looked like it was made of bubbles of green and red glass is reproduced pretty faithfully (I think that one's called Norfair), and the opening world (Brinstar) is as blue-gray and bland as you remember (first thing you do is go left and pick up the morph ball). There are some rooms that are absolutely identical, even to the extent that you'll remember which block you have to bomb to get the missile upgrade. The visual theme is some sort of a mid-'80s comic book deal. Samus' power suit is the original clunky yellow and red design instead of the rounded shoulders from the first Game Boy title and Super Metroid. The scrolling level backgrounds are extremely simple, often just two or three shades of the same color and black, and this produces an effect that reminds you of the NES game and old comic books like Rom the Silver Spaceknight. (Speaking of Rom, it just dawned on me that it was probably one of the major inspirations for Metroid. Rom had a power suit; Samus has a power suit. Rom had a gun that was part of his suit; Samus has a gun that's part of her suit. Rom had an x-ray scanner, Samus... had one in Super Metroid. Okay, maybe not.) Zero Mission brings in some of the items that were introduced later in the series like the dash that lets you break through some walls if you build up a head of steam, super missiles and bombs, and one item that lets you grab onto ledges and pull yourself up or jump off like you could in Fusion. The levels are altered from the original to account for all the new shit you GET EQUIP WITH. There's also at least one new area (the Chozo Ruins). There's no dialogue or mission briefings like in Fusion, but every so often when Samus finds a Chozo idol (the bird things that hold the items in little spheres) it'll give her a vision or hallucination of the general area where she needs to go next on the map, which eliminates the need to take notes like you had to with the NES game. There are also some animated cutscenes after big events like killing a boss, all done in a very '80s visual style. I haven't finished the game yet, but all indications are that it's pretty short. Think maybe five hours on your first playthrough. I'm about two and a half hours in and I'm about to fight Ripley, which I suppose is at least halfway through. This is traditional for the Metroid games, and your ultimate objective will probably be to finish it in under three hours so that you can see the best ending (ie. the smallest swimsuit). There's some kind of useless bullshit connectivity with Fusion, the previous GBA title. Supposedly you can link a GBA with Zero Mission to a GBA with Fusion and unlock some kind of gallery in ZM, probably of the pictures from the different endings from Fusion. Yeah, thanks Nintendo. I exchanged Fusion months ago after playing though it three times. The real bonus is that finishing the game unlocks the NES original in all its hideous glory, with a save feature so that it'll at least be feasible to attempt a playthrough. All of this is promised in the back of the manual. Can't wait. Anyway, it's good. You'll probably get the most out of it if you've played the NES game and can pick up on all the little references and retro touches. I'll probably play though it three times before exchanging it, never getting the best ending, which is exactly what I did with Fusion. By the way, the best reference to the NES original is at the title screen. The word "Metroid" is blue and it flashes red every couple of seconds, just like the title screen did back in 1986. [/quote]