Well, I like Metroid...

I think you guys would love my Metroid Other M TV ad dissection:


Metroid Other M:: TV commercial Dissection


I hate needing to skip over a good chunk of the episode because of spoilers but still a good podcast

Could Metroid be made into a viable movie frachise? I know that everyone wants to forget about the Mario movie, but I think that a good director could do the series justice. I would not mind seeing Sarah Michelle Gellar as Samus.

Could?  Possibly.  Any franchise has the potential to make a good movie with the right treatment, though Metroid's whole appeal is the isolation.  It would need to function similarly to the Silent Hill movie, and audiences didn't like that movie (unfortunately).  Would it ever likely be made into a good movie franchise?  No.  Besides, I have a feeling with his enormous ego that Sakamoto would force the producers of the movie to make him the writer, and the last thing I want is that guy penning the script of another Metroid product.

The dialog is that bad? Man, I want to play this game, but I do not like bad dialog.

The three of you pretty much nailed it. I mostly agree with your praise and criticisms for Other M, although the storytelling issues don't bother me quite as much. It was intriguing to hear everyone's thoughts about how the Morph Ball should be used in the future. I always considered it as a secondary feature to other suit abilities, but I do understand that it is more fun to use when there are some head-scratching puzzles scattered about the place. The enormous Morph Ball labyrinth before the Plasma Beam in Metroid Prime is the sort of thing there should be more of, and unfortunately, Other M was lacking in that particular respect.

As for where the series should go from here... a Metroid II remake could be worthwhile. The idea of that game was fine but it was executed so very poorly on the Game Boy as far as I'm concerned - I think it is deserving of a second chance. If we're talking original games, the design philosophy of Other M doesn't necessarily have to go to waste. It's an enjoyable experience with enough room for improvement to warrant a sequel or spiritual successor.

There was supposed to be a sequel to the Silent Hill movie, but then the writer was imprisoned on manslaughter charges. It's still happening, but its delayed...a lot.
Also, the first one did financially alright. Made about $50 million domestically and $50 million internationally. Budget was $50 million. It was at least enough to get a sequel on track.

Regardless, I think a Metroid movie could be cool if done right, but it won't be done right...and it also will never be done. Nintendo has made comments (I think) about how they're not going to do any more movies after Super Mario Bros.

After watching Resident Evil Afterlife, Paul W.S. Anderson should direct the movie.

No.  I don't want that guy anywhere near a Silent Hill movie.

I agree with Jonny about the RE4 moments- I really enjoyed them.

I didn't get far enough into the game to see if they ever had you switch to shooting mode in the middle of one. The RFN crew did indicate that you are always safe during them, which seems like it would rob those scenes of their potency after a while.

Great show guys. It is such a different experience to participate in a discussion about a recently released game that you own. It makes me wish I had the money to do it all the time.

I guess I'm one of the odd few that didn't mind the story bits of Other M. If anything, I was always looking forward to the next cutscene. Personal tolerances, I suppose. I think the writing is passably mediocre, but I latched on to it partly because I appreciate the effort this Nintendo game is making. This ties in with another point made in the podcast in how expensive Other M probably is. To date, this is probably the highest production values we've seen from Nintendo for a single game and probably will see for a long time. I enjoy the novelty Other M brings in that this will probably be the closest a Nintendo game will be to the Hollywood blockbuster/epic that every other console game is gunning after.

As for a post-Fusion Metroid game about the Metroid DNA in Samus' body, Sakamoto had this to say in an interview:

"In Metroid Fusion, it seems to have established that "Samus can't use the Ice Beam because she has inherited the nature of the Metroids", but why at the very end is she unconcerned when she regains the Ice Beam?"
Yoshio Sakamoto: "When she absorbed the core of the SA-X (the perfect condition of Samus), she basically reconstituted her genetic condition. She didn't recover the physical damage of her amputated suit, but she did recover her genetic condition."

I think you overrate the difficulty of the original Tourian. Sure, the Metroids are a real pain if they latch on but since they're stopped with one ice beam shot and destroying them gives pretty large energy/missile refills it's not all that difficult. Just don't run forward quickly since that'll spawn too many but then again the whole game encourages careful progression. I think the morph ball was more prominent in Metroid 1 than later ones (minus maybe 2 which I haven't played) though that's just because you HAD to use it if you wanted to hit anything that's below your gun level. On the other hand it's the only time I really remember using bombs as a weapon more than an exploration tool.


Rinkus have always been vulnerable to the screw attack but the Metroid 1 Tourian is too cramped to use it.

All this talk of Metroid: Fusion is starting to convince me to snag a copy of it.  I loved Zero Mission, but what few minutes of Fusion I played in an EB way back when turned me off.  I guess I should have given it a chance.  It sounds more awesome than I realized.

I haven't minded the RE4 sections as much, but they really, really needed to make Samus walk more quickly in that section at the end of Sector 1.  That was infuriating...even Leon got a run button.

In general, the story conceit of Adam authorizing Samus' abilities doesn't bother me all that much, but it is silly.  IMHO, it would have made much more sense to make it so that something on the Bottle Ship was suppressing Samus' abilities; given that the GF scientists examined her suit during the cloning process, it would make sense for them to have learned how it would work.  Since Samus was ostensibly the only person capable of stopping the Metroid/Space Pirate threat originally, it would also make sense that they would want to prevent her from finding out what they were doing on board the ship.  Adam, or someone else on the GF team, could have been working to override the bottle ship's suppression during the course of the game to unlock Samus' abilities more gradually.  Perhaps that's just as ridiculous of an idea, but perhaps it would have been more palatable to long-time Metroid fans.

Or maybe the suppression field generators would get destroyed at the points when you get those new items. Would at least tie the progression to something physical.

What came to my mind with those over the shoulder moments was that they always seemed to precede cinematics.  I wonder if they put them there so there wasn't a jarring transition between running/jumping/shinesparking into a cinematic where Samus is just walking.

Man I'm almost finally caught up. I've been behind 3 or 4 episodes all the gaming podcasts I listen to for the past year and a half. I'll probably be on here more once I finally am.