The galaxy is not at peace: Let's Play Metroid II!

The Prime series just shows the Chozo everywhere: Tallon IV, Elysia, they were hanging out with the moth people, etc. And the lore talks about the Chozo exploring all over the galaxy and stuff.

Fusion fits in the massive retcon of the Chozos creating Metroids to fight the X parasites living on SR388, and that Metroid is Chozo for "warrior" or something. I didn't bring that manual with me. But MDB has it!
...yeah. Nevermind that the first game's manual (trusty source that is, featuring cyborg man!Samus) says the scientists named the Metroids, and how would the scientists know what the Chozo called the things anyway? Can they read crazy bird language?

So, while mostly coherent, Metroid canon is a mess.

At least it's not Zelda canon.

Hahaha. Zelda. Canon.

Anyway, I always thought Nintendo did a good job with the atmosphere for Metroid II, and thanks to that experimentation the atmosphere in Super Metroid was awesome. But what always got to me in II was the low-energy warning. Instead of being a constant tone, it changed pitch and frequency every time you took a hit once it started. It became downright menacing as you got really low on health, and since most of the game doesn't have much in the way of BGM, just ambiance (or what the GB could muster for ambiance), the warning sound just overwhelmed you most of the time. It certainly made me jittery.

It doesn't help I was on low health the first time I ever encountered a Beta Metroid. But I'm getting ahead of the Let's Play...

Well Samus's visor can read crazy bird language. Really, why not? The Chozo only completely vanished in Samus's lifetime, after all. (Source: Metroid Zero Mission)

Man, that devolution of the spider ball was so disappointing.

Keeping the spider ball the way it was in II but bringing it into a 3D world would be a recipe for disaster. I'm pretty happy that it returned at all, and honestly I'm glad I didn't have to scour every single surface of Tallon IV using my sticky powers. Also, as much as I didn't like Prime 2 very much, they did some amazing things with magnetic rail tracks later in the game.

The Spider Ball's a powerful tool, but with such power comes great responsibility, and in the wrong hands, it could lead to disastrous lazy level design. "Who cares if they can get in here, they can just glue-ball their way up!" Even in Metroid II, as fun as it is to be able to scour every area, there's a lot of parts of the game where there's nothing to see, and it's slow to get there. Eventually the Space Jump supersedes it and the whole thing becomes like future Metroid games. Which obviously works. So that's okay.

I think for the 3D games it works better to split the difference: Don't stick to EVERY surface, but don't limit it to rails (though I do sometimes really like the rails, it just makes sense in that world).

I can't remember, were there walls you could stick too in Prime?

Not in Prime 1, but one of the other two did introduce magnetic platforms that you could move around on arbitrarily. Not to mention the halfpipes, ramps, and other physics toys: not exactly spider ball material, but it was useful for more than rolling into small holes and planting bombs.

Oh, I realize that it would have been a huge pain in 3D world design for both sealing the world so that the spider ball wouldn't break it and not getting lazy because players can simply spider ball all over the place, but why not at least have large surfaces where you can use it? Echoes had one a place where there was an entire wall the spider ball could cling to, as I recall, and it was a blast.

If you use McClain's "split the difference" method, it could also be used as a shortcut. If there's a place the player will probably go through multiple times that includes a platforming challenge, maybe one wall could be a spider wall, so once you have the ball you can roll up and zip along there instead of doing the same platforming you always do. It's not necessary, but options are always nice.

Surfaces you can roll around on freely, though. Not tracks.

Yes; they introduced the tracks, but they did not include surfaces in which you had more than one dimension of movement. Which is what I was talking about.

If I remember correctly, Prime 1 had one area where you had more than one direction of movement with the spider ball (Geothermal Core, right before the plasma beam).

Don't ask why I remember the name of the room; it's a long story.

I was just going say: Geothermal Core wins the argument for Metroid Prime. Seeing that room open up for the first time was a jaw-dropper.

In Metroid II, I got the spider ball, then got hoplessly lost in the big room that has a building in the middle. I still have it though, and I'm planning to go back and beat it after this LP is done (with a map, of course).

EDIT: Also, the spiderball/rails puzzles were my favorite part of Metroid Prime 1, and that's one of my favorite games that gen.

I'm not 100% sure you've narrowed your location down at all. You see, they were very economical with their level design.

Ha, yes, well, the specific room that was pointed out in this LP as a big room with a building in the middle.

But are you sure it's that specific room?