Revisiting the legacy of Metroid II: Return of Samus

I've already written extensively about Metroid, Nintendo's black sheep. Metroid II: Return of Samus, released in 1991 on the Game Boy, is the black sheep of the black sheep series. Even among Metroid fans it's often overlooked, as most Game Boy games are. But Metroid II is as pivotal in shaping the series as the original Metroid and the opus Super Metroid. This oft-forgotten sequel is fascinating to explore as a statement of design philosophy.

Let's begin with the title. Metroid II. Most handheld iterations of major series are marketed as spinoffs, rather than true sequels. The Mario games on the Game Boy were called Super Mario Land to differentiate them as inferior to the larger Super Mario WORLD on the big-boy Super Nintendo. The portable version of Assassin's Creed III was given the "Liberation" subtitle to make sure people knew it wasn't the REAL Assassin's Creed III, which could only be found on home consoles.

But Metroid on the Game Boy was simply called Metroid II. It's no coincidence Metroid creator Gunpei Yokoi was also the creator of the Game Boy. Metroid II was proof you could make "real" games on handheld systems, not just spinoffs and puzzle games.

It's not a masterpiece. Due to the limitations of the hardware, Metroid II features bland level design and recycled art assets. Many of the environments look almost identical to one another, which is all the more frustrating since there's no in-game map. And the music, while continuing the atmospheric dissonance pioneered in the original Metroid, is terribly subpar by the series' standards.

It's not a cartridge, it's a Game Pak!

There's so much to digest, though. Metroid II introduced tons of concepts and gameplay mechanics that would go on to become staples of the series, from save stations and Samus' spaceship to items like the Spider Ball and Plasma Beam. The game has an interesting structure, in that there are no conventional boss battles aside from the Queen Metroid at the end.

The series is known for its minimalist storytelling (well, until recently...). For an overlooked Game Boy game, it's strange that Metroid II includes perhaps the most important plot point in the entire series.

The set-up of Metroid II's storyline is questionable. Samus is on a mission to kill every single Metroid on planet SR388. They're not invading or terrorizing anyone else; SR388 is their home planet. Samus is the alien invader, out to commit genocide. There's even a counter at the bottom of the screen telling you at all times how many Metroids are left alive. But at the end of the game, after Samus has killed the last Metroid, she finds a Metroid egg that hatches in front of her. The newborn Metroid imprints onto her and believes Samus is its mother. So she spares the infant and takes it with her at the end of the game.

This has massive implications for the rest of the series. It immediately sets up the story of Super Metroid, where the Space Pirates steal the baby Metroid, and the dramatic ending where the baby Metroid sacrifices its own life to save Samus. It also evolves Samus' relationship with Metroids from a simple antagonistic one to a more ambiguous symbiotic connection, which would be further explored in Metroid Fusion.

The Mother Factor is particularly interesting. Not only was Samus the first major female protagonist in video games (Ms. Pac-Man doesn't really count--she's Pac-Man with a pink bow, not a human), but the main villains in Metroid and Metroid II are both female as well: Mother Brain and the Queen Metroid, respectively. Mother Brain would make a reappearance as the antagonist of Super Metroid.

How many other video games feature both a female protagonist and antagonist? And neither of them are objectified or sexualized for the Male Gaze, either? It's really just Metroid… and Portal.

Metroid II was originally planned to get a colorized remake for the Game Boy Color like The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening got with Link's Awakening DX. But Metroid is not the same cash cow for Nintendo that Zelda is, so it never happened. Metroid Prime developers Retro Studios talked about doing a remake of the game like the original Metroid got with Metroid: Zero Mission, but that never panned out either. Metroid II was not re-released in any form until 2011, when it was released on the 3DS Virtual Console.

It's a shame there hasn't been a handheld Metroid game in eight years, or a traditional Metroid sidescroller in ten years. I wouldn't recommend Metroid II to anyone in 2014 aside from diehard Metroid fans, but it's one of the most important, overlooked games Nintendo has ever made.

Rebooting Samus: The relationship between East and West in game design, through Metroid Prime

Metroid is Nintendo’s black sheep. While the series has seen just as much critical acclaim as the Japanese gaming giant’s other flagship franchises, Metroid has never been the commercial juggernaut Mario and Zelda are year after year. So when faced with the technological leap from two dimensions to three-dimensional graphics, why did Nintendo for the first time in their history hand over one of its own series to a Western developer? Metroid Prime is the culmination of the company’s marriage of East and West in game design. The unlikely bedfellows of Nintendo and U.S. developer Retro Studios managed to create one of the most successful video games of all time, both critically and commercially.

Gunpei Yokoi with his Game Boy

The series has had Western roots from the beginning. It was conceived by misunderstood designer Gunpei Yokoi—most famous as creator of Game Boy and for ruining his career later with the infamous Virtual Boy. Yokoi took heavy influence from Ridley Scott’s 1979 science-fiction horror opus Alien and the art of Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger. Even before Prime, Metroid was Nintendo’s only franchise directed at an older demographic with a more serious tone, and their only series with better sales numbers in the West than domestically in Japan.

When Metroid was finally handed to a Western developer for the jump to 3D, it wasn’t what you’d call a “smooth transition.” Austin, Texas-based Retro Studios was inexperienced and in shambles with an absent CEO when Nintendo came knocking. And their final product was a first-person game—perhaps the visual perspective most emblematic of Western design. How was this game not a total flop? And how did it consolidate the vast differences between Eastern and Western approaches to video games?

Thoughts on Metroid's 25th birthday

Twenty-five years ago this past Saturday, the first Metroid title was released on the Famicom in Japan. Plenty has been written on how the game revolutionized non-linear gameplay, how it broke gender barriers, how its dark, melancholic mood redefined atmosphere in games, and how Team Ninja bastardized the franchise with Other M. You can find all those articles on other websites.

The story of Metroid is really the story of its creator, Gunpei Yokoi. He's by far the most tragic figure in the Nintendo game design pantheon--if Shigeru Miyamoto is gaming's Thomas Edison, Yokoi is Nikola Tesla.

Yokoi's life parallels the story of the Metroid franchise. Both are integral figures at Nintendo, still the most important game company in the world. Both had moments of sheer greatness followed by moments of neglect and disaster. Both are black sheep in the Nintendo family whose legacy is too often forgotten today.

Along with Metroid, Yokoi is the creator of some of Nintendo's most important works. Among them: the Game & Watch, Kid Icarus, the Game Boy, Dr. Mario, and Fire Emblem. While many of these were popular and influential, nothing reached the stardom Miyamoto's creations.

And there were the failures. In 1985, Yokoi created R.O.B., the Robotic Operating Buddy! It's a cult classic today, but when it was released, it flopped. The plastic robot add-on for the NES only got support from two games, and it was shortly discontinued.

He was also the father of Nintendo's first foray into 3D gaming, the infamous Virtual Boy. Released in 1995, it was such a failure that it led to Yokoi's departure from Nintendo in 1996, after three decades of service.

A year later, he was hit by a car and killed. And today, unless you're a huge gaming enthusiast, you have no idea who Gunpei Yokoi is.

(Side note: I wonder what Yokoi would think of the 3DS. It's the spiritual successor to the Game Boy and Virtual Boy combined!)

What about Metroid? It's often grouped in Nintendo's "holy trinity" with Mario and The Legend of Zelda. But is it really up there? Metroid has never enjoyed the commercial success of its Miyamoto-created brethren.

To me, it's personal. As a kid, Metroid was the first series that made me realize video games could be something deeper as an art form. It's the most important game franchise to me. If it weren't for Metroid, I'd be another 14-year-old boy on Xbox Live chugging Mountain Dew and calling people homophobic slurs in Halo.

So even if Nintendo refuses to acknowledge your existence in 2011: happy birthday, Metroid. And thank you, Gunpei Yokoi. I'll pour one out for ya.