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About the Game

Metroid Fusion is the 2002 successor to the Metroid Series. Released on the Game Boy advance in concurrence with Metroid Prime on the Gamecube, the game brings us back to the world of Samus Aran for another run with the traditional 2D style of Metroid Game. It gained high praise from critics at the time, receiving several awards, including Handheld Game of the Year at the 2002 Interactive Achievement Awards, Best Game Boy Advance Adventure Game from IGN, and Best Action Game on Game Boy Advance from GameSpot.

About the LP

I, however, have never played it.

As recently as two years ago, I had never played a single Metroidvania game, but my good friend, Co-commentator and guide, Yorkshire Tea has plenty of experience with nearly all of them.

Starting with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Tea has guided me through the wonderful world of Metroidvanias and earlier this year I had great fun playing Super Metroid for the first time.

Through those games Tea has spoken about Metroid Fusion in a way that is reserved for his favourite games, expressing that frustrations that I might have had would be resolved, were I to just play it.

Knowing that high praise from Tea is hard to come by, I have decided to take the dive and will be playing through completely blind. Hopefully, my experiences in the past should help me out, but I imagine it is going to be a bumpy ride.

Episodes will release on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at around 23:00 BST, 18:00 EST, with cheeky early episodes up on our Patreon.

Art and banners, will, as ever, be handled by the amazing Bifauxnen.

Episodes



















Links

The Something Awful Thread - In case you want to chat with the regulars over there!

Our Patreon! - In case you want to support our LPs and see episodes early!

Oh, I love Metroid Fusion. Looking forward to seeing how this goes.

PS: you can hold L to aim diagonally, I think.

OH, Metroid Fusion! I recently decided to come back to the Metroid series after a long while, and i remember a TON about this game specificly (as well as the Prime games, but that's different). I look forward to seeing you play this, so i'll stick around.

A fun game, I'll stick around for this LP.

Woo! First two bosses down! Samus is feeling more and more like Samus with every passing moment.

She really is! As an aside, I love this art for the SA-X

Those floor column thingies are really interesting. Do you know if they're in other Metroid games?

I think they exist in prime as part of morph ball puzzles to get you to higher platforms, but not in the way they do with Fusion.

Yikes! Man, I remember Serris. I think I dodged him by hiding under the platforms or something? Or going into Morph Ball mode? I don't remember, but he seems to be going down easier here than when I was fighting him.

Also, nice 'Alien' reference.

I think in one of the earlier episodes it was stated that in Fusion, Samus is never seen without her suit because it's now bonded to her skin.

Thanks for kindly showing the first counterexample.

By the way, I found a picture of a baby cephalopod. It put me in mind of a Metroid for some reason... or a Core-X.

Every time you say "I want to be your friend", it ends badly...

Also, regarding "full of pirates" / "full of fire":

What if it's full of firates?

See, that's why this is the best Metroid game.

The game literally makes it impossible to stumble your way into the underwater section early and get horribly stuck there and cause the thread to go full panic mode.

Look I just want everything to love me and get along. Until I shoot it dead.

Ooh, that was a spicy video. I admit I love BOX's battle music.

Looking forward to your next play session.

The best way to avoid BOX's fire bombs is actually to go right under where they land. There's a small window where the upwards bursts don't reach climbing Samus, so you can hang out in the eye of the storm without issue.

I like the look of Varia morph ball Samus. She's very... lime green.

Regarding deciding you only have to finish games on your own terms... yeah, that's nice. That came to me after a while. It's very soothing.

Does this space station even have a basement, btw?

I feel like the lower levels of each of the environments is the basement? I don't know? They could be an attic depending on the orbit!

Quackles wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 20, 2020 2:27 am

Regarding deciding you only have to finish games on your own terms... yeah, that's nice. That came to me after a while. It's very soothing.

Does this space station even have a basement, btw?

Basement? Oh, no. This place has a spacement.

There is a basement-like area coming up soon, where the power generator is kept, but technically it's higher up on the map than some other portions of the ship, so...is it really a basement? Who knows?

I think that E-tank has one of those bomb pillars you can use, but I don't remember for sure.

Also, I must admit to wincing at the habitation part... but I'm glad you made it.

Someone pulled out their GBA SP and confirmed that there is in fact a bomb pillar there.

Ooh, nice job getting the Power Bombs!

I admit that the next part of the game is possibly the most memorable and atmospheric sequence in it, and I'm looking forward to it.

In that one vid you talked about the voice sampling for "Emergency in Sector 3".

Did you completely forget about "The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace." from Super Metroid? It's just the one line but it's one of very few SNES games that has voice acting at all.

I didn't know that about Super at all, that's awesome. Didn't Tales of Phantasia have voice acting in it?

Tales of Phantasia had an entire Jpop track that played over its attract mode. They came up with an arcane compression scheme to fit it all in but still needed a comparatively large 48-megabit cartridge to fit everything.

Oh man oh man oh man my favorite part is coming up!

Death by fast forward doesn't count, btw.

NGDBSS wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 26, 2020 11:22 pm

Tales of Phantasia had an entire Jpop track that played over its attract mode. They came up with an arcane compression scheme to fit it all in but still needed a comparatively large 48-megabit cartridge to fit everything.

I have one regret with the videogames of the SNES era, and that's that Squaresoft didn't figure it out and use it for the opera scene in Final Fantasy 6. Can you imagine? There'd have been a riot!

Natural20 wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 26, 2020 11:05 pm

I didn't know that about Super at all, that's awesome. Didn't Tales of Phantasia have voice acting in it?

I found some youtube video by some rando called Natural20 where you can hear the speech in Super Metroid.
(at 3:10)

Didn't know and completely forgot are the same thing.

oh my god

You and space jumps just don't mix, huh? Probably too late now, but can you turn the space jumps off? You could turn powerups off in Super Metroid.

Nettori feels very much like a remix of Spore Spawn to me.

Wow, uh.

So, like, the SA-X chase is the most memorable part of the game, but I have some comments.

[1] You could have had double or triple the starting health if you had gone to the recharge room above the save room before the SA-X chase.

[2] Congratulations on learning how to shoot diagonally!

[3] Nettori was a pain in the rear for me. Honestly, it took you fewer tries...

[4] I know you recorded this already, but you're probably going to want to learn to Space Jump well before 3 certain other bosses...

Uh, did Tea survive the night? Damn.

Also, those plants are annoying to get out of. Some parts of this game require you to understand the difference between straight jumps and spin jumps, and that's one of them.

Straight jump: press the jump button without holding left or right. You can press left or right to move that way AFTER you started the jump but not before. Spin jump: press the jump button while holding left or right.

Spin jump is what's needed for space jumping. Straight jump is what's needed to get out of those plants and for basically nothing else ever, which is why it's so annoying. It's something you never practice.
Another place where it makes a difference is that you can hold a shinespark during a spin jump, but trying a straight jump will launch you into boosting in whatever direction you press the key.

In Super Metroid once you fall out of a spin jump into a straight jump, you can't get back into a space jump without landing. In Fusion you can, which is one way they made the space jump easier.

Both wall jumps and the space jump in Metroid Fusion are viscerally satisfying for me. Hearing you argue about them has been endlessly amusing and confusing. They hit the exact same spot in my brain.

That was a lot more chill than the last one. Nightmare is dope, tbh.

And he has really good music.