…The Ride: The Book: Etc. The latest in the GameSpite Journal series has just body-checked the Blurb store with two available versions: Hardcover and paperback. As usual. Like The Anatomy of Castlevania Vol. I, this edition is the larger 10×8″ landscape format and isn’t available in black and white, so the price is a little […]
As I mentioned yesterday, Metroid looks and plays like an action game, a superficial child of the arcades. But the core challenge of the game rests not in sheer combat difficulty, as it provides players with a huge arsenal, a considerable amount of life energy, and no (overt) timer to force you not to farm […]
Metroid did a lot of really innovative and interesting things for a game of its genre and period, but perhaps the most important idea it brought to the table was the concept of power-up permanence. Samus didn’t simply collect items that made her more powerful; once she acquired them, she kept them. The only impermanent […]
I’m back in America, on the Internet, and at a computer. As such, I’ve updated the past two entries with images! Read them again… for the first time. Hope you’ll forgive the way Samus flips back and forth between armored/unarmored, and the occasional emulator cruft — these screens are generously provided by Rey at VG […]
The road to acquiring Metroid’s all-important Bomb has proved to be a surprisingly well-designed one, not quite guiding the player to Samus’ objectives but rather placing limitations on the game’s free-roaming spaces that allow some degree of exploration that eventually comes to an end until you stumble upon the next tool to help Samus range […]
Please forgive the lack of images in this update. I’m at a resort with a terrible Internet connection and no computer. Use your imagination for now and I’ll follow up with visuals once I get home, OK? Once you collect your first Missile expansion in the lower right area of Brinstar, Metroid leaves you […]
Once you make your way beyond Metroid‘s very clever, very brilliantly designed introductory moments, the game wastes no time in becoming promptly, well, weird. Beyond the low-hanging wall that blocks the opening area from the remainder of the game, the first vertically oriented room of the game (or at least the first that you can […]
Metroid! I’ve written about Metroid‘s opening moments before. As a matter of fact, I wrote about them nearly seven years ago, making this the game that set me on the path of thinking about how level design works. (That article isn’t dated here, but the crossposted version on 1UP.com says “June 24, 2006” — […]
And what the people have said is, “We would like to see Anatomy of a Game write-ups on a good many different titles.” Some interesting suggestions in there. Thanks to the dozens of people who responded! As it turns out, two series were name-dropped most frequently… and, not surprisingly, they’re Nintendo’s other “big” franchises. Mario: […]
Now that I’ve finished with The Anatomy of Zelda II — wherein I learned that Zelda II is in fact quite good — it’s time to move on to new ventures. But… which? I had some thoughts in mind for what should go under the microscope next, but I can’t settle. Honestly, with as many changes […]
I won’t lie: Zelda II surprised me. Based on my vague memories of being stumped by its obscure clues and opaque design for weeks on end as a young teen, and given the fact that its successors have only connected with its design concepts on oblique tangents, along with its general deprecation among gamers… well, […]
You know what I miss about games of late? That sense of finality, of crossing some threshold of no return. Say what you will about the ending of Mass Effect 3, but for me its most disappointing aspect was that it lacked a sense of trepidation. You hit a certain point after which you had […]