Today, I turn my sights on to Super Metroid. Now, there's not much that can be said about this game that hasn't been said on thousands of websites and in thousands of review articles -- it's one of the finest games ever devised for home video game consoles. Having poured a couple of hours into it, I can honestly agree with those reviews, though I imagine I'd be incredibly frustrated if I didn't have access to walkthroughs. With a walkthrough or player's guide, Super Metroid is difficult enough with having to master wall-jumping, mid-air ball morphing, and so on; but, without a guide, this game would take ten times as long to go anywhere. That's what I think...
Anyway, Super Metroid is a fine example of third-hand nostalgia, which is to say that I neither experienced nor knew about the game when it was truly relevant, but am just now playing it and feeling those nostalgic feelings associated with something from the past (i.e. the 90s). Since I swapped the sadly faulty Gen-X for a Retro Duo, I had been reading as much as I could about Super Metroid. But now, I get to play it, albeit only when my family, work, and school schedules allow it.
In almost every way, Super Metroid has lived up to the hype, but I have to ask the question I posed a few months back: how violent is this game? In a nutshell, Super Metroid is a game about exploration and discovery that involves the inevitable shootings and boss battles. On the planet Zebes, almost every creature is either apathetic to your presence or downright hospitable (seeing how some of the baddies are space pirates, after all), so blasting alien creatures is sometimes necessary. However, this is not the primary intent of the game; for the most part, you explore Zebes' extensive underworld to find things, get to other places, and find more things until you find the Metroid hatchling and eventually Mother Brain.
But, is the game violent? Yes, it is. You're shooting aliens, you're blowing up blocks with bombs and missiles, and you fight massive bosses that are ugly and evil. Is it appropriate for kids? Well, I would ask this: is Lord of the Rings appropriate for kids? Are many books of the Old Testament appropriate for kids? Does anyone remember that David actually beheads the felled Goliath with a big sword? Or that Samson kicked one thousand Philistines' butts with the jawbone of an ass? My point is that Super Metroid does not focus on violence, and I do not believe that it promotes violence, but you do have to defend yourself in that game... and you do get nifty upgrades to your arm cannon.
In any case, this is not a game for kids, and the violence must be considered in context: you are Samus Aran on a strange planet with creatures either trying to hurt you or doing nothing to keep themselves from hurting you. Oh, and creatures generally disappear with a PFFT, leaving behind missiles and life orbs to restore lost energy. How do alien creatures die and leave missile refills behind?
Ciao.
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