The Old School feel of Home
I will be out of the office all week next week because I am attending a wedding for some dear friends. Because of this, I will be away from the gaming entertainment that I so love. My laptop is good for work processing, but not much else. So, I leave the GC, PS2, and of course, my life line to the world, my computer, at home.
Which sucks, because I am trying to beat a bunch of games. A friend dropped by and handed my a couple of GBA games. " Take your SP with you." Now, most of you have probably already beat me to that conclusion, but let me finish. I don't like the GBA. Well, I must like it because I bought it, right? Sort of.
I bought it primarily for the need of owning it to play Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. For those of you that are gamers, I don't need to tell you about it. For those of you who are, brief synopsis: To play the 4 player multi-player game, you MUST all have Game Boy Advances.
Oh, and there is the Pokemon games too.
So, I have a GBA SP and a link cable. I briefly flirted with Super Street Puzzle Fighter II, but the colors were weird. So, when my friend brought me Metroid Fusion, Golden Sun, and The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, I was a little scepticle. Until I found the extra stuff you can get by beating the game and connecting it to your Game Cube. I have to admit it, being a RPG/Sqaure fanboy has adapted me to playing games for extra content.
More importantly, Metroid Fusion has the feel of one of my top ten games: Super Metroid. There is something about Super Metroid that brings the very essense of games to try better. From the beginning to the end, it never ceases to be exciting. Words fail me when trying to tell you what this game means to me.
Metroid Fusion brings that back, all be to a smaller screen. The Metroid Prime game was good for the innovation that it brought to the series, but there is nothing like old school platforming. The game, at the time of my playing, is short. The stroyline is interesting. Like many other Metroid games, you have to gather the components of your suit to make it uber great. This time, a parasite infests your suit and you have to reclaim the parts that are missing.
The extra content: Like Super Metroid, and Metroid Prime, if you beat the game in a certain amount of time/complete combinations, you get better endings. You can also link up with Metroid Zero Mission to get a special gallery.
Now, Metroid Zero Mission. This is a short, short game. I'm meh about it, having not played it very much, but after finding the list of extras, i think it is worth the 29.00 Cnd to buy it. Not only do you get get a wealth of stuff, like galleries and such, you get to unlock the ORIGINAL metroid, complete with a wealth of other endings. 8 endings to be exact. And for all you old schoolers there, the Justin Bailey code still works.
Nintendo has spent a lot of time developing the Game Boy versions, released information before and during this years E3 about a sequel to the Blockbuster hit for the GameCube, entitled Metroid Prime II: Echoes. IGN * IGN.COM* released information on the release date of this game as November 4th 2004. The new inclusion, of course knowning Nintendo's plans, is to make it a Mulitplayer game. Up to four people can play Metroid Prime II. There is a large piece of content in the game that includes thigns taken from Metroid Fusion, including a X Parasite clone as in the GBA game.
Check out the E3 movie here: http://www.norfairdepths.com/movies/metroidechoes_qthigh.mov
The Full Story, plus pics can be found here: http://cube.ign.com/articles/517/517636p1.html
While Nintendo hasn't been a top ranker in the videogame wars, they still managed to put out some seriously good product. Gamers mumbled and grumbled that there was little in the Metroid offering after Super Metroid, and now there is a flash flood of games with everyone's favorite Bounty Hunter. I think, as long as the games look good, and play good, more power to them. I for one will be picking up the Metroid Library, and hopefully they will bring back Super Metroid in some form. My SNES is on the verge of breaking!