JB0

So, I feel I've experienced enough at this point to offer an opinion on Samus Returns. And it gets a dual score. As an action-adventure, exploratory platformer game... 6/10. It is fun, but that fun is tempered by unfathomably terrible level design that makes getting from point A to point B feel like a chore, and with an emphasis on backtracking for backtracking's sake(exceptionally bizarre given the game's pedigree). This problem is aggravated by they hyper-aggressive enemies that want nothing more than to rush into Samus and kill her to death, making every six feet of travel a battle, if not a hard one. I am having fun in spite of the glaring flaws, so as much as I want to rake it over the coals and let loose the flaming vitriol(for reasons I will discuss shortly), I can't really justify it if we approach it on its own merits. Now, here's the other part: how does it stack up as a Metroid 2 remake? Well, let me lay out my case here... Metroid 2 is a thoughtful, considered, and well-paced game that attempts to do a couple of things, and has two major stories presented in addition to the manual's stated "Metroids are too dangerous to live, Samus kill them all and free us from this menace!". 1: Every game tells you how dangerous metroids are, how just a handful can completely destroy a planet's ecosystem. Metroid 2 SHOWS you. The further into the game, the fewer and more durable the enemies become. The last areas feature no non-metroid life. The metroids are burning SR-388 to the ground in their rampage. Their implied intelligence only makes them more dangerous. Wait, intelligent? Yeah, that is strongly implied in Metroid 2's endgame, with the metroids laying traps for you, and some MYSTERIOUS FORCE(the queen metroid) making an attempt to destroy the ice beam, and it is all but directly stated in Super Metroid's finale, when the hatchling sacrifices itself to save Samus from Mother Brain. So... let's move on to the second story now. It's the meatier one anyways. 2: Early metroids are found just laying out in hallways on the main path, or in chambers right off it. They know no fear, and sleep wherever they want because nothing is a threat to them. As you move through the caverns of SR-388 laying waste to everything you see, they start nesting in thornbushes, little maze-y rooms, and nooks in cliff faces hundreds of feet up in the air. Like they are prey, like the deadliest creatures in the galaxy fear something. The penultimate area, they don't nest at all. Two of the three metroids in the area you find off the main path again. Empty rooms with one exit. The metroids spawn right next to the wall farthest from the exit, and they spawn facing the wall, not you. And then you realize... the metroids DO fear something. They fear YOU. They were hiding from YOU. Those last metroids were RUNNING AWAY, and Samus hunted them down, backed them into a corner, and executed them with ruthless efficiency. "That bounty hunter is out there. She can't be bargained with. She can't be reasoned with. She doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And she absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead." And in the final area, after you've slaughtered all the metroids but for one, you enter the hallway to the queen metroid's chamber and it has a keening howl reverberating through it. It is unmistakably alien in form, but also... sorrowful, somehow. The queen is the last of her kind, and she weeps for her slain children, murdered in cold blood. And then you fill her head with enough high explosives to level a small continent. Mission completed, take pride in a job well-done, hunter. Samus is committing genocide for a paycheck. There's no sugar-coating this. That is literally the stated goal of the game. Metroids don't have any means of travelling space. They leave SR-388 only at the insistence of other species who come in their spaceships. They just want to be left alone in their caves, living their simple indolent lives of sleeping and eating, and here Samus comes in loaded for bear and starts blowing the hell out of them because some pirates robbed an archeologist that one time. Who in this story is truly the monster? Even if the metroids DO need to die, it is not a mission one should take pride in. It is an ugly and hateful job, and should rightly weigh on the soul of those charged with it. And weigh on Samus it does, as at the very end she adopts the infant hatchling, feeds it, and takes it away with her. One tiny chink her her merciless armor, a moment of sympathy at the end. ... And then Super Metroid undoes it all. She took the hatchling as a lab sample, and gave it over to scientists to experiment on. Shoulda just killed it, woulda been kinder. Whoops. Samus Returns is a brash, loud, and clumsy title that tries to tell one very different story. The metroids aren't doing crap to SR-388. It is a lush world full of life even very deep. Hell, they aren't even the most dangerous creatures on the planet. And Samus is a heroic badass rockin' her big-budget action-film moves through the caves, killing the scourge of the galaxy(and everything else in her way), harvesting their entrails, and offering them up as sacrifices at chozo altars(No, really). And between the general lack of threat and the sprawling, disorganized map, it really feels like killing metroids is incidental to Samus' looting of the ruins for cool toys and epic loot, they are but a roadbump on her Indiana Jones-style pillaging. There's precious little to praise here, and this is as far from a thoughtful and respectful remake as possible. It is more like it is actively pissing on everything Metroid 2 does. NEGATIVE TEN OF TEN.

Isn't that literally the entire basis of the current case, HG suing Tatsunoko for not paying them?

Someone with a sense of the awesome. ... Or who had played a LITTLE too much Super Mario Kart. Rainbow Milky Road. Either way, if they can project a forcefield roadway, it stands to reason they can also project a forcefield "tunnel"

Yes. Exactly this. You win the internet for a day.

As I recall, it was planned longer, then edited shorter because the sponsors wouldn't back the full run length, and then extended out again when the sponsors were all "This is selling like hotcakes we want more!"

Congratulations on regaining control of your work.

:'(

And then Tatsunoko didn't pay the money the arbitrator granted to HG. That may hurt their case.

Honestly? I'd downvote myself if I could. Just for the laugh. ... Can I? Edit: nope.

Macross: It's less stupid than all those other robots.

Trolls gonna troll. At least this is a pretty innocuous form of trolling.

In fairness, for as long and as loud as HG was shouting about how their license was for exclusive worldwide rights to the entire franchise, it isn't surprising there is still confusion. That is about the size of it, yes. HG will no longer have the content licenses needed to distribute Robotech, but they will retain copyright to their work. Robotech DVDs will almost certainly increase in value. ... Of course, I would've expected the "unremastered" version with the original sound effects to have increased in value and I don't think that happened.

Concession to jet mode, I'd wager. They look like they are colored for a lit thruster effect when closed, like the rest of the nozzles.

Honestly, I think the space chopper's biggest problem is the blades are too high. Jetfighter-wings go through the center of mass(more or less), it makes them work well as attitude thruster booms in all three axes. A helicopter's blade assembly is ABOVE the center of mass, and it makes it kind of wonky for anything other than straight up or down. It'd be better if the booms were lower, so they were aligned with the center of mass instead of above it. And if you rotate them 90 degrees after that you can stick your main engines there and... oh, hey, you have Babylon 5's Starfury. Whoops, that was (mostly) unintentional! For realistic spaceships, something like the Starfury is probably where it's at. Better yet, go for the blatantly obvious big brother and get a "real" Gunstar. It gets far enough from the concept of airfoils to stop looking like a weird airplane, and the big "wings" it does have are credible as missile or reaction mass stores. Also, monster attitude thrusters mounted directly on the main engines(and presumably tapping their large thrust-generating potential) so it can make rapid changes in orientation(See: deathblossom). But, of course, the AJAC isn't a space-helicopter. It turns into a derpy-looking fighterjet for spaceflight. But hey, in space no one cares how poor your aerodynamics or how slight your wings. And in atmosphere... helicopters don't seem to need great aerodynamics either, based on how real ones look. So all this analysis was really just a pointless exercise in establishing Gunstar supremacy. A noble cause.

Of course. How foolish of me. Gotta mount the case of Bud somewhere! Subjective is what matters most. I don't think the AJAC really crosses the "degrees of silly" threshold, it's just that for many of us it is an uninspiring machine from an uninspiring show, and that means the usual suspension of disbelief doesn't kick in because we don't really WANT to like it. And trying to justify it beyond aesthetics and lack of emotional attachment leads to arguments like "space helicopters are stupid but space fighter jets make great sense" and "That is a total partsformer because it has swingarms". I also think the REALISM of the VF series helps a lot. They look like actual friggin' planes in plane mode, whereas the AJAC looks like a collection of panels and parts stacked up to look sort of like a helicopter if you squint... though it is far from the worst offender in that regard, and actually has some charm to it outside of robot mode(which I think is the weakest of the three modes, mostly due to that large, flat, boring plate covering the entire torso). (And I still occasionally smack my hands together and pull them apart like I'm gettin' my sword ready, though it has been a long time since I shouted "form blazing sword". Voltron is still awesome, even if he IS objectively ridiculous. The Defender of the Universe still lives in my heart.)

Ripley Protocol it! Sure! "Harmony Gold is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop... ever, until you are dead. " Or it is, you all know how the movie ends.

I was going to go to the VF-1, actually. Same argument applies to flight without wings.

If you think about it the "transforming robot" is dumb. So let's not think about it. Space helicopter is an awesome idea. So is robot hovertank.

The big thing is the books insisted the neural interface was in the helmet and you couldn't operate a veritech without on. Needless to say, that "rule" collapses rapidly in the animation. Which is a shame, because it isn't a terrible idea(see Macross Plus). Certainly not as bad as all the flower of life/protoculture nonsense.

Well, she DID stab Q with a fork that one time... I've seen it before too, though I couldn't peg where it originated. It'd definitely be a traditional retcon, though. Guinan's character was created YEARS before anyone thought of the nexus. Guinan is a time lord? That is as good an answer as any, and there's probably two dozen fanfics over the years exploring the possibility. I think the original intent was mostly just supposed to be that her species had a "sixth sense" for transdimensional nonsense.

With swingbars! I mean, if that is partsforming, than the old 1/55 Valkyrie is a partsformer. Honestly, it looks like a design that was INTENDED to become a toy. There's actual concern for real-world engineering present in the design, and animation of features that make sense for a toy but not an anime robot. I mean, the thing is ugly, but let's be fair here. Also, YouTube has an updated version of that 3D-modelled transformation. Says WIP03 instead of WIP01. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkRgXjyt3-Q

Revered? Surely they meant reviled there.

I don't disagree, but... it is kind of like the Aliens to the previous games' Alien, the Terminator 2 to their Terminator. Or, arguably more topically, the Resident Evil 4 of the series. They took a horror story and turned it into a guns-blazing action spectacular. It has a very different core essence to it. And so many of Samus' new abilities are there simple because "wouldn't it be cool if... ", it makes for a game that is somewhat cluttered. Heck, one of her now-iconic abilities is basically there because "Dudes, what if she could fly through enemies and ram stuff like Getter Robo G? C'mon, I already have the ASM for a shine spark attack coded, just try it out it is SO COOL!" Most importantly, it changed "space pirate" from a career to a species. And that bugs me.... but it doesn't bug me as much as the subsequent "chozo did everything ever" rampage the Prime games and Zero went on after Super Metroid's US manual created the name in a translation error(and the Nintendo Power comic then ran with it and made them Samus's foster parents and creators of her power suit... seriously, that lore originates in a US-authored tie-in comic). I can almost guarantee that Samus Returns changes SR-388 into a chozo colony world. I love Prime, but would be just as happy to see most of the chozo lore erased.

I honestly don't remember. I read so many of them, and for the most part I just have isolated scenes bouncing around in my head now. The traditional outlook from the crew's perspective was always some flavor of "she is NOT Yar's daughter, her story is ridiculous whether she believes it or not... but she sure does LOOK like Yar..." The tale she spun them was obviously crazy, but... there was always this nagging doubt floating around. Surely if she were going to lie it would be a better one, right? From the reader's perspective, as from Sela's perspective, her story was an obvious factual truth. But the crew of the Enterprise-D was completely ignorant of the time-travelling parallel-universe version of Tasha Yar that DIDN'T die a senseless death in a puddle of black ink(except Guinan, of course, because she has space magic). ... Come to think of it, Sela was probably ignorant of the primary timeline's own Tasha Yar, so I guess that knife cuts both ways. . The episodic nature of the books back in the day obviously prevented anyone from upsetting the status quo, no matter how much they may have wanted to.

Same. I have zero faith in Nintendo turning out a remake that is... appreciative... of Metroid 2's atmosphere and general goals. It is not a guns-blazing power fantasy. It is a creepy, unsettling, occasionally nerve-wracking experience, and really the only Metroid game to deliver on the horror-movie premise(though the NES game tried). Also, you know, the moral questions of our hero character being someone who will literally commit genocide for money(you KNOW Nintendo is gonna downplay the hell out of that). ... I preordered it anyways. Expect me to be cussing up a storm once I get it. Why do I do this to myself? And before someone chimes in to help... no, Another Metroid 2 Remake is not the answer. Right now, Samus Returns has a very slim chance of being a decent remake, whereas AM2R has already been confirmed to completely miss almost every possible point. I respect DoctorM64's work on a technical level, moreso since he had zero programming experience when he started it all those years ago, but artistically his work was an unmitigated disaster. *sigh* Oh well, we'll always have 8-bit. I'm actually about halfway through a replay of the original right now, and it is really amazing how much richness Yokoi and his crew managed to tuck into the world of an early GameBoy game.