Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Year: 1986
Genre: Action-Adventure
System: NES

Look, obviously I am not going to have any unique takes on Metroid, one of the most discussed games ever, but I just completed it and I’m pretty proud of that so into the Game Log it goes. I think everyone reading this knows what Metroid is as well so I can skip that bit too. I still love the game even though it’s got some fiddly and frustrating bits from it being so early in this style of game. The only major pain point really being that if you die, it takes ages to refill your health and missiles from grinding enemies.

I’m mostly excited about completing it because it’s a game that I have owned literally my whole life. It came out in 1986, a year before I was before, and I always played it on and off over the decades and yet never completed even though I’m a big fan of the series and have completed many of the later games. What’s odd is that it didn’t even really take me that long really to complete this time. Maybe about six hours or so. I still thought it was a challenging game but it’s not really that long so I’m a little surprised I never completed it before when I had entire days free to play video games and write down passwords. It’s a very weird, and highly recommended, experience to complete a game that has existed your entire life that you’ve poked at a few times so if you got a few of those hanging around, consider knocking one out.

One of the things I really love about the original Metroid is just how weird and mysterious it is compared to later games in the series. It’s not an entirely fair comparison, of course the first game in a series is going to feel a lot more new than later games and some of the later games do have weird bits, but at the same I think it would be nice to see more unexplained stuff and weird worlds instead of revisiting some of the same characters and places so often. I don’t think this is the same as doing a “back in my day games were hard and blah blah blah” because this isn’t what made the original Metroid difficult. I’m just saying the vibes are very good and it’s less focused on telling a linear narrative, which is why I don’t care for Metroid Fusion as much as other folks even though it’s got some weird stuff in there (that I think it over explains). It’s a similar arc as the game’s inspiration Alien, lots of weird unexplained stuff and then it kinda becomes more normal and overexplained. A more modern example of what I mean is the game Axiom Verge, it’s got lots of weird stuff that you never fully get. I would love recommendations if there’s any other indie Metroid-likes that I’m missing out on with great weird vibes.

This probably sounds like I’m basically saying the Metroid gets worse over time and I’m not. I love most of those later games too. Some of the sequels have even weirder things like all the various designs of the Metroid creatures in Metroid 2 and how much it feels like horror at certain points. I just want more of it.

Anyway, no hot takes here. I still think the first Metroid is very good and I’m looking forward to the new one that was just announced. If you’ve got a game that you like but haven’t completed even though you’ve owned it for a few decades, go complete it. You’ll probably find it’s not as impossible as you remember.

Metroid is available on the NES Virtual Console for the Nintendo Switch but you can probably find ways to play it elsewhere.

Developer: Kemco
Publisher: Kemco
Year: 1993
Genre: Platformer
System: NES

Kid Klown in Night Mayor World is a pretty basic platformer for the NES where an evil magician has kidnapped your clown family and it’s up to you, Kid Klown, to rescue them. You run through level throwing balloons with the only real innovation being that you can also put balloons on the ground and jump on them to give you a big jump, or hold onto a balloon to descend slowly after jumping. It’s all very basic and the game can be completed in about an hour since it’s pretty easy. The only real challenge is on the final level where you have to go through a frustrating maze sequence that feels more like padding than a challenge, since the game gives you many opportunities for extra lives. It’s not an amazing game but I do have a soft spot for it since I completed it as a child without using any cheats, which felt like a pretty rare thing to happen for me due to the difficulty of so many NES games.

So none of that is really that interesting, what I did find interesting was the background of the game. It was originally a Mickey Mouse platformer in Japan and part of the Crazy Castle series, which played very differently and ALSO not a Mickey Mouse game here. In the US it used a Bugs Bunny license. For whatever reason they did not use that license and decided to launch their own IP, Kid Klown. It’s not a terribly interesting IP, you’re a kid who happens to be a clown. Everything about the original Mickey Mouse version sounds much more interesting since occasionally uses music from Disney properties for the game and known Disney characters for the villains instead of brand new enemies that aren’t particularly interesting.

Kemco continued to use the Kid Klown IP in a half assed way where most of the games in the series weren’t even released as Kid Klown games in the US, none of them were platformers like this, and the character was redesigned after this first game as well. There was a runner game for the SNES called Crazy Chase, a second Crazy Chase that only came out in Japan, a Game Boy Color puzzle game that was later released as an entry in the Crazy Castle series here, and a Playstation puzzle game that did come out here but didn’t have the Kid Clown name in the title.

Just overall a very weird history of an IP they owned and sorta tried to push but never did it consistently anywhere.

Kid Klown in Night Mayor World is available for the NES on your favorite rom site.