GeneralSinner666
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2017
Personally, I'm going to have to start out with what is probably a much more popular choice than I realize; Brinstar from Super Metroid.
For one thing, the fact that one of the very first things you see in the game is a nearly exact replica of what astonishingly little is left of the original Brinstar at the game's point in the series' timeline (first Metroid, then the entire Prime Trilogy, then Return Of Samus, and now this game), complete with the Morph Ball even being found in the exact same place as in the first game, serves as an ungodly brilliant method of foreshadowing the game's general theme of teaching you to expect the unexpected (within the expected, of course, because why not?)
However, things only continue to get exponentially more interesting from there.
After recovering Samus' bomb ability from a rather disturbingly alive and hostile (albeit unbelievably easy to defeat) Chozo statue in Crateria and using it to bomb your way over into the westmost portion of the Crateria cavern systems, you quickly encounter a second elevator that (as the map points out, if I remember correctly) leads to the exact same region as the first one, clearly implying how much larger the area has become since its previous appearance but giving no warning or indication about how much greener it's become since last time.
All of a sudden, the area that was pretty much literally just "the surface of the moon painted blue" back in the first game has evolved (more specifically overgrown due to an extremely overblown terraforming project by the Space Pirates) into possibly one of the most instantly recognizable and vibrantly colorful jungle settings in video game history (an underground space jungle, no less), complete with wall-jumping space monkeys, Speed-Booster-dashing ostriches, anime sakura-petal snowflakes, room-lighting fireflies, health/ammo recharging and map-downloading stations, tangled thorn vines that literally cover the entire rooms that they grow in from top to bottom, one of the most disturbing (and easiest) giant plant bosses in video game history, doors in the middles of rooms, cacti with lips, walls with teeth, man-eating Rafflesia blooms, cactus tentacles, Charge Beam, Super Missiles, Save Rooms, green doors, crumbling vine bridges that you actually need to hold down the newly added run button in order to cross, Grapple blocks, mysterious purple light pillars, an elevator with a fake wall in it, a suspiciously fragile-looking glass tube submerged in water, pink fungus all over the walls, space-shooter techno music, blood-sucking alien grasshoppers, orange doors, sideways bug pipes, creepy Chinese death-march music, dislodged pieces of Ridley's Lair, the classic eyeball door that also appeared in Zero Mission and Fusion, three-story Kraid (with an incredibly ominous and foreshadowing buildup hallway leading up to him, no less)...yeah, to make a long story short, the area has had so many new features added to it that the vast majority of it isn't even recognizable as the same place anymore. Norfair's reappearance in the game is also pretty cool but doesn't even compare to this IMO.
Also, did I mention the fucking music?
For one thing, the fact that one of the very first things you see in the game is a nearly exact replica of what astonishingly little is left of the original Brinstar at the game's point in the series' timeline (first Metroid, then the entire Prime Trilogy, then Return Of Samus, and now this game), complete with the Morph Ball even being found in the exact same place as in the first game, serves as an ungodly brilliant method of foreshadowing the game's general theme of teaching you to expect the unexpected (within the expected, of course, because why not?)
However, things only continue to get exponentially more interesting from there.
After recovering Samus' bomb ability from a rather disturbingly alive and hostile (albeit unbelievably easy to defeat) Chozo statue in Crateria and using it to bomb your way over into the westmost portion of the Crateria cavern systems, you quickly encounter a second elevator that (as the map points out, if I remember correctly) leads to the exact same region as the first one, clearly implying how much larger the area has become since its previous appearance but giving no warning or indication about how much greener it's become since last time.
All of a sudden, the area that was pretty much literally just "the surface of the moon painted blue" back in the first game has evolved (more specifically overgrown due to an extremely overblown terraforming project by the Space Pirates) into possibly one of the most instantly recognizable and vibrantly colorful jungle settings in video game history (an underground space jungle, no less), complete with wall-jumping space monkeys, Speed-Booster-dashing ostriches, anime sakura-petal snowflakes, room-lighting fireflies, health/ammo recharging and map-downloading stations, tangled thorn vines that literally cover the entire rooms that they grow in from top to bottom, one of the most disturbing (and easiest) giant plant bosses in video game history, doors in the middles of rooms, cacti with lips, walls with teeth, man-eating Rafflesia blooms, cactus tentacles, Charge Beam, Super Missiles, Save Rooms, green doors, crumbling vine bridges that you actually need to hold down the newly added run button in order to cross, Grapple blocks, mysterious purple light pillars, an elevator with a fake wall in it, a suspiciously fragile-looking glass tube submerged in water, pink fungus all over the walls, space-shooter techno music, blood-sucking alien grasshoppers, orange doors, sideways bug pipes, creepy Chinese death-march music, dislodged pieces of Ridley's Lair, the classic eyeball door that also appeared in Zero Mission and Fusion, three-story Kraid (with an incredibly ominous and foreshadowing buildup hallway leading up to him, no less)...yeah, to make a long story short, the area has had so many new features added to it that the vast majority of it isn't even recognizable as the same place anymore. Norfair's reappearance in the game is also pretty cool but doesn't even compare to this IMO.
Also, did I mention the fucking music?
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