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Samus Aran and her battle against the Metroids form one of Nintendo’s most iconic series – a franchise that has seen 17 releases throughout the company’s storied history – a beloved mainstay of everything from Gameboy to Super Nintendo, GameCube to Switch.
And yet – for all its critical acclaim and longevity – it exists in the shadow of its siblings – never finding the financial success enjoyed by Mario, Zelda or Pokémon and often disappearing into painful hibernation.
Today we’re going to be exploring this contradiction. How can a series run for four decades, define genres and platforms and yet constantly be on the cusp of extinction?
It’s part critique, part retrospective, part review and part history lesson – obviously full of spoilers and obviously full of my opinions
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Credit for the incredible thumbnail goes to the immensely talented – @MicahTheBrave
All media in this video is used for the purpose of review, commentary or criticism and is defined as fair use under US Copyright law.
=== Chapters ===
00:00:00 – An Icon of the Past (Introduction)
00:04:25 – Metroid
00:25:28 – Metroid II: Return of Samus
00:43:27 – Super Metroid
01:11:35 – Metroid Prime
01:42:05 – Metroid Fusion
02:06:51 – Metroid: Zero Mission
02:31:16 – Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
03:01:50 – Metroid Prime Pinball
03:11:42 – Metroid Prime Hunters
03:28:52 – Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
03:53:33 – Metroid Prime: Trilogy
04:03:55 – Metroid: Other M
04:32:10 – Metroid Prime: Federation Force
04:47:50 – Metroid: Samus Returns
05:13:05 – Metroid Dread
05:48:12 – Metroid Prime Remastered
05:59:26 – An Icon for the Future (Conclusion)
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#metroid #nintendo #retrospective
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1:08:20 Thank you for saving them!
So, I won't make it in three days, I'm sorry. I'm at Prime now, and loving it so far. Regarding Super Metroid, the Crystal Flash is also one of those hidden mechanics, like the Shine Spark. And I saw (if that's you who recorded the gameplay and if so; dude.. that hours upon hours) that you saved the animals!
I feel betrayed that you didn't save the animals in Super Metroid 🙁
ok ill prob update this comment as i watch, but there is a thing that kinda rubbed me the wrong way, and that is your comment on movement in prime 1. the most obvious reason why spacejump and speedbooster are cut out is because its a first person game, as it would be either very disorienting. hell, prime 3 had the screw attack back in and look how clunky it is! (i am not yet at the p3 section so mabe you cover it). movement is instead provided through the morphball and boostball, with the part before boostball itself as well as the key search in the endgame serving as prime (heh) opportunities to collect more health and missile upgrades. (also i didnt even like spacejump in super, it felt slow and clunky af and god help you if you miss a jump input). i should also add that while only tangentally relevant, primes map is really amazing for randomizers, second only to, suprisingly enough, fusion.
I would have redisigned the EMMI to be a single unit that hunts you across the whole map and isn't restricted to specific zones. It would be the Federation's crude attempt to make a robotic copy of Samus, so each time you get one power up from the world, you can use that to "steal" your other power ups from the EMMI
My only quibble was in saying the SNES handled more complex programming. Sure, compared to the NES, that's true, but the 65816 was by no means very powerful. The SNES had impressive hardware, but its CPU was never considered mindblowing even by SNES fans and was underwhelming as a 16-bit CPU (A lot of its design decisions were… let's just say WDC had a hard time letting go of 6502 limitations.), whereas the m68k was an absolute beast of a chip well into the 1990s.
Thank you for the entertainment on this Monday work day!
Thanks!
Samus' Metroid Suit looks fucking SICK and i will hear nothing else
Raven Beak is easily my most wanted new Smash character for the next game, he's so cool
thx for doing this <3
At 15:16, trance classic Mauro Picotto – Komodo starts playing, was this in the video you edited in or did you put it in yourself? Tune
Awww you shouldn't have! I didn't get you anything.. 😔
While watching this, I had drafted a long, thoughtful, eloquent comment to praise your excellent entry, but my dog barked and I lost all my upgrad- I mean, I lost all my work
Fastest 6 hours of my life, absolutely impeccable pacing
16:52
Small nitpicky detail but it's my own metaphorical hill – disoriented is the true and correct way to use that word.
This is up there with "irregardless".
Your Castlevania retrospective has been my go-to longform video this past year for everything from long road trips and walks to falling asleep. It's one of my all-time favorite video game franchises and I'm always shocked by just how much you put into it. However, there are quite a few Castlevania games that I could never get into, so I found myself skipping around during my many re-listens.
Metroid, on the other hand, is a franchise where even the bad games are still fascinating to me in their own right. So seeing you put the same love and care into dissecting my number one favorite video game series of all time is nothing short of an early Christmas miracle.
I hope you know just how many people appreciate what you do here, man. Thanks and keep up the stellar work.
One of my favorite series especially Super Metroid it's such a timeless masterpiece, amazing job once again.
Your videos are fantastic my man! You are the very definition of informative and soothing retrospectives. You have our gratitude for your time. 😊
1:07:02 The frame where Samus looks up at The Baby attack Mother Brain so as to save her life is such elegant storytelling. Samus, who has with singular focus, traversed an entire hostile alien planet, now finds herself distracted for the first time. She performs a subtle movement completely outside of the control of the player. She sees her Baby save her. We, the player, do not look up. She does. It’s love, fear, appreciation, and awe all in the reorganization of a few pixels.
Nintendo needs to swallow their pride and abandon the console market. If they ported their entire library to PC, their sales would skyrocket.
Sometimes it feels like I'm the only person who didn't hate Other M. In fairness, I'd never played the handheld or older games before Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii, but even as enamored as I was with Prime I still remember really enjoying OM and not really understanding the hate it got. It was linear, yeah, and the story was bad enough to be laughable in places, but I think people don't give the game's atmosphere enough credit, and I found the mystery of the little Ridley chick fairly interesting while it lasted (even if Samus' reaction felt incredibly weird and off when the big reveal happened).
Aside from the scanner mode bits that got shoehorned into combat, I remember it being one of the few games on the console that didn't frustrate me to no end with the wiimote wiggling gimmicks, and the postgame exploration was just so much fun to run around and blast through. I remember leaving a save there deliberately avoiding the ending just to have a way to run around and play with the combat across the ship.
It's far from a perfect game, and I do understand why it never took off… but I'm glad you at least gave it a fair shake rather than just let it sit in the fandoms corner of collective resentment. As always, another fantastic video that I look forward to probably re-listening to in the background far to many times.
Thank you for your work!
Now that I have a new slot for a favorite Youtuber, I think you're it!
Awesome, looking forward to watching this!
02:17:15 "Paint of coat" 😂😂
Otherwise you've outdone yourself my man! As always, quality research with an excellent presentational style
Just sat through all 6 hours and it felt like 3. I am excited for the future of the Metroid franchise and hope we enter a golden age. Its such a good IP with lots of potential still.
A beautiful video. I listened to the whole thing at work…except prime 2 and 3 as I have yet to play them. I was late to metroid but I was 8 when the nes came out so I played the og. But I went to sega genesis and n64 then Xbox. Only went back to Nintendo with switch and then I stumbled across a YouTube playthrough of super metroid and played it myself. I'm now a huge metroid fan and can't wait to play the rest of the primes and what ever the future holds for samus. Thank you for the awesome video!!!
My friends and I played SO much Hunters online…none of us much liked the single player game, but online multiplayer was so much fun.
Christmas came early boys
This was great I never played Metroid after Echos because I kind of hated the motion controls of the wii and I remember being super hyped for Another M but being put off by all the controversy it's pretty crazy how this series has grown and embedded itself in gaming history
Wreseaqui to hi pl😊
it is freaking insane for just long this video is. i love it. you deserve more subs
So this wasn’t mentioned, but it’s believed that one of the main reasons Team Ninja was approached to help make Other M was their close relationship with D-Rockets. They were used to working with them for the cinematic cutscenes in Ninja Gaiden it would kill two birds in one stone for the game they were making.
Now there is a question I’d like to ask you some people say Other M suffers from translation/localization issues. Others say that since Yoshio Sakamoto oversaw these aspects of the game this was his vision for Other M in the west. Where do you think the truth lies or is it something of a combination of the two? I’d really like to hear your thoughts on the matter.
I am so ready to watch this over three days and then rewatch it in a year.
On Fusion – so many people miss the fact that the X slowly *learn*. When you first encountered the ice X, they aggressively attack Samus. Once a few get absorbed, the rest of the ice X flee from her.
It's a hive mind that can process cause and effect.
Your videos are phenomenal. No other content creator can make a six hour video I would watch from start to finish. I'd love to see a retrospective on the Star Fox series.
YES!!! Metroid II gets way too much hate. It's aged a bit poorly, and it is a little more linear than other Metroid games, but it's such an isolating and atmospheric experience. Remains my favorite game in the series.
Absolutely love the video my friend, would love to see you do a lengthy retrospective of Metal Gear Solid…maybe one day 🙂 Enjoy your Holidays!
Someone else remembers battle realms.
I do want to mention, that Metroid dread is a bit more open, than it appears at a glance, there are a few intentional sequence breaks, most notably early gravity suit.
I have never fought Raven Beak with the space jump.
Finished this once, now time to listen to it another 5 times.
I Love your content
Just a small nitpick but nintendo does own a horror franchise(that they do nothing with) which is eternal darkness for the gamecube
This was an amazing retrospective video the quality of your content just keep getting better and better i'm honestly would be excited by an Legend of Zelda series video by you
I havent finished it, but so far its definitely a great video as always!
I tried to play the original nes metroid years ago. I was always getting lost and had to use a guide. Did you end up needing to use a guide for that one?
LEEEEEET'S GOOOOOOOO
absolutely loving the content
This kind of retrospective is always interesting to me, because as someone who grew up with the Prime games and has played them too many times to count, I am pretty damn entrenched in my views at this point; it’s interesting to see if a newcomer ends up in the same places I did. I love that both you and The Geek Critique ended up in the "Prime 1 is great, but y'all, PRIME 2 THO" camp. Echoes for life baby.
It's interesting that you preferred Echoes' endgame keyhunt more than Prime 1's; the consensus I've heard is that Prime 1's is better because you can start it fairly early and pick up the keys as you go, while Echoes' isn't available until the very end. But you make a really good point about Echoes' keys being hidden almost entirely in places you haven't been yet, meaning you pick them up as you fill out the map. It speaks to a difference in priorities; some people get to the keyhunt and go "ugh, I could have just gone straight to the final boss but instead I have to do all this, what a pace-killer," and you were like, "cool, I can do this while I fill out the map; filling out the map is what you're meant to do at this point."