Metroid

Yoshi's Crafted World is one of the first, and we know some at Creature's, Inc. was using UE 4 for Pokemon models.

The fact that a lot of Japanese publishers have finally caved and started using third-party engines is a big deal. A lot of companies last gen, like Konami, invested a lot of time and effort into engines that ended up only being used for one game.

Even Square jumped on the Unreal bandwagon for Kingdom Hearts.

Personally, I find the whole Power Trio of Mario, Zelda, and Metroid to be a bit of an exaggeration in hindsight of the actual attention Nintendo has given for these franchises. It was always Super Mario Bros and the Legend of Zelda that got full attention from the Big N, and I remember in the early years of the 21st Century, Star Fox had bigger publicity (and thus claim to the third spot) with the whole Dinosaur Planet and Star Fox 64.

Really, it was Mario, Zelda and Pokémon when Metroid Prime brought Metroid back into the spotlight. Though I guess it had something to do with fact of people not fully understanding Pokémon to be a Video Game first, anime and TCG second.

Whatever the case may be, if Metroid is indeed the third of a Nintendo Trinity, then it should really expand its horizon with game spinoffs (and tie-in media) that Mario, Zelda, and Pokémon are well-known to have (as part of their big status recognitions) to retain that position. Perhaps a Star Fox-esque space shooting game where you shoot down Space Pirates with Samus' Gunship?

Edited by Shadao on Jan 28th 2019 at 12:05:28 PM

Honestly both Zelda & Metroid have struggled with spin-offs with their characters; neither the likes of Crossbow Training or Metroid Prime Hunters made much of a dent in the gaming scene.

The difference was that Lo Z always had strong sales with its main titles so if Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland didn't make much of a splash, it wasn't a big deal. Metroid didn't have that luxury or as many games, so meh spin-offs end up taking a larger portion of the franchise library and the overall impression of it.

To be fair, it doesn't help that the series was left dormant for a long time after Super Metroid (while Metroid II might not have been as good as SM, there wasn't an outright bad game until Other M).

I think it might have something to do with the fact that the GameCube was the era that Nintendo struggled with the image of being seen as a kiddie company, and Metroid was the only franchise at the time to avoid that.

Might also explain why Pokémon didn't get recognition as Nintendo's true third member of the Nintendo Trinity. He he he. Ah to be young again and naive.

As I've said, Pokemon isn't a part of the trinity because it far surpasses it. Mario, Zelda and Metroid just slow it down.

Metroid spinoffs are kind of miss or miss. We have Pinball, which is a good pinball game but still a pinball game, and Federation Force, which is not what people wanted at the time.

Thing is I do want more. Hunters was a step in the right direction, but the DS wasn't the best platform to experiment with Deathmatch style gameplay. Splatoon proved Nintendo can do multiplayer shooters so I don't see why we shouldn't give Hunters 2 a shot on the switch.

I would have assumed Mario, Pokemon, and Zelda would be already the "Nintendo Trinity". According to Wikipedia, Mario is the most profitable video game franchise ever, and Pokemon is the second. Though I wonder if that's taking merchandising into account. Pokemon isn't merchandise driven per se, but it's something of a holy grail of merchandising.

Pokemon's the highest grossing franchise ever.

I'm not talking about video games. Pokemon makes more money, taking everything it is into account, then any other media franchise in the world.

It makes more than Star Wars. It makes more than Disney Princesses. It makes more than Harry Potter or Call of Duty or the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

What are your metrics for that?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises

Pokemon is number one in all of media. Hello Kitty is number two.

Mario, Zelda, and Metroid are a trinity in the sense that they're internally developed action games that originated on the NES, had large critical acclaim on the SNES, and whose first 3D entries were all considered masterpieces. Plus they make for a nice balance of modern, medieval, and science fantasy.

Sales wise it's Mario and Pokemon on one tier, then Zelda, Smash, and Animal Crossing, then some other stuff, then some more stuff, then maybe Metroid.

Cool it’s as arbitrary as DC’s trinity

In the mean time, Retro's current attitude.◊

What happened with Mario kart 7?

It was developed between Nintendo and Retro.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Jan 28th 2019 at 1:32:10 PM

I'm willing to give the Big N the benefit of the doubt after seeing all the rushed dumpster fires that have been excreted into the market in recent months. Sometimes you just need more devtime.

Much respect about the honesty. You can't even really get mad at it.

the fact the big name is apologizing not for canning the project, but for handing it to a team they judge more competent to deliver a good product, speaks volumes of how nintendo perceives their jobs of making games compared to how EA sees it when they close visceral.

Their PR department is stuck in the 20th century, but at least they understand the point of long-term planning and why good reputation helps at it.

Edited by Yumil on Jan 29th 2019 at 7:11:48 PM

I mean, Nintendo isn't typically this open about their development process, IIRC.

I believe they've seen EA and Bethesda get publicly crucified over recent issues and decided to be better than that.

So I beat Zero Mission just now.

Despite being interested in Metroid and playing this game, Super, and Fusion for a few hours each, I'd never actually beaten a Metroid game before just now. Given my experience with multiple other Metroidvanias for years I figured I owed it to myself to where it all began (well, ok, to an extent, I wasn't going to play the original Metroid because it's dated as fuck). Great experience overall, except for the Mother Brain fight which is total garbage. I wasn't super into it at first, but as I got more and more upgrades and getting stronger and stronger it became a lot more enjoyable. I only got 57% completion which I found a bit surprising; I knew I'd missed a few items, but I didn't think it was going to add up to 43%. Oh well.

I'm going through Super next, though I'm probably going to take a break and play some other games first.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Feb 11th 2019 at 9:32:41 AM

You would love to see my walkthrough of this game. It also ended up being my best personal record by accident.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Feb 11th 2019 at 1:00:48 PM

Are there any space horror things that Metroid hasn’t done a take on?

Tribbles?