Metroid is the top of the class of this week's three releases. Or is it?
The "Month of Metroid" kicks off on Virtual Console with the release of the NES original. A true classic, Metroid. But how well does it hold up in modern times? Especially compared to the impending release of Super Metroid next week? You'll have to read our recommendations below to find out. Don't forget about the other two games released on the VC service this week, as they're not bad alternative choices.
Metroid
| System | Virtual Console - Nintendo Entertainment System |  |
| Cost | 500 Points | |
| Players | 1 | |
| Controllers | Wii Remote,Wii Nunchuk,GameCube | |
| ESRB Rating | Everyone | |
| Released | Aug 15, 1986 |
Click here for a video preview
Metroid is undeniably a huge piece of gaming history. Along with The Legend of Zelda, this space-faring adventure ushered in the non-linear level design. Aside from that, the 2D Metroid series as a whole inspired Koji Igarashi to create Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which has, in turn, determined the direction of all the Castlevania games we enjoy today on our GBAs and DSes. And without the Metroid, Zelda, and modern Castlevania games, sandbox games would not exist. Clearly, gamers owe a lot to the original Famicom Disk System Metroid (and its NES port). But having said that, is this 20-year-old game worth blowing your precious Wii Points on?
Sadly, the answer is undeniably "no." Metroid existed in an era when passwords, rote memorization, endless restarts, cheap hits, and grinding for energy were acceptable pieces of the core gameplay. You may think that the Wii’s save system would make up for some of these critical downfalls, but it doesn’t. When you die, and you will (a lot), you will respawn from the first room in the game. If you manage to scribble the password down upon dying, you’ll actually restart from whatever level of the planet you’ve most recently found yourself in. The game’s graphics and sound have not aged well, either. Save your pennies, folks. Super Metroid is on its way, and that game manages to rectify basically every sin that its predecessor commits.
Shining in the Darkness
| System | Virtual Console - Genesis |  |
| Cost | 800 Points | |
| Players | 1 | |
| Controllers | Wii Remote,Wii Nunchuk,GameCube | |
| ESRB Rating | Everyone | |
| Released | Nov 01, 1991 |
Click here for a video preview
The early ‘90’s was a golden age of experimentation and evolution for role-playing games that spawned some legendary genre classics. Shining In The Darkness almost seems like an anomaly looking back on it in historical context. There are no grand dramatic pretenses that would later come to personify the entire genre; instead, you have a simple first-person dungeon crawl through a single maze with nine floors (counting some gratuitous basement levels). Gamers used to RPGs done on an epic scale may well feel a little claustrophobic playing through Shining In The Darkness. There’s no overworld map or mysterious new continents to explore here. If you’re a serious fan of RPGs, however, don’t let the stripped-down presentation fool you. Shining In The Darkness more than makes up for all its narrative shortfalls with an incredibly satisfying and finely-tuned combat system, and a robust bestiary which makes chugging through the murky corridors a genuinely rewarding experience.
While the dungeons are comprised of a lot of repeating tiles and backgrounds, they are surprisingly detailed and ambient, especially when compared to other 3D console games from that time (take a look at Sword Of Vermillion or Silent Debuggers for instance). The enemy sprites have a tremendous amount of personality, filling out each floor of the dungeon with exaggerated and ornate variations on RPG enemy mainstays like skeleton warriors, slimes, and hellhounds. There are some unpleasantly antiquated gameplay mechanics, like the necessity of blindly level-grinding for long stretches before being able to really make headway into newly accessible parts of the dungeon, but nothing that will be unfamiliar or overly disagreeable to RPG fans. For all it’s paucity of RPG ostentation and operatic melodrama, Shining In The Darkness comes through where it counts: an approachable and entertaining combat system and a detailed variety of bad guys to hack through on your way to the ultimate confrontation with the proverbial darkness.
Cratermaze
| System | Virtual Console - TurboGrafx-16 |  |
| Cost | 600 Points | |
| Players | 1 | |
| Controllers | Wii Remote,Wii Nunchuk,GameCube | |
| ESRB Rating | Everyone | |
| Released | Mar 1990 |
Click here for a video preview
Take one part Bomberman and one part Lode Runner. Mix well. Bake for 45 minutes at 375 degrees. What will come out of the oven is Cratermaze, something that can be best described as Lode Runner with a Bomberman maze level layout and top-down camera. Your character must go around levels collecting treasures chests in order to open the level exit. He cannot directly attack his enemies, instead needing to dig holes to bury them into the ground to temporarily finish them off. Items like guns and bombs can also be had to help you clear the maze of the baddies, leaving you to concentrate on navigating the level's transporters, springboards and dead-ends.
Cratermaze is more Lode Runner than it is Bomberman, and as such is a hard game. The normal difficulty mode is so easy that casual players would become bored with it, so the only way to play is on the game's difficult setting. Right from the start you need to be on your toes, else you'll fall into one of your own holes. It offers a genuine challenge for players that are looking for one, and is fun to play despite its high difficulty. This may be one of the hardcore sleeper hits on VC.
Props to VG Museum for the screenshots.
