This Week In Retro: Metroid: Other M (Patreon)

August 31, 2010: Baby Boom

by Diamond Feit

Samus Aran gets no respect. Her Metroid series dates back to the early days of the NES and holds such a strong reputation that its name has become one-half of an entire genre, but Nintendo as a company just doesn't seem to regard it as highly as other properties from that era. When a new Mario or Legend of Zelda game arrives, they do so hyped as system sellers. Metroid titles, despite their scarcity by comparison, just kind of show up.

Look no further than the first year of the Nintendo Switch for a prime example of this phenomenon. Breath of the Wild debuted alongside the console in March of 2017 and Super Mario Odyssey hit store shelves in October, primed as the new platform's tentpole product. Meanwhile, Metroid: Samus Returns dropped on the 3DS, a late release for an aging handheld system, one that Nintendo had already begun to sunset by discontinuing production of the base console.

Part of Metroid's problem might lie in the serial nature of the franchise, as each game represents a new chapter in an ongoing story. The 1986 original, its Game Boy sequel, Super Metroid, and Metroid Fusion all directly follow one another and refer back to events in previous games. 2021's Metroid Dread, the first original 2D entry in the series in nearly two decades, maintains this tradition. Perhaps Nintendo worries that such continuity intimidates new players, since no one needs to ask where New Super Mario Bros 2 or Super Mario Wonder fall within the Mario canon.

Continuity, as often is the case, both blesses and curses the Metroid brand and its star, the armored bounty hunter Samus Aran. With Samus standing by herself as the lone protagonist, performing numerous heroic acts and always jetting off safely after each successful mission, she has a history and personality that The Legend of Zelda's Link lacks. Conversely, since there is only one Samus saving the galaxy again and again, when fans boot up a new Metroid game they carry certain expectations that can mar the experience if unmet.

All of these factors formed a maelstrom 15 years ago this week surrounding Samus' latest adventure. Launching on Nintendo's popular Wii console, Metroid: Other M proved divisive upon release as the critics, the fans, and the developers clashed over the game's depiction of Samus Aran.

Metroid: Other M raises the curtain by recreating the dramatic finale of Super Metroid, only this time presenting Samus' battle against Mother Brain with 3D graphics from multiple camera angles. We see—mostly from Samus' own point of view—the last Metroid sheltering her from Mother Brain's attacks, sacrificing itself so that she might destroy the grotesque titan. As Samus delivers the finishing blow, we cut to her waking up in quarantine and monologuing to herself that she was just "reliving the tragic moments of my recent past," placing the events of this game immediately after Super Metroid and before those of Fusion.

Sealing Samus in space quarantine affords the game an excuse to put her through a brief training exercise as part of her recovery process, locking her in a test chamber and running a battery of simple exercises before she embarks on a new mission. This sequence doubles as a tutorial for players, a much-needed one as Metroid: Other M's controls definitely require getting used to—more on that later.

Once Samus receives a clean bill of health, she has to inform the authorities about the destruction of the planet Zebes at the conclusion of Super Metroid. The massive explosion wiped out all her known enemies along with the Metroids, a dangerous alien species that Samus had spent three full games trying to eradicate. Her matter-of-fact mission report receives a round of applause from a room full of impressed galactic officials. Yet Samus takes no pride in her accomplishments, instead privately lamenting that the one Metroid she bonded with had to die for her to succeed.

Samus calls her departed savior "the baby"—not "the baby Metroid," just "the baby"—as she struggles to process her sense of loss. We hear her monologue about the baby and "the finality" of its death while lying on a quarantine bed, addressing the council, and flying her personal gunship through the cosmos without any particular objective. A sudden distress call compels Samus to investigate, leading her to a deserted space station known as The Bottle Ship.

Samus steps aboard and immediately realizes something's up when she spots a second vessel docked inside the Bottle Ship belonging to the Galactic Federation. It doesn't take her long to find the crew, an entire squad of soldiers including two men she previously served with in her time in the Federation Corps. Samus helps them open a stuck door with her arm cannon and ends up tagging along under the assumption that they're all here answering the same distress call—even though the Feds refuse to disclose their orders with her.

Samus and her new friends look for answers in the Bottle Ship's control center but only find more questions when they discover a corpse sporting a lab coat and sickly green wounds. A surprise attack by an eyebeast convinces the soldiers that they're better off cooperating with Samus, but that's only on the condition that she follows their leader's commands. Samus agrees to this deal and sets off to restore power to the Bottle Ship.

Other M radically departs from the Metroid formula by introducing this team of humans that pal around with Samus. The classic games featured next to no characters besides Samus herself, and while Fusion and Dread bent those rules, they remained strictly solo missions for her to complete. Granted, Other M players still spend most of their time exploring the Bottle Ship alone, but the Federation Corps members make multiple appearances throughout the story.

There's also the nature of Samus' cooperation with the squad, particularly how the game restricts access to many of Samus' weapons and abilities in the early stages. The mandatory tutorial instructs players how to fire missiles, bombs, and power bombs, yet trying to do so before the Federation commander "authorizes" them simply won't work. Things get even more extreme as the story progresses and Samus encounters deadlier threats, yet she continues to heed her orders and refuses to use longtime assets like her Varia Suit or Speed Booster until Some Guy says it's ok.

Putting aside how this negatively impacts Samus' character—which will get too, don't worry—this just reads as senseless from a gameplay standpoint. The Metroidvania genre revolves around growth over time via the acquisition of new items and powers. Metroid fans have long joked about Samus' compulsive need to ditch all her equipment at the end of each game only to spend hours in the next game finding and restoring all her stuff. That's a silly explanation too, of course, but it's better than the idea of Samus hobbling her own Power Armor while she waits for a green light to activate its full functionality.

Even without the superfluous army bros who mostly exist to get picked off, Metroid: Other M has an abundance of dialogue to a fault. Longtime fans like me bristled at the amount of narration in Metroid Fusion, but at least that was reserved for key plot points. Samus Aran spends an ungodly amount of time in Other M explaining her every waking thought to the audience and it gets old fast.

This is evident right out of the gate when Other M begins by recreating Super Metroid's denouement, one of the top 10 video game endings of all time. I'll admit I perked up a bit when I saw that epic climax play out in 3D, but saddling Samus with an internal monologue about the baby and how much she misses it lessens the drama of that already unforgettable moment. I was a dumb, emotionally-stunted teen when I played that original game but even I didn't need a voiceover telling me to feel sad about an exploded baby.

Samus' running audio commentary combined with the superabundance of human beings crammed into what should be her story make Metroid: Other M a poor showcase for its star. In a 2010 Iwata Asks interview promoting the game's release, producer Yoshio Sakamoto said he "wanted to create an intriguing depiction of Samus's humanity, showing that she's not just cool, but also kind and sympathetic." He also described her as "a woman who is poor at coping with life's problems."

Has he been playing the same video games that I've been playing? The Samus Aran that I know and love shoots life's problems in the face with a missile and lays bombs in its esophagus. She takes orders in the sense that accepts missions and doesn't raid planets willy-nilly like a Space Pirate; rather, she tracks down Space Pirates and wipes them out like I do a party size bag of Peanut Butter M&Ms.

Metroid: Other M arrived in an era when video games in general suffered from too much talking as advancements in graphics, audio, and the storage capacity of disc-based media invited developers to overindulge in cinematic cutscenes. However, it was also an era when publishers saw increased costs and sought to attract more "casual" consumers to their products. This philosophy proved especially popular when it came to releasing games on the Wii, a console that sold extremely well thanks to Wii Sports while more traditional titles struggled to find an audience.

This sort of thinking almost certainly led to Metroid: Other M's unique control scheme which blends ideas from traditional 2D Metroid and the then-recent Metroid Prime 3D games. From that same conversation with company president Satoru Iwata in 2010, producer Yoshio Sakamoto described his intent to restrict the controls to that of a single Wii Remote, eschewing any plugins such as the Nunchuk and its analog stick. He wanted to hearken back to the series' origins on the NES, saying "Even in a Metroid world that ended up being constructed in 3D, the player feels more affinity with Samus when controlling her with the [D-Pad]." This means that players must position the Wii Remote sideways, as if holding a classic controller from the 80s.

However, since the levels of Other M exist in three dimensions, Sakamoto also wanted to offer players a means to freely observe their surroundings. At any time, players can point the Remote directly at the screen to activate Search View, shifting from a third-person to a first-person perspective. Regarding this hybrid 2D/3D control system, Sakamoto said "I think the result is that we've created a game that will be enjoyed not only by fans, but also by those who had previously been reluctant to play 3D action games."

Yet I found the controls needlessly complex because they require so much constant consideration from me as a player. Running around, jumping, and shooting monsters works great with the D-pad and buttons, but then I have to change my grip and aim the controller at the screen in certain situations? That's the opposite of simple, that's adding manual dexterity to what should be a single input.

I'd forgive the awkward controls if Search View only came up when I wanted to take a moment and absorb the ambience of the Bottle Ship, but Metroid: Other M expects players to do this in the middle of combat. Lots of enemies have specific weak points that Samus won't hit while auto-aiming. Search View is also the only way to fire a missile, a powerful component of Samus' arsenal now locked behind extra IRL actions. I haven't even gotten to Concentration, a new, welcome feature that lets Samus recharge her resources automatically but only if the player holds the Wii Remote upright while pressing a button. That's way too many solutions in search of a problem.

Metroid: Other M zoomed onto the market right before Labor Day weekend 2010, the last big game of the summer before the crowded fall season. Most critics wrote positively about Samus' latest jaunt, particularly in Japan where it received a 35/40 score from Famitsu. However, plenty of writers took umbrage with Other M as I did above, expressing their displeasure with the writing and needlessly convoluted controls.

Reviewing the game for G4, Abbie Heppe said it paints Samus as a "submissive, child-like and self-doubting little girl," making her look like an untested rookie rather than "a veteran with more combat experience than half the galactic army combined." Heppe also objected to "having to recalibrate [the] reticule" in order to launch missiles. Justin Haywald of 1up.com likewise called Other M "a heavy-handed, meandering sci-fi tale" which detracts from the action. In Game Informer, Phil Kollar lamented "the soulless voice acting and ham-fisted writing" which he felt makes Samus "[come] off as an idiot."

On the retail side, Metroid: Other M placed in the top 10 titles sold in September in the United States, although its performance paled in comparison to other action games like Halo: Reach and Dead Rising 2. Speaking to Kotaku in November 2010, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said Other M moved "close to half a million" but felt it "could be, should be a million unit title." Years later after leaving Nintendo, Fils-Aime spoke even more candidly on the Kinda Funny Gamescast, saying "I really thought [Other M] was going to be a killer moment in the franchise’s history, and it wasn’t. It didn’t deliver."

Clearly, the public and commercial dissatisfaction with Other M impacted the future of the Metroid series. Aside from two 3DS titles—one a spinoff, one a remake—we didn't see another entry until the aforementioned Metroid Dread eleven years later. This time Samus let her actions speak for her, only delivering a single line of dialogue in the entire game (and not in any human tongue). 

Even after hearing 15 years of online outrage, I tried my best to give Metroid: Other M an honest shake when I played it for the first time this week. I think it looks good considering its age, and maneuvering Samus in combat with a D-pad works better than I expected in three-dimensional space. Yet if anything, the drawn out cinematics and stiff-as-a-board narration from Samus came off worse than I could have imagined.

If Metroid: Other M was a movie, I'd say a clever editor could salvage the experience by cutting back on the voice overs to restore some of Samus' stoic dignity. However, it would take a full remake to mend the muddled controls, to say nothing of Samus disabling her personal equipment to satisfy the whims of a third party. I think Nintendo, Yoshio Sakamoto, and the fans can all agree it's easier to just forget about Other M rather than try and fix it after the fact. Call it a rare case where tossing the baby out with the bathwater is perfectly justified.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet.