It didn’t scare me no, although I am in LOVE with its atmosphere. Out the all the Metroid games, gameplay wise I think it’s the most forgettable - it controls well but it’s super linear. Everything that surrounds the gameplay however is what I absolutely adore. Like you mentioned, every Metroid game has horror elements, although I find that the most unnerving part of a typical Metroid game is during the beginning, when you’ve just entered a new environment and everything is new to you. In a typical Metroid game, there’s usually a shift in tone usually once you get the varia suit - this is the part of the game where your now comfortable with your surroundings, and so that horror now turns into triumph, the game changes from horror to action adventure. Fusion however never has that moment, it never lets you get comfortable, never gives you freedom or a sense of control, and that’s what makes it so cool to me. I have so much to say on this game ( I’d be happy to go into more detail btw), also what do you think about the other games, how do the likes of super and dread compare to fusion in your opinion?
@@charliesullivan9211 Of the three you mentioned, Fusion in terms of how I feel about them is my 'least' favourite and I use that term sparringly as I love all three and they all place within my top 5 Metroid games, Super and Dread being 1 and 2 respectively. I'm not sure if its because I've grown up but I didn't find Dread nearly as 'scary' as say fusion, but again you can chalk that up to age or maybe just more exposure to the Metroid franchise in general. Dread when it comes to the control scheme and feel is king without doubt as you'd expect from the latest 2D entry so I don't believe its too fair to compare it that way too much. In the same regard, Super which now feels somewhat clunky to play through still holds a special place in my heart. Zebes is without a doubt my favourite planet, the atmosphere it builds is amazing, and the general gameplay, exploration and pacing I think are top notch even compared to most of the other Metroids. I agree that Fusion is very linear and it suffers to some degree due to it, I think it also benefits to some degree as I stated in the video regarding the enclosed space you feel yourself trapped in. But all in all, Metroid games are very consistent in their quality which I think we can all be very thankful for. Sorry for the long response lol
My favorite little details of fusion is being able to see samus in her weakened state. The way she uses her left arm to hold up her arm cannon, and how she is unable to stand up straight is a genius touch and shows how dangerous the X really is.
John, do you know about social engineering? Its kinda like that moment in games like Metroid or Dark Souls, where you felt like you must be so far away from home, and no bloodding clue whats around the corner and then- BAM! You see a save point from 3 hours back and your mind is blown! Youve been feeling like your exploring on your own, but it truely all according to design!
One of the scary things about Metroid Fusion is that in case you've played the previous games you know full well how powerful you are, that being said, Sa-X is basically you at your prime while you are on your weakest state and not only that but you technically became one with the same beings you used to hunt all of that combined with one of the staples of the Metroid franchise: to be alone in an entire map with the enemies.
Neo Ridley screaming his head off. SA-X stalking you. Hidden Metroid Lab. The X evolving over time, learning and growing stronger. The first time I played, I was a little shaken by certain plot points. The SA-X Introduction was one of them. Love the game, even if they lacked the hardware to make SA-X more intelligent.
As scary as Sa-X can be, the moment that made small me drop the game for a while was the first timed sequence. You are eased by the chill music, you feel stronger because you acquired a new ability and unlocked the yellow door. And then BOOM, alarm, everything goes red and you only have 6 minutes to explore a new part of sector 3. And after beating it one year later? Enviromental Intrigue starts playing in the conversation with Adam. Yay.
Haha, that's what's so great about fusion. Any and every part of it can have a different effect on each different player. Cool to hear about the times others dropped their game 😅
Watching your video made me realize the horror goes even further, especially since Dread basically tells us straight up that Samus is a Metroid. When the X Parasite infects her, Samus technically dies, and is then reborn in two forms - an X Parasite, which copied all of her memories up until that point, and the Samus that continues merged with Metroid DNA. These are of course natural enemies, and so Samus becomes both the predator and prey... of herself.
My brother played this on this gba sp, you know, the pocket gba that had a high beam lighting function so you could see more clearly? Well, he played metroid fusion again and again, so much that when he got to ridley, ridley's screeching turned a lot of heads😅
6:55 the reason why nightmare is not visible whatsoever is because the recording of this gameplay is 30FPS and it constantly rendered the sprite invisible. if the game was recorded in 60fps you could see him flicker half-transparent showing all the frames that are missing from this current recording.
I'm not sure if this happened to anyone else but I distinctly remember one SA-X encounter I had that was nonscripted as far as I know. I got lost in Sector 6 spending a good half hour or so in there. I went into one of the main rooms remembering where I had to go, and I ran into the SA-X in there. I was absolutely horrified since at this point I beaten the game about 3 times at that point and never ever had that happen
Oh really? I always thought they were fully scripted. Maybe worth testing it again. Or maybe you were lost in there for so long the game decided to give you a treat 😅
@@Legend-of-Kai When I checked the Games Code for the SA-X The Random possibility was only the Random Super Missile (5-10% chance to replace ice beam) All of the Encounters are Scripted
Sorry, I'll see if I can tone it down in future videos. If I even can, I've heard its quite common in Australian accents. I'll see what I can do though. Thanks for the comment!
Metroid Dread has so many allusions to and pays homage to Metroid Fusion beautifully. Watching this video after playing dread and just recently talking to friends about Fusion was a real treat.
I really wish someone would make a mod of Metroid Fusion where the SA-X is actually wandering around, so its appearances are totally random and unexpected. Additionally, grant it access to a more aggressive chasing mechanics, giving it the ability to follow Samus through places it wouldn't originally have followed. What I'm basically saying is to give it an EMMI-like behavior pattern, and make the player work hard at shaking it off their trail. Also, that Neo-Ridley scream is a sound I will never forget. It's just pure rage in its loudest form.
You'd have to create some means for the player to escape, because SA-X is capable of taking you down with a few hits in the beginning of the game. You would basically need to introduce a whole new game mechanic for that to work, or change the layout A LOT so you would always have somewhere to hide
If they remade fusion and had Adam available only for easy mode, then it will be ok for no sequence break. Normal and hard mode should be free roaming, let players enjoy the game there own way while random encountering sa -x almost any map with a fixed chance depending on difficulty, then the game would have been a perfect masterpiece...
Those fuckin footsteps are ingrained in my brain Edit: man how could you ever FORGET that sound, considering he doesn't shut the hell up the entire boss fight
I remember my heart stopping when I saw the SA-X at the secret metroid lab, and THEN fell to the floor when Adam told me that there were NO FEWER THAN 10 SA-X onboard... 😂 Also, dem neoridley screeches 😅
Quick theory for you, notice how in the final boss how the SA-X never uses missles, and you yourself have to upgrade mechincal parts via data rooms (missles and bombs upgrades are all you get directly from data rooms). Makes me wonder if the final boss didnt even have missles. Perhaps all the encounters that it uses missles is the original? Idk
Maybe it's just me, but Samus's power suit (or lack thereof) is one of the most unsettling things about the game. Instead of making her look badass, this one gives off more of a naked, frail, prone-to-infection vibe.
I think the computer's dialogue regarding the SA-X contributes. Not only is it a stronger version of you, specifically powered-up to take you down with the ice beam, that can crop up at any moment, you are told it is hunting you, tracking you. It knows where you are but you don't know where it is. I remember my first playthrough expecting it to be behind any door, in any room, at any time.
5:45 Idk if this is a tension building device, but the first time you go through the glass room, Level 3 doors are still locked, so the Nightmare isn't visible. It's Samus's own actions that release the Nightmare and expose it to the X parasites, and you only get that foreshadowing on the way *out* of the sector. Her actions had consequences here and I honestly think that's one of the things that struck me on my first playthrough.
The creepiness of Fusion was always what really drew me to it. The games always had a creepy atmosphere and some disturbing moments, but yeah, Fusion was actively trying to freak out the kids playing it. Great video. You should do a similar video on Metroid Prime 2. I almost feel like that game is the darkest and creepiest in the series, even if it doesn’t have a terrifying stalker enemy.
@@Legend-of-Kai Super has certainly aged like fine wine too. The only thing that has aged in super that I can think about is probably the not so obvious way to Draygon in Maridia and the wall you're supposed to walk through in late Norfair.
Watching video like this about Fusion is always a treat, loving it, great job ! I have found memories with this game when it came out, either playing it in short burst on my way to school, or late at night under the blankets while Mum-X checking from time to time if i were sleeping (that's part was the scariest lol) The build up of the SA-X leading to the "jump scare", the "EMERGENCY IN SECTOR 3", or even looking at Serris bones before fighting Serris-X, gosh so good! It truly felt like they managed to make a game embodying in the Alien franchise spirit. I can understand why Fusion didn't made the cut for a lot of fans tho. That being said, i don't think Dread managed to achieve what Fusion did before, nor followed Fusion in its atmosphere and setting in my opinion. It's a good Metroid game, but not a good Metroid "5" if you know what i mean, i could expend a lot on this. Mercury Steam's Metroid series own take is like a third timeline to me, a new "style" of Metroid, it's Lord of Shadow all over again. Which is fine, just not my cup of tea. I wonder how their Fusion remake would have turned out, considering that's how they approached Sakamoto before he asked them to remake an older game which needed one the most.
Whoever made the footsteps sound nailed it. Years later as an adult they still get chills from me. The room where it's in and you have to drop down and you're praying you choose better time to based on when it stops moving.
great video, metroid fusion has been my favorite metroid game and ive played them all. i subbed, looking at your other videos i see alot i want to take a look at
Haha I know I've said this before but unreal that you're commenting on my video after having seen yours so many years ago! Hopefully you didn't think I was stealing your idea or anything. Save to say you definitely inspired me. Much love! And thanks
I was only afraid of one thing when this game came out. The commercial where Samus destroys a bunch of enemies and then absorbs all the X that appear. I don't know if that commercial or if some gaming magazine had told me, but I knew those were parasites. I am deeply, almost irrationally, afraid of parasites, I've had panic attacks thinking I had a tapeworm and get super uncomfortable seeing videos of things like botflies. I had nightmares for weeks after seeing that commercial. Nightmares so vivid I still remember them 20 years later. I still begged to get the game for my birthday, it was Metroid and Metroid 2 was literally the first game I ever played. I think the nightmares leading up to getting the game desensitized child me to any of the horror elements in game. That and I had gotten a guidebook alongside it so I was back and forth playing and reading about secrets in the areas I was in. I do observe the horror elements today, and I appreciate them immensely. But I've never personally felt any fear or unease when playing. I think nostalgia really clouds any other feeling while playing it. Any Metroid game is one I would give anything to forget everything I already know and play through it for the first time. And I think Fusion would be a good second place after Super if that ever happened to me.
I remember the first time I played this game, in the room after the energy got cut off from the place and you get the space jump, you can hear SA-X walking but you have no idea where they are. That was horrifying because up until then, you always SEE them leaving OR you always wait a bit and the footsteps disappear. This time it never goes away and you don't know where they are waiting. And the only bad thing for me in the Level Design is not the Linearity, it's the fact that once the game opens up, it does NOT warn you, and it's quite difficult to actually find the secret passageways between sectors. At least for me, I never did this game 100%.
December 2002, I got my first GBA and a copy of Fusion. I spent SO much time playing this game and imho no other GBA game stacked up to this. Zero Mission tried but it didn't have anything "new" to add to the franchise. I would love to see a modernized remake of Fusion like Metroid 2 with random SA-X encounters 😬
You just described all the reasons why Fusion is my favorite metroid game. I'm not usually a fan of horror games and rarely find them actually scary. Very few can draw me into the atmosphere as well as Fusion does and it being creepy and full of tension rather than just jumpscares and traditional horror is what makes it work so well for me, as well as what made Dread fail for me at least in respect to the horror aspects. The robots in Dread being in predictable contained areas failed to have the same constant tension of being able to encounter SA-X at any moment. The fact that they one shot you unless you did a quick time event made them less scary and more annoying. SA-X would do a ton of damage, but wouldn't kill you instantly allowing the fear to build as your health rapidly drops. The one element that you didn't cover in this video was the use of Alarms. At several points in this Fusion the story ramps up the tension to panic by introducing an emergency alarm accompanied by frantic music. Sometimes this is accompanied by a timer to really get you sweating but others it's instead accompanied by unsettling or well alarming story elements. The Metroid Cloning lab in particular was my favorite sequence in the game first with the huge buildup of tension and anticipation as you approach it and see the incredibly tight security. Then it just crescendos as alarms go off and you see metroids on the lose and SA-X fighting them. The use of the verbal warnings from the security system both on your approach and during the alarm heighten the effect so much. All of this is compounded by the fact that the metroid cloning lab's very existence is an incredibly troubling reveal and the fact that metroids are on the lose being potentially disastrous on a galactic scale.
What's scary is they had clones of almost every creature Samus went up against from her last few missions on board a ship. a war between metroids and X's taking place while she is trying to survive being hunted from her X form. The stronger metroids doesn't care about the lesser ones.
Personally metroid fusion is my least favourite 2d metroid besides first 2 thanks to the linearity with game actively preventing you from exploring certain areas according to your wish although i do think the feeling of dread and threat of SA-X was pulled off really well just wish it had a little more screen time with more dynamic encounters
Yea I agree like I said the SA-X encounters while crafted perfectly obviously lose their touch on multiple playthroughs. Not that theres anything wrong this is 2002 but just saying it could have been cool to stumble upon it randomly every now and then haha
@@Legend-of-Kai i think it could have been better if SA-X worked like the hunter in dead space where it is neither overused nor underutilized or maybe similar to Nemesis in original RE 3 where depending on the choices made by player the moment where you encounter it differs
I've always wanted for Nintendo to make a Metroid Fusion remake, and then make SA-X work similarly to the Nemesis or Mr. X in the Resident Evil games, where if you stay in a certain area for far too long, these mobs have a chance to spawn and make your exploration far more difficult, since you then have to avoid them to survive, because as much as I liked the Emmis in Metroid Dread, having them limited to only being in those Emmi zones, kind of made them less scary and then when you added the Phantom Cloak power, as long as you know how the particular Emmi in that zone behaves, you can easily avoid them or hide from them even as they get all in your face, but the SA-X should be really terrifying especially when you consider that by the end of the game there were already like 7 of them running around, but unfortunately the GBA did not show you that and just told you about it, I think it would have been truly horrific to have a couple of them chase you down as you tried escaping from the station, and then you needing to outsmart them or avoid them somehow, because I find it hard to believe that Samus was able to easily take down the SA-X by the end of the game, when she was always told how inferior she was to her old power suit, and for those that died a lot while playing Metroid Fusion, they should know that when you compare how strong Samus is in the earlier 3 games, versus how strong she became at the end of Fusion, there is just no contest because in Metroid 2 Samus was taking down all sorts of Metroid species by herself in SR388, and she took down several Omega Metroids too as well as the Queen Metroid, but at the end of Fusion she easily gets taken down by a simple Omega Metroid, so that is why I call BS that she was able to defeat her previous power suit, since the X should have known of her previous battles and stuff, and the only thing I would have found truly believable, was for the Omega Metroid to have attacked both Samus and the SA-X while they had been having their fight, as they both would have been throwing each other all they had, and it would have actually worked that they had low ammo or were too tired to face a threat such as an Omega Metroid, but Fusion just made it that you only had to fight the Omega Metroid before getting on your ship, and that's why its less believable.
What makes the SA-X scary is that the game assumes you've played super metroid, if so, you know the massive extent of the SA-X's abilities, while you are stripped of your OP gear. What weird is that the SA-X never uses the x-ray to find you behind walls, that would make it even more terrifying.
fusion is the only metroid game i have played and i got exactly to that nightmare monster and cound not beat it i think after that my brother formated the phone so the emullater a got deleated and i lost all save but man i will say the i love playing this game and the 1st intro of SA-X gave me goosebumps
I recently replayed and wanted to be over with nightmare because its just so unnerving. The music in its boss fight also helped add to that feeling. Yakuza used to be my least favorite boss, followed by nightmare, but nightmare is now #1. NEO Ridley is also up there, and I believe that's what the screech was from. Really good video, keep up the good work!
I know that lots of people don't want linearity for Metroid games, but I actually greatly enjoyed linearity, as long as I can go back and explore the previous regions and get the items I didn't have access to earlier.
If Nintendo were to remake Fusion, it would be extremely terrifying if the SA-X would show up randomly on the Station. Or at least have more elaborate SA-X encounters.
Last I played this game was about 5 years ago, last nightmare I had about this game was about a year ago, I think that sais it all, 10/10 would get traumatized again
Hey not sure if anyone actually got this but It was NEO Ridley who made that sound. being honest i still play fusion to this day as it is truly horrifying
I don't know if this is an unpopular opinion, but Samus' Fusion Suit is my favourite design in the franchise. The sleeker, slightly more organic look is really cool in my eyes.
I'm finding it FUNNY how people are talking about how CREEPY Fusion is but NOT talk about how TERRIFYING Echoes or ANY of the Prime Trilogy are... they're pure nightmare fuel...
Probably the most terrifying thing when I played this game when I was 6 it was the first time in sector 6 noc with subzero X... Obv there are minor things too like the encounter with sa x in the main deck/ sector 2. I probably completed the game in 1 year or more when I was young... Today I clear it in less than an hr 😂
Please allow me to ask a question that is free of any commentary of your video itself: Were you aware of Video Game Animation Study's excellent video on this topic from 4 years ago? Seems redundant.
I did watch that video years ago yes! I have also seen a few others from people like Luker and so on. Is it redundant? Maybe, but I'd argue a good majority of the content on RU-vid would classify as redundant. If there was only 1 video on every topic then there'd be a lot less content going around. Just my take though. Thanks for the comment!
Despite what people say, Fusion still is my favourite Metroid game of all times, and the horror factor is one of the reasons. Anyway, I'd say OtherM Nightmare is as terrifying as the Fusion one to be honest.
Gotta be honest, the X parasites are some of the creepiest entities I have ever seen in a videogame, and it is quite telling the X Parasites are a shout out to the Thing film, in the same way a lot of elements in the whole franchise are shout outs to the Alien franchise
Damn, I have been saying this! Its like resident evil in space, but made by Nintendo. Literally, the Sa-X is like the creature from the thing plus resident evil style B.O.W.'s and it can even infect and absorb data from computers. This is a freaking horror movie monster. The sa-x is basically an amalgam of all DNA from organisms it has killed and replaced, with very high intelligence. It even gains intelligence from the organisms it has killed, example, it tries to kill samus like a metroid. Its actively trying to eliminate samus(metroid DNA, last one left) at all cost, she is its only threat. Its an extremely dangerous threat to the universe. To be honest, every enemy is in metroid. Thats why every metroid game starts with escaping a planet explosion, and ends with a planet exploding. Just to eliminate all the parasites.
