The history of the Metroid Series

[phart010 | 1,705]

1986:
Nintendo – We present to you Metroid. A freedom of exploration adventure. 
Metroid Fans – I love this!

1991:
Nintendo – We heard you. Here is a new Metroid exploration adventure, now for the GAMEBOY
Metroid Fans – I love this! on the go!

1994:
Nintendo – Metroid fans, we know you’ve been waiting for the next exploration adventure. We give you SUPER Metroid.
Metroid Fans – Oh my God! This is a masterpiece.

1998:
Nintendo -   ……
Metroid Fans – Hey Nintendo. Are you there?
Nintendo – Uhhhh…. Hey guess what, Samus will be in Smash Bros next year.
Metroid Fans -  ☹

2002:
Nintendo – We know you’ve been waiting. Metroid is back in the all new Metroid Fusion on GBA and Metroid Prime on Gamecube.
Metroid Fans – hmmm. Nintendo, this new Fusion game is linear.. and whats up with that annoying Adam guy that keeps telling me where I’m allowed to go and what weapons I’m allowed to use? Next time can you make a new Metroid game with freedom of exploration?
Halo Fans – hey I just bought a Gamecube to play that new Metroid 3D shooter. Its pretty good.

2004: 
Nintendo – We know you didn’t like Metroid Fusion. We have repurposed the Metroid Fusion engine to make a new GBA Metroid. It is a remake of Metroid NES, now with chibi-style graphics!
Metroid Fans – Hey Nintendo, are you even listening to us?  You got rid of Adam, but this game is STILL linear. And its not even a new game.

2005:
Nintendo – Ok we have a new game for you. Metroid Prime Pinball !
Metroid Fans – Nintendo. what the f*** is this? We want to shoot enemies.

2006:
Nintendo – Ok here is our new Metroid 3D melee shooter. Metroid Prime Hunters.
Metroid Fans –Shoot enemies in an EXPLORATION ADVENTURE!

2007:
Nintendo – Metroid games don’t really sell well. Here’s another Metroid Prime.
Metroid Fans - FU Nintendo

2009: 
Nintendo – Hmm. We don’t have any new Metroid Prime games. Let’s just re-release all three Metroid Prime games on one disc. 
Metroid Fans – Can you just give us a new mainline Metroid exploration game dammit!

2010:
Nintendo – Ok Metroid fans. We asked Team Ninja to make you a new mainline Metroid game. In it, you will explore Samus’s relationship with Adam Malkovich. It will be a new linear 3D Action Adventure.
Metroid Fans – Is this a frikkin joke?  This isn’t even an exploration game. Its an action game.. and its linear. And didn’t we already say, we don’t want Adam telling us what we can and can’t do. F*** him

2012:
Nintendo – 3DS is starting to sell pretty well. Unlike the Metroid series... Maybe we should just ditch mainline Metroid and focus on the Metroid Prime series. Mainline Metroid might jinx our sales.
Metroid Fans – How bout you just make new goddam Metroid exploration game for us to buy?

2016: 
Nintendo – Metroid fans. We know you are disenfranchised. We know you wanted an exploration game. While this new game may be branded as a Metroid Prime game, you will get to explore the galaxy. And Metroid Prime fans will also like it because the core focus of the game is 3D shooting. And everyone wins because we’re even throwing in a free soccer game. Two games in one.. eh.. eh?
Metroid Fans – don’t talk to me. I’m tired of you Nintendo. I’m selling my 3DS to get a Switch.

2017:  
Nintendo – Ok ok. We’ll give you Metroid fans what you’ve been asking for. Here is your stupid new Metroid game… ONLY ON 3DS! If this one doesn’t sell well we’re just not doing Metroid anymore.
Metroid Fans – I just traded in my 3DS to buy a Switch  maybe I’ll just buy a copy to support for the franchise.

2021:
Shinya Takahashi: (Metroid Dread trailer ends) “That was the trailer for the first new Metroid game in roughly 19 years.”
Metroid Fans – Finally. You understand us!

Edited June 16, 2021 by phart010

[fox | 1,665]

I think Fusion and the Prime games are a bit more appreciated than this, but the rest is pretty spot on

[Strange | 1,700]

Samus won her gulag against Captain Falcon. Now her series is alive again.

Captain Falcon, Pit, and Fox are all waiting to be revived.

[peg | 370]

Metroid 5? What the fuck was metroid 4? Was that the DREADful fps game?

[Strange | 1,700]

3 minutes ago, peg said:

Metroid 5? What the fuck was metroid 4? Was that the DREADful fps game?

Metroid Fusion

Metroid - Metroid II - Super - Fusion - Dread

[Reed Rothchild | 9,504]

Wow... Metroid fans are some whiny bitches!  

 

I mean.. all present company excluded of course... 

*runs from Metroid lynch mob*

[MagusSmurf | 577]

People liked Prime 1 through 3, Fusion, and Zero Mission though. There were some complaints about those games and Super Metroid is still #1 but those are probably the consensus #2 through #6. Well, possibly #2 through #7, I’ve never played Samus Returns or dug too deeply into what people thought of it and maybe some of the less positive opinions I’ve heard on it were not representative.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,504]

58 minutes ago, MagusSmurf said:

People liked Prime 1 through 3, Fusion, and Zero Mission though. There were some complaints about those games and Super Metroid is still #1 but those are probably the consensus #2 through #6. Well, possibly #2 through #7, I’ve never played Samus Returns or dug too deeply into what people thought of it and maybe some of the less positive opinions I’ve heard on it were not representative.

I liked it quite a bit, but there is definitely a lot of complaining about that one as well.

[TDIRunner | 2,721]

1 hour ago, MagusSmurf said:

People liked Prime 1 through 3, Fusion, and Zero Mission though. There were some complaints about those games and Super Metroid is still #1 but those are probably the consensus #2 through #6. Well, possibly #2 through #7, I’ve never played Samus Returns or dug too deeply into what people thought of it and maybe some of the less positive opinions I’ve heard on it were not representative.

I agree with this.

 

I thought the "history of the Metroid series" was funny, but it seemed to be coming up with a lot of excuses to hate on everything made since Super Metroid.  

[RH | 4,890]

I think the issue with something like the outline above is the way it's presented, but the facts are there.  I loved Metroid, Super Metroid and when I finally was able to play Super Metroid on the Wii, I "got it" and it definitely was an amazing trilogy.

I have nothing against spin-off titles from major franchises and I'm actually semi-interested in a concept like Metroid Pinball if I ever pick that one up.  The real problem is that big companies basically choose which games they make based off of sales of former games.  A rabid fanbase isn't just into the mythos.  They are into the play style and genre-features, which as outlined above was the fact that all three of the first games involved a lot of non-linear exploration and there was a general lack of any hand-holding.

Nintendo hasn't given us that in ages, and that's why we keep wanting to buy into the series.  However, since these new games continue to stray further and further away from what made the series great, we're disenfranchised. This also means that any new game that strays far from the series original roots also has to do a good job of standing on it's own.  I think the many of the Metroid titles that have come out in the past 20 years have been just ok, partially because there are plenty of other, better FPSs out there and I did enjoy Fusion but, yeah, Adam and the linear nature of the game was not at all what I hoped for in a Metroid game.

If Nintendo is going to semi-threaten to cancel a series because "no one buys it" they need to listen to why the fans aren't interested. We don't want new and flashy way's to continue the story.  We want the core of the game to remain the same and we want it to complement the story.

I hope that's what Dread does.  I think it still remains to be seen if it's linear or not.  I'll still buy it, I'll still enjoy it but I skeptical to believe this will be a real game of exploration like the original trilogy.

[noiseredux | 232]

my only personal disagreement w/ the original post as the I loved Fusion and Zero Mission. But yeah.

I'll say this, Dread was probably the most exciting thing for me in that whole E3 Direct. Oddly, I bounced off Samus Returns pretty fast, even though I was a huge fan of Metroid II. But man, I don't even know. Dread looks like the Metroid game I wanted but didn't know I wanted. I mean, I get why people want Prime 4, but I'm way more pumped about Dread.

[phart010 | 1,705]

30 minutes ago, noiseredux said:

my only personal disagreement w/ the original post as the I loved Fusion and Zero Mission. But yeah.

I'll say this, Dread was probably the most exciting thing for me in that whole E3 Direct. Oddly, I bounced off Samus Returns pretty fast, even though I was a huge fan of Metroid II. But man, I don't even know. Dread looks like the Metroid game I wanted but didn't know I wanted. I mean, I get why people want Prime 4, but I'm way more pumped about Dread.

I wrote this partly as satire, but also to illustrate the point that Nintendo justifies NOT making Metroid based on the sales of the franchise. But maybe the reason it doesn’t sell is because Nintendo isn’t giving Metroid fans what they want.

To illustrate this point, SNES released in 1991 and sold 49M consoles. By the time Super Metroid released, it was 1994 and the game sold 1.5M units. That doesn’t sound like a big number by today’s standards, but it was a 3% attach rate assuming most all of those SNES consoles were sold at that point. Super Metroid was number 30 best selling SNES game.

Compare this to GBA a wildly more popular console. It released June 2001 and sold 81.5M consoles. Fusion came out in Late 2002, let’s call it 2003 and sold 0.94M units and then DS came out in 2004. So if we assume 75% of GBA systems were sold by the time Fusion was out it only had a 1.5% attach rate. 
 

Fusion was not very popular. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, but the game missed the formula and didn’t captivate fans.

Metroid Prime was hugely successful in comparison, but it changed the genre and feel of the game so drastically that it may have actually created a brand new market segment rather than retaining the original fanbase

[noiseredux | 232]

3 minutes ago, phart010 said:

I wrote this partly as satire, but also to illustrate the point that Nintendo justifies NOT making Metroid based on the sales of the franchise. But maybe the reason it doesn’t sell is because Nintendo isn’t giving Metroid fans what they want.

To illustrate this point, SNES released in 1991 and sold 49M consoles. By the time Super Metroid released, it was 1994 and the game sold 1.5M units. That doesn’t sound like a big number by today’s standards, but it was a 3% attach rate assuming most all of those SNES consoles were sold at that point. Super Metroid was number 30 best selling SNES game.

Compare this to GBA a wildly more popular console. It released June 2001 and sold 81.5M consoles. Fusion came out in Late 2002, let’s call it 2003 and sold 0.94M units and then DS came out in 2004. So if we assume 75% of GBA systems were sold by the time Fusion was out it only had a 1.5% attach rate. 
 

Fusion was not very popular. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it, but the game missed the formula and didn’t captivate fans.

Metroid Prime was hugely successful in comparison, but it changed the genre and feel of the game so drastically that it may have actually created a brand new market segment rather than retaining the original fanbase

agree on all points. And man, I love digging into the numbers, so thank you for that.

I definitely agree on the last point. I'd wager that, sure, a bunch of people bought Prime because they were already Metroid fans. But probably a bunch more bought it because it was a new FPS series on Gamecube. And at this point it feels like Metroid and Metroid Prime really are their own series.

[Sumez | 2,929]

19 hours ago, phart010 said:

Metroid Fans – Finally. You understand us!

If a dreadful, drab looking outsourced Metroid game by MercurySteam is "what metroid fans want", I really need to find myself some new metroid fans

[phart010 | 1,705]

29 minutes ago, Sumez said:

If a dreadful, drab looking outsourced Metroid game by MercurySteam is "what metroid fans want", I really need to find myself some new metroid fans

The statement “You understand us!” wasn’t meant to convey that this upcoming game is what Metroid fans want. We’ll have to see the actual game to find out if measures up.

Takahashi’s statement was basically acknowledging what Metroid fans have felt for the past 19 years. There hasn’t been a new “Metroid game” since Fusion... Basically he’s acknowledging that all these other games that have come out with Metroid in the title are not what the fans have been looking for. 

[RH | 4,890]

FYI the Nintendo channel has an hour of gameplay spread across two videos if anyone wants to see it. It starts right at the beginning of gameplay, and not boot up or with the starting story. I watched about 10 minutes of the first boss fight. I don't know... Maybe?

 

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,504]

56 minutes ago, Sumez said:

If a dreadful, drab looking outsourced Metroid game by MercurySteam is "what metroid fans want", I really need to find myself some new metroid fans

I think what Metroid fans the online gaming crowd wants is to whine and cry and perpetually be unhappy about everything ever.  Just another post-Nintendo Direct, business as usual 

I got too much shit to play as it is, so I wish I didn't want to play this.  But it will very good, like usual.

[Renmauzo | 1,196]

I'm looking forward to Dread. Other than the atmosphere, I don't care much for Super Metroid like many do, but I love Fusion, so a direct continuation is great news to me.

In fact, there were some nice reveals on this direct: a new Wario Ware (always good for fun and a laugh), bringing Advance Wars 1 & 2 back got me hype as soon as I saw the first screen mentioning "Orange Star Nation is under attack", SMT V looks like it's going to be a gem, and I'm always down for more Mario Party.

I imagine that the AW re-make/re-release is meant to serve as a litmus test for the possibility of reviving the property with new entries; Fire Emblem blew up since Awakening and has had steady releases ever since, why not try it with Advance Wars?

Anyway, on topic, I've made peace long ago that a sprite based Metroid will never happen again, but the aesthetic for Dread works in my eyes and that feeling of being hunted coming back from Fusion will really bring the tension which I'm all for. October is going to be an exciting month!

[phart010 | 1,705]

5 hours ago, RH said:

FYI the Nintendo channel has an hour of gameplay spread across two videos if anyone wants to see it. It starts right at the beginning of gameplay, and not boot up or with the starting story. I watched about 10 minutes of the first boss fight. I don't know... Maybe?

 

 

Thanks for posting those videos. I probably would not have caught wind of them on my own.

I just finished watching the first one. Sounds like they have figured out the importance of the exploration component of the game. Also they specifically mentioned that Adam will not be bossing you around in this game. 

I think this looks very promising. Although I’m so much of a Metroid nut, it’s a guaranteed buy for me, good or bad

 

Edit: I am so tired of special editions... this is the last one I’m gonna get

Edited June 17, 2021 by phart010

[Sumez | 2,929]

6 hours ago, phart010 said:

Takahashi’s statement was basically acknowledging what Metroid fans have felt for the past 19 years. There hasn’t been a new “Metroid game” since Fusion... Basically he’s acknowledging that all these other games that have come out with Metroid in the title are not what the fans have been looking for. 

So here's my take, Zero Mission was the last real "new Metroid game", and that one was the first since Super Metroid.

Everything else has felt like somewhere in the range from a complete spinoff (pinball/hunters) to an attempt at doing something different (prime/other m), with equally varying degrees of success. Even Fusion didn't do any of what the Metroid series historically has done best, and felt like a misunderstanding of the series. (judging by your original post, it seems you agree )

To me, this new game looks like just yet another step in that direction, and more of a direct followup to Samus Returns (which it is), than an actual "Metroid 5".
Seems to me like people are just having a gut reaction to the fact that it's 2D, rather than it actually having anything to do with the original series. Remember when Other M was announced, people reacted that way too.
It actually looks a lot like Shadow Complex, which of course was obviously very inspired by the Metroid series, but hopefully not the new standard for it.

At least I can still hope the game will be decent as its own thing, it's got Nintendo's supervision after all , but MercurySteam is not where I want to see the Metroid series end up. I can't possibly ever forgive them for the garbage that was Mirror of Fate.

tldr; what fans want is a new inhouse developed Metroid game, made by Nintendo/Intelligent Systems.

Edited June 17, 2021 by Sumez

[OptOut | 8,879]

I love Metroid Prime, best GameCube game IMO, and I love Super Metroid as well. Why does it always have to be one or another?

Also, Metroid Prime pinball is a great adventure style pinball game too, I won't hear anyone badmouthing that game! 

 

So anyways, are people already hating on Metroid Dread without even playing it? I'm going to buy it, even though I'm honestly way more excited about Metroid Prime 4 than that... It looks good! 

[RH | 4,890]

5 hours ago, OptOut said:

I love Metroid Prime, best GameCube game IMO, and I love Super Metroid as well. Why does it always have to be one or another?

Also, Metroid Prime pinball is a great adventure style pinball game too, I won't hear anyone badmouthing that game! 

 

So anyways, are people already hating on Metroid Dread without even playing it? I'm going to buy it, even though I'm honestly way more excited about Metroid Prime 4 than that... It looks good! 

Well, this is my opinion but I think the big picture is, many of us love Metroid originally for what it was in it's early days-- open exploration where you could get lost. Yes, back-tracking for long passages could suck, but this still added to the feel that you were in a real world, where caverns are random and you never know where your next target will be.  That process is refined a little bit as the series went on, but still, Metroid worlds were open for exploration and once one boss was defeated and a new skill was acquired, you had to remember where that skill would have been useful to progress in a different direction OR you have to hunt down a new path you've missed.

Fans of the series since the first decade have missed that gameplay.  That is "Metroid" on a spiritual level.  All of these other games could truly be amazing titles and worth being loved... but it's not the original experience and that's what we'd like to get back to.

Again, I'm all for both.  Sure, you can create these linear, FPS spin-offs or even pinball games, but also have the OG style series, with added power-ups, better graphics and bigger worlds.  That's what we've been longing for.

 

[RH | 4,890]

9 hours ago, phart010 said:

Edit: I am so tired of special editions... this is the last one I’m gonna get

Somehow I missed that... interesting.  Hmmmm...

Well, I've already decided to get the Special Edition of Axiom Verge 2 (first SE I will have bought... ever?) and there' something a bout seeing those Metroid cards.  If it's not THAT much more over retail, I might get two.

I've never considered Metroidvania games to be my favorite genre, but I'm starting to think I may need to reconsider my priorities.

[spacepup | 2,404]

I'm pretty excited for both new Metroid games.  Metroid Dread looks fun, and I'm super excited for the next Metroid Prime as well.

I LOVED the prime series.  Honestly, I thought it was a pretty great foray into the third dimension with Metroid.  I still remember the first time playing Metroid Prime for Gamecube, and really enjoying it and thinking it was super-fun.  It's very difficult to transition a beloved series from 2d to 3d and do it in a way that works.  I thought Metroid Prime actually did a pretty decent job of it.  

There will always be a side of me that just loves the classic side-scrolling Metroid action, but I quite enjoyed Prime and am very excited to finally get to try out the next iteration.

 

[Tanooki | 4,929]

Ugh... I don't know.  I'm being open minded here with that Treehouse bit.  I really don't like that one hit kill bit with EMMI, they're a bit TOO aggressive, but the rest doesn't feel as gimmicky and grating than that gameplay downgrade that was Samus Returns.  There are some good mechanics here, clearly took what SR did and refined some the turd elements into something more workable here.  Just finished clip #1 of 2 making that comment.

I feel I could own this, maybe a gift?  It's clearly a true sequel from Fusion seeing what is there and that's a plus.

I'm just not going to like some here be an (intentional or not) by looks Nintendo apologist who sees minimal to no wrong and just want this, and want it now.  Not going to be an internet dumpster troll either, something about it appeals, some about it also is very unappealing.

Is this Mercury Steam again?  Or did Nintendo do this.  MS is a very hit and miss company with old IP, did like the 3DS/PC game of Castlevania, but even it's a bit on the weird side mixing up like 3 games in 1, but it worked ok.