I beat Super Metroid on what I think might only be my second full playthrough (could that be?) I played the original on a used cartridge in 1999 or 2000, after having picked Samus as my favorite fighter in Super Smash Bros. (Still probably my favorite even in Ultimate, though I enjoy Cloud and Ike a lot.) Super Metroid had been one of the games advertised on the back of my Donkey Kong Country bundle box when I had first gotten an SNES, but I knew next to nothing about the series until much later.
Anyway, Super Metroid is one of my favorite video games of all time, and speaks to me as someone who grew up in the 90s as one of the "quintessential" games for the major Nintendo franchises that came out for that system (a friend and I were talking about it and I conceded that Ocarina of Time is arguably the more quintessential Zelda game than Link to the Past, but I'd put LttP as a close second for me.)
One thing that I do think has not aged terribly well is Super Metroid's controls. The biggest issue is the need to cycle through Missiles, Super Missiles, Power Bombs, the Grappling Beam, and the X-Ray Scanner to get to the other items - given that you can complete the game without any sequence breaks even if you skip the X-Ray Scanner, it's arguably easier to play without it.
Now, the only other Metroid games I've played (other than a few very brief forays into the original NES Metroid) have been in the Metroid Prime spin-off series. Here, there was a dedicated missile button, and things like Super Missile were actually a kind of special alternate-firing mode that used the Charge Beam and missiles for fuel.
Selecting weapons in Super Metroid is especially tough on the Joy-Cons of the Switch, because it's very easy to accidentally hit the joystick while fumbling for the tiny Minus button. I generally found myself using the Directional buttons for movement given that the subtleties of the joystick could often cause me to accidentally aim up or down while trying to simply move left or right (or move left or right when trying to crouch.)
I'm curious to see how the free-aim system works in Metroid Dread. I believe it's adapted from the Samus Returns remake, which was a recent 3DS update of the Game Boy's Metroid II. Looking up the way that controls, you can hold the L button to aim with the joystick, which might be how it works in Metroid Dread.
One thing I'll say is that the Dark Souls/Bloodborne games have gotten me much more comfortable with using shoulder buttons for attacking (I guess also nearly all first-person shooters, though not the Metroid Prime games). I could imagine a control scheme where you use the right analog stick to aim while you use the left to move, and then fire with R or ZR.
Anyway, I ordered a Pro Controller because I think it will be far more ergonomic than the Joy-Cons, which feel like they're built for much smaller hands than mine.
While I think the SNES controller was a really elegant controller for its day (unlike the bizarre monstrosity that was the N64 controller - did any game ever use the left prong?) I think that just having more buttons on a controller now should help a lot to make gameplay more fluid.
Anyway, having played through Super Metroid again (and saved the animals! Which is not something I thought you could even do the first time I played it) my excitement for a new game in that mold has greatly increased. I'm a little worried that the EMMI segments might prove more tedious and annoying than enjoyable, but we'll see!
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