7 ms·

The Invisible Hand of Super Metroid

194 points by jsnell 12y ago

erik_landerholm 12y ago
I don't comment much here, but this is one of my favorite articles...ever. I loved metroid as a kid. The idea that the game was deliberately leading me to a solution, while making it interesting, exciting, and rewarding is what I do with my children everyday. The fact I never noticed until now just shows how great that game was. Amazing. Makes me feel 12 again just reading it!
- randall 12y ago
  I last played it probably about 5-7 years ago (along with the primes and zero missions, was on a metroid bender). Re-reading it as an adult with little spare time, it was like playing the game but in a fraction of the time. Thank you, poster, for preventing further loss of productivity.
ehmmm 12y ago
Those mechanics are way too subtle. Today, the player must be explicitly told how to overcome obstacles. Games have become mainstream and so did the target audience, this caused a push towards the lowest common denominator in game design.
- Tiktaalik 12y ago
  The popularity of the opaque and difficult Dark Souls/Bloodborne games proves that there is space for games that challenge the player. What's different now than the era of Super Metroid is that there are vibrant communities where people can deeply discuss the mysteries of games and help fellow gamers discover how to move forward.
  - jsnell 12y ago
    The key difference to this classic design style is that the Souls games don't really have the "invisible hand" guiding them in the right direction. It's almost the opposite. Almost everyone who played Dark Souls probably has a story about heading in the wrong direction from the first hub world, and ending up in one of two locations that are almost impossible for a newbie (typically the skeletons) rather than the intended "slightly harder than the tutorial" area. The only thing that varies is how long they spent hopelessly beating their head against the wall before discovering the intended path. In Bloodborne that's been replaced by half the players new to the series not realizing they can equip a weapon, and consequently spending hours trying to defeat the (rather tough) first enemy barehanded.
    - kibwen 12y ago
      I absolutely adore the mental image of Dark Souls using its invisible hand to push players off of cliffs. :) It's a nifty demonstration of differing philosophies: Super Metroid wants to guide the player to minimize frustration, so that they get the satisfaction of non-linear exploration while avoiding the boredom that comes from fruitlessly trekking through the same place over and over and over and over again. Meanwhile, Dark Souls doesn't care a whit about frustration, and aims to give players a feeling of deserved triumph when they finally manage to surmount the previously insurmountable. I think there are room for games of both philosophies to exist, though they will surely appeal to different tastes.
- krapp 12y ago
  It could also be the case that game designers have gotten lazier, as the purpose of mainstream games shifts from challenging players to encouraging in-game purchases and DLC, and explicit tutorials take a lot less effort when all you really want to do is milk the casuals until they get bored and wander off to the next thing.
- oldmanjay 12y ago
  there is such a wide variety of games available today that any sweeping statements like yours are by necessity untrue. but even if your thesis were correct, your conclusion is unsupported and honestly nothing more than insulting.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    I don't necessarily agree with parent, but see Gran Turismo for a game that got a lot easier, with more content, as the series developed. I'd love to see someone comparing the licence tests in each game.
- Retra 12y ago
  People who want games like this have left that particular market. The players haven't changed, it the group that's willing to spend the most money that has.
- white-flame 12y ago
  From the second paragraph: "This analysis takes most of its material from the first playthrough of the game by my friend Rufus, which I had the pleasure of observing from beginning to end. Watching him, a complete newcomer to the genre, still find his way around Zebes in pretty much the same way I'd do, almost never once getting lost or stuck for any considerable amount of time, made me question how that could be. This analysis is my answer." I presume this happened recently, with a gamer of "today".
  - ehmmm 12y ago
    Your logical fallacy is, drum roll... : Hasty generalization Congratulations! You win nothing.
- vilhelm_s 12y ago
  I think one big difference is that we have the internet now, with wikis, Game FAQs, youtube walkthroughs, etc. I played Super Metroid using a walkthrough, and that completely breaks the illusion of exploration, because it's then clear to the player that the game is linear and there is always only one way you can go. (Metroid 1 holds up better in that situation, because it actually gives the player genuine choice about what order to do the different challenges). The most popular game right now is probably Minecraft. Note how it exactly takes advantage of this environment: in order to have fun in it, you want to read tutorials about how to build various stuff.
aabajian 12y ago
I agree with the content of the article, but there's one key secret that seems next to impossible to find without cheating. To my knowledge the entrance to Kraig is the only place in the game where there's a secret in an elevator room. If you fail to explore the elevator room, the story won't ever move forward. Here's a picture: http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/images/d/df/Super_Metroid_Walkthrough_Brinstar_Elevator_Room_Kraid.png http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/images/d/df/Super_Metroid... Shooting a super-missile at that block eventually leads you to Kraig.
- TillE 12y ago
  It's been years since I played it, but if you look at the minimap in that screenshot, it seems you can get the area map before discovering that entrance. The unexplored blue area is a huge clue.
  - ehmmm 12y ago
    Yes. And if I remember correctly, if you bomb the block, the super missile logo appears on the block.
- zten 12y ago
  If someone was as bomb-happy as I was when exploring, the game would tell you a super missile is required to proceed when a bomb explodes. Bombed blocks change to show what smashes them.
- kimos 12y ago
  The part that tripped me up when I was younger was using the power bombs to shatter the glass pipe to gain access to Marida. It looks like a piece of background, does not respond to any other weapons, is not colour coded or have any breakable indicators, and does not react to the X-Ray beam.
  - Retra 12y ago
    There are other ways into Maridia, though. I don't think you are actually required to bomb that glass.
DiabloD3 12y ago
Super Metroid is easily in my top ten of greatest games ever, along with Zelda 3.
- Retra 12y ago
  I also think it's one of the best games ever made. I haven't played it in years, but I can still hear the sound of the power beam when you first land on the planet, with the lightning in the background. It sounds muffled and distant, like the atmosphere is really wet and heavy. They really nailed the 'alien' part of the experience.
- Natsu 12y ago
  Yes, I loved it too. The only thing I wish they'd done differently is not make me sit there for the music after every single missile powerup. Just watch a 100% TAS of it to see what I mean...
- username223 12y ago
  Don't forget Faxanadu for the NES, a similar semi-linear side-scrolling quest for power-ups.
navait 12y ago
One concept that's interested me is metroid as purgatory. -Samus often repeats the same mission over and over with minor changes. Her enemies are generally Kraid, Ridley, Mother Brain, evil Samus(SA-X, Dark Samus) -Samus is constantly repeating work getting the same power-ups and soon losing them after she completes the mission. -Samus is mostly completely alone, unless saved by something else at the end. Everything in metroid's design emphasizes isolation. -She blows up the planet/starship/space station, with a desperate race against time. -Soon there is a new mission... She's forced to repeat the same thing over and over. Perhaps she is stuck here eternally, a hell created as a reflection of her life. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned, like with the infant metroid before she can live. The game design emhasizes isolation - there are only enemies, except artifacts left by the Chozo. Samus can only depend on herself. The world is designed to emphasize isolation from the real world by putting her on caverns below the surface of uninhabited planets. The art is designed to look like no human has set foot here. The gameplay teaches you through the world.
- AndrewOMartin 12y ago
  Sounds more like Sisyphus, who was punished for lying by having to roll a boulder up a hill, when it would roll back down and he'd have to repeat the task. Purgatory, as described in Inferno seemed like a reasonably well populated place, if not exactly a party.
- kibwen 12y ago
  I think there's a fantastic parallel here to the Zelda series. Though there exists an official (and humorously bifurcated) "timeline" that determines where each game takes place chronologically, the fundamental premise, set pieces, and objectives of most of the games all echo each other. Rather than trying to fit all of these games into a linear narrative, I think it's more fun to think of each game in the Zelda series as a retelling of the exact same story, much as real-world legends change subtly over time as they are passed down through generations and across cultures.
krebby 12y ago
There's a fantastic series on YouTube that examines some of these types of game and level design elements in a similarly academic way. The episode on Half-Life 2's Invisible Tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMggqenxuZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMggqenxuZc) is particularly well done.
- barrkel 12y ago
  One word: overdesigned. One of the reasons I disliked HL2 so much was because my experience of it was so controlled and funneled. I felt like the designers removed my agency, and tried to ensure that there was one right way to solve a problem, to the point of punishing me [1], or worse, main-routing[2] me when I sought an alternative route. [1] One location early on requires you to break into a tunnel to come up behind and flank a guard shooting down at you with a mounted gun behind a screen. The problem is that the fact that a flanking tunnel exists means that the designers had no reason to make him possible to hit; it is actually possible to kill him head on, but it's difficult, and you will almost certainly take a lot of damage in the process (the punishment). The tunnel is just too damn convenient though, and breaks the suspension of disbelief; it's too obviously designed in. [2] I invented the word main-routing to describe a situation where, when you're exploring shady nooks that you spot out of the corner of your eye, they look like they go somewhere interesting, so you go back to the main route to find out what the main stream does. But instead it dead-ends, and in fact that shady little corner you were exploring was the only way forward; what you thought was a secret shortcut was just the main route again, in a different guise. This is a double-whammy: not only does it break suspension of disbelief again, but it also punishes exploration. It teaches you that nooks are either dead ends that are pointless to explore, or that the main route will dead-end itself and you'll be forced to explore the nook. Either way, you have no choice in the matter, so you're better off sticking to the main route until it forces you to explore. I really did not enjoy HL2. It was a cripplingly disappointing experience, especially after having played Deus Ex, which greatly increased my expectations from a game. Going back to playing a mute scientist with an alleged PhD yet whose only mechanism of interacting with the world is violence was like going back to the 90s.
  - ehmmm 12y ago
nazgulnarsil 12y ago
Also see: A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid II, a fantastic piece exploring the earlier game. http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SRHoliwell/20150130/235329/A_Maze_of_Murderscapes_Metroid_II.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SRHoliwell/20150130/235329/A_...
digi_owl 12y ago
The 16-bit era seems like perhaps a golden age of console gaming. Enough memory and CPU to do quite massive games, but still not burdened by 3D graphics and movement.
- p1mrx 12y ago
  3D is an option, not a requirement. There are plenty of modern 2D games.
  - ehmmm 12y ago
    Most of them are burdened by graphics. It sells better.
    - joshuapants 12y ago
      On the contrary, a lot of the 2d indie darlings have terrible graphics, they're burdened with hubris ("it can't be that hard to make pixel art") and nostalgia.
      - ehmmm 12y ago
        On the contrary, what? Who said anything about indie games specifically? This sub-thread is talking about modern games, all of them. My comment still stands. Games that make most of the market share, are burdened by graphics. Ori is a good example that does that. It's an indie game with a major publisher and was profitable within the first week. Its graphics are turned up to 11.
        aw3c2 12y ago
        Have you heard of the phenomenon of Minecraft?
- cbd1984 12y ago
  The Golden Age is when you're twelve. Always. Regardless of generation.
dietrichepp 12y ago
Interesting article... I just made a Metroid style game for Ludum Dare, and one of my key lessons from previous games was listed in the article: force people to use new tools. I have a room with a double-jump powerup, and you have to use it to get back out again. My experience was that otherwise, far too many people simply didn't figure out double jumping. http://chaostomb.moria.us/ http://chaostomb.moria.us/
jfarmer 12y ago
As a counterpoint to this, I like this essay: A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid II (http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?p=1384825#1384825 http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?p=1384825#13848...). Regarding the level design of Super Metroid vs. other Metroid games, the author writes: > Return of Samus is the only 2D Metroid with buildings the player can walk on and enter. Every door in Metroid II is located in abandoned buildings, and behind every door is an item that’s been sealed away like a time capsule. Each door is a barrier that is hopelessly locked, necessitating that you blast through it with missiles. > Compare this to Super Metroid, where the continuity of the map is constantly sabotaged by the ridiculous bottlenecking of doors meant to transition into the next room. These doors are, of course, the perfect size for Samus to pass through and only her arsenal can open them. Some doors are located in outside areas where the sky is visible, making the game world feel like a box with holes poked in the sides of it. This problem endlessly reveals the artificiality of areas intended to seem organic and makes the game designers’ guiding hands hamfistedly obvious. > The Space Pirates—somehow an entire species—mill around inside rooms between these doors as if they’re doomed to wait forever. Space Pirates don’t have missiles or Power Bombs, so how would they be inside places where these weapons are needed to ingress? It doesn’t feel like aliens on Zebes built those damn mazes or that they’re natural formations; it feels like sleep-deprived game developers built them And as far as essays about level design go, this one about the level design in Super Mario Bros. is one of my favorite: http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=465 http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=465.
VeejayRampay 12y ago
I think Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap could be mentioned here for some of the same reasons. The animal upgrades you get along the game open up new possibilities and make the game awesome.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
bane 12y ago
I never played SM when it was originally out for some reason that's long since been forgotten. I first played it maybe 2 or 3 years ago and found it fantastic. Completely divorced from any nostalgia, I found myself really getting engrossed in the story, the environment and the design. Even though it was 16-bit and 2D, I was completely absorbed in the environment. It feels like almost every screen and task had been poured over and over and polished until it was perfect. It's actually kind of hard to play other games that haven't received that kind of attention because you feel the subjective difference. It's so wonderfully designed that, even though the game ends up being pseudo-linear (everything you're going to do to progress has been more or less pre-determined), it felt like a world I really wanted to spend more time in and that I had an amazing amount of agency. It's definitely one of those games that clearly qualifies as art in the sense that it has a story to tell and emotions it wants to evoke, while at the same time remaining interactive. I feel like this is the kind of level that Ebert was challenging games to reach when he claimed they weren't art.
- keeperofdakeys 12y ago
  While the game may feel linear from a casual play through, the speed running community have developed many sequence breaks (intended or not), to finish the game faster. With these you can grab items early, out of order, or not at all. If you were curious, you should look up a super metroid speedrun on youtube. Some of them even have a running commentary of glitches, techniques, or general information while they are being played.
ericdykstra 12y ago
For anyone that finds this article interesting, I recommend the Retronauts podcast. http://www.retronauts.com/ http://www.retronauts.com/ I started listening to it about a month ago, and immediately dove into their back catalogue and have listened to about half of the episodes from their current and previous season. Even when the episodes are about something I have little knowledge of, hearing about a game or producer's impact and legacy is really interesting and makes me want to go back and check the games out.

194 points by jsnell 12y ago

I don't comment much here, but this is one of my favorite articles...ever. I loved metroid as a kid. The idea that the game was deliberately leading me to a solution, while making it interesting, exciting, and rewarding is what I do with my children everyday. The fact I never noticed until now just shows how great that game was. Amazing. Makes me feel 12 again just reading it!

randall 12y ago
I last played it probably about 5-7 years ago (along with the primes and zero missions, was on a metroid bender). Re-reading it as an adult with little spare time, it was like playing the game but in a fraction of the time. Thank you, poster, for preventing further loss of productivity.

ehmmm 12y ago

Those mechanics are way too subtle. Today, the player must be explicitly told how to overcome obstacles. Games have become mainstream and so did the target audience, this caused a push towards the lowest common denominator in game design.

Tiktaalik 12y ago
The popularity of the opaque and difficult Dark Souls/Bloodborne games proves that there is space for games that challenge the player. What's different now than the era of Super Metroid is that there are vibrant communities where people can deeply discuss the mysteries of games and help fellow gamers discover how to move forward.
- jsnell 12y ago
  The key difference to this classic design style is that the Souls games don't really have the "invisible hand" guiding them in the right direction. It's almost the opposite. Almost everyone who played Dark Souls probably has a story about heading in the wrong direction from the first hub world, and ending up in one of two locations that are almost impossible for a newbie (typically the skeletons) rather than the intended "slightly harder than the tutorial" area. The only thing that varies is how long they spent hopelessly beating their head against the wall before discovering the intended path. In Bloodborne that's been replaced by half the players new to the series not realizing they can equip a weapon, and consequently spending hours trying to defeat the (rather tough) first enemy barehanded.
  - kibwen 12y ago
    I absolutely adore the mental image of Dark Souls using its invisible hand to push players off of cliffs. :) It's a nifty demonstration of differing philosophies: Super Metroid wants to guide the player to minimize frustration, so that they get the satisfaction of non-linear exploration while avoiding the boredom that comes from fruitlessly trekking through the same place over and over and over and over again. Meanwhile, Dark Souls doesn't care a whit about frustration, and aims to give players a feeling of deserved triumph when they finally manage to surmount the previously insurmountable. I think there are room for games of both philosophies to exist, though they will surely appeal to different tastes.
krapp 12y ago
It could also be the case that game designers have gotten lazier, as the purpose of mainstream games shifts from challenging players to encouraging in-game purchases and DLC, and explicit tutorials take a lot less effort when all you really want to do is milk the casuals until they get bored and wander off to the next thing.
oldmanjay 12y ago
there is such a wide variety of games available today that any sweeping statements like yours are by necessity untrue. but even if your thesis were correct, your conclusion is unsupported and honestly nothing more than insulting.
- DanBC 12y ago
  I don't necessarily agree with parent, but see Gran Turismo for a game that got a lot easier, with more content, as the series developed. I'd love to see someone comparing the licence tests in each game.
Retra 12y ago
People who want games like this have left that particular market. The players haven't changed, it the group that's willing to spend the most money that has.
white-flame 12y ago
From the second paragraph: "This analysis takes most of its material from the first playthrough of the game by my friend Rufus, which I had the pleasure of observing from beginning to end. Watching him, a complete newcomer to the genre, still find his way around Zebes in pretty much the same way I'd do, almost never once getting lost or stuck for any considerable amount of time, made me question how that could be. This analysis is my answer." I presume this happened recently, with a gamer of "today".
- ehmmm 12y ago
  Your logical fallacy is, drum roll... : Hasty generalization Congratulations! You win nothing.
vilhelm_s 12y ago
I think one big difference is that we have the internet now, with wikis, Game FAQs, youtube walkthroughs, etc. I played Super Metroid using a walkthrough, and that completely breaks the illusion of exploration, because it's then clear to the player that the game is linear and there is always only one way you can go. (Metroid 1 holds up better in that situation, because it actually gives the player genuine choice about what order to do the different challenges). The most popular game right now is probably Minecraft. Note how it exactly takes advantage of this environment: in order to have fun in it, you want to read tutorials about how to build various stuff.

aabajian 12y ago

I agree with the content of the article, but there's one key secret that seems next to impossible to find without cheating. To my knowledge the entrance to Kraig is the only place in the game where there's a secret in an elevator room. If you fail to explore the elevator room, the story won't ever move forward. Here's a picture: http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/images/d/df/Super_Metroid_Walkthrough_Brinstar_Elevator_Room_Kraid.png http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/images/d/df/Super_Metroid... Shooting a super-missile at that block eventually leads you to Kraig.

TillE 12y ago
It's been years since I played it, but if you look at the minimap in that screenshot, it seems you can get the area map before discovering that entrance. The unexplored blue area is a huge clue.
- ehmmm 12y ago
  Yes. And if I remember correctly, if you bomb the block, the super missile logo appears on the block.
zten 12y ago
If someone was as bomb-happy as I was when exploring, the game would tell you a super missile is required to proceed when a bomb explodes. Bombed blocks change to show what smashes them.
kimos 12y ago
The part that tripped me up when I was younger was using the power bombs to shatter the glass pipe to gain access to Marida. It looks like a piece of background, does not respond to any other weapons, is not colour coded or have any breakable indicators, and does not react to the X-Ray beam.
- Retra 12y ago
  There are other ways into Maridia, though. I don't think you are actually required to bomb that glass.

DiabloD3 12y ago

Super Metroid is easily in my top ten of greatest games ever, along with Zelda 3.

Retra 12y ago
I also think it's one of the best games ever made. I haven't played it in years, but I can still hear the sound of the power beam when you first land on the planet, with the lightning in the background. It sounds muffled and distant, like the atmosphere is really wet and heavy. They really nailed the 'alien' part of the experience.
Natsu 12y ago
Yes, I loved it too. The only thing I wish they'd done differently is not make me sit there for the music after every single missile powerup. Just watch a 100% TAS of it to see what I mean...
username223 12y ago
Don't forget Faxanadu for the NES, a similar semi-linear side-scrolling quest for power-ups.

navait 12y ago

One concept that's interested me is metroid as purgatory. -Samus often repeats the same mission over and over with minor changes. Her enemies are generally Kraid, Ridley, Mother Brain, evil Samus(SA-X, Dark Samus) -Samus is constantly repeating work getting the same power-ups and soon losing them after she completes the mission. -Samus is mostly completely alone, unless saved by something else at the end. Everything in metroid's design emphasizes isolation. -She blows up the planet/starship/space station, with a desperate race against time. -Soon there is a new mission... She's forced to repeat the same thing over and over. Perhaps she is stuck here eternally, a hell created as a reflection of her life. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned, like with the infant metroid before she can live. The game design emhasizes isolation - there are only enemies, except artifacts left by the Chozo. Samus can only depend on herself. The world is designed to emphasize isolation from the real world by putting her on caverns below the surface of uninhabited planets. The art is designed to look like no human has set foot here. The gameplay teaches you through the world.

AndrewOMartin 12y ago
Sounds more like Sisyphus, who was punished for lying by having to roll a boulder up a hill, when it would roll back down and he'd have to repeat the task. Purgatory, as described in Inferno seemed like a reasonably well populated place, if not exactly a party.
kibwen 12y ago
I think there's a fantastic parallel here to the Zelda series. Though there exists an official (and humorously bifurcated) "timeline" that determines where each game takes place chronologically, the fundamental premise, set pieces, and objectives of most of the games all echo each other. Rather than trying to fit all of these games into a linear narrative, I think it's more fun to think of each game in the Zelda series as a retelling of the exact same story, much as real-world legends change subtly over time as they are passed down through generations and across cultures.

krebby 12y ago

There's a fantastic series on YouTube that examines some of these types of game and level design elements in a similarly academic way. The episode on Half-Life 2's Invisible Tutorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMggqenxuZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMggqenxuZc) is particularly well done.

barrkel 12y ago
One word: overdesigned. One of the reasons I disliked HL2 so much was because my experience of it was so controlled and funneled. I felt like the designers removed my agency, and tried to ensure that there was one right way to solve a problem, to the point of punishing me [1], or worse, main-routing[2] me when I sought an alternative route. [1] One location early on requires you to break into a tunnel to come up behind and flank a guard shooting down at you with a mounted gun behind a screen. The problem is that the fact that a flanking tunnel exists means that the designers had no reason to make him possible to hit; it is actually possible to kill him head on, but it's difficult, and you will almost certainly take a lot of damage in the process (the punishment). The tunnel is just too damn convenient though, and breaks the suspension of disbelief; it's too obviously designed in. [2] I invented the word main-routing to describe a situation where, when you're exploring shady nooks that you spot out of the corner of your eye, they look like they go somewhere interesting, so you go back to the main route to find out what the main stream does. But instead it dead-ends, and in fact that shady little corner you were exploring was the only way forward; what you thought was a secret shortcut was just the main route again, in a different guise. This is a double-whammy: not only does it break suspension of disbelief again, but it also punishes exploration. It teaches you that nooks are either dead ends that are pointless to explore, or that the main route will dead-end itself and you'll be forced to explore the nook. Either way, you have no choice in the matter, so you're better off sticking to the main route until it forces you to explore. I really did not enjoy HL2. It was a cripplingly disappointing experience, especially after having played Deus Ex, which greatly increased my expectations from a game. Going back to playing a mute scientist with an alleged PhD yet whose only mechanism of interacting with the world is violence was like going back to the 90s.
- ehmmm 12y ago

nazgulnarsil 12y ago

Also see: A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid II, a fantastic piece exploring the earlier game. http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SRHoliwell/20150130/235329/A_Maze_of_Murderscapes_Metroid_II.php http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SRHoliwell/20150130/235329/A_...

digi_owl 12y ago

The 16-bit era seems like perhaps a golden age of console gaming. Enough memory and CPU to do quite massive games, but still not burdened by 3D graphics and movement.

p1mrx 12y ago
3D is an option, not a requirement. There are plenty of modern 2D games.
- ehmmm 12y ago
  Most of them are burdened by graphics. It sells better.
  - joshuapants 12y ago
    On the contrary, a lot of the 2d indie darlings have terrible graphics, they're burdened with hubris ("it can't be that hard to make pixel art") and nostalgia.
    - ehmmm 12y ago
      On the contrary, what? Who said anything about indie games specifically? This sub-thread is talking about modern games, all of them. My comment still stands. Games that make most of the market share, are burdened by graphics. Ori is a good example that does that. It's an indie game with a major publisher and was profitable within the first week. Its graphics are turned up to 11.
      - aw3c2 12y ago
        Have you heard of the phenomenon of Minecraft?
cbd1984 12y ago
The Golden Age is when you're twelve. Always. Regardless of generation.

dietrichepp 12y ago

Interesting article... I just made a Metroid style game for Ludum Dare, and one of my key lessons from previous games was listed in the article: force people to use new tools. I have a room with a double-jump powerup, and you have to use it to get back out again. My experience was that otherwise, far too many people simply didn't figure out double jumping. http://chaostomb.moria.us/ http://chaostomb.moria.us/

jfarmer 12y ago

As a counterpoint to this, I like this essay: A Maze of Murderscapes: Metroid II (http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?p=1384825#1384825 http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?p=1384825#13848...). Regarding the level design of Super Metroid vs. other Metroid games, the author writes: > Return of Samus is the only 2D Metroid with buildings the player can walk on and enter. Every door in Metroid II is located in abandoned buildings, and behind every door is an item that’s been sealed away like a time capsule. Each door is a barrier that is hopelessly locked, necessitating that you blast through it with missiles. > Compare this to Super Metroid, where the continuity of the map is constantly sabotaged by the ridiculous bottlenecking of doors meant to transition into the next room. These doors are, of course, the perfect size for Samus to pass through and only her arsenal can open them. Some doors are located in outside areas where the sky is visible, making the game world feel like a box with holes poked in the sides of it. This problem endlessly reveals the artificiality of areas intended to seem organic and makes the game designers’ guiding hands hamfistedly obvious. > The Space Pirates—somehow an entire species—mill around inside rooms between these doors as if they’re doomed to wait forever. Space Pirates don’t have missiles or Power Bombs, so how would they be inside places where these weapons are needed to ingress? It doesn’t feel like aliens on Zebes built those damn mazes or that they’re natural formations; it feels like sleep-deprived game developers built them And as far as essays about level design go, this one about the level design in Super Mario Bros. is one of my favorite: http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=465 http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=465.

VeejayRampay 12y ago

I think Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap could be mentioned here for some of the same reasons. The animal upgrades you get along the game open up new possibilities and make the game awesome.

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bane 12y ago

I never played SM when it was originally out for some reason that's long since been forgotten. I first played it maybe 2 or 3 years ago and found it fantastic. Completely divorced from any nostalgia, I found myself really getting engrossed in the story, the environment and the design. Even though it was 16-bit and 2D, I was completely absorbed in the environment. It feels like almost every screen and task had been poured over and over and polished until it was perfect. It's actually kind of hard to play other games that haven't received that kind of attention because you feel the subjective difference. It's so wonderfully designed that, even though the game ends up being pseudo-linear (everything you're going to do to progress has been more or less pre-determined), it felt like a world I really wanted to spend more time in and that I had an amazing amount of agency. It's definitely one of those games that clearly qualifies as art in the sense that it has a story to tell and emotions it wants to evoke, while at the same time remaining interactive. I feel like this is the kind of level that Ebert was challenging games to reach when he claimed they weren't art.

keeperofdakeys 12y ago
While the game may feel linear from a casual play through, the speed running community have developed many sequence breaks (intended or not), to finish the game faster. With these you can grab items early, out of order, or not at all. If you were curious, you should look up a super metroid speedrun on youtube. Some of them even have a running commentary of glitches, techniques, or general information while they are being played.

ericdykstra 12y ago

For anyone that finds this article interesting, I recommend the Retronauts podcast. http://www.retronauts.com/ http://www.retronauts.com/ I started listening to it about a month ago, and immediately dove into their back catalogue and have listened to about half of the episodes from their current and previous season. Even when the episodes are about something I have little knowledge of, hearing about a game or producer's impact and legacy is really interesting and makes me want to go back and check the games out.