Genocide for galactic peace - Let's Play Metroid 2: The Return of Samus

Because here’s the final Metroid: The Queen.


The Queen is a battle of attrition, more than anything else. She only has a couple of attacks—stretching her neck out to bite you, and spitting spiky things.


The spiky things can be avoided with the invincibility frames of the screw attack, or you can just high-jump out of their way if you time it right.


The bite isn’t really an attack: It’s your opportunity. The Queen’s whole head is vulnerable to missiles, but she doesn’t suffer stun or knockback. Unless you feed her a missile when her mouth is open, which will freeze her for a second and let you feed her more. Learning to time that properly is the key to getting enough missiles fired into her before you run out of energy tanks.


Nintendo Power talked about the types of Metroids, which I didn’t post before because I didn’t want to spoil the Queen.

Arguably, this could be a point where you realize the game is unwinnable (though you can always backtrack). You need 150 missiles to kill the Queen (assuming you NEVER miss) plus 40 to take out the baby metroids before her. If you missed a lot of missile upgrades, you may not have nearly enough.

There is an alternative if you have the health to manage it, though: You can let the Queen swallow you, roll down into her belly, and drop bombs there. Doing that ten times will also kill her, but it’ll do a number on Samus, too. (Also, it’s really tricky to time right. I wasn’t able to manage it while trying to get screenshots.)


Here’s a full-body shot of the Queen, the kind you can only get with an infinite-energy code.


Finally, notice that hole in front of the Queen? That’s your escape hatch. If you roll down there, you’ll fall down to where the Ice Beam was, and can make your way back to the energy and missile rechargers (or even further back in the game to look for upgrades you missed) and then circle back to try the Queen again. (She heals when you leave the screen, of course.)


A lot of shots fired later, the Queen crumbles.


Turns out that this weird thing we saw before was an egg. It hatches, but the Metroid doesn’t attack—it floats around Samus, trying to be helpful.


“Are you my mommy?”


Unlike other Metroid games, there’s no timer or big rush to escape. Just follow the path.

Those two-toned blocks are indestructible, but the baby Metroid can destroy them for you.


The surface!


Climb up and over the right-hand wall.


Then drop down to find Samus’ spacecraft.


Entering it ends the game.




Here’s the final two maps, of the Area 10 section and the exit section. The endgame was obviously an attempt at the stuff horror movies are made of: Long, enemy-free seemingly-safe areas punctuated by horrifyingly dangerous stuff.

The Final Area is easily my favorite section of the game; that or the Metroid that immediately molts to Omega Level once you kill its brother.

Samus runs as the credits roll.




And because I finished in juuuuust under 3 hours, I get the best ending: Samus flips up and comes down out of her power suit, then unties her hair and lets it flap in the breeze.

And that's a wrap!

All the usual thank-yous to the folks at Nintendo, at Valiant Comics, and to my very supportive audience here at Talking Time.

I've got some more Game Boy games in my hopper, and hopefully it won't be another year before I get the next one together. I don't plan to buy a house again this coming year, so that should help.

In the meantime: Anyone have any additional thoughts or commentary about the Metroid universe?

I've said it in other threads, but I wish Nintendo would go ahead and try a New Super Metroid sometime. Maybe they just don't have that kind of talent on staff like they do with their Mario renaissance going on.

edit: And of course, thanks for the LP! It was over and done with quicker than most of the others I've read, but was thoroughly entertaining. Did you get 100% of the items?

It's an extremely atmospheric game. Seeing screenshots doesn't do justice to the sound and music, especially in the last section. It has an incredibly ominous soundtrack and you can hear the queen breathing in the penultimate chamber.

I also love the baby metroid's peeping when it eats those diamond blocks.

Overall, a great recap. Thanks, Beowulf!

I also really love the low health warning in this game. Rather than be a persistent beeping that never varies in tone you get this really dire-sounding warning siren, and it keeps changing in pitch and frequency every time you get hit after it starts. I'm not sure if there's any rhyme or reason to it, all I know is that it's particularly unsettling in a way no other low-health warning is.

It's almost like it's a sound that could actually be coming from Samus's suit as it starts to take critical damage, and the seemingly random changes in pitch and frequency are just due to the suit itself being so damaged that it can't play the sound properly.

Great observations about the game's sound! This is probably the most tolerable instance of "low health beeping" that I can think of.

The comments on the atmosphere are also spot-on. That's one of the key aspects about the overall series that I love: coming across lost civilizations, hostile territory, and purely natural environments, and drawing what conclusions you can from them (both the pure mystery of this game and the more info-heavy Primes and Fusion work for me).

This is a game that's dying for a remake, but I think it would take a careful touch. I'd like detriments to smoothed over (like the lack of content and samey environments), but I also want it to retain its identity and atmosphere. Zero Mission, for instance, feels like the original game was given a "post-Super" paint job. It improves on a lot of things, but the original still has a very distinct "flavor" that's gone from the remake.

I feel similarly about Zelda 2 and Castlevania 2. I think they have a lot to gain from some revisions, but I also don't want them to be turned into "standard" Zelda and Metroidvania entries. For all of these sequels, there's some overlap between their flaws and what makes them unique, but they're not exactly the same thing, and I worry that remakes wouldn't prune as carefully as I would like.

Wasn't there a fanmade remake of Metroid 2 in the works? What became of that?

I used to follow one rather closely, though eventually I forgot about it. Seems like it's still coming along, at its own pace anyway.

And then, after the Queen dies, the music becomes wondrous and peaceful as you make your new friend.

Everything after the final save point—the shattered Ice Beam statue, the portentous sighting of the egg, the counter shooting back up, the return of the original Metroids, the coming of the Queen, and the wordless denouement—is just perfect, really. Thanks for the LP, Beowulf!

It's not a threat.

It's the future, Nich.

The technology is in place to make that scanner VERY thorough

I agree with Nich, but I figure it's probably a concession to game design in that R&D1 didn't want anyone to think they had to figure out how to kill this cute baby that just fell in love with them.

I didn't have anything to add while the LP was still running, but I did enjoy reading it! Thanks for another fine thread, Beowulf.

even just the screenshots of baby metroid were enough to make my eyes moist.

The last metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace.

Everyone is right, the sound design in this game is amazing.

Great LP!

Thanks to this LP I think I'm going to buy Metroid 2 on 3DS VC. I know it's on the JP eshop, at least.

To be fair, even taking screenshots, there's only so much of a time-sink a three-hour game can be. Part of why I do the Game Boy games is that they're fairly limited; even the longest Game Boy rpg takes only a dozen hours to beat.

I did indeed get 100% of the items. The only thing I skipped was changing out my plasma beam for one of the older varieties in Area 6.

That was actually my reaction to Nich's comment as well: If Samus was specifically charged with ending the threat of the Metroids, why not make a detector as specific to that task as possible?

And thanks for the praise, everybody!