i sort of felt like Prime 1 (at the time - i never replayed the game since its release) was working off a lot of what was done in Super Metroid, and that’s part of why it felt very much like a Metroid game. i played a demo of it at Gamestop and it’s the game that convinced me to buy a GCN.
when Prime 2 came out, i just couldn’t be bothered to play it for very long, and the stuff i heard about 3 made me never try it.
i feel like FPS Metroid can be done well, but i haven’t seen anything that really hits the way Prime 1 did, since
Yes Prime 1 has the problem of ice world, lava world, Ridley fight, etc with the same upgrades and progression path that Super and now too many Metroids are falling comfortably into. Prime 2 drags on in parts but after playing a ton of the series I think it holds up really well for the things it does differently. Sky Temple Sanctuary Fortress is my favourite location in the series.
Now that I think about it Prime 1 reminds me of Ocarina in that they recycle much of the ideas and design of their 2D counterparts (Super and Link to the Past). I think Nintendo played it safe because 3D gameplay makes it innovative enough, and the team can focus on the transition of space without worrying if the underlying concepts are solid. Which in the long run has hurt my appreciation of Prime and Ocarina.
There was a big Kid Icarus Uprising tournament in London when that came out and I took part but got badly screwed over during it. Some dude there happened to work for Nintendo and he gave me his business card and told me to email him saying he’d give me one free DS game of my choice. I chose Picross 3D and a week or two later I got a big cardboard box with that and like 7 copies of First Hunt I later went round various different game stores in the UK selling them for like £5 each.
prime 1 was my brother’s and prime 2 was mine so i actually got to play it more. i absolutely just waited for my health to fully recover in each of the little pills of light though so i’m not the best judge of whether it was boring
tbh i have a pretty hard time telling whether i’m enjoying a game in general, much more discerning when it comes to film or music or other stuff i hit when i was at least a teen
The PS1 Tales of Destiny was pretty great, if only for the hilarious ‘plot twist’ halfway through where the sword that talks and is literally called a Swordian (lol) admits that when he told the main character about a huge heroic journey at the beginning of the game…he was just making shit up because he was bored and tired of being stuck on a shelf. I remember laughing a lot at that. I don’t even know of it was a good game, really, but that stuck in my head forever.
i find myself wishing that i hadn’t encountered most entertainment media until adulthood, honestly. too far back and the memories are so tangled with circumstantial places and people and feelings that it’s incredibly hard to separate the raw substance and judge it critically.
but you do need to be exposed to some things in order to build up that critical language in the first place, hmm
i know it’s Just Pinball, but i half want to try it anyway because the more these games have leant into the ball physics as a central mechanic the more i’ve enjoyed them.
… i wonder if they’ll ever make a 2D game where the ball has velocity. that’s such a defining feature of the Primes to me, more than the tank controls, more than the extra dimension even. just the satisfaction and rush of rolling and flinging yourself through all manner of contrived apparatus; i don’t know, i’ll never get tired of it, and it’s something the series has only taken in more exotic directions with time.
i know that contrivance flies in the face of the Design Ideal of metroid, it’s supposed to all be natural and organic and elegant and exist independently of the player but (1) that’s really hard, and i think any attempt to take a stab at that ideal while maintaining ease-of-play will begin to show its age before long, and (2) i’m not gonna hold it against a series, built in a certain engine and template, for identifying (i think correctly) its most fun mechanic and increasingly letting that steer design at the expense of believability. i’d like to know where else i can get this specific experience!
