Part 5: The Plot to Metroid Part 2

Let's Read Up On Metroid's Story!

Part 2: Zero Mission is a lot more complicated than I remember

Last time we covered the lore of Metroid as told in the instruction manuals, but what about the remake of the first game, Zero Mission, that was released back in 2004? Wouldn't the updated release of the first game invalidate the flimsy story the original hid away in it's manual?



Nope, not really!

The game's backstory and plot are almost exactly the same as the original: exterminate all Metroids and defeat Mother Brain. To get to Mother Brain you need to defeat Kraid and Ridley, and to get to Kraid and Ridley you need to explore Brinstar and Norfair to collect weapons and powerups. That said, there are some twists to this game...


I don't think I remember this from the first game...

Like the new bosses scattered around the areas, usually guarding choke points or items, and most of them actually have small stories preceding their defeat, like the Charge Worm (who holds the Charge Beam ) will randomly attack you in the tunnels of Brinstar and retreat only to attack again in a different tunnel latter, or that little worm in the picture that blocks the passage to Ridley's lair in it's larva form, but when you get to Ridley's lair you'll find it in it's adult form and have to kill it again.

There are also strange items scattered around that your suit can't use, which are usually found near Chozo ruins and beg the question of what, exactly, these mystery items are, and why wouldn't they let us use them? And that's not even getting into the actual cutscenes that were added, some of which are really good at setting the mood, like the first time you arrive in Tourian and you see Metroid's draining the life from a pirate... creepy enough and helped set the tone of the final stage very well.

But the real surprise happened right at the end of the game; you beat Mother Brain, you race against the clock to climb out of the exploding Tourian and race to your ship, you think you've won and...



Okay, I definitely don't remember this from the first game!

You're only half done, and what's more, you're starting from less than scratch. You don't get a Power Suit, now you have to play as Samus in her Zero Suit, weaker than when you started the game. That means sneaking so you don't get spotted and killed, and you can't use any of your abilities...


Solid Snake's got nothing on Samus

The gameplay is completely turned on it's head from exploring and overpowering weak wildlife, to carefully making your way through Ridley's ship hiding from and evading Space Pirates the entire way through. You can't go where ever you want to, you can't kill anything, and you spend most of this section of the game hiding from Pirates and avoiding traps while crawling through airducts. The entire time the player is wishing that they'd get their stuff back, because being so helpless after beating basically the entire game is pretty aggravating.

Eventually you'll find some Chozo ruins, more intact that most you've seen to this point, and crawling with Pirates, one of whom even walks away with a Power Bomb, till eventually you make it to a room with a mirror that attacks you.


I wonder what a Chozo in a Power Suit would look like...

Samus defeats the mirror of herself, and gets a new Power Suit, complete with funky round shoulder pads, you get all your weapons and power ups back, all the mystery items reveal themselves as the Gravity Suit, Space Jump and Plasma Beam, and the music takes a turn for the awesome. Now you can get the Power Bombs the pirates took, and blow up their ship as a thank you for shooting you down, triggering a second escape sequence where you steal one of their ships and escape from the planet.


Oh, yes! Come to mama!

Overall, the game doesn't really change anything from the Metroid story so much as expand Samus's first adventure into an even bigger one. Also worth mentioning is that this is all told through the environment and short, 5 second cutscenes with no dialogue; Samus has an opening monologue, the short "everything's fucked" statement I posted above, AND THAT WAS IT. And it was good, because it still managed to tell a story complex enough I couldn't get even a tenth of the detail across in this post. (for example, the ship you sneak around in the end is seen earlier as Ridley lands it on Zebes, which is pretty cool)

Also in this game is a small glimpse into Samus's past, notably when she enters the above pictured room and we're treated to a flashback where she's shown as a small child.


Dawwwwwwww

There's also some bonus images you can get by linking this game up with Fusion, which show the attack on her home by Ridley and being found and raised by the Chozo. They're actually cool little bonus's into the life Samus had before becoming a bounty hunter, and after a half dozen games where we knew next to nothing about Samus, this brief glimpse proved very interesting indeed. Oh, but only for North American fans, as Japanese fans got the full story back in 2003 when Nintendo released the story as a manga.


You get zero guesses what the next update is gonna be about

Next time, Manga, comics, and what everybody but Sakamoto thinks Samus is like.