Let's talk about Another Metroid 2 Remake

There was a job opportunity and I finished up applying for it.  I had to stop all projects to work on the application.  It's a composer position and it's an extremely small chance, but I still took it anyways.  After I finished up, I went back to my own projects.  Shortly afterwards, I saw that Metroid had reached its 30th anniversary since its initial release on the Nintendo Famicom.

"Whoop-dee-doo, we've reached the 30th Anniversary and they're giving us Metroid Prime: Federation Force. I don't think it looks bad, but it feels like they slapped the Metroid brand on a project that would otherwise get no attention. We haven't had a proper Metroid game in 12 years and haven't had a spinoff in 6 years. I don't think this is the spinoff fans expected or wanted, but perhaps it has a chance to surprise us."

That was my initial reaction to the news (as posted on Facebook).  It has bothered me for the longest time that there were so many Mario and Zelda games still being made with even some Donkey Kong Country and Star Fox games released while the Metroid series has been mostly ignored by Nintendo.  Even on the anniversary, no mention or celebration was made by Nintendo.  It wasn't even used as a marketing ploy to bring interest to their upcoming game Metroid Prime: Federation Force.

Moments after seeing the news for the anniversary, I came across Another Metroid 2 Remake when I typed in "Metroid" in google.  I've played quite a few fan-made Metroid games and they mostly capture the controls of the game, but not the full gameplay.  The game looked interesting and I decided to download and try it out.  I have never finished the original Metroid 2 as I got stuck on the last boss and couldn't beat it.  I was thinking the game was going to be a graphics overhaul of the original game and didn't think there would be too much deviation from it.  Boy, was I wrong!

This trailer is about 3 years old and was possibly the only time I've heard about this project.  Back then, it was just a demo and I didn't feel like playing an unfinished game.  So I didn't think much of it.  But on the 30th anniversary, the game was fully released.  I was expecting the game to be short since it was a fan-made game.  What I got was a fully fleshed out Metroid experience that is nearly on par with the quality it would have been if Nintendo had created the game.  Much of the gameplay, visuals and design is influenced by Metroid Zero Mission, which was a remake of the very first Metroid game.  The basic world layout and concept of Metroid 2 is still there: Kill all the Metroids, move onto the next area.  Obviously, the first and most notable difference in the remake is how rich and nicer looking the graphics are.  The original Metroid 2 was released on the original Black and White gameboy which had a limited amount of technology and memory space to work with.  In terms of control and gameplay, it closely resembles Zero Mission as Metroid 2's controls were slower and floaty to compensate for the limited amount of screen space it had.  The only critique I personally have for the game is the audio.  Some of the sound effects feel like misplaced foley recordings and some of the arranged music from the original are a bit monotonous and boring.  It also doesn't capture the eerie and atmospheric experience that the original had, despite its limited capabilities.  Still, it wasn't enough to call it "bad", just not up to expectation.  Everything else is great though!  Enemies have a lot more movement and AI patterns, bosses are challenging and memorable, level designs and item placements are well thought out and teaches the player along the way without actually having them go through any tutorial.  It was so fun, in fact, that I played the game 5 times in a row!  I played Normal the first time with the attempt to do everything and collect all the items (couldn't, got 94%).  Then I played 2 more times to improve my time.  I was going to stop.  But then I played through the original Metroid 2 and was reminded on how difficult it was due to enemies dealing a lot of damage and save points being scarce and far apart from each other and it made me wonder if enemies would hurt as much as they did in the original if I played on Hard difficulty for the remake.  And so I played the game a 4th time on Hard difficulty (with all other runs on Normal, I didn't play Easy).  It was challenging and it definitely made boss battles that much more intense, but I think I enjoyed the game more on Normal.  I wanted to try the game on Normal one last time and try to finish it in 1.5 hours.  I ended my run at 1:42:50 with my previous fastest time at 1:57:36.  I was hoping to get a much faster time than that after skipping a boss fight and many miscellaneous items.  I'm satisfied now in terms of Another Metroid 2 Remake.  The fans didn't exactly get the 30th Anniversary celebration they wanted for Metroid, but the fan-made game will have to do.

By the way, a DMCA was issued to the site a day after it was released and they had to take down the downloads for it.  Sad but true.

I'm planning on revisiting all the other Metroid games other than the original since I already did that earlier this year.  Maybe I'll finally get around to actually playing Metroid Prime 3 and Other M.