Forget Call of Duty, Real Men Need the Retro Love: Super Metroid

As we saw earlier this week, Nintendo's most bargainous of bargains continues in earnest. Super Metroidfor a meager thirty of your Earth cents? This truly is the greatest deal since Two for One on Transexual Thai Brides Day at willhavesexforcreditcarddetails.com! As promised, we're going to party like it's 1994 and see what's so damn special about Samus's third space romp.

This mid-Nineties SNES title continues the proud action/platformery tradition of its forebears (NES's Metroid and Game Boy's Metroid II: Return of Samus). By this time, we didn't need a few piss-poor blur-o-vision seconds of bikini ogling to know it was a woman in that chunky ol' suit; one with a diploma in Lumpen Alien Wang Shooting from the University of Badassery at that. She'll need all of her -metaphorical- cojones for this mission.

The premise is that the last survivor of the nefarious space-bastard vampire race, the Metroids, has been stolen by Space Pirate leader Ridley. We pursue him to the planet Zebes, and a whole shitstorm of tunnel exploration, shooty goodness and platforms with furious demonic faces on them for no damn reason ensues.

What Super Metroid nails so well is the patented atmosphere of the series (which generally constitutes one you could cut with a knife and greedily consume as you lay scratching yourself in your undercrackers on the couch). It's a solitary experience, with the notion of exploration heightened by the very fact of cruising about an expansive, surreal alien world with nothing but your freakishly huge, Elephant Man-esque shoulders for company. Plus the myriad of assorted wildlife that wants to eat you in the face, but those bastards are worse than no travel companions at all. Screw them.

It is also notable as a true relic of a bygone era; born before gaming's trend for hand-holding, excessive tutorials and so forth. The more decrepit gamers and retro heads among us will be acquainted with games not wiping our asses and/or shaking it dry for us, the only tips and guides that were accessible were on the other end of unscrupulous premium rate phone calls. Super Metroid, true to form, propels us cheeks-first into a immense, unexplored realm (pretty much sans objectives of any sort) and exclaims, "Do what the hell you want. I giveno shits." It's enough to make many of us cry sad, sad tears of salty sadness, befuddlement and rage.

Nonetheless, those of us with the necessary ‘nads of steel to persevere will experience a true classic. The venerable Super Metroid is among the most critically acclaimed releases in gaming history, and a crucial contribution to what is considered by some the best console lineup of all. Salute the SNES and the days of hand-drawn, nerdtacular level maps by sending thirty cents Wii U-wards in exchange for a sexy slice of Samus.