Post Mortem: Metroid Zero Mission

The problem with comparing sequels to their classic predecessors, some argue, is that there is no accounting for that initial sense of wonderment. Sequels can never match up to their classic originals because you can never recreate that sense of new-ness and awe you felt when you played the first classic. Comparing New Super Mario Bros. to Super Mario Bros. 3 is, thus, rather unfair. Even the best level design cannot mimic the joy of first finding the Tanooki suit in the ice world.

Metroid: Zero Mission, a 32-bit remake of the original Metroid, does not defy these expectations. And if the only thing that made Super Metroid so amazing was its undiscovered country, then we would have to admit that putting the remake in this classic study series is a bit mean-spirited and crotchety. There are differences between the games, however, that do not involve the ephemeral sixth sense of “the first time” at all, for what Zero Mission lacks is not a sense of freshness, but heart.

The Game Boy Advance remake is, in fact, quite dutiful in its painstaking mimicry of Super Metroid’s best bits. The soundtrack, undeniably classic, is elevated to its full glory, a bit strained on portable speakers but no less an improvement over the 1986 version. Similarly, the sprites have transformed from muddled boxes into recognizable and memorable foes. Finally, and thankfully, level design has been overhauled as well, leaving the repetitive corridors of the original Metroid behind in favor of varied, and more enjoyable, designs.

 

 

Yet for all of its faithfulness to the Super Metroid way, Zero Mission seems to miss the point. Its introduction of Chozo statues that mark Samus’ map with directions of where to explore next are helpful, but they also rob the player of the joy of discovery. This tendency to over-direct is compounded as the player nears special upgrade locations. Doors seal themselves off, and the player soon finds the only way to escape a narrow selection of corridors is to uncover the next item. When the item is finally found, the game pauses awkwardly to deliver a short, explanatory tutorial detailing how to use it. There are, of course, secrets, but even then they feel mandatory, particularly when the once-hidden Varia suit becomes necessary to progress.

It’s easy to blame this over-simplification of exploration on the contemporary tendency to make games easy. Generating negative emotions like frustration, confusion, or (worst of all) a sense of being lost is anathema to designers now, and there is often good reason for this. As free time shrinks for the aging video game playing demographic, the idea of wandering around aimlessly in a video game for hours is an increasingly unattractive prospect.

Yet Super Metroid, by contrast and whether by limitation or design, had a certain trust in both itself and the player. It did not go out of its way to obfuscate the correct path but let the level design speak for itself. Nor did it seem overly concerned if Samus missed an important item during her first pass through a room. After being lost long enough, she was sure to come back and had probably found an extra missile tank or two along the way. And in lieu of using non-interactive tutorials to explain game mechanics, Super Metroid simply put Samus in spaces that invited experimentation. The speed boots, for example, were found in a small room at the end of a long corridor filled with collapsing bricks. When Samus returned through the corridor with the boots, sprinting, possibly even by habit, she would discover the bricks now easily traversable. This is not to mention the friendly aliens either, who carefully taught Samus how to wall-jump and shinespark the only way aliens from another planet could: by example. Where Super Metroid showed, Zero Mission tells, and that makes a world of difference.

 

 

The remake also fails the coherency test by adding a second ending to the original game. This final sequence strips Samus of all of her powers and thrusts her into a new game mechanic: stealth. Like most stealth-action sequences in non-stealth-action games, this section stumbles horribly. Designers should be lauded for trying something new, and we must not make the Metroid cocktail of exploration/empowerment/action so sacred that the series cannot evolve, but capping a five-hour experience with an hour of something completely different smacks of set piece design rather than thoughtful renovation.

The appearance of Kraid in Zero Mission is telling. The original Kraid was barely larger than Samus herself, a far cry from the three-screens tall behemoth that would challenge her in Super Metroid. But Super Metroid did not change the story, because small Kraid made an appearance there as well. When Samus reaches the larger boss chamber, fans of the original quickly realize that, like the Zebes of old, the Kraid they knew was only an infant (perhaps literally) in comparison to what they would encounter now. The real Kraid, like the real Zebes, is a more daunting beast. In Zero Mission, though, Samus faces the newer version, and the designers appeared to have missed the point. The joy of discovering that there are in fact two Kraids is sacrificed for the sake of fan service. It was the larger Kraid that loomed over the Brinstar stages in Super Smash Bros., and so it is the larger Kraid that we get.

 

 

It’s not that Zero Mission is a bad game. In fact, it is quite good, and if R&D1’s only goal was to remake the original Metroid into something playable, then they quite satisfactorily succeeded. But as another development team sits down to create a new, more action-oriented Metroid game (Metroid: Other M), it is worth revisiting what made the Metroid series such a dear in the first place. Team Ninja, and the inevitable developers of the next side-scrolling Metroid, would do well to remember that the secret sauce was not “the first time,” but coherency and the joy of discovery. When we look back on the Game Boy era to remember the absolute best of its crop, it is unlikely that Zero Mission, a game that catered overmuch to directed experiences, will come to mind. Nearly every revisitation of eras that include the Super Nintendo, however, has something much different to say about a game that opened a door to players – and stopped there.

 

(Originally published at GameSnobs.com)