This is probably my all-time favorite video game. With the exception of the recent CASTLEVANIA games, not other series has integrated action and exploration so seamlessly, and at the same time provided a story that is deep and involving. Controls are intuitive, even to the greenest of gamers, and there are hundreds of little nooks and crannies to explore, so even though you can beat the game fairly quickly, it pays to be patient and thoroughly explore every room. All of these element alone make for a great game, but this one has the edge over the competition: Samus Aran. Samus is easily the most interesting of all video game characters. A female bounty hunter equipped with a technologically enhanced spacesuit and arm cannon, Samus always works alone, never speaks, and has a vendetta against the race of blood-sucking parasites known as Metroids. Her desire to eliminate them from the entire universe goes beyond the battle between good and evil and becomes an obsession. In the beginning of the game, she is commissioned to bring back the last Metroid in existence for scientific research. Something goes wrong, though, and the specimen is stolen by Ridley, a horrific winged beast and the right hand man of the Mother Brain, a mysterious evil force from the planet Zebes. Samus goes to Zebes to hunt down the Mother Brain and recapture the baby Metroid, but is faced with much more than she bargained with. I've heard that there's a filmed adaptation of the series in the works. IMDb shows no cast, screenwriter or director yet, but word has it Hong Kong action filmmaker John Woo is interested in the project. This is perhaps the first video game with a legitimate shot at becoming a good movie, and I hope that the filmmakers don't overlook certain opportunities. Samus must be portrayed not as a brooding, one-liner spewing action heroine, but as a human being, troubled but not emotionless. There must be a real sense of isolation in her journeys, and maybe some insight on why she must always work alone. While I don't hold out a lot of hope that anyone involved in the film will be reading this review, I feel it important that I get my views out there into the open, so at least someone will know that it could have been done.
Review of Super Metroid
