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Last time, we took a look at Super Metroid's great descent. A very purposeful moment in the game's structure where the player takes a fall down a deep pit, and reaches a point of no return. This is really important to Super Metroid, because as we've discussed, it's a game that wants you to feel lost. Zebes is supposed to be a hostile, impenetrable planet, and suddenly dropping the player into the depths of that planet with no way back is an effective way of making them feel isolated and trapped. But that's only half of the story, because Super Metroid is also about the power of overcoming such obstacles, and that's something we are going to start seeing today.
The first thing the player will run into after their short excursion through Maridia is an elevator room. This room is noteworthy for the message it sends the player. The presence of an elevator here means that you're about to travelling to a new, unfamiliar area, even further down from the strange one you're already trapped in. It really furthers the sense that you're departing from where you've been up until now. Progression up until this point has rarely been straightforward; it has usually involved backtracking through previous areas to reach a new path. That kind of travelling helps make things feel neat and cozy, you get familiar with key rooms and the whole world feels connected. The continued travel in one direction here works to achieve the exact opposite effect. You're continually heading further away from everything you've known so far, and there isn't even anything to come back to. The elevator here further supports that as you're taken to a brand new area.
Observant players, however, won't be so quick to head down the elevator. They'll notice that the map shows that there is more to the right of the elevator room. A quick bomb of the right wall will reveal that the tiles there are destructible, and you'll find this strange room on the other side. Its blues and weird alien goop are a stark contrast to the metallic elevator room you just left, and this change is further emphasize by the weird alien head thing just barely out of view at the far edge. Try as you might though, you won't be able to reach that doorway with your current jump, meaning this room is something you'll have to come back to later. Odds are, with its strange design and the hint of things lying beyond, this is something that will be easy to remember later.
Going down, you'll find yourself in the harsh caverns of Norfair. Luckily, despite being a new area, we see now a similar structure with the area's central shaft. There is quite a large collection of doors here so let's look at what is behind each one.
The room in the top right features a trippy heat wave background that drains your health incredibly fast. It only takes a second to realize that your health is depleting rapidly, and that's about all the time you have to make it out before you find yourself at a game-over. This room doesn't give you much time to process what's going on, and it does a good job of setting up Norfair. As one of the first rooms the player will probably see here, it shows that Norfair is such an oppressive place that even some of the rooms themselves are deadly.
The door on the top left leads to a room you can actually survive in, but progress is just as much halted here as it was in the other room. A series of mechanical gates will begin to close the moment you enter this room, and even with your handy-dandy run button you won't have enough speed to make it through them all before they close. Once again you run into another dead-end, which doesn't bode well for your progress here.
Falling further down the shaft, you'll pass a yellow door you just can't open yet, and then find two more doors on either side at the bottom. The one on the right leads to a save station, one that is sorely needed. The save point really hammers in the progress that you've made to this point, and it also cements it. It also lets you take a breath, as you haven't had a chance to save your progress for this entire harrowing descent, making things more tense the further you go. The save point and familiar structure here also give this area a kind of home-y feeling. Now that things are familiar, and death no longer a looming threat, this new place won't seem so intimidating anymore, which is a great relief to all the tension that had been building up. Further right past the save station, you'll find a long hallway blocked by a large pile of debris that you can't break yet. Also a new kind of enemy that will latch onto you and drain your hp very quickly if you can't blast them off with bombs in time. Lucky there's a save station nearby.
In an effort to trump how great the save station felt, the last door left in this shaft leads to a great surprise. The energy tank here greatly increases your current health, along with giving a free energy refill which is almost certainly needed at this point (since save stations do nothing to replenish health). The enemy skirting along the bottom of the room here suggests that there'e more going on however. It very quickly works its way off-screen, showing you very blatantly that there is more to be seen in this room. This is reinforced by the fact that the door literally locks shut behind you so even if you somehow missed the enemy, you'd be forced to investigate this room more. The ground to the left of the energy tank breaks when you step on it, allowing you to morph ball roll through the tunnel the enemy just escaped through.
As you roll down the tunnel, you'll get the briefest glimpse of a missile tank up above before falling down a steep drop. This tank is dangled before you, but you're very quickly shown that it's not meant to be, at least not yet.
The path that leads to where the tank should be is just barely inaccessible by your current jump. It means you have no choice but head further left through a nearby door, but it sure is upsetting to leave a missile tank that was lying right there in the open. What we see here is a common trick employed by Metroidvanias to make new upgrades feel more powerful. The developers threw this inaccessible missile tank in here just to remind you of how limited your current jump is. Reminding players the scope of their current move-set before giving them a new ability really lets them appreciate what that new ability adds. And I bet you can guess what kind of new ability we are about to see here.
If there were ever any doubts, the very next room offers the High Jump Boots. True to their name, they increase your jump height significantly. In a clever but simple way to showcase this, you're only able to exit the hole that holds the jump boots with their extra jump height. Now with this useful tool under your belt, it's time to get that sweet missile expansion. With these boots in hand (or, I should say, in foot), it's easy to grab the missile expansion, and then find a path that loops back to the exit door for this whole chamber. Leaving, however, doesn't fill you with the excitement you usually have when you get a new upgrade. After all, none of the barriers you found in this shaft can be cleared by jumping. Now since we found it earlier, you may be thinking of a certain blue, goopy room with a ledge that was just out of reach, but pretend for a second you're one of the many players that didn't find that area immediately. First, we should try heading back to the shaft.
This area, does in fact, hold a secret of its own. The ground at the center here seems suspicious, and the map even indicates that the shaft doesn't end here. In a clever mimicry of the secret at the bottom of Brinstar's shaft, bombing the ground here reveals that you can actually go further down. Doing so leads to one final door, offering perhaps a glimmer of hope.
Instead, however, we find another health-draining room with an impassible wall. This means that it's back to the drawing board for lost players.
Players that didn't find the room I pointed out at the beginning of this article will now have to spend some time searching for the path forward. Luckily, the secret entrance to that room isn't obtusely hidden, so it isn't terrible to find. It just requires that players think to backtrack out of Norfair to use the item they found in it. It is like a small-scale test of one of the crucial skills of Metroid: checking old areas for new potential paths. This makes for a perfect breaking point where next week we'll meet up at the blue alien face and see what lies beyond.
Key Takeaways:
- Structures of areas can do a lot to set tone. One that is interconnected builds familiarity and feels neat, while a long, straight path can feel like you're travelling to an isolated area.
- Giving players some kind of safe space in an otherwise hostile environment does a lot to give them breathing room that they may need.
- It's good for Metroidvanias to take time to remind players of the scope and limitations of their current move-set. This makes it feel incredibly satisfying to expand that move-set and make previously impassable obstacles irrelevant
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