The Metroid franchise turns 35, so this time on Stone Age Gaming, we dive into a "complete" US collection including nearly every unique physical Metroid released in North America. And as a special treat, the video is set to a series of original covers by Banjo Guy Ollie. Enjoy!

Transcript of the video: 

Hi, everyone. Kris from Stone Age Gamer here. Welcome back to Stone Age Gaming. The Metroid franchise turns 35 years old today, the day this video is being posted. It's the 30th anniversary of one of my absolute favorite videogame franchises. I love Metroid. I've loved it since the day I first saw it. When I was a little kid playing, I got my new Nintendo Entertainment System. I had that giant poster that had all the games on it. I was like, Metroid, what a cool name. And, you know, the calendars and all that other stuff. I just love Metroid. And so I thought it would be a great opportunity to go through my "complete" US collection of Metroid games. Again, I'm using the quotation marks around the word complete because there are a couple of variants and stuff I don't have. Like I've never been a big fan of collecting the Player's Choice stuff, like the Greatest Hits kind of things, you know, except the Nintendo flavor Player's Choice. So I don't have the Players Choice versions. I don't have the Wind Waker/Metroid Prime combo pack thing. But other than that, by my criteria, I have every unique U.S. released Metroid game. So let's go take a look. 

OK, let's talk about some Metroid. See, I got a couple a couple of friends joining me today. They're squishy friends, too. I love veterans. These are the coolest things like this. Meebo it's squishy. I love this thing anyway. All right. Let's talk about Metroid. 

So this is a complete U.S. collection, but I did have to show off this guy first because this is the actual game that we're here to celebrate. This is the game that is having its anniversary today. This is the original Japanese Famicom Disc System version of Metroid. I don't have a Famicom disc system myself, but I really want to get one. And I've collected a handful of the games on it, just the really important ones to me personally. And with Metroid being such an important thing to me, I just had to track that track down a copy of this for myself. So this is the auto show. This first this is the actual the game disc itself. If you've never seen a Famicom disc system game before, these are endlessly fascinating to me. They come on these awesome bright yellow floppy disks, basically. And, you know, there's the logo written right there on it. On the side, A and B comes in this cute little sleeve here. And then this is this is the real cool stuff. This is the instruction manual. So there's the original Japanese cover that you would see. And then on the back, you got a little view of Sammis from behind, which is a really nice little image there. So let's take a look inside. We've got some some some labels, some stickers, these actual stickers. I can't believe they're still intact, that you're so awesome. There's a Riddley, a Metroid and Sammis up there and then you can slap these on your your disc. And then you got these pictures here of the from the storyline. 

This is there, the Galactic Federation lined up there, some some funky looking aliens. And then it's a I mean, look how thick this thing is. This is serious and structure and it's just chock full of so much awesome artwork. I just love this. There's a whole space police guy shooting a space pirate, I guess is what that's supposed to be. You know, there's an energy tank in blue. There's some meteoroids and Sam is looking all cool. And I had no idea that this this was a real eye opener for me. I don't remember the first time I saw this, but Metroid in Japan had safe slots, kind of like Legend of Zelda, which is so cool. I it blew my mind seeing that when I was a kid. I remember spending so much time pounding in those passwords over and over again, really, and xrayed next to each other. And that's where it all started. And this is a gorgeous, gorgeous instruction manual just full of so much cool artwork. I love this thing. Yeah, I don't know what else to say about it. It's Metroid. This is where it began. And it's a phenomenal game still. It has you know, it's aged a bit. It's not the easiest thing to get into nowadays, especially if you if you started on more modern games, it's easy to get lost and whatnot. But there's still an awful lot to love about the original release. 

So let's move on to the American stuff. Here is the original U.S. release of Metroid. I don't know if there was a circle Zealander's. I'm not going to lie. I have 100 percent knowledge on that. But this is my copy of Metroid that I picked up at what was a store called Micro Play Video Games and Sommer's Point, New Jersey. They are not there anymore, but that's where I got my Metroid from. So let's take a quick look inside, because, you know, there's there's some different stuff here. This is one of the few silver label and yes, games. After they finished up with their black box stuff, they did three silver label games, this kid, Icarus and Rad Racer, before moving on to a more full color stuff like ice hockey, RC Prime, etc.. But here is Metroid. Today's my, my, my cartridge, which is and I'm very proud of the condition that this sucker is in. It's and it's in great shape. It looks nice. It smells nice there. There it is. And all of it's silver label glory. And here's the instruction manual, which is more or less a retread of what we just saw in the Japanese one except the artwork's larger, the Metroid story is pretty expansive. 

You can see it's there's there's an awful lot here. I just we just looked at that Japanese one. I love how much larger the artwork is for the American ones. It's one of the definite advantages that we had here in the United States. I used to love, love reading through just pouring through these instruction manuals for all the different bits of information. And just like the Japanese one, this is a this is a lengthy instruction manual and it's got this Google map in their grade and Ridley is getting burned in the butt. So much good stuff in here. The I I always love these Letrozole statues were always so mysterious to me. And then you've got these weird little monsters that hold the the weapon items in their mouths. I've always thought that was such a crazy cool design. It's it's everything about Metro, it has this wonderful air of mystery to it, I just love them. And this artwork is so, so cool. Your energy tanks or missile rocket. Oh, man. And then you get all your mail, your American names, your zoomer is your Zeb's Ríos and grippers and screams and there's there's xrayed man. Look how much the design has changed uncrate over the years. And he's this gigantic lizard guy now and he has this super cool hair in this one weird, creepy eyes. Ridleys the other one that he changed a ton. And this isn't exactly a secret. Everyone's seen this one. But man, just look at Ridley. He was all kind of like chubby in the original one, very, very dragon. And I've never really understood what's going on here is that is I or these supposed to be his eyes? I've never really understood. What was I supposed to be looking at with the head here. But either way, super awesome stuff. 

So Metroid did get a second proper release on the second unique release, and that was this guy right here. And if you've ever played Metroid two for Gameboy, you may recognize this cover because it's a. The same, but we'll get to that in a minute here. So this was one of four games was released as the the classic series they had punch out, not Mike Tyson's, just punch out Mr. Dream Metroid, the legend of Zelda and Zelda to the adventure of Link. And they all had this kind of match, the more slightly more modern trade dress they had going on here like this, the NASA logo down here on the side. So this kind of matches up with other stuff like Star Tropics and and whatnot that was coming out around this time. And the the cartridge itself matches. It's this super cool bright yellow with the the triangle in the background is very, very niños, very much a product of its time. But it's such a cool looking thing. It's such a cool looking image. So there's there's the card itself matches and then your instruction manual is pretty much the same thing on the inside. It's a I don't think there's I don't think they changed a single thing about it. It's just top to bottom here. It's the same structure manually, probably updated stuff like this checkerboard or whatever it is. Was the chalkboard in there? Oh, no. No, it wasn't. There were a few pictures back there to. Who are they? Let's discover together know, wow, it's a little shorter that they did change something. Who knew? Apparently not me, but yeah, that was the the classic series release of Metroid, for instance, a pretty snazzy looking thing. I bought all four of those when they came out because I just couldn't not I'm a humongous punch out fans. It's like, sure, I'll buy another copy of Punjab. This one looks a little different. Yeah, I'll pay for that. And my yeah, the cartridges for the Zelda games were gray instead of gold, so I had to have those and I bought the other three. And I love this cover art. So I bought Metro. I got them all at my local electronics boutique when I was a when, when I was when I was a young and when I was a wee lad. All right. 

So let's see what's next comes Metroid to return of Sammis. This game blew my lip and mind as a kid. First off, this is the best iteration of that cover. They've used this image of Samisen, a handful of Nintendo power posters and ads over the years. This particular image with this space backdrop was just the coolest cover I think I'd ever seen on a video game. Up to this point, it's simply amazing. I love the name of it. Everything about this box is awesome. Everything about this game is cool. You obviously look at it now and there's all these tactical limitations and like, oh, they couldn't really do this with the Gameboy because it was black and white. But I still remember being so completely blown away by being able to play a Metroid game this expansive on small little handheld like the Gameboy and just the cool things that they added to it. The music, the surface of our 388 tune is one of my favorite Metroid tunes ever, and it's such a such a good tune. I love the Metroid Evolutions. This was such a cool idea to have the regular Metroid just be like one flavor of Metroid, but they actually evolved into all these other different things. So so here's here's the cartridge, same artwork and all that and nothing all that exciting. It's a game cart hussar. And then we have the instruction manual. You got your story and everything. Did that weird thing with where Gameboy instruction manuals all had that kind of tint to them. So they weren't usually in the fullest of full color. But man, look at this artwork. Look how much better the artwork got for Metroid Demetra too. And not saying there's anything wrong with the original Metroid artwork, but boy, did they really suss things out for this metric, even samisen, even in her regular power suit, not even the various suit looks so cool. This is also where the big shoulders from the various you came from. There's your meteoroids and a handful of other creatures. Some more awesome pictures of Sammis in various suits, your regular old stuff teaching you how to play the game. 

Let's get to the evolutions, you guys. You got your items. Very cool is introduce the spring ball in the space jump. Man, this game did so much cool stuff. First place we saw Sam as a starship. They started introducing different creatures to hold the power ups. Right. So here's your ice beam. It still looks like from Metroid, but then they just snake for wave, the crab for spaza and this little dinosaur looking dude plasma. Oh. Oh, good. This was so good. And then we got the weird, weird creatures, your squeak, your step dog, whatever that is. And then we got our Metroid evolutions. Were they. Come on I it around here somewhere. There we go. These were the coolest things in the world. These drawings are so gross. Look how freaky these little things are. They're so awesome man. They were a pain in the butt to fight during the game. And then you got your, you know, splash screen of Sammis, Aaron, including the nice little behind the View picture of Sammis that matches the back of the Famicom Instruction Manual we saw earlier. How awesome is that? I love Metroid, too. It's it's a super flawed game, no question about it. It's got its fair share of issues. But I, I still love playing through it. Even with the existence of Sammis returns, which I love as a game, I still think there's plenty to love about the original Metroid too. 

Now this next one is actually a Metroid game, but it's something I needed to talk about and that is how I played Metroid, too. Originally, I didn't have a Gameboy, so I played a little bit of it on the Gameboy and was totally fascinated by it on a friend's Gameboy, but I was never able to get through it. Then they released the super Gameboy and this is how I actually played through Metroid too. And I was super thrilled by it, by seeing in the store like, oh, they got married to right in the cover. But something's wrong with this because that's not what the surface of our 380 looks like. That is not what Sam Seasprite looked like in Metroid. Do what's going on with her head, but it's still got the Hudd down on the bottom. So I'm not sure what I'm looking at here. Right. Because if you look at the back, you've got an actual screenshot of Metrozoo. That's what it actually looks like. This is not that. So what is this picture? We're. Come from it's so weird, but anyway, this is a great way to play Metroid, too, I love messing with the colors. The game looks great on a super Gameboy. It's got a lot of good. This was it's like default one with a weird blue in the background. I would always change to black. And I think the game just looks spectacular that way. It make the border all black, changed this blue to black because you can always change the colors in the the super Gameboy. And that's how I played through Metroid two for the first time and beat it and thought the ending where you save the baby Metroid was the coolest darn thing. I love Metroid too, but this is the pinnacle right here. 

This to me is as good as it gets. This is my copy of Supernatural and then I bought the day it came out. Now I'll never forget the first place I saw this was on the cover of an issue of Game Fan magazine that said Super Metroid. How does Nintendo make games this good? I had no idea they were going to make a third Metroid game. I had hoped, you know, but, you know, I didn't get a third kid Icarus game either. So you never know with those kinds of things. He's still don't. But oh, my goodness. Seeing this game in person, before it came out, I went to Electronics Boutique in Hamilton Mall and I asked the guy behind the counter if I could try Super Metroid. And I got to see the intro sequence where they talk about the story. The last Metroid is in captivity and then Sammis get out of her spaceship on the surface of Planet Sevice and walk around with the rain. This game is as close to perfect as I think I've ever experienced a video game in my life. It's it is still astonishes me to this game this day. And I know that they're I've seen a lot of younger players starting to get into the Metroid series now because of Metroid Dread. And it's it's always painful for me to see them play this game and not like a lot of people appreciate it, but they're not like, oh, wow, this game really isn't talked about a masterpiece like. Well, it sure would be great if this had a map or, you know, a better map system or some of the more modern accouterments that people are used to. And I loved getting lost in this game. I just I loved the whole the whole thing. Every single drop of this game is just perfection to me. 

Now, you can tell that this one of all the Metroid games I own probably got the most use. I used to do this thing where these came with these plastic sleeves on the bottom. I don't know how well you can tell on here that there's these vertical lines on the top of my label here because I used to take the the the little sleeve off the bottom and not lose it. I'd slap it on the top. So a bunch of my supertaster games have this kind of like scratching going on on the top there. It's not like terribly obvious, but it's totally there. And also it's a it's two toned because this didn't leave my system a lot. And I think I had my system near window for a while, which might be might explain this besides just that, you know, with the cheap plastic that Nintendo used for some of their parts. But there it is, Super Metroid, and there's the wonderful box. This was the first one with the only four Nintendo in the corner before they did the whole, like, rip thing in the corner. This did get a rerelease is a player's choice title with a big blue ribbon in the corner. But I never bothered with that because, you know, it's not my thing. 

And here's the instruction manual. Never seen this before. Some even more awesome full color artwork of Sammis. This amazing recap of the Metroid series so far that also plays out final scene from Metroid two all redone in sixteen bit in C Sammis I for the first time this was so awesome. I poured over this manual backwards and forwards. Any time that I wasn't allowed to be playing Super Metroid, I was like in my living room reading this manual, looking at this map and just pouring over the mythology and couldn't wait to see what I was going to discover next. In this game. It is just about the most perfect game I've ever played. I replay it as often as I as often as I can. I've never gotten sick of it. This redesign of xrayed, him being the gigantic lizard that was several screens tall was one of the most shocking things I had ever seen. Brockmeyer what a great boss battle. Awesome reinterpretation of Ridley using the grapple beam to kill Dragon. And of course the whole ending sequence. I could go on and on about how much I love this game. I could seriously just talk about it for hours because it's one of the it's one of my favorite games, my very favorites. It's so, so good. If you've never played this one, please play it and give it a fair shake. And, you know, realize that most of the modern Metroid Vanilla's, as they're called today, would not exist in the state that they do without the trails that Super Metroid blazed. 

So then Metroid went on hiatus for a long time. There weren't there wasn't anything. And Metroid related for quite some time, and then we got a double dose on the same day, we got Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime will, we'll touch on Metroid Prime in a bit. But let's follow up with Fusion, because this was the next 2D Metro game. This is Metroid for this followed up Super Metroid. And it got a little overshadowed when it launched because, you know, that's what Prime was, the big new 3D Metroid game. And it looked amazing. And this game is definitely really well worth your time. It's a lot more guided than most of the other Metroid games. It's very talky. But, you know, that's it was it was the game industry was going through a period of evolution, but the art direction was great. It was very colorful, much more colorful than previous Metroid games in this whole thing with the sax was nuts. Like, the thing about Metroid games is by the end of them, you are so powerful. And instead of like the this year, a lot of games do things like, oh, you fight the darkling or you fight the dark pit or something like that. This was you've been weakened and you have to fight a mindless monster that is you at the height of your powers at the end of Super Metroid, which is crazy. So so you just can't fight that thing and it's chasing you the whole game. And I thought that made for a really, really fun and unique experience. Had the little monsters that you saved in Super Metroid in there. There's my my cartridge and here's the manual. We'll do a quick little fly through that just because there's some good artwork in here. You know, you got some creatures from S3 and this introduces the X parasite, which is a main plot point in the upcoming Metroid Dread, which I'm very excited about this. 

This is a much more clinical instruction manual. This was, you know, came out when I was a bit older. So I wasn't quite as not bringing these to school because I wasn't really in school anymore. This was cheese. This came out when I was working at Toys R US. And so it's got some neat artwork in it, but not quite as much as the old games. It's a pretty, pretty straightforward manual. Still got some neat looking stuff in there. Got your horn, your horn code and your arachnids. I never remember this creature's name. I remember this boss battle shows up and it was in Metroid two is in Sammamish returns in this game. And I never remember the name of this creature because it's called arachnids, but it doesn't look anything like a spider, whatever. Either way, very cool stuff. I like this little Metroid series recap going on in the back here, which is pretty snazzy, but it's weird. Great. You get your players choice. Super Mario, you play his choice. Metroid too. But the original release, Metroid and whatever, they didn't put the the rerelease yellow box in the back there anyway. Phusion great game. And this was for the longest time and actually until today even this is the latest Metroid game. This was the further furthest in the storyline that we had ever seen. And this was meant to Sammis fuzing with a Metroid. So she now is part Metroid, which is crazy cool. 

But anyway, on the same day, like I said, we also got this unbelievable masterpiece, Metroid Prime. This is another one of the best games in the series, one of my favorite games of all time. Oh, my goodness. Just oh my goodness. I couldn't believe how good this game was because I just like Wind Waker. I was very upset with this game because I've never been a big fan of first person shooters. So when it turned out that the new Metroid Game four Game Cube was going to be a first person shooter developed by an unproven American company, I couldn't have been more disappointed and nervous because, you know, Metroid meant so much to me. It totally skipped the end, 64 generation. So I'm finally getting a new Metroid. But, yeah, I don't know how this one's going to work, and I couldn't have been happier. It turns out that this it took me a little bit to get used to the controls at first, which I think helped me that I wasn't much of a first person shooter guy because I didn't miss the whole dual analog thing. That, by the way, is way cooler than this. This is cool. That's cooler. That should have in the box art, whatever. And I left the disk. Kind of looks like the Sammis more fall. That's very cool. But I remember playing the game and kind of getting used to it and thinking it was very impressive. I was having a good time, but it was like a couple hours in and it finally dawned on me that I was playing a Metroid game because I was I was running around and one of the earlier areas and I was kind of lost. So I just pulled up my map and I was just poring over the map. And then I was like, oh, my, this is it. I'm doing a Metroid game. I'm searching through my map trying to figure out where to go next. This feels like Metroid and they really did nail it. 

So at a certain point I started I don't know if you noticed in all the other ones. I don't have anything besides the structure manuals in there because I started taking all this stuff out and then I kind of stopped doing that eventually because I realized it was. A very silly thing to do, so here's your instruction manual. Again, this is a this is a nice looking manual from back when they did the backpack in the old days, but they did manual. Still, he got some really good lord, look at this artwork. Look at the art of this game. It is gorgeous. And this game has aged extraordinarily well. This game looked amazing back then and it still looks amazing now. Even just playing through on on your Game Cube with some some basic tact to get it up and running on a modern HDTV, this game really, really holds up. So, again, the manual is a bit on the clinical side besides that really awesome artwork in the beginning of the that Shozo. But then you have this cool stuff you could link up with Metroid Fusion to get the unlock the fusion suit in the game, which does nothing. It's just cosmetic. You just look different. But you could also unlock the going the other direction. You could unlock the original and the Metroid in your copy of Metroid Fusion, which was pretty darn cool and also rendered something else we're about to talk, talk to talk about effectively useless, useless, useless. There I can talk. Confidential subject, Metroid there. Look at this little Metroid and teaching you how to do the unlock the original Metroid in your Metroid Fusion game. Cool. Is that very cool. Cool stuff. And then we have prime time. This is for Nintendo Power, right? Yep. Subscribe to Nintendo Power, which was awesome. I missed Nintendo Power, although other things exist like Nintendo Force. Check that out. All right. So there's Metroid Prime, which is great. 

Now, there are a couple of different releases I mentioned in the intro that there's one that's half Wind Waker and Metroid Prime. There's a couple of retailer exclusives that have like logos on there, like includes a hat or something from from Kmart. But the only one of those little special bonus ones I have is this. This was a version of it that came with the bonus disc of Metroid Prime, too. I don't have another copy of the game to go in there, but I used to house this little guy at the metric prime time bonus disc and I can't remember why this is in the sleeve. Like, I think this came in a different bundle somehow. But he had your Metroid Prime and then this bonus disc would have been down there. And I don't know, I held on to it because I snagged an extra copy of it from my store when I was working in Game Crazy. I found this and I just thought it was a cool cover, like the lightning bolt Metroid Prime, too. So I grabbed one. That's pretty neat. OK, so then we have this I hate this thing. I hate this game. So I had prime in Fusion and I unlocked and he asked Metroid in my copy of Metroid Fusion. So this was pointless to me. And then years went by and it occurred to me that this was a unique Metroid release that I didn't have. So several months ago, I wound up ponying up to get one and it was more money than I wanted to spend on another copy of Metroid that I will likely never play because there are so many better ways to play the enhanced Metroid. But here it is. I have it. I don't want to talk about it. 

OK, but I do want to talk about is this you want to talk about a good way to play the original Metroid Metroid Fusion? Is it this is if you've never played Metroid before, this is where you should start even before you play the original and ask a yes game. This is where you should start, because this is this is a masterpiece. This takes pretty much everything that was good about Super Metroid and applies it to a gorgeous remake of the original. And it's Metroid adds a whole new mission at the end. Where you play is Sammis in her zero suit, which is the suit that she wears under her suit, which is all stealth mission thing. It's got giant great right on the back of the box. This game, it's pretty short because it's effectively just a remake of the Metroid. Even with the new stuff they added at the end, it's still pretty short, but this game's amazing. I wish it was more readily available. It is on the Wii U virtual console is probably the best way to play it on a TV unless you grab it on. You can obviously get the original cartridge, which is crazy expensive nowadays, or you can get resell ever drives on stoneage gamer dotcom. You can look into that as an option. 

But here's your whole prolog. You know, we're past the point of getting a ton of really great artwork. That's a great picture of Sammis in instruction manuals. But you still got some really cool looking stuff here. It's a nice looking manual. But, yeah, it's it's pretty straightforward like that great art. Look at that xrayed. He's so cool. I miss Xrayed. I really hope they find some sort of excuse to put xrayed in Metroid Dread because I just want to play a modern game with xrayed. And it was really do they really not put a picture of Ridley in there? Maybe I skip it our whatever Gameboy player. Also a really cool game. Cool way to play this game. Gameboy player is pretty darn cool. Basically super Gameboy for your game tube. Nice way of doing things. So there is Metroid zero emission. This is how you do a remake, folks. This is it right here. Remakes don't get a lot better than Metroid zero emission. So let's see what was next. Metroid Prime was a big success. So you better believe they made a bet. Metroid Prime too. And as you can see, the cover was like a foil cover. It's got this really, really cool shimmering effect going on. I love this artwork. This game's really good. It's got a lot of good points. I don't love it nearly as much as I love the first Metroid Prime, but I liked all the artwork that surrounded it. I think the multiplayer mode is way better than people gave it credit for. It was a bit on the tacked on side, I suppose, but it's there's a pretty cool, fun way to play with it with a handful of friends. If you got some people involved in it. You like your Skåne Viser disrupted their lock on you. What is this. What is this. It's my handwriting. What in the world? Oh, my goodness. There's a map I drew. Oh, my terrible handwriting. What is all this? So this was me writing down where I found certain keys and stuff, I guess. What the heck was I doing so cool? I don't even remember doing this. Oh, that's awesome. Oh, the old days before the Internet, huh? 

Then we've got, you know, the ad for Metroid Prime Hunters coming out. Nintendo DS Demo came with the console, too. We'll touch on that in just a minute. Look at this. This brought this attack into 3D and it worked so well in 3D. Like, man, they really nailed it with this screw attack. They worked at the same way they did the morph ball or the camera pans out and you get to see Sammis jumping around such cool artwork. And then your instruction manual is I remember this one being all that impressive. I didn't really spend a lot of time poring over the the booklets anymore this time. So let's see. Yeah, it looks pretty good. Looks pretty. DOWA Not a whole lot going on here. Some nice looking screenshots. It's very informative clearly, but not a lot of awesome artwork or anything like that in there. So not the most interesting thing I've ever seen. Metroid Prime to EKOS is an excellent game. Apparently I drew some weird stuff was like copying this out of a strategy guide maybe. I have no idea what this is. That's so funny to me. There we go. Metroid Prime, too. So what comes after Metroid Prime, too? Not Prime three. Not yet, because first we've got to take a trip into the land of pinball. This game rolls. Metroid Prime Pinball is just one of the coolest video pinball games. It recreates a bunch of tables from metro areas for Metroid Prime One. And you play out just like Sammis is the pinball. It's got really great music. And my copy is actually upstairs. I didn't bring it downstairs. My copy of this game is always with my Nintendo 3D because I just love playing this game. Still, this also came with a rumble pack, which I don't know where my mind is right now. And the original discs, you had a Gameboy Advance port in the bottom and the the rumble pack is shaped like a GBA cartridge and you put it in there and it would shake along with this game, which is neat. 

So, you know, looking at the instruction manual, got some cool artwork and it's it does the whole, like, dual screen thing to recreate the verticality of a pinball table. You just go around and collect them and it shows artifacts and you fight bosses as a pinball. This game is a masterpiece of pinball games. You have any interest in video pinball at all? Even if you're not a metric fan, you've got to try this game. It is so stinking good. Like I said, it never leaves my carrying case for my my three kids. It's just that's why it's not here. I do want to know where my rumball pack is. That is a good question. I don't know where that thing went, but the track that one down anyway. Also on the D when you bought the D like you said before you get a demo, Metroid Prime Hunters, this is Metroid Prime Hunters First Hunt. And this actually is a pretty unique thing because it includes content that was not in the final game. This game got delayed pretty, pretty harshly when it when the D came out and was reworked considerably and they took a lot of this stuff out. But there's some unique music in here, totally unique levels. There's some really cool stuff here. This basically worked more. Yeah, it was a demo of this game, but it was also more of a tech demo than anything of like, hey, check it out. We've got a first person shooter working on this Nintendo DS and it's not bad. There's nothing here. Just it's repeated in different languages. There's really not much to it. But it's it is a thing that exists. 

So it came with the first runs of the Nintendo DS. And I like the the artwork on the front, too. It's pretty cool. But then you have the real thing, Metroid Prime Hunters, it also has that cool, shiny cover, just like Metroid Prime too. It's got all the other hunters in the background, which are really cool character designs. I thought these other hunters were great. And so yeah, I didn't like this game when it first came out that I have another copy of Prime Hunters in here. First Hunt. OK, here's my copy of Prime Hunters and all the accompanying books and stuff that came with this. I don't think there's anything even remotely interesting in here, but yeah, you get your Wi-Fi connection stuff so you could play this one online little ad for Metroid Prime to some club Nintendo stuff for registering your game, you know, get Nintendo Power, et cetera, et cetera. Cool stuff. And then here's the instruction manual itself for the game. Like I said, I didn't like this game too much when it came out. I liked the idea of it, but I remember playing it on my my dad's and just not sticking with it. I had no interest in. Finishing it off, I never found anyone to play multiplayer with, and that was more or less the end of it until just earlier this year, my son wanted to play through every Metroid game with me. I was like, OK, sure, let's do it. So we sat down and he effectively watched me play all the Metroid games and release order. And when we got to Prime Hunters, I bought this on the Wii U virtual console because you can actually get this game on your TV if you have a Wii U. And it works fairly well about as well as it does in the D as far as the controls are concerned, because it's a lot of tapping, like jumping is double tapping. So it's it's got its issues. But I got to say, the single player campaign in this game was a lot better than I expected it to be. 

I'm not saying this is some sort of like lost masterpiece or anything that you really check out, but if you're a big Metroid Prime fan, it's really worth given a look to because there's more to it than meets the eye. And these character designs the silence Weevil Candan trace and not Knox's inspire. These were really cool designs, right? I mean, I like these better than the ones that they the other bounty hunters that showed up in frame three. And I hope that we do get to see more of them at some point. Apparently, this guy is still out there somewhere. There have been some hints at his return. I would love to see more of them. I would love to see this game get properly remade with, you know, dull analog controls and better graphics, because now, granted, this is one of the best looking DFS games I've ever seen. It's got some really impressive visuals. But, you know, it's no Metroid Prime, but it is a pretty excellent game in its own right. So Metroid Prime Hunters. So it was next. We got the we we got Metroid Prime three corruption. The Wii U was the Wii sports machine, without a doubt. But there were a handful of very good games made, you know, like traditional style games that came out on the way. And this is one of them prime threes. Great. I never finished this one. Initially when it came out, I got really far in it. I don't know why I stopped because earlier this year when I was doing my whole series play through, I finish this with my son and I got pretty close to the end. I really don't know why I stopped. I was like an hour away from the end of the game. 

Anyway, cool cover art, right? I'm not sure why we needed the extra dark Sammis floating around in the background unless that's not dark. So that's Dark Sammis. This is like corrupted Sammis, I guess. I don't know. Cover doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's pretty neat looking. This one gave you the fusion canon I think was what it was called. You were infected with Faizan and you have to fight Dark Sammis, which Dark Sammis is a really cool character in case you don't you haven't played through the other prime games. Metroid Prime at the end of was the last boss of Metroid Prime and it was like this gigantic gross Faizan infused Metroid monster that absorbed your Faizan suit and became Dark Sammis. So the other games is called Metroid Prime because Dark Sammis is Metroid Prime. There you go. Title actually does make sense. Your fun little register, your software thing is a little ad for hey, if you like Metroid Prime three, check out these other games. Please buy something other than we sports, please. Good luck and stay twilight. Princess Myristic is charged Super Mario some pretty solid games. And then, you know, like I said before, we're we're way past the point of seeing lots of unique and special artwork in instruction manuals. But this is a big, thick one with some dark samisen. And I think this is a yeah, it's just repeated a bunch of times and a couple of different languages, which is why it's so thick. So it's a pretty paltry man manual. Nice glossy pages, though. It's a good looking, good looking book. And this is a really good game. This is a very solid game. I very much enjoyed it. 

But then the way to play it sort of is this Metroid Prime trilogy. This game became worse a lot pretty quickly. I couldn't believe more people didn't buy it when it came out. I couldn't believe it came out. Honestly, I could not believe that this came out at all. Like, OK, we're going to slap all three Metroid Prime games on one disk for are we OK now in Europe and Japan? I think there was a new play control version of the first two Metroid Prime games that made them we compatible. So you had you didn't have to deal with the single analog stick controls. And that's what's included in this rendition here. You got this cool, clear cover that went over this steel bookcase was really, really nice. It's got unique menus on it. None of the games have their own title screens anymore, which is a little weird. Kind of threw me off. But this does this is a very this is my preferred way to play through the games now, although I get the if you have the option to download this on the Wii U virtual console, because that actually has faster load times. Particularly with Metroid Prime three works better on the Metroid Prime trilogy on the Wii U, what is this? What I actually don't remember this thing at all. Look at this thing. Metroid Prime trilogy, history phase and oh, wow, look at this thing. How did I not know about this? Like, there's Ken Drita. There's all your other. Wow, this is a this is a cool little thing. Why is this stuck together. OK, I see. OK. Oh look at that. Wow. This is bringing on some like super glossy paper, some awesome artwork over here. I can't believe I never knew this existed. What is wrong with me? This is awesome, man. Look at this. Look at all this. This collection is great. I mean, you got all three prime games on one disk, which is just madness. And here's your book. That kind of basically just reprints the books for Prime one, two and three, your basic info there and some some Riddley flying around. And like I said, the the the Wii U downloadable version actually is has some improvements. You've got some cool stuff going on here in the back is an excellent poster. There's a GameStop had a poster of this when you preordered this game. I think I've got that poster rolled up around here somewhere. 

I don't I've never found a good place to hang it, but it's a really good looking, good looking poster. But there you go. Metroid Prime trilogy for the Wii. Hopefully someday we get these Metroid Prime games on the switch with traditional dual analog controls similar to what they did with Skyward Sword. But I won't be holding my breath. All right. Things start going downhill pretty hard from this point forward. Starting here, Metroid other m this game is heartbreaking. When they announced this game, it looked amazing and it does look amazing. This game has a great look. It actually is pretty fun to play, but it is. It cuts itself off at the feet at every single turn. Great art direction. The story is just bug nuts. It is complete nonsense. And I mean, I, I do mean that literally I've seen some people take issue to people using the word nonsense incorrectly to say that something, you know, doesn't make much sense or I forget what they suggested I use instead. But no, I think the story in this is actual nonsense. There are so many things that you just look at and say, why would you do that? And a lot of it takes away from what makes Metroid Metroid in favor of trying to tell this ridiculously complicated story that involves Ridley being a chicken like a little chicken monster, a bunch of other characters they introduced you to. They change things like the parrot, the various what is now a feature that you turn on and off, same with the gravity suit, just makes you glow purple instead of changing the suit to a different suit. But look how cool these beams look. The wave beam. Oh, my God. I could I could write a dissertation on everything that's right and wrong with this game. But at the end of the day, it is a pretty fun game to play. These are, again, duplicates in other languages. So you're not really missing much here. You had to play the game with the Wii remote held sideways, which was absurd because this is a 3D Metroid game, but it's in third person. So you see Sammis the entire time and boy, does she talk. I mean, she will just wax poetic about every single thought that pops into her head, including reminiscing about scenes that you just watched. It's it's insane. I this game is nothing short of insanity. Team Ninja did some really awesome work with this Nintendo and Sakamoto, which were in charge of the story and the overall direction. Not so much, but it is a fascinating game and it's pretty cheap to find because nobody wants it, because there's some really terrible moments in here. 

But boy, the stuff it gets right, it gets really right. I can't say that this is an amazing game that you need to play, but if you're a Metroid fan, try this game out and try to make it through to the end, because there's some really, really good stuff in here. It's just buried underneath a larger pile of really, really bad stuff that's just hard to get through. But like I said, visuals are one of the things that worked well with this. And this is a preorder bonus. I it was sitting on my shelf next to my copy of other ammo, so I figured I'd grab it. It's like an art. It's an art folio. So it's just a bunch of these still images. And I don't want to I can't get this thing off comfortably. Come on, you can do this. I don't want to ruin it. I might decrease the value of my greatly sought after Metroid to other M stuff. Now, I just don't like wrecking stuff. I don't have to. Come on, you can do it anyway. Yeah. So there's just a bunch of these little cards with different bits of artwork from each right other m which had great art direction for the most part, same as a suit was a little strange in some ways. I mean like they're just screenshots and even then they look good. I mean there's so much to like about the way this game looks with a little bit of tweaking. The gameplay itself could really override the just astronomical levels of stupid to be found in this game. Like you start the game with a replay of the ending of Super Metroid and they get so much of it wrong. She's not even wearing the gravity suit, thinks there are better things to get angry at Metro at other times, a weird game moving on. 

So there was no Metroid game on the Wii U. However, we had this. Now, if you've never played Nintendo Land before, shame on you. Go buy this game, go get a Wii U and played in Wonderland. This this game got so much flak that it didn't really deserve, but it kind of did because this wasn't it wasn't we sports. But I think this game is even better. I still play this with my family, family and friends. We can still have a lot of fun with Nintendo LAN. This is an evergreen awesome multiplayer game that can only be done with the two screens setup of the Wii U. And one of the things is a Metroid game. See, that Metroid blast is what it's called and it's got unique remixes of Metroid music. And this also stands as, I believe, the only game in the franchise where you can actually fight Ridley and create at the same time you can team up with four different people as Sammis and another a fifth person flying around in Sammis, a spaceship. And it's like a cooperative shooter. That's really fun to play. It's not perfect, but it's a pretty fun experience and it's very, very Metroid as in like just covered in its personality, not like gameplay wise. There's no real seeking out items or anything, but it's it's a fun game and it's the closest we got to an actual Metroid game on Wii U outside of the fact that the Wii U. Is the way to play most Metroid games right now, you can get Prime Hunters, Prime Trilogy, Zero Emission and Fusion all running through the virtual console. You've got the Metroid Blast and Nintendo Land. It's a really good way to play your Metroid games. But then we had probably the darkest of days in the Metroid camp. And that is this gentleman right here in a world where we had the last Metroid game was Metroid other him. And that did not go over well with Metroid fans. We had been itching, positively itching for a new Metroid game. And Nintendo announced, here's your next Metroid game. It is a spinoff that does not star Sammis. It's got cutesie Chibi graphics and it is a multiplayer online shooter instead of just a regular style Metroid game. And people were admittedly and in my opinion, rightfully cheesed off. I'm actually trying to play through this game now, which is why my copy isn't here. But I brought it down here to make this video and now I don't know where it is, whatever. I am consistently being bored by this game. I don't love it. I don't I don't hate it. But it's not really a single player thing. This is clearly designed to be played with multiple people. 

And not a lot of people did that because there wasn't a lot of reason to even when you're playing it with other people, it's just fine. Blast Ball was a neat idea, but rocket league did it better. So this is like a you have a big ball. You have to shoot it into the goal instead of ramming it with a car, which is way more fun. This is a weird, weird game. And it made a lot of Metroid fans very angry and very sad, myself included. I had bought it the day it came out, kept it sealed until a few weeks ago when we actually a few months ago at this point, my son and I finished our Metroid play through and it came time for this one. So I cracked it open. We played the first level and he said he was done. It's like, I love Metroid, but this is this isn't it? I'm out. So I've been trying to play through it by myself and it just has been boring the snot out of me. So Boo Federation for us, it's not a terrible game, just just not for me. And then last but very much, not least, we have returned to form. This is Metroid. Sammis returns for three days and I wanted nothing more in the world than to play this game on my switch. But unfortunately it's only on three days. So no matter how much I want to play this on a big TV, I currently cannot do that. But this game is there's my federation force. So where's my Sammis returns? Oh, well, whenever I'm sure it's around here somewhere, I think it's still upstairs with my three days. Oh well whatever. No instruction manual. This game's great. And this was done by Mercury Steam into the Castlevania Lords of Shadow Stuff with supervision from Nintendo. And I think they turned Metrick Metroid two into a really, really awesome experience. It's got some flaws. It relies a little bit too much on this melee counter that they introduced a lot of the environments. It suffers from being Metroid, too, which is one of the most linear Metroid games outside of Metroid other him. But that being said, there's a groundwork for some really amazing stuff in here. And I'm so glad that that's the team that got to move on and make Metroid dread, because it seems like they learned every lesson that they possibly could from this game and turned Metrojet into something extraordinarily special. I have played through this game twice now. I finally got the little circle thing that lets me use Amiibo on my 3D. So I unlocked the hard mode, played it for five seconds and knocked the heck out because, boy, that's tough. And there's some really cool artwork in here. There's some great lawyer stuff they added to this talking about like an evil band of Shozo that kind of messed things up. They added a Riddley fight to the end that actually ties in continuity wise with some Metroid prime stuff in the timeline and just makes the whole overall story of Metroid make a bit more sense. This is, as far as I'm concerned, the way to play Metroid two. If you're getting into the series first time and you want to play the story in order, you do zero emission, this super and fusion, and then you go back and play the next version in the Gameboy version for, you know, the history lesson and the visual stuff and kind of learning about the evolution of it. But that is the Metroid franchise. That's all the Metroid games that have been released in America, as far as I know, and my copies of them and. Well, gosh darn it, I love Metroid. 

So one more piece that I wanted to mention in my collection, which isn't really part of my collection, but I did technically will it into existence. And it's pretty much my favorite Metroid thing that exists. And it's the music that's been playing throughout the course of this video. I commissioned Banjo Guy Ali to do six Metroid themed covers. I picked the songs and he just completely knocked it out of the park. And I can't believe how good the music came out. I mean, I can because he's awesome. But if you've been enjoying the music in this video, then go check out his channel, Banjo Guy Ollie. 

He's got tons of other great covers out there as well from ranging from everything from Outrun to Super Mario Brothers all over the map. Great stuff. But yes, natural franchise, as you can tell. I love it. I love it. Since I was a kid, I cannot wait for Metro dread. I can't wait for the eventual metro train for. I love that the franchise is getting all this attention every day on Twitter, I see new Metroid themed artwork and stuff. It's it's so cool seeing so much promotion put behind this franchise that has never exactly been tiny. You know, we're not talking chibi robo levels here, but it's it's never really been, I think is high up in the pantheon as it as it really deserves, because seriously, some of the best games ever made have the word Metroid in the title. Thanks for watching, everybody. If you liked what you saw here today, please comment like subscribe. Tell us your stories about your favorite metric experiences, your favorite metric games. Did I forget something? Is there a metric game that I just left out of my video because I'm a lunatic? Just let us know in the comments. We always love hearing from everybody. Thanks again for watching.