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Paul Soth
 Posts: 140 Location: Columbus, Oh |
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You too, huh? |
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Myznomer
Posts: 24 |
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Anybody dying to read the 2 volume Metroid manga might be interested to know it was scanlated by SnoopyCool, a reputable organization that sadly seems to have shut down. The links at their site are dead, but if you look around you should be able to find their scans uploaded somewhere else. (You can still get the torrents if you check around their forum, but it is unlikely that they will be seeded).
Anyway, thanks for presenting a moderate review of Other M. I wasn't happy with how everybody either seemed to be gushing about it or hating on it. It was far too reactionary. I also like how you address the sexism aspect. You don't hop on the bandwagon, but you present insight on how that conclusion could be made. As to the infamous "Ridley freak-out" I think Sakamoto's defenders need to step back and compare the arguments: Bad Storytelling: She's faced Ridley before and defeated him (I don't know if the OCD that makes you get 100% completion is canon, but if it is, you can tack on "easily"), there is no reason to be surprised at his return except for how he initially enters the scene. Adds Character Depth: Nightmare cycle, monstrous massacre, hopelessness of an immortal enemy, suppositions and inferences into Samus' psyche, etc. etc. So, one group has the evidence of multiple games, and the other group has the insinuations of one game. Now, even if Sakamoto is the god of the Metroid universe, it's still bad storytelling because he did not sell this portrayal of Samus. It was his responsibility to convey her thoughts and emotions, and he did so poorly. All he really would have had to do to smooth this over would be to incorporate any one of your hyper-competent defenses into the story (with subtle, verbalized hints, not the bludgeon of exposition) and tone down the melodrama. But he didn't. So while you're half right, in that this had the potential to be interesting character development, it fails to fulfill that potential, and leaves Metroid veterans (Meterans?) out in the cold. PS: Personally, I imagine Samus as more of an Indiana Jones than a typical run and gun action hero, but this idea is influenced by the Prime games' Lore feature, which gives her character a hint of archivist or archaeologist. |
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belvadeer
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Megaman Universe: Wow so you can choose the way he looks? Interesting. Still if I ever find who drew that ugly version of MM, I want to strangle him. Classic anime Rockman all the way!
Metroid: As a whole, I'm not a Metroid fan. Never have been, never will be. I know the series has garnered much praise over the years. People love Samus. They love her because she gets things done without thinking twice. She's taken names, including Ridley's, many times. I'm surprised people get so worked up over one little change they made in her which I find quite logical to a degree. I doubt any person would get used to seeing the same adversary keep coming back again and again. Admit it: can any of you honestly admit to being able to see the same monster many times and not freak out just once? It reminds me of the Sanity Points system in Shadow Hearts. Fighting scary and gross monsters over and over might seem exciting but it can get to you eventually. Not everyone is a rock. The Metroid manga looks like a funny item (the silly one) to own but I think the new manga that's out for viewing is really cool to experience. The Fusion one seems pretty well done from what the cover depicts. I wonder why Japan chose to keep giving her a Western look all these years. Probably to appeal to U.S. fans. The closest I ever got to playing as Samus was in Brawl. Last edited by belvadeer on Thu Sep 09, 2010 11:43 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ZeetherKID77
 Posts: 981 |
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Somehow I think AH3 will get localized because of Arcsys' involvement. Probably not...
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MH Knights
Posts: 71 Location: Madison, WI |
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Yeah, many people forget she is supposed to be 6'3" and 198 lbs of "Gets things done." No tiresome catchphrases every time she does something, no bossy disembodied voices telling you to do the obvious, and no annoying sidekicks. Samus just goes in and gets the job done. |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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I read the Tazawa/Ishikawa Metroid and it was actually pretty good, but I guess my expectations were low since it was a video game manga.
Still, I think it humanizes Samus well without confusing that for making her a weakling.
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varmintx
 Posts: 1210 Location: Covington, KY |
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I played through Metroid Prime Trilogy over the summer to gear myself up for Other M which, quite frankly, I'm not anticipating much from. Granted, back in '02, I wasn't particularly enamored with the idea of a first-person Metroid...boy did it ever turn out that I was wrong there. And though I'm not exactly the biggest fan of motion controls, I think the Wiimote actually works better than the 'Cube's carpal tunnel-inducing push in trigger/release trigger mechanics; though, the nunchuk's use for the grapple beam in 3 caused me more headaches than I remember.
I'll be starting Other M soon, so I guess I'll see for myself how well it stands up against the its renowned forebears. |
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Big Hed
 Posts: 1607 Location: Melbourne, Australia |
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Oh god, I cracked up. What would we do without your image captions, Todd... Overall good column. I had no idea Metroid had run in GN form before. |
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robo-ky
 Posts: 63 Location: blue crow, callisto |
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glad to see some luv for yun and yang 3rd strike is an under appreciated game to this day
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davecabrera
ANN Columnist
 Posts: 132 |
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For people who never got a chance to see Arcana Heart 2 PS2 in action, I assure you that it was for the better. Videos on Youtube and stuff don't do it justice. You really need to see the thing in person, or at least in high quality video (which I haven't seen anywhere), to appreciate exactly how poorly made it is.
What exactly is wrong with the game depends on the character onscreen. Every character has had their animations messed around with, presumably to save RAM (Arcana Heart 2 moved from the Naomi to a new arcade board with 1GB RAM to the PS2's 32MB): they do this by heavily pixelating the in-between frames of animation, so that your character looks normal in keyframes and turns into a mosaic monster while actually moving. The entire game is plagued with tremendous slowdown: there are comparison videos on Nico where you can see the same moves taking twice as long to complete. Whenever there's any kind of hit effect, the whole game starts to chug, effectively ruining the combo timing from the arcade version. This is most obvious with the gun girl Petra, who is just about unplayable in this version of the game. Bigger sprites like Catherine (she rides in a robot that takes up about half the screen) have all the same problems but worse: they flicker constantly and sometimes make the entire screen or HUD flicker and shake just by moving around. The port's a monstrosity. That they actually sold this pile to paying customers (it was returned en masse and marked down to $10 the next week) is nearly malicious. AH3 will probably come out fine, though. (It'll still be totally creepy though, sorry: blob girl's KO animation from AH2 on pushes the game completely into "indefensible") |
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sfried
Posts: 266 |
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As for the whole Prime or Other M argument, I'd say Prime got the exploration aspects right, while for the most part Fusion and Other M got the pacing nailed down. Other M's narrative can be horrible at times, and unskippable cutscenes (through the first playthrough anyways) kind of bog the game down for those wishing to speedrun. But it's not as if the Prime games were faultless: There was always that one treasure hunt at the end of each game, which felt like artificial padding, and then there's some of the awful layouts that make you walk to a dead end only to tell you to turn back, not to mention Retro's perchance to eliminate sequence breaking from the game. Still, I really wish they took the best of both worlds from each of the games for the next installment (combat in Other M was fantastic, and sensemove abuse feels so satisfying), and just cut on the whole storytelling aspect.
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2234 |
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Sakamoto has said Team Ninja will probably be brought back for a sequel when the time comes. I also believe he said the logical thing to do is make a follow up to Fusion. Plus Retro are now working on DKC so they're gonna be busy.
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Haterater
 Posts: 1727 |
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@ davecabrera
Wow, that's probably the reason Atlus didn't bother to release that game here or anyone else. That's just terrible and I bet it would have cost an arm and a leg to do an exclusive fix for a region. Unacceptable and I hope that doesn't happen again for them to allow that. I'll just find the story for the 2nd elsewhere if the 3rd game is released overseas. It puzzles me about that fighting game with Izuna in it. People who made and those who brought it here were probably drunk. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Shotaro Ishinomori made a Zelda manga? I thought he was far too cynical to do such a thing.
Speaking of Nintendo manga, does anyone know about that Fossil Fighters manga? has it ever been finished? |
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