Open Forum: Carry Me Home, Super Metroid

Before this past weekend, I had never finished Super Metroid. At least not myself, playing from beginning to end. Every time I played it as a kid, it was with a friend who was extraordinarily good it. So sure, I had played most of the game before, but only in bits and pieces. And I hung out with him while he played it a dozen times or so, which was easy since he could easily do a sub-2-hour time. Mine took me over 7, but hey, I got lost a few times.

There are a few things that I realized while playing: one, that I’ve played the first third of Super Metroid many, many times over the years and can easily play through Norfair from memory. Two, that I only had hazy memory of the Crashed Ship, which was great as that made me appreciate it all the more. Three, I had almost no memory of Meridia other than (luckily) that I needed to use a super bomb to crack a certain infamous glass tube. And four, that the penultimate sequence of deep Norfair, to Ridley’s fight, to the Mother Brain, to the race back to Samus’ ship, well, that’s incredible. Even in the Switch’s SNES emulator, that’s as good a piece of cinematic sci-fi action gameplay as you’ll find. Sure, maybe my knowledge of the characters of the game fills in some blanks, but it’s just so damn good.

Popular opinion, I know, but hey, sometimes you play a classic and it holds up.

Last night, I fired up my old Hollow Knight save to see how it feels in comparison. If anything, I enjoyed it more than I previously did. The controls are so smooth and the small details in the animations are so rich. And the music is fantastic. I would prefer it if the Knight was a little more solid, though – maybe it can borrow the Varia suit.

**Talk Amongst Yourselves!**

• Have your revisited any classics lately?
• How about a good ol’ Metroidvania?
• How’s the start of your week going, so far?