I was going to make a big long effort-post about these fangames a few months back, but I got burnt out one the last on I played so it never happened.
Now I remembered that “not finishing games” is actually a perfectly healthy behavior that millions of well-adjusted people do every day, and that it’s perfectly okay to talk about things you’ve quit, so I’m going to make that post right now:
There’s this french Zero Suit Samus cosplayer who goes by the name of Kelly Crystal. I don’t know what her deal is or what chthonic energies fuel her soul, but since 2018 she has released 6 (six!) fully-scoped metroid fangames in her own bespoke engine. As a person who sometimes believes in the mantra of “Real Artists Ship 
”, I find this alone to be supremely impressive and terrifying.
I don’t know all of her secrets, but one way she manages to pump all these games out so quickly is working economically (as they say in the business). Enemies are kept simple. Bosses are often reused between games, with the occasional tweak and revamp. All music is ripped from other metroid games. All graphics are ripped from the Spriters Resource. While these things help her actually release stuff, they also make her games kinda blend together in my head.
Speaking of which, how about her first two games:
1./2.) Metroid: A New Adventure and Metroid: An Other New Adventure
These are basically remakes of Metroid 2 — yet another one and an other one, you could say. They’re both metroid-slaughterfests with acid-lowering, all the classic metroid powerups, and a heavy influence of AM2R. However, since they aren’t literally remakes of the original (for one: there’s no epiphany at the end), they feel free to play with the structure of the game in interesting ways, such as revisiting a lower, previously inaccessible portion of a previous area, or having a random mid-game zero suit segment (this is a running theme in her games).
They blend together so much in my mind that they are hard to distinguish. The biggest difference I can recall between these two games is the ship at the start:
In the first game the ship is just for show — it does nothing. In the second one, it now acts as a save point thanks to a save point being embedded in it. Classic game design.
In terms of actually playing this game, the framerate and general speed feel very sludge-like. There is some iterative improvement between the two, but I’d rank these solely as curiosities.
verdict: sickos only
3.) Metroid: Back on Zebes
Like it’s name suggests, this is a remake of Metroid 3 (you don’t see too many of those around here these days). Unfortunately, unlike her Metroid 2 riffs, this one is a bit more of a literal remake. There are a few major changes here and there, but they feel more like they were making this from memory rather than premeditated design decisions.
Anyhow, out of all the games she’s made, this one has the worst weapon/health balancing. Save points don’t restore your health and ammo (unlike the rest of her games) and bosses are all damage sponges, so big long farms are to be expected in this.
Anyhow, here’s a random screenshot of Maridia:
verdict: sickos only
(Also, for some reason all of the music is .wav files, so this is like several hundred megabytes larger than the other games for some reason. I’m guessing this was her first attempt at having proper loop points in the music.)
4.) Metroid: Between Worlds
This is the last one of her games I played, and the one that finally broke me. While in many ways this is a notable step up from her previous work, it’s still a Metroid 2-like (but with a Dark World Phazon Dimension this time!), which brings me to the elephant in the room:
The later metroid fights, since her first game up to the present, suck so bad. The hitboxes for their weak points are so janky and inconsistent that you’ll probably waste all of your ammo on each and every one of these things:
Pictured: The Ultimate Wearier
I got to the halfway point of this game where you are finally (finally) introduced to the dark world, noticed that I still had over 35 metroids left to kill, realized that nearly all of them would be these janked-up, coked-up, screwed-up zeta or omega metroids, and quit the game right then and there.
(Allegedly, someone complained about how her previous games only ran at 30 fps or whatever, so she reportedly fixed that by increasing the tick-rate in this game while barely adjusting anything to compensate. I’m not sure if I entirely believe it, but there sure is some stuff that feels that way!)
verdict: meh
5.) Metroid: A New Galaxy
This game is also yet another Metroid 2-like, except the different areas are contextualized as different planets, which is enough to make it seem novel and fresh at this point. Granted, this was actually the first game of hers that I played, so it was novel by default.
Like her other games, this one has another gratuitous mid-game zero suit sequence, but it’s kinda actually brilliant in the way that it recontextualizes the places you’ve been to. I actually like it better (at least in terms of concept and game flow) than the suitless sequence in MZM.
My recollection of this game kinda hazy (I played it much earlier than the rest), but I feel it’s the first game of hers that I would classify as “maybe you don’t need to be as much of a sicko as me to play this game.”
At the end of this game the titular galaxy starts exploding so you have to escape the galaxy. I have as many questions about this as you do.
6.) Metroid: The Threat Never Ends
After 4 games that are Metroid 2 remakes, you’d be surprised to learn that this is not actually a Metroid 2 remake. (While there is a space genocide quest, it’s confined to only one planet and only partially required!) This is just a planet hopping adventure with all the classics: an asteroid, a water planet, a lava planet, a jungle planet, a snow planet, a water planet, a high gravity planet, and also a metal planet with gears you can collect to upgrade your ship to visit the later planets (if you’re a sicko like me you can even collect all the gears in one go).
The “threat” referred to in the title is not actually the metroids — It’s the X! More specifically, it’s Ridley-X, who is referred to almost exclusively as “RI-X” and framed as Samus’ personal nemesis. Also there’s something about Samus carrying around a tiny pet SA-X in the intro that is only relevant for the first 2 minutes of the game (???).
Bad writing and typical jank aside, this one is actually somewhat decent. It’s got some actual ideas working off each other, neat one-offs, and creative whimsy. It’s almost possible to recommend this game to normal folks.
In conclusion: Maybe we should hand metroid over to the french.
