DGC Ep 026: Super Metroid (part 2)

Welcome to our second episode in our series examining Super Metroid. We talk a bit about what we might do with the series if it were handed to us, and delve deeply into the way Samus fits into the world completely. Dev Game Club looks at classic video games and plays through them over several episodes, providing commentary.

Sections played:
Up until the Ice Beam

Podcast breakdown:
0:33    Segment 1: innovating Metroid and character context
48:13   Break 1
48:45  Segment 2: Skill-based play, bits and bobs, and reader mail!

Issues covered: what do you do with this franchise if they hand it to you, destructability, history of Samus Aran as a potential exploration angle, the game hitting its stride, are most of the weapons missable?, getting stuck (or are you), not reading the f'ing manual again (running), a nearly perfect game design, abilities you can disable, the big gold statue and Ridley, scanning and lore and collection, what the manual reveals, players skip everything, economy of character design, building to human scale, player focus, when the stars align and you are the hero, the demise of poor Chester Copperpot, building a hero, biodiversity in Star Trek vs Star Wars, "it's a video game *first*," overdoing context, wanting to make all the puzzle pieces fit, nerd desire for in-references and coherence, Brett hasn't seen the Lord of the Rings movies, shortcutting back in loops vs weaker backtracking, punishing Norfair, skill-based games and pushing through to being good at it, the pleasure of physical stuff, what turns one off from a thing, player ownership of mistakes, games getting in the way, opening doors for good, enemy mix and variance, enemy ecology, map issues and future work in that area, reader mail about speedrunning, wall jump, speedrunning against programming, reprogramming console games with a controller. 

Games, people, and influences mentioned or discussed: Halo, Metroid Prime series, Tomb Raider, Metroid: Other M, This American Life, Fez, Paper Mario series, Shadow Complex, Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Star Trek, Super Mario series, Legend of Zelda, The Goonies, Star Wars, Daron Stinnett, Indiana Jones, Starfighter series, Suicide Squad, Shadows of Mordor, The Silmarillion, Lord of the Rings movies, Harry Potter movies, Super Mario Galaxy, Superman, Guacamelee, Bethesda Game Studios, Fallout 3, Skyrim, WarCraft. 

Next time:
Up through boss Draygon

Links: 
Zora, the superhero featured on This American Life: 

@brett_douville, @timlongojr, and @devgameclub
DevGameClub@gmail.com