Samus in Ninja Gaiden

[Green Gibbon!]

Almost every Japanese arcade has a pile of notebooks for people to scribble notes and other things in

That's interesting, I've never seen any such thing. I'm pretty sure arcades here have withered drastically in the past decade. In every game center I've ever been in, even the ones in Akiba, the ratio of actual games to other things (crane games, photo booths, pachinko, etc) is really small. Usually there's less than 20 or 30 percent of the floorspace devoted to proper games, and most of those are more than 10 years old or on hardware that's more than 10 years old.

It's kind of depressing, actually.

[G.Silver]

That's interesting, I've never seen any such thing. I'm pretty sure arcades here have withered drastically in the past decade.

I admit I'm going on my experience there and that's getting pretty close to 10 years ago. They still had them then, at any rate, and by "almost every" I actually mean almost every one that was still attracting the sort of gamer that might find that information interesting. There were lots of more mall-style arcades that were more like the ones you describe, but the smaller ones were still havens for fighting games and shooters and the like, and some of the bigger ones were still very hardcore-focused. Have you been to any of the Sportsland game centers? "Nishi Supo" (Sportsland West) in Shinjuku seemed to be the center of serious play when I was there (I got to lose to some exceptional Virtual On players), I didn't find Akihabara's arcades were that great either.

The game center I frequented the most ("Game Carrot"), located right across from the university I did my exchange at, had shut down when I visited again 2 years later. It is depressing! If an arcade can't thrive across the street from a Japanese university, where can it?

[Shadow Hog]

Carrots are probably the last thing I'd think to associate with games...

[Crazy Penguin]

But Super Mario Land 2!

[Edgerock]

www.metroid.com

So the main site got a big overhaul.

And Nintendo made a live action commercial...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ruVuOI5Igo

And the game's out on August 31 of this month for those in the US.

[Ritz]

Uncover a dark mystery involving her military past

Boy, do I feel sorry for you Metroid fans.

[Kogen]

I stick to the 'rapidly press A' method when playing Metroid games with dialogue.

[Ritz]

1000 posts!!!!

[Dr. BUGMAN]

Boy, do I feel sorry for you Metroid fans.

Nah, I got most of my grievances out months and months ago, and have moved on.

I think the thing that really got me, though, is that I knew despite the new tepid, pandering veneer, that it could still be a very well-put-together and enjoyable experience. Auto-aiming and unavoidable cinematics be damned (really, damn them).

When it came to Sonic, I felt vindicated.

[Radrappy]

hey so I picked up a copy of other m last night and played for a couple hours. The writing and story are god awful so far. That being said, this is one of the better games I have played in the past few years or so. There is a certain degree of challenge and difficulty that really does make it feel old school. The combat is satisfying and the switching between first and third person views is smooth and intuitive. After having had a bad experience with the Prime franchise, it's really nice to play a game that really feels like metroid. The wallkick and screw attack are extremely welcome and were sorely missed. So yeah, if the story improves, it really will make for a nice package. I encourage you guys to try it out.

[Esrever]

I wanted to pick up this game -- just tune out the story and enjoy the rest of it -- but I'm just not sure I can do it. The ten minutes or so of cutscenes I watched online were among the most infuriating gaming-related experiences of my entire life.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

In retrospect, my lashing out at the action shots (still pretty wacky for the content) was mis-aimed. I just lost my shit when I say an pouty almond-eyed, feathered-haired girl and the type of narrative those kind of characters are placed in in Japanese media, but not having anything to go off of from there.

Petty thing to hold against a game, but if I have a nice slice of key lime pie and there's a big ol' hairy booger on it, I'm not gonna say only the pie matters and eat around the booger. This kinda shit was novel in 1997 at best.

[Green Gibbon!]

I've actually never played a Metroid game with any sincerity, and I was thinking this would be as good a time as any to get started.

So assuming I have no knowledge of the Metroid mythos outside of the fact that it involves some blond chick in silly orange armor who rolls into a ball and gets more naked the faster you can beat the game and I think something about a maternal brain. With no fanboy preconceptions to damage, it's a good game, right?

[Yami CJMErl]

Pretty much. From what I've read, it seems that a lot of people only have problems about Samus's personality because it goes against the "fan-made" canon, which never really had any competition from the actual games (apart from the 2-volume manga and parts of Fusion) until now.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

Not exactly ""Fan-made"" when she had some amount of personality within the Prime games. But Sakamoto has essentially declared those non-canon, just to rub it in.

[Rob-Bert]

You know, between the 90s JRPG-quality cutscenes, the Mario 64-style first-person view, the fact that its 3D but controlled with a D-Pad, the context-sensitive dodging that so many other games have already used, and the fact that this takes place right after Super Metroid makes me feel like this is the Metroid title for the N64 that we never got.

[Esrever]

People have a problem with Samus' personality because it's LAME, regardless of how she was depicted before. There are a lot of different ways you could spin Samus' character, but at least spin them in a way that makes her cool! Who wants to play as a frail, whiny, insecure brat with an inner monologue like a 14-year-old's diary and a nigh insatiable craving for the approval of whatever random male character happens to be standing around? Trust me, you don't need to have any pre-conceived notions to be irritated by nearly every one of the eight-zillion words her voice actor woodenly delivers.

The other thing about Other M, GG, is that the gameplay is much more linear and way less exploration-focused than the other games. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad game (I think it looks really fun) but it does make it a very different game! So play it, but however you react to it may not be a good indication of how you'd feel about the rest of the series.

[Radrappy]

Actually there's plenty of exploration. It's just not that tedious back tracking bullshit from the prime games.

Pretty much. From what I've read, it seems that a lot of people only have problems about Samus's personality because it goes against the "fan-made" canon, which never really had any competition from the actual games (apart from the 2-volume manga and parts of Fusion) until now.

And this is what was so wrong with the franchise to begin with. It wants to be epic, but there are no stakes. No emotional investment in anything that's happening. No motivations, no nothing. That might suit a franchise like Mario, but for a scifi action series, you don't get off so easy. That being said, the narrative in Other M is pretty shit. I have no problem with them making Samus a scared little girl, but yeah you've got to deliver it better.

[Ritz]

So I stayed up all night watching a playthrough of the game. I didn't like Super Metroid at all and the series in general has never really appealed to me, but the game actually looks pretty fun, and the lengthy cutscenes are actually few and far between (The player must've gone 2-3 hours without triggering a single one at one point). I'm still pretty glad I opted to watch the game over actually playing it, as the player was pretty hilarious and made even the most abysmal sequences and design decisions a treat to endure.

Those mandatory 1st person Where's Waldo sequences where you can't do anything until you find the one pixel on the screen that the game wants you to look at are particularly delightful. I think that might actually be the worst game mechanic I've ever seen. Astonishing!

[Ritz]

Come to think of it, I think a great deal of the game's appeal for me is that it reminds me so much of the sublime Silent Bomber. They both play pretty differently, but there are a lot of uncanny similarities that I just can't shake, with the 3rd person perspective, pacing, spastic movement and skill enhancement via hidden items. The settings of both games are practically identical, and they even share some plot conventions (Sullen protagonist with a dark military past who's prone to teen diary monologues, bioweapons research gone wrong, tenuous relationship with a mentor figure, a traitorous crew member, etc. etc.) and scenarios (Rescue missions, boss fights on square lifts), and the quintessentially 90s cutscenes with poor dialogue hardly help to distinguish them.

If the rolling mode bombs weren't entirely useless in combat, I'd have to call plagiarism.

[Radrappy]

It just occurred to me that Mario has the princess to save in his games and Link has hyrule to fight for. Samus has. . .nothing.

[Esrever]

You're... joking, right? The space pirates killed Samus' parents.

[Popcorn]

Hey, Esrever, there's a guy who works at Frontier who has a t-shirt with your blue hedgehog drawing on it. That kind of blows my mind every time I see it.

OK, everyone, carry on.

[Esrever]

Really? That's awesome! I wish that meant he was a Sam and Fuzzy reader. But like most people, he probably just bought it from Topatoco with no idea who made it. That shirt has really taken on a life of it's own.

[Radrappy]

You're... joking, right? The space pirates killed Samus' parents.

What? And that drives her to do what exactly? Eradicate all evil in the universe? Last time I checked, metroid was not a revenge story.