31 MORE Days, 31 MORE Screams: Day 4 (Metroid II: Return Of Samus)

This is real tricky ground we're delving over now. Metroid II is pretty fresh in my mind. Y'know, thanks to that big remake that came out a while ago. Which I wrote about here, in case you missed it. That was a GameFAQs review so it's more formal and... game journalist-y? I hesitate to call myself a game journalist, mostly because what I like to do here is the shit I am about to do right now. That being esoteric waffling bullshit with a hint of mysticism. The intent here is to do that, but everything gets tricky. I might want to write lots about Metroid II in the future and I don't want to blow my entire wad. I'll try and show restraint. Let's talk about Metroid II, how it's spooky, and how it ties into all that Aliens stuff I was babbling about yesterday.

Exterminate.

Metroid II, more than any other game in the series, is haunted. I speak not just of the stark black caverns of planet SR388, or the harsh screeching chiptunes that eventually devolve into droning noise and dread. I speak of the future. Not only is Metroid II's climax a key lynchpin in the plot of the Metroid series, but its legacy is haunted by the future in varying attempts to possess it, and take possession of it. The curtain between worlds is thin here, and things bleed in from other timelines and other worlds. We will focus on those esoteric haunts later, and try and get some semblance of coherence here. First, the game itself. Metroid II, the sequel to 1986's hit NES game Metroid. There are plenty of comparisons to make between Metroid/Metroid II and Alien/Aliens. Thematically it's not a complete 1 for 1 fit, but it works well enough. Metroid II, kind of like my perception of what Aliens was, is a "bug hunt" where our heroine's goal is to destroy every last specimen of a deadly alien species. She encounters and kills many of said alien species before having a big showdown with the alien's queen, retreating into the depths of space with her adopted child. That last part is admittedly one of the future ghosts haunting us, but we'll get to that. Metroid II is much lighter on plot than Aliens, and it doesn't have that whole healing from trauma reading attached to it. Samus Aran, Metroid's heroine, is a capable badass bounty hunter who singlehandedly saved the day in the first game. She was not the terrified last survivor of a lone Xenomorph as Ripley was in Alien's closing moments. No, they apply that trauma to her in the future... and totally botch it, I might add. Still, we're not letting that future in right now. It's a terrible spectre screaming about babies, and we are haunted by it, but clutch your holy symbol close to your chest as we delve deeper.

Metroid II uses every strength and limitation of the system it's on to deliver the maximum of dread and tension. The 160x144 pixel width of the Game Boy's screen means that everything is closed in and claustrophobic. Samus's sprite is larger by comparison, making things feel even tighter. There is no automap... and there could not be. Looking up a full map of the game online somewhere reveals that certain areas overlap. This labyrinth is an otherworldly space where the rules have left the building. It is in this space that monsters lurk. 40 of the meanest monsters this side of the galaxy, the Metroids. Space jellyfish vampires in the original game, they had their own terror and tension. Even shooting them in the final area made them let out hellish chirps. It's in Metroid II that things... evolve, and quite literally. An entire life cycle is laid out for the Metroids, with the space jellyfish of the original game retconned as just one phase. Your very first encounter with one has it molt from its jellyfish carapace into something new, something dangerous, all as the shrillest startling shrieks of chiptunes plays. Then you plug it with missiles and it dies. Yes, they evolve into bigger and deadlier forms as the game goes on, but they're all still vulnerable to missiles. It's how they can beat you to shit that makes them dangerous. Health can be hard to come by and it can leave you in a tight spot. It's a deliberate tension, and I like it like that. I could go on, but I think I've made my point without going too gonzo. Metroid II is a game that uses its limited viewspace, non-euclidian map design, warbling nightmare noise chiptunes, and everything else at its disposal to create a game with interesting atmosphere all contained within a tiny screen on the go.


Then the future ghosts invade. Here's the real horror for lots of people. The terror doesn't come from Metroid II being scary on its own merits, but from Metroid II not being Super Metroid. So, the future invades. It invades in making the Metroid Samus spares at the end into a plot point all its own that haunts and grieves her. This loss leads us to 2010 and Metroid Other M, in which Samus dies; character assassination authorized. A long darkness of death, and then another. Another Metroid 2 Remake. Or, hell, let's just call the ghost by its "true" name, hm? METROID II: THE GOOD EDITION. Exorcism by way of a future spirit. Whether its creator intended it to or not, the real horror for people was that Metroid II was too different. A Black Sheep. Now it was like Super Metroid Zero Mission Prime. Now it was the same. Thank god! Then, a different future ghost. It's like some sort of ironic Greek tragedy. AM2R, the game that defiantly declared that it would replace that old broken black and white shit? Exorcised. Taken down and then replaced itself by Nintendo's official remake. The very fate it hoped to deliver to Metroid II, now bestowed upon itself. Marooned outside of time and space, beyond the boundaries that divide the living from the dead. Haunting the Metroid series to this day. Even Nintendo's version was a reimagining sort of transformation that lost certain elements in translation... but the original is still out there. Planet SR388 hangs like a green pearl in space, a rock teeming with sentient life... and in the deepest darkest chasms, something lurks within. Like the Space Jockey's cargo in Alien, but much smaller. A single waxy translucent egg, laid by some departed mother, ready to hatch. Inside is the ultimate ghost of the future, the thing that will dog us for over 25 years and bring about the end of everything... and there's nothing we can do to stop it. We look away, to brighter futures, but the beast must be named to close the circle.


The baby.