#9: Metroid: Samus Returns(3DS)

You know that episode of Seinfeld where George builds a cool little fort underneath his desk at work? Growing up that may have been my favorite plot arc ever in any Seinfeld episode because of my love for claustrophobic, snuggly spaces. I remember coming home from school the next day after that episode aired and my mom surprised me by building a small blanket fort in my closet. It was one of the most touching and creative ways she had ever showed her love for me. I spent hours in that tiny nest, reading Sonic the Hedgehog comics and John Bellairs novels underneath the warm glow of the dusty closet light bulb above me.

Even younger still, I remember a day that a friend of mine and I assembled a time capsule to bury in his front yard. It was filled with drawings and a paper with scribbles of predictions of what would happen in the future(I specifically recall thinking that the inevitable sequel to 'Donkey Kong Country' would be titled "Donkey Kong State", which, my adult mind wonders, why would they have gone backwards to a smaller, more localized area? child brains are weird and fascinating).

Once the capsule was assembled with our shitty drawings, video game predictions, and other-such half-baked mementoes, we were granted access to a shovel and began digging in the front yard. This was the part I was most excited for! I had never used a shovel at this point in my life before, and had often wondered why people weren't constantly digging holes and building networks of caves and tunnels beneath their houses. I often wondered why we had houses at all. After just a few minutes of digging, I quickly understood why. the shovel met resistance after just a couple shallow feet of digging as we hit some sort of pipe. My friend's father, supervising us, told us that it may have been the water line leading to the house, and that digging any further might not be the best idea. It was also much more...moist than i imagine, and earthworms littered the soil that we had dug up. The discovery of these water lines was traumatizing. There was no maze of tunnels and caves underneath the surface of the earth. Just a bunch of stupid pipes and other such human, practical bullshit.

I also remember trying to read "Journey to the Center of the Earth" at a young age. This was not only for my love of the subterranean, but also influenced by the namedrop of the author in Back to the Future part III. I thought to myself "If Doc Brown loves this dude so much he names his kids after him (BTTF3 spoilers) He must be a pretty solid-ass writer!" My attempt to read this book ended in miserable failure, perhaps because I was just a tad too young for it or perhaps it was because hollywood science fiction had already given me the expectation that science fiction should move at a quicker pace. If I ever happen to find myself ever reading again, I'd like to go back to it now that my brain is much larger.

After reading positive reviews of Super Metroid and watching a friend of mine play Metroid II on the school bus every single day for an entire schoolyear I decided to ask my mom to drive me to the video rental store so I could rent it. I wish I could say it was something I immediately fell in love with, but my aforementioned child brain was not yet equipped with the dexterity to beat even the first boss of the game, a hulking bird statue that comes to life. After a few attempts of trying to beat him I declared "Fuck this! This is too hard!" and hurled my controller at the ground in disgust. Trying to play video games but hitting performance walls that I simply could not scale at a young age was always a source of frustration for me. Thankfully, I had older brothers that could handle any video game-related feat of strength I requested of them, and I watched one of my brothers cruise through the entire game with ease while I got to soak in the beauty of Super Metroid's sprawling underground labyrinth without having to deal with the frustrations of playing the game myself. I ended up going back to it a year or two later having no problems with it, but it's never been a mystery to me why Twitch and video game streamers are so popular. Watching my brothers play through video games as a kid that were either too difficult or complicated to figure out was how I ingested the first few years of my video game education.

I had always wanted to go back to Metroid II. It was my white whale. I watched so many hours of it played on the school bus but this friend was notoriously stingy with his possessions and never let me try it despite frequent and pathetic pleading to do so. I picked the game up on the 3DS virtual console some 20 years later, only to realize that the game had aged considerably to the point that even someone like myself who has a genuine curiousity and a greater tolerance for older games than most, bounced off of it completely. "Some day," I'd say to myself. "but not today," as I shut the lid to my 3DS.

The original Game Boy Advance's nightmare of a non-backlit screen and tepid reception of Metroid Fusion kept me from ever trying the game, and my distaste for the slow pacing and first person platforming of the Metroid Prime series meant that it seemed like I was never going to be a Metroid fan despite enjoying the premise so much. Plus, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night added so much to the formula that it seemed that the genre that Metroid had created had already been outdone by it's peers. Nintendo seemingly was also more than happy to bury the franchise's 2d entries for well over a decade to focus on more lighthearted, family-friendly entertainment than Metroid's more isolating and subdued atmosphere.

So it was a pleasant surprise when Metroid: Samus Returns was released this year. Despite tragically releasing for the 3DS while the Switch takes over the world, it was great to finally play a brand new Metroid game by myself for the first time in my life. My only real complaint about the game being the platform it released on. This was in many ways the platform's swan song for me as nothing on the horizon looks particularly interesting and, as I try to play less video games in general, The 3DS's long line of life-swallowing JRPGs are just not what I want to play anymore.

Samus Returns however is a neat and tidy 10-12 hours long and never felt padded out. The design of progressing forward, seeing locations you can't get to, and then finding the power-up or item that allows you to progress further never ceases to satisfy me, combine that with stellar animations and a great collection of remixed tunes from the series I found myself enjoying this game much more than i had anticipated. I still do prefer Super Metroid's non-linearity to Samus Return's more straight-forward exploration, but the game still manages to scratch that exploration itch. I think I can finally consider a Metroid fan.