The Time is Right to Remake Super Metroid

Metroid.  It’s probably the actual best franchise Nintendo has created.  Solid gameplay based on exploration and item progression, a story timeline that actually makes sense and features a consistent protagonist and universe (lookin’ at you, Zelda), and some of the most memorable and atmospheric worlds ever navigated in games.  In particular, Super Metroid put the series on the map in the industry as helping define an entire genre.  Back in the day, Metroid was among the greats.

And Nintendo has no clue what to do with it right now.

Following a… mixed reception, at best, to 2009’s entry into the series, Other M, there hasn’t been much action for Metroid fans.  So imagine the shock and excitement when rumors of a new title to be announced came to fruition at this year’s E3.  And then imagine the shock and outrage when said title was confirmed to be a co-op multiplayer/sports spinoff featuring none of the aforementioned features that made the series special to start with: no exploration or open-world gameplay, generic space marine player characters and no main narrative, and a silly tone devoid of the series’ grand immersive tradition.  Actually, you don’t have to imagine the outrage.  The trailer for Metroid Prime: Federation Force on YouTube has a dislike rate of almost 90%.  With that kind of announcement as the first Metroid game in over five years (the first good one in almost a decade), it’s not hard to come away with the opinion that Nintendo is a tad removed from the place where they were when they first created Samus and her world.

But I’m not here to rant about how much Federation Force is a slap in the face to the series.  Right now I’m here to talk about how Super Metroid can still save it.  Or rather, a remake of Super could.

I should note that usually I don’t go in for remakes as opposed to new, original ideas.  I think they’re usually a little lazy as a way to put out an installment that doesn’t require the same conceptual, programming, or design efforts; or a stopgap measure to sate fans of a series between major releases.  But that brings me to my first point.  A remake of Super, at this point, would primarily be a return to form and a celebration of Metroid‘s roots.  Since it’s clear that there’s not much desire to come up with a new concept for it right now, returning to the concept put forth by what many consider to be the greatest in the series would go a long way toward convincing them that Nintendo still respects the elements that earned Super its recognition.  A gesture saying “now look guys, we remember this exists.  We loved it too!”

This gesture would not be lost on an audience who grew up and is still playing and making games under Super Metroid‘s influence.  Metroidvania is a fairly popular genre in the indie scene and it would be missing a massive opportunity not to capitalize on that, even from a business standpoint.  The genre alone would sell copies, never mind the association with a classic Nintendo name.

Besides, simply being a remake wouldn’t necessarily mean that it’s a complete recycling.  Given modern console capabilities, a successful capture of the aesthetic and tone of Super Metroid would be mind-blowing to witness.  Imagine exploring Zebes in full HD, even 3D, environments and the kind of graphical quality that could be brought to bear in portraying them.  Imagine Super’s amazing and varied soundtrack given a remaster across the board.  Heck, even imagine an updated control scheme that streamlines some of the clunkier bits of Super in terms of movement and HUD navigation.

The progression of the game would also be an easy roadmap to follow.  Super has one of the best such roadmaps that video gamers have ever been challenged to follow.  For an in-depth analysis of this as its own topic, I recommend reading “The Invisible Hand of Super Metroid,” but for this post, suffice it to say that every area, every item acquisition, and even every dead end is placed in such a way as to guide players subtly while still affording them the sense of exploring the game world.  Exploration is the defining trait of the Metroidvania genre, and one of the best examples of it could be lifted wholesale at a time when that genre is popular.

And of course, if Nintendo really wanted to go the extra mile, they could add new content: perhaps new game areas (think Chozodia from Zero Mission), unlockables (taking cues from Prime Trilogy’s bonuses), incentives to speedrun, extra game modes like a harder difficulty or item randomizer… all of these have solid precedents from both previous official entries and the fanbase.

A remake would be great, but I feel like an effective one would be done with a couple caveats in place.

First and most essential, the game mechanics themselves would have to be virtually untouched.  The reason Super has endured in the fans’ memories for so long and still maintains an active playerbase today is because of how versatile the physics and even the glitches have become, catering to all styles and paces of play.  The temptation to remove single-wall wall jumping or the Mockball to “balance” the game or tighten the programming would definitely force it to conform to a unified vision, but it would sacrifice all of the charm and longevity Super possesses – not to mention completely alienate the speedrunning portion of the fanbase, who would be among the first to buy it.  The touchstone to point to here is Ocarina of Time 3D, which retained most of the sequence break-enabling glitches while still touching everything else up.

Second, even though the graphics and sound would be well-served if brought to modern standards, the design sensibilities would have to be grounded in the spirit of discovery and player-determined experience, something that isn’t always as appealing to developers today looking to railroad and handhold players according to their own ideas.  That just doesn’t fly in Metroid like it might in a AAA cinematic release.  For the sake of the experience, keep the noob bridge and don’t show a “run button” popup over it.

And, for the love of all that is not Other M, it would have to be free of any attempt at fleshing out the story beyond the opening monologue and a very few sparse cutscenes.  The narrative of Super is simple, and that simplicity grants it power.

In short, the keys to success in a remake are updating the production values while not needing to update the gameplay, aesthetic, and narrative elements that have already proven timeless enough to warrant a revisit.  Not that any of this is likely to occur, given the sparseness among Metroid titles that’s been a plague since even the N64 era, and the (sadly accurate) perception at Nintendo that it’s simply not one of the more popular franchises they can offer.  Even so, just because the opportunity isn’t taken doesn’t mean it’s not there.  I doubt many complaints would arise from Metroid fans.

Mario Maker Musings

Found a post on a forum I frequent bemoaning the presence of a full $60 price tag for the upcoming Super Mario Maker, a game that, funnily enough, involves designing one’s own Mario platforming levels.  At first I didn’t think such a complaint was well-founded.  I myself am really looking forward to trying it out; it looks to be a full-fledged editing tool that incorporates almost every potential element in the thirty-year history of the franchise.  There’s not really anything bad about that, is there?  Why gripe about the price?

But I admit, I thought about it a little more, and I can see how one might have (dry) bones to pick with whoever decided to slap the full price on the game.  Consider: what we’re going to be paying for with SMM is largely the ability to produce content of our own.  Don’t get me wrong, the editor looks fun and well-put together, the stuff of User-Generated Content legend; and there are still going to be pre-designed levels included in the game.  But I can’t help but agree at least a little bit with the sentiment that Nintendo is shirking design duty this time around.

I think it’s an easy but fatal mistake to assume that game development is basically just coding and animation, maybe some fitting audio to round it all out.  Even with all the aesthetics and technical underpinnings, there’s a very important component to actual interactivity, and that’s design.  Here, I’m not referring to the aesthetics of a game, like the character art or texture detail.  With games, design can mean something else: the deliberate arranging of all the aforementioned devices according to a certain vision.

Sometimes, especially in a modern context of deep narratives and painstakingly constructed 3D models, roles like playtesting, level layout, mechanical balance, and difficulty tuning seem like an afterthought.  It’s easier to excuse their absence now that we have the technology to wrap games up in prettier packaging.  Necessity is the mother of invention – or to put it in terminology more apt for games, constraints are the foundation of creativity.  When all you really had to sell your game was the design, you had to make doubly sure it worked.

Design, more than any other part of the process, is what determines the player’s assessment of “this is fun!”  Design is just as much a determinant of the game’s spirit as the narrative tone or the color scheme (just look at how much the identity of Super Meat Boy is driven by incredibly well-iterated platforming challenges).  Design marries Mr. Mechanic to Miss Aesthetic and serves you cake at the reception.

So when you put out a title like Super Mario Maker and charge as much for it as any game that does include design as a cornerstone, you’re implicitly attaching zero value to the process of tuning and assembling the artwork and code.  You’re explicitly handing your customer a wrench and some auto parts and saying “build your own car” before charging them the same price as if they had bought a brand new one from a dealer.

And there’s even a way in which the latter is a good thing.  For all the aspiring game developers who will be making their own in a few years, it’s hard to imagine a better way than Mario Maker to enter the world of game design (especially in the context of a genre that’s largely faded into obscurity as far as the mainstream is concerned).  And it’ll force a lot of people to think about the effort that goes into making a truly great game more than the sum of its parts.  Who knows – maybe it’ll cause more value to be ascribed to design rather than less because it can’t be taken for granted this time?

I’m not trying to say that Mario Maker is a bad idea, or even that it’s not necessarily worth the price of admission.  The point here is that it’s not really a game so much as an editing tool.  If you deceive yourself that you’re essentially just purchasing more of the same as an amusing diversion, then that’s when you’re truly missing out on one of the most important and essentially fun steps in any development cycle.

Patchwork Solutions

Recently I made a post on the Terraria subreddit regarding the most recent boss added to the game, the Moon Lord.

For the uninitiated, the Moon Lord is far and away the toughest enemy in the game ever to be added.  It deals and tanks massive damage and drops the current best equipment and resources in the game.  It has been referred to by the developers as the “final boss” and been subject to no small amount of hype.  Come the 1.3 release, the only turn of events faster than players’ finding ways to “cheese” (come up with methods and game mechanic exploits to trivialize the battle) Moon Lord was their reaching the point in the game where they fought him in the first place.

Then came the patches.  1.3.0.2-1.3.0.7, all of which contained both blatant and subtle buffs to the Moon Lord and/or nerfs to the players’ preferred cheese methods.  Where before the boss was vulnerable to HP draining attacks, he now inflicts a debuff that blocks them.  Where before the player could use teleportation back to home base and quickly heal while he flew to your location from a distance, he now teleports along with you instantly.  Where before players would exploit the damage from spike traps and weak enemies to trigger invincibility periods against the Moon Lord himself, the Moon Lord’s attacks now operate on a separate timer than every other damage source in the game.

It seems the developers have been systematically targeting and amputating unintended methods of defeating this boss, and this is where my post on Reddit comes into play.  In it, I argued that these patches aren’t such a great thing for the game experience overall.  I won’t reiterate the entire post here, but it definitely spawned some… er, controversy as to the nature of developer intent, and what the player “should” be allowed to do in a game.  A lot of commenters made some interesting points, on both sides of the issue.

My stance, in short, is that game exploits, if they require the player to go out of his way to use, do no harm to casual and “normal” players, and enhance the experience for those who enjoy using them.  Why is it, then, that developers in the age of DLC and patches seem so hell-bent on enforcing their own “version” of how to play the game?  Given the medium’s fundamentally interactive nature, the user experience is probably as important as it ever could be in a work of art.

I find that the games I most frequently return to are the ones that give me some element of control over the pacing, difficulty tuning, or other aspects of play.  Minecraft.  The Elder Scrolls.  Terraria.  All highly dependent, even essentially so, upon the player to decide how the game mechanics come together to make the experience.  Even franchises like Metroid provide examples of the same principle (albeit to a lesser degree).

I think the best relationship between developer and player is one where the developer wants the player to succeed, gives him the tools to do so, and lets him decide the rest.  In the age of patches and balance fixes, the relationship is in some danger of becoming player vs. developer, rather than player vs. game (please note that I’m not addressing the implications of the use of exploits in multiplayer scenarios, where I’m a lot more likely to be against it).  What I mean by this is that the developer begins to see patches as ways to curtail “naughty” player behavior, rather than ensure that the game is stable and enjoyable for as many people as possible.  If you remove sequence breaks from a special edition re-release of your game, but leave in game-breaking camera bugs or softlocks, your priorities might be a little skewed.

Developers are always in danger of it, but they should never forget that just because their job is to place obstacles in front of the player doesn’t mean they’re on opposites sides.  The more “open” the game, the more their preconceptions of how the game should go take a back seat.

Power to the people, stick it to the man, etc.