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N-Philes: What about the newest Metroids? The DS Hunters and Pinball, and the upcoming Prime 3 for Revolution? Do you feel Nintendo is treating the series properly?Trebor: Well, the Metroid series is as popular as ever, so Nintendo must be doing something right. I haven't played any of the games released after Echoes, so I can't really comment on those.
Nate: I haven't played Hunters (except for a few seconds) or Pinball yet, but I hear they're great. Fearing what nintendo is going to do next is no way to live. People thought that Prime was going to kill the series, and look what happened: it's the best game ever made. Now, Prime 2 may have sucked, but that shouldn't reflect badly on Hunters or Pinball, neither of which Retro is involved with.
N-Philes: No game is perfect. What in the Prime sub-series did you feel was lacking, or was a serious issue that didn't get looked upon?
Nate: I think that the game companies still don't get it in terms of letting money crunchers push them around. They're taking release dates from these people who know nothing about what's going on with the development. Good games are made by artists, not by profiteers. Nintendo is obviously less afflicted with this than, say, a certain other company whose name I won't mention (starts with "E" and ends with "A"), but I think that the seemingly random crashes that were in the original (speed running standard) version of Metroid Prime are inexcusable. They are so common that a few guys playing the game a few hours a day each will more than likely encounter at least one before a week is up. Their combined frequency and seriousness--you have to turn off the GameCube and turn it back on when it happens--just says to me that Retro blew it. Though whether it was actually Retro's fault, or if they asked for more time and were denied it, is anyone's guess. I'd also like to say that our experience with Metroid Prime has been so overwhelmingly positive that it actually took me a while just now to remember, "Oh, yeah, the crashes. I knew the game wasn't perfect!"
Trebor: That's hard to say. Prime exceeded all of my expectations by a large margin, so I can't think of anything right off hand that could've been done to it. As for Echoes, it just didn't have the same feel to me as the original. I can't quite explain it, but I know something is missing. To me, one of Prime's greatest assets was its ability to be "sequence broken." This basically means that major items could be obtained out of order, or even skipped entirely, throughout the course of the game. Echoes lacked a great deal of this, so it appeared the developers spent a lot of time and energy trying to make it "unbreakable." This normally isn't bad from the developer's point of view, but one could claim all this extra effort distracted Retro from putting forth the effort needed to make the game as good as it could have been. It wasn't a bad game by any means, but it didn't live up to the hype that Prime created.
N-Philes: What would you personally want to see from the franchise, storyline, or the future of Metroid?
Nate: I'd just like to see people pour their souls into what they're doing with the series. I can't ask for anything less, and they can't give anything more. If this comes to pass, we'll meet in heaven like we did with Prime and everything will be beautiful (well, except for the occasional crash).
Trebor: For the next game, I'd love to see a worldwide simultaneous release. That way, everyone has the same game with all the same glitches and oversights. You wouldn't think this would be an issue, but Prime is a perfect example. In the PAL version and even the Player's Choice version, several methods were employed to keep players from getting into areas earlier than they were intended.
N-Philes: Please share with us your favorite stories about Metroid, regarding the culture or games.
Nate: I've told this story a thousand times, but I'm sure plenty of people reading this haven't heard it before. It's about Red Scarlet's 100% run in Super Metroid that she submitted in February of 2004. After several attempts, she had finally gotten her clear time down to a jaw-dropping 1:00 (that's one hour of actual play time). That meant that she picked up nearly two items for every one minute of game time and beat the entire game with every item in less time than it takes to watch a Hollywood movie. We were impressed, but apparently people who hadn't been keeping up with this speed running thing were much more impressed, because when I released the run to the general public my server used up over half of its monthly bandwidth allowance on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Valentine's Day weekend before I, horrified at what was happening to my server, pulled the plug.
I was also concerned about the welfare of the original tape, which was circulating around my dorm at Texas Tech (this was before I thought of putting the runs on DVD for people to order; see here for more on that). People couldn't keep their eyes off of this thing. And yes, I'm sure that the idea that a girl was behind all of this was very appealing to the predominantly male audience, but I think that to dismiss her popularity as coming out of sex appeal alone would be a mistake. She is simply the best there is; the numbers don't lie (she still holds the record for 100% in Super Metroid, 0:55 now.)
Anyway, I consider that run's explosive popularity the turning point in our history, when we stopped being able to serve our speed runs from my server (Metroid 2002 alone), and instead had to turn to Speed Demos Archive's arrangement with the internet archive to get enough bandwidth to meet our hobby's growing popularity. In other words, in my mind, Valentine's Day weekend of 2004 was when Metroid 2002 started to turn into Metroid 2K2/Speed Demos Archive, with Metroid 2K2 responsible for archiving the discoveries found in the Metroid games and Speed Demos Archive responsible for archiving the resulting speed runs, not just in Metroid games, but in any game we feel appropriate for speed running.
N-Philes: Okay well that's about all I've got, it's been great talking to you guys. Thanks for all your time!
Nate: No problem.
Trebor: Right back at you.
