When you're a fan of less popular video games, you feel a special mix of joy and frustration. Having the game acknowledged or celebrated feels like a special gift. But it's often a gift that no one else understands. Once I said to some friends that my favorite 3DS game was Metroid: Samus Returns, and … Continue reading The Highs and Lows of a Metroid Fan
Back in January 2019 I was enjoying my SNES Classic and decided I should investigate games I'd never played before. I mashed Right on the D-Pad in a kind of "Retro Roulette" I'd made for myself. I landed on Super Ghouls n' Ghosts. I booted it up, died about 20 times without even finishing the … Continue reading How to Make Difficult Video Games Fun
Time spins on, my friends. With each passing Holiday season, I'm reminded that my childhood was a long time ago, and it's only drifting further and further away into the past. My parents gifted my siblings and I a PlayStation 1, our first video game console, in the Christmas of 1998. I remember plugging that … Continue reading My 2021 In Gaming
Metroid Dread is a 2D Metroidvania game developed by MercurySteam and published by Nintendo. It was released in October 2021 as a Nintendo Switch exclusive. MSRB is $60. For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I'm mostly going to show screenshots from the first 3 areas of the game and only talk about the early plot. … Continue reading Metroid Dread Review: A Modern Classic
We're in the home stretch, and it'll be a double-header this time! Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission were both Game Boy Advance games developed within 2 years of each other, and were released during the series' brief renaissance of the early 2000s. Metroid: Zero Mission is a remake of the first NES game with … Continue reading Fusing The Best Parts of Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission
Super Metroid sits on a golden pedestal, inside a sacred chamber, deep within the revered temple of Retro Video Game Classics. To approach, one must meditate for seven days, chanting the ancient mantra: atmosphere, exploration, powerups, backtracking... atmosphere, exploration, powerups, backtracking... once you've cleansed yourself from the impure, hand-holding world of Modern Gaming, you may … Continue reading Super Metroid: A Critical Second Look
On the eve of Samus' new outing on the Nintendo Switch, I thought it would be fun to look back on some of the Metroid games and give them solid critiques, starting with this game. As with A Link Between Worlds, I played Samus Returns before I started reviewing games. However, unlike A Link Between … Continue reading Returning to Metroid: Samus Returns
So you saw the E3 trailer for Metroid Dread and you're interested in trying it out, but you've never played a Metroid game before. Allow me, a long-time Metroid fan, to help! Metroid is one of Nintendo's oldest and most important franchises. Among critics, it stands proudly on Nintendo's podium of their best video game … Continue reading A Newcomer’s Guide to the Metroid Series
Hookshot, Charge Beam, Revive 