/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9503380]

Just go ahead and look up a map.

[Anonymous No.9503464]

>>9503380
I'll just play the famicom version which has a mini-map

[Anonymous No.9503471]

>>9503464
FDS version has no ingame maps.

[Anonymous No.9503475]

>>9503471
lies

[Anonymous No.9503478]

>>9503475
Burden of proof lies on the person who makes the initial statement.

[Anonymous No.9503487]

>>9503478
you're the one who made the initial statement. prove me wrong.

[Anonymous No.9503528]

>>9503380
Exactly what I did. I'm not fallin' for that "draw a map as you play" shit. If I were a kid in the late '80s, I would have to have Nintendo Power

[Anonymous No.9503659]

>>9503464
>The game was released for the PlayChoice-10 Arcade board, which has a second screen. In this screen, the game displays a partial Brinstar map.

Holy shit. This would literally change this games whole reputation. Shame.

[Anonymous No.9504373]

I neither look up a map, nor draw one. I simply play the game and use my memory.

Do you all have low IQs or something?

[Anonymous No.9504421]

>>9503380
>>9503528
>>9503659
You're all kids with no appreciation for challenge or games as art. Your enjoyment peaks when you use Game Genie to unlock every power at the start and enable infinite lives so that you can rush through with minimal investment, that is a disgrace to the developers' intended experience and gaming as a whole.

...either that or you're just bored baiters who are too lazy to say what every reasonable person thinks so you say the opposite so a smart person will spell it out for you while calling you retards, and then you take pleasure in having "contributed". Retards.

Fuck, I'm too intelligent for this board.

[Anonymous No.9504432]

Just play Metroid Planets you RETARD

[Anonymous No.9504450]

>>9503659
Nigga the manual has a similar map.

[Anonymous No.9504510]

>>9503380
Might as well just watch a let's play at that point.

[Anonymous No.9504753]

>>9504421
Oh shut the fuck up. Why do you think Nintendo Power was so popular? No one wanted to make their own maps or figure out the cryptic bulllshit.

[Anonymous No.9505462]

>>9504421
I love when zoomers pretend to be oldfags. it's so funny.

[Anonymous No.9505564]

>>9503380
I was looking for a strategy guide for this game on archive.org and found this hand-drawn fan guide
https://archive.org/details/metroid-hdgg-digital-final
looks pretty cool, and it includes some comics too

[Anonymous No.9505570]

>>9503380
Then it is too easy

[Anonymous No.9506010]

>>9504373
The only way to play.

[Anonymous No.9506023]

>>9504373
Ah yes I just remember which of these several literally identical rooms are which.

[Anonymous No.9506040]

>>9504421
nihilistic with a witty sense of humor

[Anonymous No.9507180]

>>9506023
Yes.
All you need to do is remember what room you came from literally 15 seconds ago. If you have actual goldfish memory and cannot do this, i am very sorry.

[Anonymous No.9507201]

>>9506023
Most people have spatial awareness.
Even if rooms are similar you should still be able to know the difference

[Anonymous No.9507210]

>>9504421
You ever think why the developers put in stuff in Super Metroid like a working mini-map that completes with exploration, and an X-ray scope or power bombs to discover hidden items and passages?

Because navigating the original Metroid was tedious. It's not even a matter of "the player should just remember or draw their own map", but the original Metroid heavily re-used screens to save on ROM space.

There's a section of Kraid's lair that is the exact same three corridors on loop with no payoff for exploring it. It's a drain to get through them with how many enemies there are in there, so this place only serves to waste the player's time and serve as a source of frustration.

The devs knew this when developing Zero Mission and adapted this area to be important to game progress; it features a mini-boss and a mechanism to activate ziplines, plus a few extra items including two missile expansions and an energy tank.

The point I'm making was that this was Nintendo R&D1's first crack at making this kind of game and the weaknesses in technology and game design are apparent, and they've deliberately avoided these mistakes for future entries in the series.

[Anonymous No.9507217]

>>9507180
When playing something like Super Metroid, rooms are generally designed to be unique with landmarks, but they also give the player space to breathe. This allows the player to better exercise or develop spatial awareness, and have less challenge doing so as it's less labyrinthine.

In NES Metroid, a lot of the player's focus is put on surviving constantly respawning enemies, so it takes concentration away from observing and learning their surroundings. The design isn't memorable due to heavy repetition and re-use of chunks of map.

[Anonymous No.9507240]

>>9507210
That area is also very easy to explore in full, leave the way you came, and then remember. This runs completely against your point that you should be drawing a map.

[Anonymous No.9507375]

>>9507240
In practice, getting through these rooms is time consuming. Granted it's not a lot of space to explore, but the concentration of enemies slows you down considerably in a game where you're constantly farming energy drops against how quickly you can lose it.

So to say it's "very easy to explore in full" is facetious.

Also, "Draw your own map" isn't the point I'm making, it's the point that others often make when defending the repetitive and labyrinthine NES Metroid map.
Whilst that can be a valid play experience, it's a form of tedium to keep bringing software gameplay to a halt so you can bring out graphing paper on a clipboard or something. It's a step beyond writing down old passwords.

[Anonymous No.9507665]

>>9506023
>it's a form of tedium
It's not tedious, you can navigate easily by counting. In the screenshot, there are three identical corridors, but as you move vertically down the main corridor you can count them, one, two, three. So, they look the same, but by counting you can locate yourself in either the 1st, 2nd or 3rd corridor. This is actually cool and immersive and the game messes with your mind, you begin questioning yourself, "did I count two corridors, or did I count three corridors?", and the repetitive music plays a factor in the overall hypnotic effect of the experience. Super Metroid is more accessible and it is more successful too because although it they added QoL features like the minimap, there are many other ways that they introduced to mess with the player, but the repetitive corridors of the original Metroid are a feature, not a design flaw. It would be nice if newer games had these sorts of tricky aspects that make the player rely on their own faculties of reasoning rather then cosseting the player from the moment the game is switched on to the moment it's switched off.

[Anonymous No.9507836]

>>9507665
there's really nothing interesting about walking through the same corridor 3 times to discover nothing. enjoy the game if you want but don't be surprised when this unpopular style is deprecated.

[Anonymous No.9507884]

>>9507836
>there's really nothing interesting about walking through the same corridor 3 times to discover nothing.
It's interesting enough for you to post on the internet about it. And they aren't the same corridors, the look the same, they have the same contents, but they are different corridors, just as identical twins are different people or if I copy a file on my computer I have two files and since they are separate and distinct from each other, that makes them different, even if they are identical.

[Anonymous No.9507968]

I really like the sense of atmosphere and isolation you get with the lack of map in metroid even if it's a pain to navigate. Did players in the 80s struggle or just rely on magazines? From memory the varia suit was cryptic to get, don't think I'd have found that one without a guide

[Anonymous No.9507972]

>>9507968
I don't think metroid ever needed a map, the in game navigation is either extremely good or (in the case of the first game) the game is so small and simplistic it's impossible to get lost anyway

[Anonymous No.9507982]

>>9507968
The Varia is hard to find, but it's also a 100% optional bonus item to make the game a bit easier. Pretty similar to the Red Ring in Zelda 1, which a lot of people also missed.

[Anonymous No.9507989]

>>9507982
Pretty much everything in Metroid is optional besides missiles, bombs and ice beam

[Anonymous No.9509783]

>>9504450
lol

[Anonymous No.9510642]

>>9504432
lol sure

[Anonymous No.9510648]

>>9510642
Let me upgrade that upgrade for you.

[Anonymous No.9511209]

>>9507210
The game was intended to be a giant maze. Giant mazes tend to have dead ends that waste time.

[Anonymous No.9511212]

>>9503659
Brinstar is the least confusing section of the game though.

[Anonymous No.9511221]

>>9510642
Unlike Mario, it's actually a solid improvement for Metroid

[Anonymous No.9511297]

>>9510642
>>9510648
why does hat bounce?

[Anonymous No.9511319]

>>9511221
That makes her hitbox way too big! Also, why isn't there a helmet bounce?

[Anonymous No.9511394]

>>9507989
Ice beam is technically optional too.
You don't actually have to kill the Metroids in the original, you can just run past them.
Ice Beam just makes it way easier to get through Tourian.

[Anonymous No.9511701]

>>9510648
EVERY TIME

WITHOUT FAIL

MAKES ME LAUGH

[Anonymous No.9511887]

>>9511221

this so stupid. the 4 frames are wrong order and low frame rate

[Anonymous No.9511986]

>>9511297
To make it more animated, and thus better.

[Anonymous No.9512276]

>>9504421
>Fuck, I'm too intelligent for this board.

[Anonymous No.9512420]

>>9503528
counting screens is so tedious and shatters all the illusions of it being a living world