Metroid: Zero Mission

The Good
It's a Metroid, what's not to like? A polished, more playable, more accessible version of a great, if too hard, NES classic. Take a core game from that old one, add great SNES-style graphics, make it just perfectly playable, add great remixes of the classic music tracks, and you've got a complete and utter masterpiece that you gladly play over and over and over until you are too tired to play anything.

The Bad
I've heard people calling this far too short and simple. You can't do much about the shortness - even slowest players should beat this thing in 6 hours on Normal level on their first try - but I say this is good for replayability in portable games, especially when the thing wants me to play it faster and faster. If I know I have three hour trip ahead, I can usually count on completing this thing in that time.As for simplicity, well, I think this thing is generally pretty straightforward, which is not to say it is challenging at places.

And you have to kill Ridley in this game. Ridley is cute. =(

The Bottom Line
What do you get when you get a chance to take a NES game and turn it into a SNES-like game? A good chance to rework on playability and enjoyability, that's what.

This is a remake of a NES game, and a quite successful one at that. I kind of liked NES Metroid, but that thing is just way too hard by most modern scales. When most developers convert games from NES to GBA, they get things more balanced in this respect. Not a wonder. And it worked just fine in this game's case.

I used to hate all platformers unconditionally and little bit of 2D Metroids too (well, I only played the NES game and Super Metroid a little bit), but nowadays, I'm completely sold, and most of the thanks for that go to this little game. (Well, I still hate platformers, excluding Metroids!) For those who have never played the games, this game should be a good introduction to the series. Then follow that up with Prime and Fusion and Super and... well, just skip Metroid II, but you get my point.

Oh, and if you beat it, it also lets you play the original game. I'm still trying to figure that game out. It's hard.