I don't think you're allowed to say that anymore considering who you put in as president. The man literally could not stop crying about how everyone was so unfair to him, to this day even, as if being president is supposed to be easy.
Good job “fulfiling” your mission! Yeah when I was a kid you wrote a letter to Nintendo asking for help, and they’d send you tons of content. They mailed me a great 2-page map of Metroid and, once armed with that, I was beating Metroid without a sweat. Without that…. Good luck.
The round ball blockage at the opening has a purpose. Games that scrolled both left _and_ right were still an amnomally. It forces the player to go left early and see that screen scrolls that way as well.
I just beat it for the first time today and I agree, the ' mother brain ' boss is the most frustrating boss I have ever beaten. One thing that makes it a little easier to predict is there will never be more than 3 rings on screen at once......so when ya see a ring disappearing off screen, ya know another is just about to be spawned.
Freezing the rings makes things so much easier. As long as you pay attention to which rings are frozen and which rings thawed out, the battle shouldn't be too bad.
I kid you not, I recently beat Mother Brain with about 5 units of energy left. I had to jump VERY CAREFULLY from that room to the next one, for if I had fallen in the energy sapping liquid ( lava?) I would have died and had to do it again. Thankfully, the escape room you travel up in did not have any hazards or enemies that could have drained my remaining energy. Whew. Those rings did made it difficult to get good shots on Mother Brain. See you next mission! :)
I played this when it originally came out. Being "stuck" was part of the fun. This is where we learned how to grind and farm and it's carried us all the way through our gaming today. Who cares is we knew what to do. We learned to bomb everywhere and shoot each wall. We returned to the same spots over and over again. We knew it wasn't E.T. on Atari and appreciated that it was a difficult experience. Plus, playing late at night, finding new scary areas was just a great feeling. We felt like pioneers and adventurers in the safety of our own homes. It was fantastic!
You learned to grind from Metroid? I learned it from Final Fantasy and when I played Metroid afterwards, I was mostly just flustered and frustrated that a side-scrolling shooter (which is what I thought of it as both because I was a stupid child and the genre hadn't been fully codified yet) wanted me to drop all of my progress to murder stuff coming out of a warp pipe over and over.
@@CoralCopperHeadGrinding by doing the same thing over and over and over again until I got the jumps right. Starting over GRINDING my way back to that spot. Metroid was brutal for a 6/7 year old. I never got into FF . Even to this day I'm not a fan of the turn based rpg. I do love to watch someone else play FF, the visuals and graphics got AMAZING over the years.
@@mrsynister666 I beat it in grade 4. I now realize only when we were kids did we have the patience to grind for days with no progress of finding secret spots. As an adult we don’t have that patience anymore. And modern kids even worse. I recently played it again, only got halfway before quitting and saying to myself “well I beat it as a kid with no guide. So I don’t have to struggle if I don’t want”. I don’t think games from 80s difficulty can ever be remade because the awe and wonder of a video game is not there anymore. Heck I get bored within 5 min now of a modern game if it doesn’t keep me entertained every second.
@@gary7181 I'm smiling as im reading your post because, I've downloaded basically all of my childhood games on my phone with an emulator (they're small!!). I use a PS4 controller and play. Honestly, 5 min is all I can take! You're right. It's NOT the same, But the music is what really gives me the memories. That's why I keep them. What's sad is that I WANT the magic and awe that I used to find in games and I haven't found a game since Gears of war, that gives me that.
I’m sure it was mentioned before but Ridley’s pattern is determined randomly when you enter the room, and sometimes his attacks will overshoot your safe space in front of him, other times, his attacks will land in front of him and block your missiles making his fight more aggravating
@@milddiffuse if you play it multiple times it could be cool because you expect one type of fight and could get something very different from expectations. I know when I played i got the harder fight so I felt like I earned something. Guess it was the best they could do at the time
It’s actually a crapshoot whether or not you’re going to get lucky enough to have a space where you can stand without even getting hit. If you’ve got several energy tanks and you fight this boss when you have the wave beam. You can stand underneath of it, and jump up out of the lava while shooting the Boss from underneath. In any case is much more difficult to defeat, depending on what happens when you first come against him a.k.a. standing and not getting hit.🤓
Great stuff, it’s good to see new players actually giving the OG Metroid a shot. The series really is more compelling when you get to experience the games chronologically. Can’t wait to see you tackle 2 and 3.
It was a neighborhood event when I was a kid when Jason, the kid who owned the game, FINALLY got to Mother Brain. We packed his living room and all watched with abated breath when he finally beat the game. Cheers and high-fives all around!
The TH-cam algorithm blessed me with finding this budding channel which is making Metroid content, so I'm eager to see your growth and wish you luck! Always glad to see a new entry to the metroid club, and just in time for Dread!
I have to say, thank you very much for giving this game a fair shake! I've seen so many reviews of Metroid from people under 30 who outright refuse to even try to understand this game for what it is, and what its place and significance was in the annals of video game history. I was very pleased to see that you played all the way through (twice!) and that you were honest about what's good, what's bad, and what's ugly about this game. I don't expect people to like the original Metroid (compared to the original Zelda, Mario, Kid Icarus, etc., it doesn't hold up nearly as well), but I expect a fair and honest review, and that's what you've done here. Good job!
By the way, when I played this game all the way back in 1986, I called the red rings "hot Cheerios". When you freeze them, they become cold Cheerios, which are much more pleasant to eat, of course. That's their canon name in my head for all time, lol. Oh, and they make a reappearance in Metroid Dread, which I love!
Thanks a bunch! I definitely held that feeling that I was behind everyone when I started but a lot of people have been incredibly sweet with their words about my editing, that I implore anyone to start and that if I can do it anyone can!
Even as a kid in the 80s, I still needed a simple Nintendo Power magazine map to help me beat this game. But even with all of the issues, I still loved this game.
There's two ways I've seen that you can deal with Kraid. With the Wave Beam, you can somewhat keep your distance and fire at him, the wave pattern is likely to hit Kraid's head if you're slightly above his level. This works especially if Kraid is using his shorter throwing distance, but it takes some time. With the Ice Beam, if you can freeze the center spike in such a way that you have a clean shot at Kraid's stomach, you can spam your weapon at point blank and he'll struggle to retaliate. Of course, this is a bit tricky. As for Ridley, if he's using the farther throwing distance you can cheap him out. If he's using the shorter distance, the Ice Beam can freeze the entire volley, at which point his fire is merely a platform for you to pelt his face with missiles. Alternatively, I believe the Varia suit lets you get behind him and cheap him out with the Wave Beam. And Mother Brain, yeah you pretty much summed it up. There's a trick you can use throughout the game to reach some secrets or avoid damage. When you're in ball form while in mid-air, and press up to unroll, Samus can jump in mid-air as long as she's not moving left or right. Hire me, 80's Nintendo guide people
hm, I used to use bombs on Kraig. took a shitload of damage myself, (or I'd just, as I heard somewhere, "Stand so that your gun penetrates his body," and just shoot" (I think that was in Nintendo Power,) but you could always get the extra E tank there after.
I remember playing it for the first time back in 1987 when I was only 7. It took me months to beat the game. There was a Nintendo guide back then, but I didn't know about it. So I had to grind my way to beat the game. Good times 😅
That's why I decided to play Zero Mission instead. Battery-backed saving, no restarting with empty tanks, restoring your health and ammo at save points and the map room tells you where you need to go. Great job beating the OG version!!
This was a great video! It brought back a lot of memories and I had a good laugh at the struggles I also encountered, including dying a lot, back in the day. What I can proudly say about Metroid on the NES is that I beat it without any guides or cheats. As I previously mentioned, it involved dying a lot and a lot of exploration and memorization. It was the first game I ever beat on the NES and it will always hold a special place in my childhood memories for that reason. I fittingly make homage to it in my home game room with a Metroid display.
I had such a good time watching this, recalling every ounce of your frustration from when I played this back in the 80's. I must say, this really is "the best way" to play it. Unlike modern guides, which tell you EVERYTHING, this classic guide is only that: a guide. You still have to figure things out on your own; you still have to experiment and guess and strive to get good. And quite frankly, that's what makes this game fun and rewarding. Beating it is a genuine accomplishment, and the more someone holds your hand, the less you accomplish. I get that this formula doesn't work with today's audiences, and not everyone is going to want to play this game "the right way." But I commend you for doing so!
The problem isn't the formula you're describing. The problem is the fact that the formula is being placed on an oldass NES game with horribly clunky mechanics. That and the lack of a map does not make this game more "difficult" in any genuine sense of the word, it just makes it obnoxiously tedious to navigate. This is a problem with most if not all early games though, and Metroid was still a lot better than the bulk of them - plus there are some aspects of it that are genuinely difficult in very fair, skill-oriented ways. But if you want to talk about playing this game "the right way," there's no map and no guide included with the game because that is your intended experience. You're not supposed to know where you're going, you're not supposed to know where anything is or how anything works. And that is painful design, especially when the game is visually repetitive, frequently misleading on purpose, and overall incredibly difficult to navigate without a map. So in consideration of that, for anyone who doesn't want to spend literal years mapping out, exploring, and memorizing the entire game on their own, I would say "the right way" to play a janky-ass old game like this is whatever way you want. It has nothing to do with the audience. You can ask people who got this game when it came out and they'll tell you it took them 10-20 years to beat it, and not because of genuine points of skill-oriented difficulty. It's just obscenely tedious to navigate and the game has very unsatisfying outdated and inconsistent mechanics. Using an external source for a map is pretty much the bare minimum requirement for actually enjoying this game unless you genuinely enjoy the process of being lost and confused for hours and hours on end with very little progress. I'm not trying to say this game is horrible or anything; by all means, it was fantastic for its time. However, I feel like everything you said would apply better to future games in the series as future technology enabled them to have much better mechanics and much cleaner visual representation of things like in-game hints toward objects/places of interest. The technology of the NES simply did not enable this game to convey all of what it wanted to, leaving it as more of a confusing experience than a difficult one. And frankly, the addition of the crouch mechanic alone makes future Metroid games infinitely less aggravating to play (mainly because it enables you to shoot enemies that simply aren't tall enough to hit in the original and require tedious constant morph bombing to deal with). Just look at Zero Mission, which in most regards is a very faithful remake of the original game, just... with a lot of the jank removed or at least polished up. Or even Super Metroid, which while technically being a sequel and not a remake, is in many ways a carbon copy of the original Metroid's design with major improvements.
Last year I was finally forced to sell all my childhood Nintendo Power Player’s Guides mostly from SNES, N64, and GameCube era and at least one of them from the 2000s was also a guide for the original Metroid. Not sure if it was Metroid Prime, Metroid Fusion, or Metroid Zero Mission, but they included the original Metroid in the guide since it was unlockable with those later games.
Hey, the TH-cam algorithm just pushed this to me today, and I wanted to add to the comments here letting you know what a great job you’ve done and to keep it up! Your personality and humor really shines through. You really have a path forward in making these kinds of videos. I’ve subscribed and am looking forward to seeing more!
Ok, it is a normal day, I, a Chinese 25 years old man just purchased Metroid Prime. He felt guilty for his incomplete of Metroid Dread. So he wanna we some videos as his expiation. And he find this great content. Really Great content! You should have 10 times more subs!
After warching your zero mission video, I like your narration style and I've now watched almost every video you've ever done. You, sir, have earned another subscriber! Keep up the great work and i look forward to a video featuring metroid dread.
As someone who has only player super metroid, when i clicked on this everything looked so wrong. It doesn’t have to be stated how well that game has been received. After watching this, it really puts into perspective why it was such a massive hit on release, it just broke the mold. Every action was rewarding, all pieces of knowledge you get as you progress count in your mind to help when you backtrack, the mechanics are rewarding to learn and master, plus on too of excellent gameplay its the most immersive 16 bit game (I’ve experienced) of all time. With minimal colors and sounds, super metroid actually creeps you out and makes you feel alone and isolated. Thanks for showing how the franchise started, it’s really cool in retrospect
oh, I love this. you had such a classic experience with the game! and going through it a second time, faster, better than before, is really the spice of the older metroids... I grew up reading my brother's nintendo powers and the really awkward way they spelled out how to play was such a special thing, I'm glad that resonates with others, too.
My dad beat this game without a guide (we didn't even know about guides at the time) when I was a kid. He painstakingly mapped out most of the game with detailed notes (which he couldn't actually read, but the map was still good). He and a friend would tag team it, but he would get frustrated with the friend who would pick up every energy ball and missile reload even if he was full. Years later, I beat it myself (again, without a guide). It was very... well, let's just say I spent many stressful hours playing it that could have been better spent. I'm proud of beating it, but I have no desire to ever play it again. I greatly preferred the SNES sequel. Save features, a built in map, little tutorials scattered around (enacted by cute little aliens). Definitely a better game overall. Thanks for the nostalgia though!
watched this without even looking at the views or subs on your channel and IMMEDIATELY thought you were one of those top-tier video game reviewers. content is incredible. i hope you grow more homie :3
Wow, I'm super flattered that you thought so highly of my content 😄 very fortunate to have you watching my stuff and thank you for the kind words my guy!
I can't believe that I actually beat this game without a guide. It took me a long time and many instances of retyping passwords but I did do it as a kid. I nowhere near got all the items though.
My friends used to draw naps in the diet of the baseball field during recess when we’d discuss this game back in the day. I don’t think any of us ever came close to actually beating it back then though. I’ve beaten it a few times now, but I definitely don’t play through it without referencing a map from now on.
I remember my mom bought my sister a Nintendo and it came with the guide for Metroid. I was only 8 and completely stuck but when I got the guide I was finally able to finish the game.
I beat the game on GBA when it was released as part of the NES classic collection. I mindlessly wandered the game for 1 month before finally beating it. I never found the wave beam but I can without a doubt still beat the game pretty quickly without a map. Wandering the mazes for a month really makes you remember where the key items are.
Awesome production value. Your channel will take off soon, as it should, and I'm here before 1k to see it all! Btw, Super Metroid is my favorite game of all time. I've literally played through it at least 20 times and know every nook and cranny.
I first played 'Metroid' on the Virtual Console when I was a pre-teen. I remember it being very hard to get into the first time around; it was brutally hard, there was no map of any kind, and I got confused on where I was supposed to go next. It, however, didn't take long to get a better sense of what the goal is, in addition to gradually handling the high difficulty with ease. Generally speaking, I don't find the experience to be entirely cryptic. A couple of those Brinstar bridges for example generally have enemies that you can't engage with, which makes for curiously designed rooms; why would there be enemies you can't kill? So it soon became easy to figure out I needed to bomb the floor in order to get through, and I quickly discovered both an ice beam and that pointless paranoia-inducing trap. Even during the most cryptic parts, I managed to beat the game without any outside help, though it did take me a long time to beat the game. I'm an adult now, and 'Metroid' looking back is kind of a bad game. Graphics are boring and repetitive a lot of the time, and the poor signifying of critical pathways can quickly result in the player with little patience for such nonsense feeling motivated to look for outside help. The main problem is that the level design, barring the majority of Brinstar, is poor at best and quite frankly terrible at worst. It mostly boils down to haphazardly arranged and constantly recycled rooms with uninteresting platforming and frustrating enemy encounters, not helped by the dodgy play control that isn't responsive a lot of the time. Even Brinstar has its severe design hiccups, such as the aforementioned trap that needlessly punishes exploration, as well as being able to go to Norfair without the bombs which does nothing but create a frustrating roadblock that needlessly adds confusion to the already confusing and tedious exploration. Couple that with the lack of recharge stations for health and ammo, and you have a frustrating endurance test. Probably one of the worst cases of first game syndrome out there.
Your video randomly appeared in my recommended and I must say, I'm very impressed! You articulate your thoughts very well and in turn makes for a very interesting video! Will be subbing!
Thank you so much for the kind words! The next few entries will likely be in a more analytical approach so hopefully I can get across my points well there too :)
Metroid was the first truly scary game and in some ways it's still among the scariest games. The sound, music, and lack of music is still maybe the best that it's ever been done.
loved your video! really refreshing to see those appreciate and give a chance to nestroid. gonna subscribe and look forward to see you trying more metroid!
I was able to beat Metroid in the summer of 1988. I got it for my 10th birthday in June, and I eventually beat it in August. No guide. I didn't get a guide with Metroid maps until 1989.
I beat this when I was a kid, when it first came out. I didn't have a guide. it took me forever to memorize all the areas and find all the hidden power-ups. I didn't even know there were different ending according to your finish time, until years later.
Great Video! One odd quirk about the NES version of Metroid compared to its original Famicom Disk System release in Japan, is how it handles random enemy patterns. In short; it doesn't. When you first turn the NES version on, it picks one value for each action that's meant to be random (How high those enemies jump out of the lava, Kraid and Ridley's attack patterns, etc), and just uses that one state until the game is reset. So, on the original version Ridley there would have alternated between two attack patterns, one of which may not have left that area right next to him safe, but on the NES version it can just happen to land on that one pattern and he just repeats it forever. You also got to save the game on the original instead of a password because it was on a proprietary floppy disk, and I believe you're given 1-2 extra hours to achieve the "best ending". Heck it even makes use of the FDS's extra sound channel. Would have been cool to see Nintendo "localize" the FDS version on the Nintendo Online Collection to make it just a little more accessible, but I guess in the end the point was serving nostalgia for each region.
My personal opinion, Super Metroid got everything right that Metroid failed. I haven't played ALL of them but the ones I have played? Super Metroid is without question, the BEST Metroid in the franchise!
Options were limited back in this day of gaming. You spent $60 on this game and by God you were going to beat it! I spent a lot of time on this game, writing passwords down and such. Problem solving is what this game is all about, along with the sense of achievement that comes with it. Imagine spending hours trying to get to and beat the final boss and finally feeling the sense of relief that follows, only to discover you have to climb you way to safety before the whole place self destructs. High anxiety! We need more games like this!
I know you joke about the round ball tip but I let some kids borrow the game in exchange for Simon's Quest back in the day and they couldn't figure it out. They came to me for help and said they got stuck in this room after they got the "key", which was round ball.
I am still confused that the Wave Beam was completely useless. You couldn't combine it with Ice Beam that was necessary in many sections to freeze enemies to platforms. So the Wave Beam was brutally hard to find and it turned out that it killed your freeze capabilities. That was a pretty bad design decision by Nintendo. Luckily, they introduced the Beam combination capability at Super Metroid.
First video I've watched by you, solid stuff. Having played Metroid a few times both as a kid and as an adult, I pretty much agree with everything you said.
8:05 If it helps, this is just a consequence of Metroid's limited cartridge space and how the map layout is programmed. This happens because this item room is a copy of another item room that does use that secret to access a hidden passage.
yeah, top game in my book. by far best NES game. The music alone is unprecedented and unmatched in eeriness. It is beatable without the guide but takes the foreknowledge of powerups available and game mechanics such as breaking walls and hidden stuff. it is very much a maze which is kinda what motherbrain would want to keep her lack of ass safe, so I did it with pencil and paper and blockcounting (the latter part very loosely). fortunately, the doors don't warp you, it is topographically nicely organized. but all of your pain, we have as a community collectively shared. : D
One aspect of Metroid that I think is more forgiving than its contemporaries is that you can't really fall to your death in the game. In an era where landing in lava, on spikes, or just off the bottom of the screen was almost universally an instant death, Metroid allowed you to claw your way back up. There's no fall damage, either. The game arguably makes jumping into a pit rewarding and fun.
I never beat this game without a password as a kid. A lot of the play time probably is taken up by just bombing/shooting random floors and walls and then just getting lost in the samey looking areas. The fact that the official players guide, guides you into a pit you can't leave unless you bug your way out (you should have the high jump) or luring the flying enemy into the top area is a speedrunners exploit too. People say this game didn't "age well", but I'd say it wasn't that great at the start... it had potential kind of like Street Fighter 1. They would perfect clueing the player in better in Super Metroid. The crunch and inexperience of the dev team really shows in Metroid 1.
Back in the day, you're not supposed to beat the game in one sitting. You're supposed to take days or even weeks to beat it. Hence, the high difficulty, hence the password system.
We played Zelda on and off on weekends for almost a year before we figured out where level 7 was. I beat Metroid as a kid, with no guide, and it took months.
Honestly the obtuse and weird design is a big part of the charm to me, despite the occasional frustration. Between the design quirks, punishing difficulty, and creepy minimalistic aesthetic, there's something incredibly alien about the original Metroid that's wholly unique (even to other Metroid games). You feel like you're fighting a world that wasn't meant to be beaten, and yet you still figure out how to overcome it anyway. The only other game I've played that came close to replicating this feeling is probably Dark Souls.
I think you hit the nail on the head! I was speaking to a friend about this video a few days after it was released (he has a degree in game design) and he said something to the effect that while I/maybe newer players find the game frustrating, people back in the day just got 'lost.' As philosophy and approach to game design was different on a generational level, it makes Metroid something I truly hadn't played anything like before it!
I tried to complete this game by myself recently... Draw the map... Ended up completely stuck and frustrated. When I finally gave up and watched a video using the fucking enemy to reach the upper platform you mention I got convinced this was not meant to be done by an individual on its own. Now that you mention there is a official guide for it (which I was not aware of) it suddenly makes much more sense. Anyway, I completed the game watching a longplay everytime I was stuck again. It removes a part of the fun, but honestly I had lost my patience after this.
Honestly Metroid on NES is one of my absolute favorite Metroids. No showing you the way or a pseudo linear gameplay like the rest (besides Super and Prime 1), no making it too easy with 100% Items. I like it so much that I'm making a Roguevania on the Gameboy Color more based on the classic Metroid gameplay. Nearly completely open (not many progression locks), only enemies that will at some point become risiculously hard so that one is forced to git gud or find some items.
Ahh I'm very flattered! 3 months ago I was stuck on 22-23 subscribers for the better part of a few weeks with hopes to get 100 subscribers by the end of the year, so the fact I have 200 subscribers now before the end of August is absolutely humbling and unreal to me - but I very much appreciate you think I still deserve more!
I've seen it done a few times! MysteryOre coined the concept w/ a Minecraft guide, and a Pokemon TH-camr Papasea has done it for a few Pokemon games. I've been thinking of doing it for the OG Zelda in the future, think it'd be a lot of fun
Two tidbits about comments you made. The first thing is how easy Ridley is. I remember being really confused as a kid when Super Metroid came out, and Ridley was the big bad guy (and continued to be so throughout the series) since Kraid is a much more difficult and cooler boss in the original NES. Turns out that the difficulty (or lack thereof) is due to being ported from the Famicom disk system to the NES. The Famicom was able to generate random numbers on the fly, whereas the NES cannot. So, on the original, he'd alternate between close up shots and far away shots. You can't camp under his arch of fireballs and just blast away, since he'd easily hit you there. On the NES, it only picks one shot pattern when you enter the room and stays that way. Also, for Mother Brain, for some reason Nintendo of America decided that she wasn't difficult enough on the Japanese version. So, they made her harder by only having a small portion of her glass tank be able to be destroyed. So you have a 1x1 block to shoot through to hit her. On the Japanese version, the whole front of the tank blows off, making her MUCH easier to hit. So, blame NoA for that one.
Thank you so much for the kind words! Funnily enough today I was hired to be a TH-camr's editor, so I'm hoping in doing that it can help improve my content here by practicing more :) thanks once again!
Gotta remember that Nintendo was just figuring out the idea of a long-form “action-adventure” game at this point. As you note, most games prior to this were just about piling up a bunch of points before you died, not about exploring and gradually making progress. Stuff like the original Metroid and Zelda games have their issues because the designers were truly inventing something new. They’d improve upon the details later, but back then part of the fun was sharing tips and secrets with your friends on the playground. That (and strategy guides) is how everyone really learned how to play. Games like that were a revelation in the 80s.
Great video. I agree it is way too cryptic. I never would have beaten it without a walkthrough. And had to look up a Strat for motherbrain room outside of the walkthrough. It just seems that was the way things were in that era of gaming. Friends sharing secrets they learned playing together, like where the warp whistles were in Mario 3 or overworks heart containers in Zelda. I didn’t have a guide and never would have guessed how to find them, but some learned it and then shared it with me.
See, the expectation back then is that you’d make your own map… but _fuuuuuuck_ that! I didn’t use a map when I finally beat this game, but that’s only because Zero Mission has the same layout and I’d just played that enough to memorize where I needed to go. lol
Ridley can send the fireballs in a short or long pattern. If the lava enemies jumping up to the top of the screen heading towards the boss, you will get short range fireballs. I prefer the screw-attack to kill him either way.
Beat it when it first came out, on the FAMICOM, which meant every restart puts you at Brinstar. Every time I got stuck, I would shoot and bomb EVERYWHERE until something happened. That was part of the challenge, and part of the discovery. And yes I used the freeze beam on that enemy to get the varia suit. You have to lure it to fly up the column first, which is already hard enough. I don't even know how many hours it took me to beat this game... Games back then were definitely harder than games these days.
I played this as a child back in the 80's. It was difficult, but it was a different era in gaming for a kid. It took MONTHS of learning, memorization, etc. I had no guides, I made some rough "maps", and once I had a passcode from getting nearly every missile and E-tank, confronting Mother Brain was just a "let's hope it works" thing. If I died, it wasn't a big deal except for having to grind for full energy replenishment. THAT definitely sucked, so... I always saved the hidden e-tank near the beginning (ceiling tile near the giant block of purple fuzz tiles). That way, I'd begin the game with my (legitimate) code, grab the tank for a full refill, and head to the Metroid zone with M Brain. Piece of cake.
I played this on the Metroid: Zero Mission GBA cart and on Metroid Prime. I liked it but it was definitely more difficult than the later Metroids I played.
Metroid was already old when it came here in the states. Try out some of the hacks. They've made it so you can start with full life when you die, have a built in map like all the newer releases, and have multiple weapons stack on each other. It's amazing what the hacking community has done over the decades.
It's a tough game your first time through for sure. thinking back on it, I have no idea how me or anyone else beat this game back in the 80's with no internet or walkthroughs. I got Metroid at a garage sale in 1988 without even the manual and still managed to beat it. Probably took me 20 hours and 100 deaths but 8 year old me thought I was a GAMING GOD that day lol.
Ah thank you so much mate! I appreciate the kind words :) Won't spoil too much on it now, but the script for the video is done! Will try and find the time to get it finished, the next few weeks could be a bit busier but will aim to get it out by the end of August. It's a special one!
Great video! And yes, if you want to play this game, USE A GUIDE. It makes the game not only playable, but really enjoyable! I loved my experience with this game. If you're feeling really adventurous, look up a guide of how to beat the game in under one hour for the best ending. A very satisfying moment if you pull it off.
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You must be a liberal. They cry about hard games
Bruh this is the most American comment I've received that I think it might've bombed a children's hospital
If you had literally ANY understanding of the word "liberal" you'd know it's not an insult. 🙄😒🤦♂️
You must be a Republican, because you make this your entire personality.
Shave that rat off your head before you criticize anyone else. My god you look like a used toilet wand.
I don't think you're allowed to say that anymore considering who you put in as president. The man literally could not stop crying about how everyone was so unfair to him, to this day even, as if being president is supposed to be easy.
Good job “fulfiling” your mission!
Yeah when I was a kid you wrote a letter to Nintendo asking for help, and they’d send you tons of content. They mailed me a great 2-page map of Metroid and, once armed with that, I was beating Metroid without a sweat. Without that…. Good luck.
Oh that's awesome! Genuinely such a cool thing to have and for them to do
I love how you siad "thanks to the soundtrack and graphics" when you wer in the room where the song just beeps.
The round ball blockage at the opening has a purpose. Games that scrolled both left _and_ right were still an amnomally. It forces the player to go left early and see that screen scrolls that way as well.
I beat Metroid as a child, and I’m talking when I was 9. I wouldn’t have thought anyone would need a guide.
I tried to wipe the dust off my phone screen like three times before I realized that it was a background of stars lol
I just beat it for the first time today and I agree, the ' mother brain ' boss is the most frustrating boss I have ever beaten. One thing that makes it a little easier to predict is there will never be more than 3 rings on screen at once......so when ya see a ring disappearing off screen, ya know another is just about to be spawned.
Freezing the rings makes things so much easier. As long as you pay attention to which rings are frozen and which rings thawed out, the battle shouldn't be too bad.
I kid you not, I recently beat Mother Brain with about 5 units of energy left. I had to jump VERY CAREFULLY from that room to the next one, for if I had fallen in the energy sapping liquid ( lava?) I would have died and had to do it again.
Thankfully, the escape room you travel up in did not have any hazards or enemies that could have drained my remaining energy. Whew.
Those rings did made it difficult to get good shots on Mother Brain.
See you next mission! :)
*RINKA
Just freeze the rings
@@matteldred4949 Yeah thats a more 'refined ' way of doing it. I just make sure Ive got plenty health and just 'power' my way though it.
I played this when it originally came out. Being "stuck" was part of the fun. This is where we learned how to grind and farm and it's carried us all the way through our gaming today. Who cares is we knew what to do. We learned to bomb everywhere and shoot each wall. We returned to the same spots over and over again. We knew it wasn't E.T. on Atari and appreciated that it was a difficult experience. Plus, playing late at night, finding new scary areas was just a great feeling. We felt like pioneers and adventurers in the safety of our own homes. It was fantastic!
between Zelda, Metroid and Ghosts and Goblins I had MANY sleepless night grinding.
You learned to grind from Metroid? I learned it from Final Fantasy and when I played Metroid afterwards, I was mostly just flustered and frustrated that a side-scrolling shooter (which is what I thought of it as both because I was a stupid child and the genre hadn't been fully codified yet) wanted me to drop all of my progress to murder stuff coming out of a warp pipe over and over.
@@CoralCopperHeadGrinding by doing the same thing over and over and over again until I got the jumps right. Starting over GRINDING my way back to that spot. Metroid was brutal for a 6/7 year old. I never got into FF . Even to this day I'm not a fan of the turn based rpg. I do love to watch someone else play FF, the visuals and graphics got AMAZING over the years.
@@mrsynister666 I beat it in grade 4. I now realize only when we were kids did we have the patience to grind for days with no progress of finding secret spots. As an adult we don’t have that patience anymore. And modern kids even worse. I recently played it again, only got halfway before quitting and saying to myself “well I beat it as a kid with no guide. So I don’t have to struggle if I don’t want”.
I don’t think games from 80s difficulty can ever be remade because the awe and wonder of a video game is not there anymore.
Heck I get bored within 5 min now of a modern game if it doesn’t keep me entertained every second.
@@gary7181 I'm smiling as im reading your post because, I've downloaded basically all of my childhood games on my phone with an emulator (they're small!!). I use a PS4 controller and play. Honestly, 5 min is all I can take! You're right. It's NOT the same, But the music is what really gives me the memories. That's why I keep them.
What's sad is that I WANT the magic and awe that I used to find in games and I haven't found a game since Gears of war, that gives me that.
I’m sure it was mentioned before but Ridley’s pattern is determined randomly when you enter the room, and sometimes his attacks will overshoot your safe space in front of him, other times, his attacks will land in front of him and block your missiles making his fight more aggravating
oh what really, that's either really cool or kinda stupid
@@milddiffuse if you play it multiple times it could be cool because you expect one type of fight and could get something very different from expectations. I know when I played i got the harder fight so I felt like I earned something. Guess it was the best they could do at the time
It’s actually a crapshoot whether or not you’re going to get lucky enough to have a space where you can stand without even getting hit. If you’ve got several energy tanks and you fight this boss when you have the wave beam. You can stand underneath of it, and jump up out of the lava while shooting the Boss from underneath. In any case is much more difficult to defeat, depending on what happens when you first come against him a.k.a. standing and not getting hit.🤓
Great stuff, it’s good to see new players actually giving the OG Metroid a shot. The series really is more compelling when you get to experience the games chronologically. Can’t wait to see you tackle 2 and 3.
That Kraid/Toad bit nearly made spit up my cereal from laughing!
It was a neighborhood event when I was a kid when Jason, the kid who owned the game, FINALLY got to Mother Brain. We packed his living room and all watched with abated breath when he finally beat the game. Cheers and high-fives all around!
I first played this game in my copy of Zero Mission. I was ecstatic that my time in Zero Mission gave me a sense of direction in the game.
The TH-cam algorithm blessed me with finding this budding channel which is making Metroid content, so I'm eager to see your growth and wish you luck! Always glad to see a new entry to the metroid club, and just in time for Dread!
Haha, I've been very blessed by the algorithm lately! Thank you for the kind words and glad to be on the hype train for the franchise finally :D
I have to say, thank you very much for giving this game a fair shake! I've seen so many reviews of Metroid from people under 30 who outright refuse to even try to understand this game for what it is, and what its place and significance was in the annals of video game history. I was very pleased to see that you played all the way through (twice!) and that you were honest about what's good, what's bad, and what's ugly about this game. I don't expect people to like the original Metroid (compared to the original Zelda, Mario, Kid Icarus, etc., it doesn't hold up nearly as well), but I expect a fair and honest review, and that's what you've done here. Good job!
By the way, when I played this game all the way back in 1986, I called the red rings "hot Cheerios". When you freeze them, they become cold Cheerios, which are much more pleasant to eat, of course. That's their canon name in my head for all time, lol. Oh, and they make a reappearance in Metroid Dread, which I love!
Amazing editing for 2023 standards. Very inspiring for people who feel like they’re late af to the gaming content party
Thanks a bunch! I definitely held that feeling that I was behind everyone when I started but a lot of people have been incredibly sweet with their words about my editing, that I implore anyone to start and that if I can do it anyone can!
Even as a kid in the 80s, I still needed a simple Nintendo Power magazine map to help me beat this game. But even with all of the issues, I still loved this game.
There's two ways I've seen that you can deal with Kraid. With the Wave Beam, you can somewhat keep your distance and fire at him, the wave pattern is likely to hit Kraid's head if you're slightly above his level. This works especially if Kraid is using his shorter throwing distance, but it takes some time. With the Ice Beam, if you can freeze the center spike in such a way that you have a clean shot at Kraid's stomach, you can spam your weapon at point blank and he'll struggle to retaliate. Of course, this is a bit tricky.
As for Ridley, if he's using the farther throwing distance you can cheap him out. If he's using the shorter distance, the Ice Beam can freeze the entire volley, at which point his fire is merely a platform for you to pelt his face with missiles. Alternatively, I believe the Varia suit lets you get behind him and cheap him out with the Wave Beam.
And Mother Brain, yeah you pretty much summed it up. There's a trick you can use throughout the game to reach some secrets or avoid damage. When you're in ball form while in mid-air, and press up to unroll, Samus can jump in mid-air as long as she's not moving left or right.
Hire me, 80's Nintendo guide people
hm, I used to use bombs on Kraig. took a shitload of damage myself, (or I'd just, as I heard somewhere, "Stand so that your gun penetrates his body," and just shoot" (I think that was in Nintendo Power,) but you could always get the extra E tank there after.
I remember playing it for the first time back in 1987 when I was only 7. It took me months to beat the game. There was a Nintendo guide back then, but I didn't know about it. So I had to grind my way to beat the game. Good times 😅
Just pulled out my Wii and started playing this a few days ago. God it brings me back when I was a kid loving this game and metroid 2.
I took a few weeks to beat this game in elementary school and loved it. A few years later my pal Justin Bailey gave me a few pointers.
That's why I decided to play Zero Mission instead. Battery-backed saving, no restarting with empty tanks, restoring your health and ammo at save points and the map room tells you where you need to go. Great job beating the OG version!!
Skill issue
This was a great video! It brought back a lot of memories and I had a good laugh at the struggles I also encountered, including dying a lot, back in the day. What I can proudly say about Metroid on the NES is that I beat it without any guides or cheats. As I previously mentioned, it involved dying a lot and a lot of exploration and memorization. It was the first game I ever beat on the NES and it will always hold a special place in my childhood memories for that reason. I fittingly make homage to it in my home game room with a Metroid display.
I had such a good time watching this, recalling every ounce of your frustration from when I played this back in the 80's.
I must say, this really is "the best way" to play it. Unlike modern guides, which tell you EVERYTHING, this classic guide is only that: a guide. You still have to figure things out on your own; you still have to experiment and guess and strive to get good. And quite frankly, that's what makes this game fun and rewarding. Beating it is a genuine accomplishment, and the more someone holds your hand, the less you accomplish.
I get that this formula doesn't work with today's audiences, and not everyone is going to want to play this game "the right way." But I commend you for doing so!
The problem isn't the formula you're describing. The problem is the fact that the formula is being placed on an oldass NES game with horribly clunky mechanics. That and the lack of a map does not make this game more "difficult" in any genuine sense of the word, it just makes it obnoxiously tedious to navigate. This is a problem with most if not all early games though, and Metroid was still a lot better than the bulk of them - plus there are some aspects of it that are genuinely difficult in very fair, skill-oriented ways.
But if you want to talk about playing this game "the right way," there's no map and no guide included with the game because that is your intended experience. You're not supposed to know where you're going, you're not supposed to know where anything is or how anything works. And that is painful design, especially when the game is visually repetitive, frequently misleading on purpose, and overall incredibly difficult to navigate without a map.
So in consideration of that, for anyone who doesn't want to spend literal years mapping out, exploring, and memorizing the entire game on their own, I would say "the right way" to play a janky-ass old game like this is whatever way you want. It has nothing to do with the audience. You can ask people who got this game when it came out and they'll tell you it took them 10-20 years to beat it, and not because of genuine points of skill-oriented difficulty. It's just obscenely tedious to navigate and the game has very unsatisfying outdated and inconsistent mechanics. Using an external source for a map is pretty much the bare minimum requirement for actually enjoying this game unless you genuinely enjoy the process of being lost and confused for hours and hours on end with very little progress.
I'm not trying to say this game is horrible or anything; by all means, it was fantastic for its time. However, I feel like everything you said would apply better to future games in the series as future technology enabled them to have much better mechanics and much cleaner visual representation of things like in-game hints toward objects/places of interest. The technology of the NES simply did not enable this game to convey all of what it wanted to, leaving it as more of a confusing experience than a difficult one. And frankly, the addition of the crouch mechanic alone makes future Metroid games infinitely less aggravating to play (mainly because it enables you to shoot enemies that simply aren't tall enough to hit in the original and require tedious constant morph bombing to deal with). Just look at Zero Mission, which in most regards is a very faithful remake of the original game, just... with a lot of the jank removed or at least polished up. Or even Super Metroid, which while technically being a sequel and not a remake, is in many ways a carbon copy of the original Metroid's design with major improvements.
Last year I was finally forced to sell all my childhood Nintendo Power Player’s Guides mostly from SNES, N64, and GameCube era and at least one of them from the 2000s was also a guide for the original Metroid. Not sure if it was Metroid Prime, Metroid Fusion, or Metroid Zero Mission, but they included the original Metroid in the guide since it was unlockable with those later games.
Hey, the TH-cam algorithm just pushed this to me today, and I wanted to add to the comments here letting you know what a great job you’ve done and to keep it up! Your personality and humor really shines through. You really have a path forward in making these kinds of videos. I’ve subscribed and am looking forward to seeing more!
This is legitimately one of the nicst comments I've ever received, thank you very much for the complimentary words!
Ok, it is a normal day, I, a Chinese 25 years old man just purchased Metroid Prime. He felt guilty for his incomplete of Metroid Dread. So he wanna we some videos as his expiation. And he find this great content. Really Great content! You should have 10 times more subs!
After warching your zero mission video, I like your narration style and I've now watched almost every video you've ever done. You, sir, have earned another subscriber! Keep up the great work and i look forward to a video featuring metroid dread.
As someone who has only player super metroid, when i clicked on this everything looked so wrong. It doesn’t have to be stated how well that game has been received. After watching this, it really puts into perspective why it was such a massive hit on release, it just broke the mold. Every action was rewarding, all pieces of knowledge you get as you progress count in your mind to help when you backtrack, the mechanics are rewarding to learn and master, plus on too of excellent gameplay its the most immersive 16 bit game (I’ve experienced) of all time. With minimal colors and sounds, super metroid actually creeps you out and makes you feel alone and isolated. Thanks for showing how the franchise started, it’s really cool in retrospect
oh, I love this. you had such a classic experience with the game! and going through it a second time, faster, better than before, is really the spice of the older metroids... I grew up reading my brother's nintendo powers and the really awkward way they spelled out how to play was such a special thing, I'm glad that resonates with others, too.
My dad beat this game without a guide (we didn't even know about guides at the time) when I was a kid. He painstakingly mapped out most of the game with detailed notes (which he couldn't actually read, but the map was still good). He and a friend would tag team it, but he would get frustrated with the friend who would pick up every energy ball and missile reload even if he was full. Years later, I beat it myself (again, without a guide). It was very... well, let's just say I spent many stressful hours playing it that could have been better spent. I'm proud of beating it, but I have no desire to ever play it again.
I greatly preferred the SNES sequel. Save features, a built in map, little tutorials scattered around (enacted by cute little aliens). Definitely a better game overall. Thanks for the nostalgia though!
There is a certain enchanting sense of accomplishment and discovery like this that the Internet has made extinct.
watched this without even looking at the views or subs on your channel and IMMEDIATELY thought you were one of those top-tier video game reviewers. content is incredible. i hope you grow more homie :3
Wow, I'm super flattered that you thought so highly of my content 😄 very fortunate to have you watching my stuff and thank you for the kind words my guy!
@@LukerYT of course! Easiest sub I've ever given LOL. Can't wait to see more, especially when Dread comes out
@@Mattaroni Haha that response has ne buzzing, thank you incredibly for the compliment 😁 Looking forward to it too!
Exactly, he's got great production value. He'll be huge soon
I can't believe that I actually beat this game without a guide. It took me a long time and many instances of retyping passwords but I did do it as a kid. I nowhere near got all the items though.
My friends used to draw naps in the diet of the baseball field during recess when we’d discuss this game back in the day. I don’t think any of us ever came close to actually beating it back then though.
I’ve beaten it a few times now, but I definitely don’t play through it without referencing a map from now on.
I remember my mom bought my sister a Nintendo and it came with the guide for Metroid. I was only 8 and completely stuck but when I got the guide I was finally able to finish the game.
I beat the game on GBA when it was released as part of the NES classic collection. I mindlessly wandered the game for 1 month before finally beating it. I never found the wave beam but I can without a doubt still beat the game pretty quickly without a map. Wandering the mazes for a month really makes you remember where the key items are.
Rarely have I seen someone make Metroid NES entertaining
I will follow your career with great interests
Awesome production value. Your channel will take off soon, as it should, and I'm here before 1k to see it all! Btw, Super Metroid is my favorite game of all time. I've literally played through it at least 20 times and know every nook and cranny.
Thank you so much! And glad to hear other people loving Metroid, it's a very good franchise that I need to finish!
I first played 'Metroid' on the Virtual Console when I was a pre-teen. I remember it being very hard to get into the first time around; it was brutally hard, there was no map of any kind, and I got confused on where I was supposed to go next. It, however, didn't take long to get a better sense of what the goal is, in addition to gradually handling the high difficulty with ease. Generally speaking, I don't find the experience to be entirely cryptic. A couple of those Brinstar bridges for example generally have enemies that you can't engage with, which makes for curiously designed rooms; why would there be enemies you can't kill? So it soon became easy to figure out I needed to bomb the floor in order to get through, and I quickly discovered both an ice beam and that pointless paranoia-inducing trap. Even during the most cryptic parts, I managed to beat the game without any outside help, though it did take me a long time to beat the game.
I'm an adult now, and 'Metroid' looking back is kind of a bad game. Graphics are boring and repetitive a lot of the time, and the poor signifying of critical pathways can quickly result in the player with little patience for such nonsense feeling motivated to look for outside help. The main problem is that the level design, barring the majority of Brinstar, is poor at best and quite frankly terrible at worst. It mostly boils down to haphazardly arranged and constantly recycled rooms with uninteresting platforming and frustrating enemy encounters, not helped by the dodgy play control that isn't responsive a lot of the time. Even Brinstar has its severe design hiccups, such as the aforementioned trap that needlessly punishes exploration, as well as being able to go to Norfair without the bombs which does nothing but create a frustrating roadblock that needlessly adds confusion to the already confusing and tedious exploration. Couple that with the lack of recharge stations for health and ammo, and you have a frustrating endurance test. Probably one of the worst cases of first game syndrome out there.
Your video randomly appeared in my recommended and I must say, I'm very impressed! You articulate your thoughts very well and in turn makes for a very interesting video! Will be subbing!
Thank you so much for the kind words! The next few entries will likely be in a more analytical approach so hopefully I can get across my points well there too :)
Metroid was the first truly scary game and in some ways it's still among the scariest games. The sound, music, and lack of music is still maybe the best that it's ever been done.
Two great points.., was such a hard game and no idea where to go. Wasn’t until Nintendo Power walkthrough. Made so many maps as a kid 😂
loved your video! really refreshing to see those appreciate and give a chance to nestroid. gonna subscribe and look forward to see you trying more metroid!
Ah thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed the video & I'm looking forward to going through all the next entries 😁
@@LukerYT no problem! hope it's alright i put this video on the metroid reddit to encourage everyone to come and give it a watch 👽
@@damascoup oh no thank you so much for doing it! I'm flattered you thought it was good enough to share to the wider community 😀
keep grinding💪🏻 these videos are great man!
Thank you! Will try to!
Expert use of the drowning music.
I think your reaction to that first Metroid was spot on EVERYONE'S reaction!!! LoL
I was able to beat Metroid in the summer of 1988. I got it for my 10th birthday in June, and I eventually beat it in August. No guide. I didn't get a guide with Metroid maps until 1989.
I beat this when I was a kid, when it first came out. I didn't have a guide. it took me forever to memorize all the areas and find all the hidden power-ups. I didn't even know there were different ending according to your finish time, until years later.
Great Video! One odd quirk about the NES version of Metroid compared to its original Famicom Disk System release in Japan, is how it handles random enemy patterns. In short; it doesn't. When you first turn the NES version on, it picks one value for each action that's meant to be random (How high those enemies jump out of the lava, Kraid and Ridley's attack patterns, etc), and just uses that one state until the game is reset.
So, on the original version Ridley there would have alternated between two attack patterns, one of which may not have left that area right next to him safe, but on the NES version it can just happen to land on that one pattern and he just repeats it forever. You also got to save the game on the original instead of a password because it was on a proprietary floppy disk, and I believe you're given 1-2 extra hours to achieve the "best ending". Heck it even makes use of the FDS's extra sound channel. Would have been cool to see Nintendo "localize" the FDS version on the Nintendo Online Collection to make it just a little more accessible, but I guess in the end the point was serving nostalgia for each region.
My personal opinion, Super Metroid got everything right that Metroid failed. I haven't played ALL of them but the ones I have played? Super Metroid is without question, the BEST Metroid in the franchise!
Options were limited back in this day of gaming. You spent $60 on this game and by God you were going to beat it! I spent a lot of time on this game, writing passwords down and such. Problem solving is what this game is all about, along with the sense of achievement that comes with it. Imagine spending hours trying to get to and beat the final boss and finally feeling the sense of relief that follows, only to discover you have to climb you way to safety before the whole place self destructs. High anxiety! We need more games like this!
I know you joke about the round ball tip but I let some kids borrow the game in exchange for Simon's Quest back in the day and they couldn't figure it out. They came to me for help and said they got stuck in this room after they got the "key", which was round ball.
That part about Kraid gave me major "To kill the Cyberdemon, shoot it until it dies" vibes.
This is why I love NES and SNES games. They are brutal. Taught me to never give up.
I am still confused that the Wave Beam was completely useless. You couldn't combine it with Ice Beam that was necessary in many sections to freeze enemies to platforms. So the Wave Beam was brutally hard to find and it turned out that it killed your freeze capabilities. That was a pretty bad design decision by Nintendo. Luckily, they introduced the Beam combination capability at Super Metroid.
You mean Gunpei Yokoi! He's deceased now but he and R&D 1 made Metroid and Kid Icarus originally 😢😢 RIP
First video I've watched by you, solid stuff. Having played Metroid a few times both as a kid and as an adult, I pretty much agree with everything you said.
Very good quality video for someone with only 135 subscribers. I've subbed
Thank you incredibly so! I'm very flattered you thought about doing so
8:05
If it helps, this is just a consequence of Metroid's limited cartridge space and how the map layout is programmed. This happens because this item room is a copy of another item room that does use that secret to access a hidden passage.
yeah, top game in my book. by far best NES game. The music alone is unprecedented and unmatched in eeriness.
It is beatable without the guide but takes the foreknowledge of powerups available and game mechanics such as breaking walls and hidden stuff.
it is very much a maze which is kinda what motherbrain would want to keep her lack of ass safe, so I did it with pencil and paper and blockcounting (the latter part very loosely). fortunately, the doors don't warp you, it is topographically nicely organized. but all of your pain, we have as a community collectively shared. : D
I was able to beat the game with a map I found on google. I suffered a lot playing the original Metroid.
You and me both haha
One aspect of Metroid that I think is more forgiving than its contemporaries is that you can't really fall to your death in the game. In an era where landing in lava, on spikes, or just off the bottom of the screen was almost universally an instant death, Metroid allowed you to claw your way back up. There's no fall damage, either. The game arguably makes jumping into a pit rewarding and fun.
This is why I like playthroughs more than speedruns. At least for the games I know.
This video coming from a TH-camr with 83 subscribers is proof that there is no justice in this world
Thank you so much for the high praise! I'm very flattered and the fact that I even have 83 subscribers to begin with is something I truly appreciate 😄
I never beat this game without a password as a kid. A lot of the play time probably is taken up by just bombing/shooting random floors and walls and then just getting lost in the samey looking areas. The fact that the official players guide, guides you into a pit you can't leave unless you bug your way out (you should have the high jump) or luring the flying enemy into the top area is a speedrunners exploit too. People say this game didn't "age well", but I'd say it wasn't that great at the start... it had potential kind of like Street Fighter 1. They would perfect clueing the player in better in Super Metroid. The crunch and inexperience of the dev team really shows in Metroid 1.
Back in the day, you're not supposed to beat the game in one sitting. You're supposed to take days or even weeks to beat it. Hence, the high difficulty, hence the password system.
We played Zelda on and off on weekends for almost a year before we figured out where level 7 was. I beat Metroid as a kid, with no guide, and it took months.
I wish they would make other games like this . Loved playing Metroid
Good job doing that on like 3 tanks. When you have a full suite of e-tanks, it's still hell but it lasts longer.
Honestly the obtuse and weird design is a big part of the charm to me, despite the occasional frustration. Between the design quirks, punishing difficulty, and creepy minimalistic aesthetic, there's something incredibly alien about the original Metroid that's wholly unique (even to other Metroid games). You feel like you're fighting a world that wasn't meant to be beaten, and yet you still figure out how to overcome it anyway. The only other game I've played that came close to replicating this feeling is probably Dark Souls.
I think you hit the nail on the head! I was speaking to a friend about this video a few days after it was released (he has a degree in game design) and he said something to the effect that while I/maybe newer players find the game frustrating, people back in the day just got 'lost.'
As philosophy and approach to game design was different on a generational level, it makes Metroid something I truly hadn't played anything like before it!
@@LukerYT when they made this game, there was no scholarly, no collegiate, no business school for game design.
Super Metroid is the best game of all time. Metroid was good, but SM is god tier. A 10/10 game, the only game I've ever considered perfect.
I tried to complete this game by myself recently... Draw the map... Ended up completely stuck and frustrated.
When I finally gave up and watched a video using the fucking enemy to reach the upper platform you mention I got convinced this was not meant to be done by an individual on its own. Now that you mention there is a official guide for it (which I was not aware of) it suddenly makes much more sense.
Anyway, I completed the game watching a longplay everytime I was stuck again. It removes a part of the fun, but honestly I had lost my patience after this.
10:19 i had the same reaction when I arrived for the first time trying to complete the game in less than an hour and enter without seeing the guide xd
Mad respect for beating it twice just for the final fight
Honestly Metroid on NES is one of my absolute favorite Metroids. No showing you the way or a pseudo linear gameplay like the rest (besides Super and Prime 1), no making it too easy with 100% Items. I like it so much that I'm making a Roguevania on the Gameboy Color more based on the classic Metroid gameplay. Nearly completely open (not many progression locks), only enemies that will at some point become risiculously hard so that one is forced to git gud or find some items.
the music in metroid scared the hell out of me when i was a kid
This game still stands the test of time for me. I can still beat it without a guide.
Dude you seriously need more subs
Ahh I'm very flattered! 3 months ago I was stuck on 22-23 subscribers for the better part of a few weeks with hopes to get 100 subscribers by the end of the year, so the fact I have 200 subscribers now before the end of August is absolutely humbling and unreal to me - but I very much appreciate you think I still deserve more!
@@LukerYT np 😊
Well let's make that happen by sharing his channel my guy.
yaknow... this could be a good series on its own; reviewing player guides and how they translate to the actual game.
I've seen it done a few times! MysteryOre coined the concept w/ a Minecraft guide, and a Pokemon TH-camr Papasea has done it for a few Pokemon games.
I've been thinking of doing it for the OG Zelda in the future, think it'd be a lot of fun
Two tidbits about comments you made. The first thing is how easy Ridley is. I remember being really confused as a kid when Super Metroid came out, and Ridley was the big bad guy (and continued to be so throughout the series) since Kraid is a much more difficult and cooler boss in the original NES.
Turns out that the difficulty (or lack thereof) is due to being ported from the Famicom disk system to the NES. The Famicom was able to generate random numbers on the fly, whereas the NES cannot. So, on the original, he'd alternate between close up shots and far away shots. You can't camp under his arch of fireballs and just blast away, since he'd easily hit you there. On the NES, it only picks one shot pattern when you enter the room and stays that way.
Also, for Mother Brain, for some reason Nintendo of America decided that she wasn't difficult enough on the Japanese version. So, they made her harder by only having a small portion of her glass tank be able to be destroyed. So you have a 1x1 block to shoot through to hit her. On the Japanese version, the whole front of the tank blows off, making her MUCH easier to hit. So, blame NoA for that one.
i cannot believe how good your edit skills are, Good shit man, really good video.
Thank you so much for the kind words! Funnily enough today I was hired to be a TH-camr's editor, so I'm hoping in doing that it can help improve my content here by practicing more :) thanks once again!
Another great video Luker. Been enjoying them a lot!
Bro has more quality content than many bigger TH-camrs bruh😭
Aha I really appreciate the kind words - a lot of better people than me in the game that I hope get their shine!
Best advice I got was to beat Ridley first. That makes the game much easier.
Gotta remember that Nintendo was just figuring out the idea of a long-form “action-adventure” game at this point. As you note, most games prior to this were just about piling up a bunch of points before you died, not about exploring and gradually making progress.
Stuff like the original Metroid and Zelda games have their issues because the designers were truly inventing something new. They’d improve upon the details later, but back then part of the fun was sharing tips and secrets with your friends on the playground. That (and strategy guides) is how everyone really learned how to play. Games like that were a revelation in the 80s.
Great video. I agree it is way too cryptic. I never would have beaten it without a walkthrough. And had to look up a Strat for motherbrain room outside of the walkthrough. It just seems that was the way things were in that era of gaming. Friends sharing secrets they learned playing together, like where the warp whistles were in Mario 3 or overworks heart containers in Zelda. I didn’t have a guide and never would have guessed how to find them, but some learned it and then shared it with me.
The strategy guide (and later nintendo power magazine) was the NES version of microtransactions!
At least you could share it among friends.
I'm pretty sure Ridley became famous because of his Super Metroid appearance.
"Nintendo strategy GUUUUUUUIIIII..."
Pure gold right there 🤣🤣
See, the expectation back then is that you’d make your own map…
but _fuuuuuuck_ that!
I didn’t use a map when I finally beat this game, but that’s only because Zero Mission has the same layout and I’d just played that enough to memorize where I needed to go. lol
Ridley can send the fireballs in a short or long pattern. If the lava enemies jumping up to the top of the screen heading towards the boss, you will get short range fireballs. I prefer the screw-attack to kill him either way.
Beat it when it first came out, on the FAMICOM, which meant every restart puts you at Brinstar. Every time I got stuck, I would shoot and bomb EVERYWHERE until something happened. That was part of the challenge, and part of the discovery. And yes I used the freeze beam on that enemy to get the varia suit. You have to lure it to fly up the column first, which is already hard enough.
I don't even know how many hours it took me to beat this game...
Games back then were definitely harder than games these days.
2:05 That joke made me smile
I played this as a child back in the 80's. It was difficult, but it was a different era in gaming for a kid. It took MONTHS of learning, memorization, etc. I had no guides, I made some rough "maps", and once I had a passcode from getting nearly every missile and E-tank, confronting Mother Brain was just a "let's hope it works" thing. If I died, it wasn't a big deal except for having to grind for full energy replenishment. THAT definitely sucked, so... I always saved the hidden e-tank near the beginning (ceiling tile near the giant block of purple fuzz tiles). That way, I'd begin the game with my (legitimate) code, grab the tank for a full refill, and head to the Metroid zone with M Brain. Piece of cake.
I played this on the Metroid: Zero Mission GBA cart and on Metroid Prime. I liked it but it was definitely more difficult than the later Metroids I played.
Metroid was already old when it came here in the states. Try out some of the hacks. They've made it so you can start with full life when you die, have a built in map like all the newer releases, and have multiple weapons stack on each other. It's amazing what the hacking community has done over the decades.
i beat so many of these NES games blind when i was a kid 😄. took me FOREVER. i remember VERY well TMNT and Zelda2 🤐
Hey man. Love your stuff. Well-made videos and some good comedy in there. Congrats on reaching over 1000 subs. You deserve way more man. Keep it up
It's a tough game your first time through for sure. thinking back on it, I have no idea how me or anyone else beat this game back in the 80's with no internet or walkthroughs. I got Metroid at a garage sale in 1988 without even the manual and still managed to beat it. Probably took me 20 hours and 100 deaths but 8 year old me thought I was a GAMING GOD that day lol.
Lmao, that last part of the video was perfection. 😂
This is some great quality video, great job mate.
Waiting for you to try Super Metroid Blind!
Ah thank you so much mate! I appreciate the kind words :)
Won't spoil too much on it now, but the script for the video is done! Will try and find the time to get it finished, the next few weeks could be a bit busier but will aim to get it out by the end of August. It's a special one!
That’s great! Already hyped!
Great video! And yes, if you want to play this game, USE A GUIDE. It makes the game not only playable, but really enjoyable! I loved my experience with this game. If you're feeling really adventurous, look up a guide of how to beat the game in under one hour for the best ending. A very satisfying moment if you pull it off.
really enjoying your videos. cant wait to see you grow and make more great videos
Thank you so much! I very much appreciate you're willing to stick around & I hope I can keep entertaining you