Nostalgia Trip: Best Wii Channels

Poor Ryan, using the Wii Message Board as his primary texting app!


Nintendo’s Wii console is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary! We’re definitely feeling the celebratory spirit at the Crew, so you will hear us talking a lot about the Wii in the next few weeks as the system turns ten years old. Today, Ryan is hosting the show to discuss the Wii’s best Channels and his fond memories with them. From the music in the Wii Shop channel to the stiff competition on Check Mii Out, there was always fun to be had just a channel away after booting your Wii up. We’re sure Ryan’s not the only one who remembers the piercing blue light of getting a notification on the Wii Message Board, either!

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Switch: The Name, Branding, and Marketing

Just be yourself and try to have a good time.


Goodbye Wii Branding – Nintendo Switch is hailing in an all new era for the company. This new console is being marketed to adults, without a gimmick in sight. Let’s discuss!

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

All Nintendo Console’s Final Games

Depper. Large. These are the words you must put in the title of your game if you want it to be a success in Japan.


Some games get the honor of singing the sweet swan song for their console as it passes into history. We’ve found each game that Nintendo and 3rd parties published last for every console – enjoy!

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

What is the Boundary Break Webseries?

He is the easiest person to interview, as in, most easy-going!


Subscribe to the amazing show – Boundary Break at www.youtube.com/c/shesez – where you get to see parts of your favorite games that you’ve never seen before!

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Which Nintendo Series Evolved Most?

It takes BILLIONS of years for games to get good – duh.


Nintendo and their franchises have been around longer than the two of us, so which series have evolved the most during that time?

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The Curious Case of the Classic Controller Clip

Can’t wait to land that interview with a Nintendo executive so that we can ask about this.


Once upon a time, Nintendo released a controller with a mysterious clip on the backside… AND NEVER DID -ANYTHING- WITH IT!

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

A Debatably Brief Overview of Homebrew

I want to make Nintendo games.

Let’s face it, we’ve all thought that at one point or another. Usually it doesn’t go any further than wishful thinking, though. Sure, some of us might doodle concept art or gameplay ideas in a notebook, a few might even learn to program, but even for those with all of the skills there’s another, more tangible hurdle: the tools. Game development isn’t free and procuring a software development kit (SDK or devkit for short) is often a costly proposition. For those of you not familiar with the game development process, a devkit is a collection of specialized software and hardware used to make and test games. They’re quite expensive: the Wii’s devkit cost around $5000, which at the time was rather cheap compared to the XBox 360’s and PS3’s $20,000 price tag. Now, those of you who are used to making do with free software—like me—are probably thinking, “do I really need all of those fancy tools?”

No.

Homebrew is the process of making software for a system without the original development kit or system distributor’s blessing (more commonly known as a “license”). The term originated among beer aficionados for beer brewed by an individual instead of a commercial brewing house, but now is used in many hobbies—including video games—to refer to unofficial/amateur produced content. Homebrewering shouldn’t be confused with modding or ROM hacking: homebrewing is concerned with making new content for a system, while modding and ROM hacking only intend to change or manipulate an existing game (sometimes to the point where it’s arguably a different game made from the parts of the original).

Homebrew is the process of making software for a system without the original development kit…

What’s Homebrew Like?

Homebrew provides a surprisingly diverse selection of content. There’s homebrew for almost all Nintendo systems, though the type of content varies greatly from system to system. Older systems mostly focus on games, while newer ones–from about the Wii onward–have homebrew for everything from games to system utilities. Let’s take a quick look at some examples.

Games

Blade Buster

Just as “all toasters toast toast [sic]” Nintendo homebrewers homebrew games…duh. Sadly, most of the homebrew games I found in my research are simple, forgettable diversions much like the flash games of the early days of the internet. It’s not that surprising, considering game development on any level is an intricate and time consumptive process. That isn’t to say that all homebrewers lack diligence and ambition. There are still many quality original titles. Notice that I said original titles; a large number of homebrew game projects are simply ports, usually of games whose creators have released the source code to the general public. In fact, the Wii alone has ports of P.C. classics such as Tyrian, Quake, and Jazz Jackrabbit.

 

N-Warp ScreenshotI’m not going to try to enumerate every homebrew project released for a Nintendo system, but for the sake of being thorough, there are some that warrant mention. First up is Blade Buster, a Famicom shoot-em-up notable for its screen filling boss sprites (on an 8-bit console mind you), an insane number of sprites on the screen at a time, and unique time-attack styled gameplay. Next for the Super Nintendo is N-Warp Daisakusen, a game that allows eight—yes, eight—players to compete in a free-for-all brawl. Lastly, I want to mention a puzzle game for the DS named Negative Space which has the player drawing paths to guide two opposite colored blobs to their respective goal flags. The catch? They can only travel through the other’s color, meaning every path you draw for one is an obstacle to the other.

Negative Space
This game is also available as a free download on Android.

Emulators

After games, the most common type of homebrew is emulators. I’m not exactly sure why when emulators are already so prolific on P.C. Maybe people make them because they like the challenge of getting an emulator to function on the constraints of a game console. Maybe it’s to prove that more fully featured emulation is possible on Nintendo systems. Maybe people just think it’s funny to play Playstation games on their Wii. Whatever the reason, most of Nintendo’s modern systems have a multitude of homebrewed emulators available on them.

WiiSX
I can’t be the only one who thinks this is hilarious.

Obviously, many of the homebrewed emulators available online for Nintendo consoles are for older Nintendo systems. As I alluded to in the previous paragraph, however, the homebrewed emulator scene isn’t exclusively concerned with Nintendo systems. On the just Wii alone there are emulators for Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive, Sega Saturn, Playstation 1, CalecoVision, Commodore 64, Atari Lynx, and many, many, many, many, many more. Also, there’s a Super Nintendo emulator that runs on the original 3DS (I knew it!).

Whatever the reason, most of Nintendo’s modern systems have a multitude of homebrewed emulators available on them.

Miscellaneous Software

Not all homebrew projects are game related. Some are just the sort of software you’d find on any computer: music players, web browsers, etc. One such program of note is an art program called Colors! Which was originally developed as homebrew for the DS but has since gotten an official release on multiple systems, including the 3DS eshop. Then there’s software that changes system behaviors. For example, the 3DS has an application that removes the cap on the number of play coins a player can receive in a day. More impressive is a Wii hack that let’s the user change the region of the console—y’know, to play region locked games.

Linux

Where there’s hardware, there’s Linux. Much like the speed of light or the certainty of death and taxes, it’s one of the constants of our universe. Seriously, any system that’s powerful enough to run Linux sooner or later will. There’s Linux for the GameCube, Linux on the 3DS, Linux for the Wii, a distro is in development for the N64, there’s a version for the DS; heck, even the GameBoy Advance has…Unix?

…Wait, what?

GameBoy Advance Unix
What?

Any system that’s powerful enough to run Linux sooner or later will.

Cool! Let me try!

For those of you who don’t know, I happen to be a programmer, so when I write an article that gives me the opportunity to talk about programming, I’m going to talk about programming. If you think programming is some kind of voodoo (which it isn’t: it’s sorcery), you may want to skip this part.

Still here? Great! Believe it or not, if you’re already comfortable with programming it’s almost as simple as picking the system you want to develop for and a few Google searches. While homebrewing isn’t exactly the go-to past-time among bored nerds, there are several online guides and communities dedicated to the craft: forums, YouTube videos, blogs, and wikis galore! Heck, there’s an entire free book on WikiBooks about Super Nintendo programming.

Even though you’re not going to be using The Man’s toolkit, you can’t exactly make a game with just your imagination and wishful thinking (trust me, I’ve tried). You will need software to compile the code you write and, if you’re developing for one of Nintendo’s more recent systems, an API library to interface with the system (getting controller input and such). You’ll also want an emulator. Fortunately, all of these tools can be easily acquired on the internet for free.

 There are several online guides and communities dedicated to the craft: forums, YouTube videos, blogs, and wikis galore!

As for the coding itself, it’s mostly the same as regular programming. For example, I—out of curiosity—browsed through a tutorial on GameBoy Advance homebrewing and was quite relieved (and just a little surprised) to find that the code was hardly distinguishable from any other program written in C. There are certainly nuances to keep in mind—like in the case of the GBA, some memory addresses are reserved for the screen’s RGB values, tracking whether buttons are pressed, and so on. You may also need to go without some modern conveniences (hope you like compiling your code from command-line!). But by-and-large, anyone who’s sufficiently experienced with C and/or C++ should be fine.

Unless you’re developing for an 8 or 16-bit system. In that case I hope you really like 65c816 Assembly!

 

We Haven’t Even Touched the Red Pill

Instead of starting on a proper summation, I’d like to cover my backside real quick and stress that despite this being the longest article I’ve written for Two Button Crew to date, I have only given the barest of overviews of the subject. I encourage you to look further into this, either as someone interested in finding new games to play or someone hoping to make such games. More over, there’s a lot I omitted for length, like how some retail games have been pulled from store shelves because of homebrewers.

Having said all that, it’s a shame homebrew isn’t more popular. I understand why, though: if someone’s going to go to all the trouble to make a game, why make it for a dead system? And if it’s for a modern system, why make a game that they can’t license and sell? But, hey, who knows? Many Nintendo fans have grown up and started making games of their own. As time goes on and more fans get old enough to take an interest in game development, maybe some of them will try to make a few for the systems they played on as kids. Wouldn’t that be something, a flood of new old games?


About the Author:

Glen is a lifelong Nintendo fan whose love of video games has inspired him to pursue a career in computer programming; so much so that he is now studying to get a masters in computer science. He doesn’t understand that the average person isn’t interested in programming and won’t shut up about how awesome it is.

Bob Ross: The Joy of Painting… DS?

A game that belongs in our collections, but shall never be…


In this happy little episode, Simeon and Scott look back on the great work of Bob Ross and sadly discuss his canceled game – the Joy of Painting for Wii and DS! Watch for some pictures of the Crew attempting their own Bob Ross-inspired works of art.

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Escape the Premises” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The Nintendo Experience: Ōkami and Pokémon Red/Blue

When I introduced the Nintendo Experience, I said that it would include around 70 titles or so. I haven’t changed my mind as far as the number of games go, but Scott brought to my attention that if I were to keep my current pace, it would take me approximately 2 ½ forevers to finish, and that’s not counting any games that might be essential coming out between now and then. I figured it might be easier if I spent some of my blog posts to talk about the Nintendo Experience. I still plan on dedicating a few Crew Cuts to them, but I can cover several games per post, so I can actually someday finish this project.

The Nintendo Experience is a list of games that I believe sum up essential Nintendo adventures for any fan to play through.

It’s not a list of Nintendo’s “best games”, per se, but they showcase what makes Nintendo the best game company in the world. They don’t need to be first-party games, or even exclusive games, but they need to use the Nintendo hardware in a unique way if they’re not.

Case in point, the next game joining the Experience is Capcom’s Ōkami for Wii.
Okami

Ōkami was originally released for the PlayStation 2 in 2006 and was ported to the Wii in 2008. It’s a wonderful cell-shaded adventure that plays quite a bit like a Legend of Zelda game. But the gameplay isn’t the best part of the experience; that would go to the presentation. Graphically, the developers have re-created feudal Japan in the style of traditional Japanese paintings. The world is absolutely incredible, and you’ll find yourself running around fields and forests just taking in the prettiness of it all. The orchestral sound track matches the setting, and helps to transport the player into the world.

Okami 2

Next, the story is fantastic. Without giving very much away, you play as Amaterasu, a reincarnation of the sun god Shiranui. You set out on a quest to restore the nature of Nippon that has been thrown into ruin by the forces of evil by collecting different “Celestial Brush” techniques (more on that in a moment). The premise may sound odd, but believe me when I say that the story will suck you in and move you with every twist of the plot.

The thing that makes the Wii version of Ōkami unique and gives it a spot on the Nintendo Experience is the Celestial Brush. One of the key mechanics of the game entails the player stopping the action and using the Wiimote’s pointer to draw a shape on the screen to activate different powers. Need to cut a tree down that’s blocking your path? There’s a technique for that! Need a lily pad to help you walk on water? There’s a technique for that, too! Need a gust of wind to get rid of fowl-smelling air? You’re in luck! Just scrawl the shape where you need it and presto! Sometimes it takes a few tries to get the shape right, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be Bob-ing your enemies like a Ross.

If you like adventure games and haven’t played Ōkami yet, then pick up a copy and give it a shot. You won’t regret picking it up.

In honor of the recent release of Pokémon GO, another induction from the franchise into the Experience is Pokémon Red/Blue/Green along with their sequel, Yellow.

Pokemon

It’s hard to think of a world without Pokémon, and often times I forget where it all started. After these games were released, the TV show, trading card game, mangas, toys, and more were everywhere (just like GO is doing now).

Pokemon 2

Up to that point, RPGs usually had a pretty limited cast. You might be able to choose a few different combinations of characters for your party, but your choices were pretty limited. Then these games dropped and flipped the game on its head with 151 unique characters available to play as. As long as you could catch them, you could have whatever combination of six (or less) monsters you wanted. Sure the game was unbalanced, and sure, there were plenty of glitches, but the feeling you got when the professor gave you your first starter, or you traded a Pokémon with a friend, or got your first gym badge far outweighs all of the brokenness. If you haven’t played any of the games in the original trilogy, I highly suggest getting the port for your 3DS. It’s just $10! Give it a shot.

That’s it for the Nintendo Experience for now. Signing out!

NE1

Ranking All Nintendo Controllers

I love every Nintendo controller, but some are easily better than others. Today we’ll take a look at my personal ranking of Nintendo’s controllers from best to worst, and the reasoning behind it. Remember, this list is entirely my opinion and yours could be completely different.

 

7. Wii U

Wii U Gamepad

The main problem I have with the Wii U gamepad is when a game gives me the option to use the Wii U Pro Controller, I use the Pro Controller every time. While the touch screen is insanely helpful for a map in Splatoon, or item management in The Legend of Zelda, the gamepad never had a very compelling reason to justify the second screen in my mind. I only ever used the off TV play a handful of times, because the resolution on the gamepad leaves much to be desired.

 

 

6. Nintendo 64

 

 

The Nintendo 64 controller was designed for people with 3 hands. I only ever knew of a few games that even used the D-Pad because it was located off to the side, but I loved the control stick and the Z-button as a trigger was amazing.

 

 

 

5. NES

NES-Controller-Flat

Simple. Clean. Classic. It doesn’t get much easier than this. The fact that almost anyone can pick up an NES controller and play because of its simplicity is amazing. Truly a monumentous achievement when your original controller still holds up so well today. The only thing holding this one back is the square design. While it looks amazing, it can become uncomfortable to hold during extended play sessions.

 

 

 

4. Virtual Boy

Only used to its full potential a couple times, but easily the best part of the console. The L and R buttons located on the back is fantastic and the dual D-pad was great for added control. Created with a mirrored design meant that games that only used one D-pad let the players pick which one they wanted to use, so whether you were left or right handed you could pick what felt comfortable.

 

 

 

3. Wii

242196-nintendo-wii-remote-plus

 

Not everyone loves motion control gaming, but the Wii did it right. The controller was designed to be similar to a TV remote for ease of use with all demographics. They nailed it. The main thing I didn’t like about it was the 1 and 2 buttons were far down on the controller, but they were usually used for menus and map anyhow. As an added bonus you can plug in the nunchuck attachment for added control-ability or turn the controller sideways and it essentially becomes an NES controller. Brilliant.

 

 

2. GameCube

 

ABXY? Check. L and R? Check. Dual analog? So close! The main thing holding this controller back in my mind is the tic-tac C-stick. There’s a very good reason it’s many peoples go to controller for Smash Bros. to this day. Very comfortable and great button placement. You could even update your default controller to the Wavebird for wireless gaming.

 

 

 

1. SNES

SNES-Controller-Flat

 

Nintendo took the NES controller and improved on it in every way. Rounded so it was more comfortable, added buttons for more functionality, but still incredibly simple and user friendly. It really doesn’t get any better than this.

 

 

That’s all of them, folks… for now! I can’t wait to see where the NX will end up on this list. Be sure to let me know how your list compares!


Scott and Simeon recently ranked all of Nintendo’s consoles! Check out Part 1 and Part 2 to see how they stack up!

Ranking All Nintendo Consoles Worst to Best (Pt. 2)

It was tough saying one Nintendo console was better than the others.


Today the crew disagrees on the best of what Nintendo has to offer! It’s part 2 of ranking Nintendo’s consoles!

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Reformat” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Ranking All Nintendo Consoles Worst to Best (Pt. 1)

We didn’t include the Pokemon Pikachu because… well… It’s embarrassing.


It’s a two-part spectacular! Today, Scott and Simeon agree on the worst of Nintendo’s systems.

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Reformat” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

10 Worst Nintendo Gimmicks

Some of these were really cool ideas… but they just weren’t cool enough.


Nintendo has tried many gimmicks in their day: some have worked, others… Well, we’re talking about them today! Help make TBC better! twobuttoncrew.com/survey

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Reformat” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Metroid: Other Fusion

WARNING: The following blog post contains spoilers for Metroid: Other M and Metroid Fusion.

It’s tough being a Metroid fan. After a promising start, the series goes on hiatus for nearly a decade. Then after a resurgence and several great additions to the franchise, Metroid: Other M comes out and sends everyone into a tizzy. Cue another hiatus, and then after years of waiting, Nintendo finally announces a new entry into the series…and everyone loses it all over again. I don’t particularly like controversies, they have an odd propensity to throw gentlemanly discourse out the window and reduce (presumably) otherwise intelligent individuals to their embarrassingly base, vitriolic nature. That said, there is an issue regarding Metroid: Other M that seems to have slipped through the cracks, and with the aesthetically controversial Metriod Prime: Federation Force releasing this August, I think now would be a good time to get it off my chest and discuss what I think Metroid: Other M‘s real flaw is.

People have criticized Other M for a variety of things: potentially sexist undertones, awkward non-analog controls, Samus’s emotionless voice acting, etc. I, however, either didn’t notice or didn’t mind most of the commonly cited issues when I first played the game. No, there was something else. Something I couldn’t ignore. Something that kept scratching at the back of my mind in the same annoying fashion a house cat lazily paws at its sleeping owner’s face. Something that is never brought up when discussing the game’s flaws. Something that kept running through my moderately attractive head every time I played the game: I’ve seen this before.

To put it bluntly, Metroid: Other M is a rehash of Metroid Fusion.

No seriously, there are just too many similarities. Oddly enough, despite all of the discussion the game has (shine) sparked, no one ever discusses the Goyagma in the room and mentions how suspiciously similar the two games are, even when they’re listing reasons they don’t think the game is good. The only time I’ve seen it brought up was a forum post made shortly after the game was released, and that was quickly dismissed by the site’s other members. So let’s switch to our scan visors and take a closer look.

The Setting

Both games are set shortly after the masterpiece that is Super Metroid. The similarities between settings are more than chronological, however.

In Fusion, the game starts with our girl Sammy escorting a team of xeno-biologists on a mission to survey the metroid home-world, SR-388. After mercilessly blasting a hornoad that could’ve made for a valuable specimen, the creature reveals itself to be an X-parasite in disguise. Samus is infected, hospitalized, and eventually saved by a vaccine made from a DNA sample from the now dead last metroid. Deciding not to question the medical team’s severe misuse of the term vaccine, Samus immediately gets back to work and heads out on her next mission: to investigate a distress signal coming from the BSL (Biological Space Laboratories) Research Station.

The BSL Research Station is a space station-based research facility designed with the study of alien lifeforms in mind. It is equipped with top-of-the-line containment facilities that recreate the environments of the creatures that live in them. Each of these areas are referred to as sectors, are numbered one through six, and recreate a different biome (SR-388, jungle, desert/volcanic, aquatic, ice, and nocturnal).

Ah, the memories: like that one time I got stuck on the spider boss for 16 months.
The B.S.L. Research Station serves as the setting of Metroid Fusion.

Other M opens with Samus in a Federation quarantine bay being attended to by Federation medics after her harrowing escape at the end of Super Metroid. After a dry internal monologue and debriefing, Samus is off on her own to…I don’t know, hunt bounties? Anyway, she picks up a “baby’s cry” distress signal and—being the mercenary bounty-hunter that she is—goes to assist with no promise of financial compensation what-so-ever.

Upon arriving at the source of the transmission, Samus finds herself at the Bottle Ship. The Bottle Ship is a space station-based research facility designed with the study of alien lifeforms in mind. It is equipped with top-of-the-line containment facilities that recreate the environments of the creatures that live in them. Each of these areas are referred to as sectors, are numbered one through three, and recreate a different biome (jungle, volcanic, and ice). Sound familiar?

♪ One of these things is just like the other! ♫
The Bottle Ship serves as the setting of Metroid Fus–OTHER M! I was going to say Other M!

[They are] equipped with top-of-the-line containment facilities that recreate the environments of the creatures that live in them. Each of these areas are referred to as sectors, are numbered […], and recreate a different biome.

To top it all off, even the chamber from which the sectors are accessed are the same: a large room situated below the crew quarters and command center with color coordinated elevators.

The Antagonists

Both games also have similar antagonists. Anyone who’s played Fusion can tell you about the paranoia inducing terror that is SA-X. Heck, I still sometimes have nightmares about it. For readers who don’t know, SA-X is the X-Parasite’s mimicry of Samus: it has all of her powers, her knowledge, and—most of all—her suit. Throughout the game, it wanders the BSL, constantly attempting to sabotage Samus’s mission. It destroys machinery, doorways, it even tries to induce a meltdown in the station’s reactor. While the being makes a few onscreen appearances, it usually sticks to the shadows. Throughout the game, SA-X is a threat that seems to be around every corner, just out of sight.

Oh BTW, there are actually TEN of these.
Metroid Fusion is rated E? Man, when is Nintendo going to stop making kid’s games?!

Other M has a similar enemy: the Deleter. The Deleter is a mysterious entity that operates in the shadows. He/she/it constantly attempts to thwart Samus and her allies’ efforts to get to the bottom of what went down on the Bottle Ship by sabotaging equipment, jamming communications, and even systematically eliminating Adam Malkovich’s soldiers one-by-one. Trying to identify and stop the Deleter is one of the major plot elements of the game, much like stopping SA-X is in Fusion.

You never find out.
Surely, uncovering this criminal mastermind’s true identity will be the ultimate payoff!

But Other M doesn’t just have similar antagonists to Fusion, it even goes so far as to copy one of Fusion‘s most iconic bosses: Nightmare. Nightmare is a large, gravity-warping bio-weapon that gave Samus the gravity suit in Fusion. Its battle is one of the longest and most difficult in the game, and as to be expected the fight occurs near the end of the game. The boss returns in Other M, and just like in Fusion is fought near the end of the game. The only real difference is that Fusion bothers to build it up as a major threat, while Other M just shoe horns it into the game.

And then there’s Ridley…who’s in almost every game, so he isn’t worth mentioning. Moving on!

Adam Malkovich

Yet another of the similarities between Fusion and Other M is Adam and his role. In Fusion, Samus’s new ship comes with an on board A.I. that she nicknames Adam after a former commanding officer. Adam is Samus’s guide throughout the game, offering objectives and providing suit upgrades. Adam is eventually revealed to be an uploaded personality and is—in fact—the real (artificially simulated) Adam Malkovich. The real (not artificially-simulated) Adam appears in Other M. In that game he points out objectives to Samus and authorizes use of her various suit features, similar to in Fusion.

The two games also both depict him as potentially untrustworthy. Fusion shows that Adam, and the Federation at large, have a hidden agenda that they’re keeping a secret from Samus. This can also be said of Other M, though it is more ambiguously framed. Adam clearly knows more about the situation at hand than Samus, which is a major source of tension in the game’s story. Other M even goes so far as to depict Adam as a candidate for the true identity of the Deleter. All of this conspiracy mumbo-jumbo leads to my final point…

Surprise! It’s Full of Metroids!

Both game’s have a secret, hidden sector. It’s full of metroids. The Federation is cloning them. They want to use them as bio-weapons. The secret part of the space station is jettisoned into space. Samus fights an adult metroid.

I always imagined SA-X was freaking out a bit at this point.
Imagine this in 3D and then replace SA-X with Adam and you basically have what happens in Other M.

Despite what my very critical overview may suggest, I rather enjoyed Metroid: Other M. It certainly had a number of problems, but the end product still had tight controls, good gameplay, and great production values; overall an enjoyable experience. Unfortunately, as a prequel to Fusion, it’s an abysmal mess that introduces many, many plot-holes. I’d go so far to say it serves as a cautionary tale of how not to do a prequel. All of the similarities make Samus’s reaction to the events of Fusion completely unbelievable. She acts like it’s her first time stumbling across a secret metroid cloning project, or dealing with an enigmatic saboteur, or fighting Nightmare! It’s almost as if Other M was an attempt to rewrite Fusion in hopes of removing the latter from the series continuity like a lab full of metroids from a space-station. But I’ll admit, that’s a bit of a stretch. It’s not like the Big N is some sort of large, secretive collective that would conspire to do something like repeatedly clone Metroids to further their own ends, right?


Haven’t gotten enough Metroid: Other M? Click here to hear Scott and Simeon’s thoughts on the game.


About the author:

Glen is a lifelong Nintendo fan whose first foray into the Metroid Franchise was Metroid Fusion. His love of video games has inspired him to pursue a career in computer programming and is currently studying to get a masters in computer science. And yes, he really does sometimes have nightmares about SA-X.

Answers to Gamers’ Burning Google Questions

Seriously, why would someone want to know how Bowser describes his castle?


Google users ask some mighty strange questions… Today the Crew takes a shot at answering them!

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Reformat” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Is Bill Trinen GOOD at Smash?

*Waits patiently by the Bill-Phone for a reply*


We all know that Reggie is bad at Smash… Like, REALLY bad. But what about Bill? Does he have it down to a Science, or does he get Sluggo’d just like Mr. Filsaime?

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Reformat” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Simeon Is the Mega Man Master

The puns are strong with this one.


Just HOW good is Simeon at Mega Man? Just HOW much can Scott humiliate himself in comparison? Let’s see!

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Reformat” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Maverick Hunter – Mega Man FPS

R.I.P. Iron Mega Man.


With all of the Mega Man games cancelled, Maverick Hunter was the one we were most excited for. What was it? What happened? Can it return? Hardy Boys: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=hardy+boys

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Reformat” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Wii Masterpiece – Excite Bots

Nebula. You bring shame to Nebula.


It’s a bird! It’s a bat! It’s a… Turtle? Today the crew revisits Excite Bots for the Wii!

Shot by Alex Campbell

“Reformat” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/