And it all started at a space vessel above Tallon IV...

Day 52

I've said before, I am an avid gamer and one of the main reasons, beside the fact that I find them very fun and highly entertaining, is that it allows me to throw myself into a different universe and live a different life for a few hours.

They allow me to live in a fantasy world and personally I find that extremely exciting and therapeutic because I can forget about my personal struggles and are extremely good at lowering my stress levels.  I like almost any kind of game but as everything in life, I do have certain exceptions:

1- It cannot be a mobile game (as in played on a smartphone) - I hate using touch controls, and those games are generally made to be extremely simple or highly addictive.  As a smartphone power user, I do find other better uses for my phone and its battery.

2- It cannot be too realistic - in the sense of trying to simulate real life things.  For example, I like racing games, I just don't like simulation type of racing games as in Gran Turismo, I rather play arcade style racing games doing a lot of crazy shit during races.  I also detest simulation type of sports game - for example, I don't really enjoy the Fifas or Maddens or any sports game trying to look/play like the real thing.  I rather play some over the top sports game (like the old "Street" type of games by EA or the Mario Sports series).

And the reason why I'm going over this is simple: I recently replayed Metroid Prime in its remaster version for Nintendo Switch and oh shit, what a way to relive this amazing game.  First, as usual, some background.  Ever since I got my first Nintendo system, Metroid was one game I played the shit out of, with its sci-fi themes, music, gameplay loop that really had me from the first moment I put my hands on it.

In this game, then, I thought I was playing as this badass character in a fucking amazing power suit, getting upgrades, shooting bombs and missiles and having many different types of futuristic weapons defeating monsters and bosses left and right.  It was one of the very first examples of a game where the creators played with players expectations about the character, everyone and their mothers thought that the character was this powerful guy on a power suit, but at the very end of the game you get the reveal that you've been playing as Samus Aran - a girl - all along and what a revelation that was.

This game had a password system to save progress, and at some point, either my friends or my cousins or some magazine had a password so you could play as Samus without her power armor and well, I still remember it as if it was yesterday, the password is:

JUSTIN BAILEY ----- ------

Don't believe me? Google it then.

Anyways, a few years later, Metroid 2 came out but only for Gameboy and it was one game I never played in its original form (I played it later on emulators, and the amazing remake made for 3DS) but when Super Metroid came out for SNES in 1994 I was all blown away again and it was one of those games I love to replay and compete with my good friend Johann on who could finish the game faster or have the highest item collection score.  

In 1996 the N64 came out, and with it rumors started that Metroid was going to jump to 3D like many other games back then, but as years went by, nothing was ever announced but then finally, in August 2000, when Nintendo was announcing its next major console, the Nintendo GameCube, they also show a 10 second teaser trailer of a new Metroid game, a major shift for the game as it was being designed as a "first-person adventure" when everybody was expecting at the very least a 3rd person shooter type of game considering its 2D roots.

The game was finally released in November 2022 (a full 8 years after Super Metroid) and it was simply AWESOME.  The graphics, the sound, the music, the gameplay, the world design, the way they told the story, the secrets, the boss fights, the feeling of dread and loneliness, it was something that at the time was very revolutionary and definitely demonstrated what great talent could do with time and passion.  As an avid Nintendo gamer, I bought it day one - $50 dollars then - and I played it to death.  As years went on, we got a couple of sequels: Metroid Prime 2 and 3, for GameCube and Wii respectively (2004 and 2007) which are also amazing but then, Nintendo went silent.

It wasn't until 2017 that Nintendo announced a sequel to Metroid Prime 3, but we are in 2023 and still waiting on any news about so called, Metroid Prime 4.  That said, Nintendo did drop a bomb a few weeks ago when they surprisingly announced a remaster version of the original Metroid Prime - 21 years after it was first released. It would have been a so so announcement if they would have just released an HD remaster of the original game, but well, they went above and beyond to make sure that exactly the same game could look and play as any new modern release.

All graphics were basically remade and retouched, and even though the core gameplay, level design and AI logic is exactly the same as it was, the changes in controls and graphics make this game look as something unbelievable.  As I said, it was a surprised release, and I went to the eshop to buy it right away and hell I was not disappointed, not in the slightest.

It was the exact game I remember but looking and controlling amazing and well, I got lost in Tallon IV all over again, and for a replay so many years after the first time, I did amazingly well:

For a game I havent played in forever, taking almost 12 hours to finish, and having a collection rate of 93% is not bad at all.  I was actually fairly surprised how I remembered most of the secrets, tactics and little details of the game.