Super Metroid has just been released for the New Nintendo 3DS, and so, to celebrate, the React team got a bunch of teenagers together and put them in front of a game that was released before most of them had been conceived. And it turns out to be further proof that Nintendo knows what it’s doing, because after a few rough patches, the teens get the hang of Samus’ adventures fairly quickly.
It is fun to watch them react to some of Nintendo’s more faddish tendencies of the 1990s. In particular, they were annoyed by the opening where you have to climb back up to the elevator while dodging deadly puffs of steam, and then the platforms start tilting to show off those Mode 7 graphics. But once they’re on Zebes, they pretty quickly get the hang of it, even if they don’t exactly twig to everything at first. I have to own up to the fact that I was probably just as surprised by the first boss fight on my first playthrough, and probably died as many times. That said, it’s a bit sad Samus has slipped so low in Nintendo’s regard that an entire generation doesn’t remember she’s a woman.
Sadly, it doesn’t appear that any new adventures for Samus are in the cards at the moment, although Nintendo will dip into the franchise occasionally much to the rage of fans. Still, it’s just nice to see that even more than twenty years later, Samus still has it.
(Via YouTube)