Old School Lane Update: August 2020

 Hey everyone, Patricia here. Summer is officially over for me, yet I've been super preoccupied with school with my classes, school projects, and other activities. Because of COVID-19, I have to take my classes online at home so that I don't get myself or my family sick if I run into a student or a teacher who has it. As of right now, I'm in my junior year of college taking five classes, with one of them being my minor which is entrepreneurship/business. That has been taking a lot of time out of my life to focus on getting these assignments done. I only need two more years until I get my Bachelor's Degree and hopefully have a chance to better my life with better opportunities. But I always worry that I will graduate and find out that there are no jobs available. When I first graduated in 2008, The Great Recession happened and I ended up working in dead-end temporary jobs or spend most of my days in the unemployment office getting seminars on how to present yourself in interviews and how to create your resume. With COVID-19 occurring with millions of people out of work and businesses shutting down, I fear that I would go through it all over again over 15 years later. I have some hopes that things will be okay, but I'm still not sure. Nonetheless, I've come this far and I wish to continue until I completed everything.

With that said, I want to also give an update on my YouTube channel on how things are going since I posted my update blog back in June. Click here to check it out. So, I hadn't posted a video in months because of my schedule and I had been too busy with getting a hold of people to interview for my podcast. So my friend and Manic Expression colleague Liam Higgins stepped in to help and has helped me bring some amazing people to Casual Chats that I never would've contacted otherwise. Without him, Casual Chats wouldn't have continued due to not having time to get a few people together to talk about a topic. I even still have some episodes of Casual Chats that I recorded months ago that I haven't edited it due to being so busy. With that said, Liam and I will continue to collaborate on getting more amazing guests on the show for your enjoyment. 

Then there's the comeback of In Search of the Crystal Skull that Arun and I did back in March talking about the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog movie with two new episodes: Mrs. Doubtfire and The Mask. Because COVID-19 had delayed The Croods 2 and Soul until late this year, PixMix and DreamMachine has halted. The same thing happened to Roald Dahl's The Witches in which that was suppose to come out this October, but was delayed until next year. Arun and I are on track on The Roald Dahl Retrospective where we recently talked about Fantastic Mr. Fox with Eli "TheHeroOfTomorrow" Stone. We only have three movies to talk about until we go over the best and worst Roald Dahl adaptations which will come out at the end of the year. And yes, we will have you vote on your favorites and least favorites as well, but we'll go over that much later on. So, despite my super busy schedule, I'm still posting content on this channel and not leaving it dead without anything for months.

But man, if there was ever a severe low point that I noticed on my subscribers and views, 2020 might be my worst year yet. Back in June, I also posted on my update blog post that my views and subscribers have gotten lower and lower since I deviated from my usual discussions and interviews of people who had worked on Nickelodeon and wanted to do something different to freshen up the podcast which I had feared had gotten stale. I had posted the newest podcast episodes' analytics and saw that the views were hitting the minimum numbers and that I had gained no subscribers. Since then, it has only gotten worse. 

First, there was the Hamilton podcast that Arun and I did in honor of the play being released on Disney+. We actually saw the play live around March during my spring break from school where Arun and I spent a whole week together in Florida doing many activities together in Orlando, St. Augustine, Boca Raton, Deerfield Beach, and Miami with our last activity was going to see the play, going to a Peruvian restaurant called Ceviche, and then walking around the Miami Bayside Marketplace. We loved the play and thought it would be great if we shared our thoughts on it. Sadly, as of the posting of this blog post, it only has 143 views and 0 subscribers gained.

Then, there were the interviews with actors Eric Roberts and Niketa Calame and actor/musician Blake "ShadyVox" Swift. I can understand the low views of both Eric and Niketa despite Liam and I having a great job interviewing them. With Eric, I had to limit my viewers 18 and up due to him promoting a device that helps men with erectile dysfunction. As for Niketa, most people wouldn't know who she is other than playing Young Nala in the 1994 version of The Lion King. Because of that, 2 subscribers were gone. As for Blake, it only had gotten 175 views despite getting more likes and more comments. I'm very happy to get a hold of someone whose work I've enjoyed for over a decade. But sadly, it seems that most people didn't feel the same way.

The podcast episodes that had gotten the most views recently, unsurprisingly, were the Casual Chats episode of Dora and the Lost City of Gold and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the Roald Dahl Retrospective. With Dora, it's a Nickelodeon property, which a lot of people tune into since that's what I've been known for talking about for almost a decade. As for Charlie, it was the 15th anniversary of the movie's premiere. But the channel still lost 2 subscribers from it, so maybe they didn't like Arun and I's defense for the film, I don't know. 

 

I remember when I interviewed Mathew Klickstein, the author of Slimed! An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age on Casual Chats back in 2013 and we were talking about how Nickelodeon had changed so much compared to its more beloved era during the late 80's and 90's. He had said "It's like when you're a kid and you go to your favorite Italian restaurant. But then you go back to the same building 20 years later and it's now serving Chinese food". So, I wonder to all my listeners of the podcasts and followers on the YouTube channel? Have I become Chinese food? Have I gotten to the point in which, despite me not wanting to go stale on my content posting the same topics over and over and over again, you wanted that same content all along and haven't been committed to the new stuff? I even did a poll on my social media pages noticing that the premiere views were getting no viewers and the majority of you stated was because you didn't care about the topic or person I was talking to. I know some people are going to say "Don't worry about what people say, do what you like to do." I agree, but I also want to keep my listeners and viewers happy as well. Kevin and I did Old School Lane back in 2011 because we wanted to talk about our favorite shows and movies from our childhoods during a time in which the country was going through The Great Recession and we were going through our own personal struggles. We needed an escape and so did a lot of other people, so we decided to post our discussions based on things we liked. I want to continue doing that. But maybe, people aren't into that anymore? 

The content creation game has changed so many times over the years from doing let's plays to ranting reviews to reactions to things to analytical discussions to clickbait-y topics to cooking videos to livestreams, it's hard to keep up. Maybe what I'm doing isn't working because I've fallen so behind the times and other fantastic content creators like Rebeltaxi, Saberspark, CellSpex, ToonrificTariq, Pop Arena, and others are doing similar things that I was doing more consistently and with better editing skills. In reality, I don't know what to do anymore. As I'm writing this, I may consider 2021 to be the last year for Old School Lane and maybe pursue in other things. I do have a handful of projects I want to complete and afterwards, I may need to focus on what's really important. Kevin quit Old School Lane a long time ago to focus on his career and get married. Maybe I should do the same and move on. We'll see. 

But for now, the 150th episode of Casual Chats is approaching and I'm allowing YOU to choose a topic for me to cover. Let me know in the comments below on what you would like to hear. Thank you so much for reading this long post. I do appreciate it. Hope to see you around Old School Lane soon.

-Patricia

Old School Lane Update: June 2020

Hey everyone, Patricia here. I just wanted to give an update on everything that has happened over the past month since the last update blog post. Click here to check it out. I've been really busy doing online classes this summer starting off with accounting and beginning Spanish. If I'm not doing that, then I'm helping my school with various media projects or helping my family out. I'm saying this because content has been going pretty slow here for Old School Lane. I haven't been able to post an episode of Old School Lane Reads in weeks, I haven't done a video in 5 months, and I haven't appeared in Live & Wired for almost two months. While I have been posting new episodes of Casual Chats about Father Ted and Scoob! as well as featuring interviews from TV writer Darrell Vickers and Ryan James, Jeff MacIntyre, and Melissa Disney for their online webseries The Quarantine Bunch, my viewers don't really seem to care about most of the content.

When it comes to Old School Lane Reads and the book club, they've reached less than 100 views with people leaving the video less than 5 minutes after it starts. I'm not sure this is what everyone wants despite putting out a poll with the majority of the votes going to Things I Can't Explain. Until I catch up with my reading and the book club with Jim, I'm probably going to put it on hold since pretty much no one is watching.

Here at Old School Lane, we cover various topics from movies, TV shows, video games, and more. Our Roald Dahl Retrospective on James and the Giant Peach and Matilda have done pretty well with views and comments, but Casual Chats has not. The only exception recently was Scoob! with special guests Taylor "Whyboy" Wyatt and Nero Angelus from ToonGrin since Scooby-Doo is a popular franchise and their movie had just came out in streaming services. People seemed to enjoy that podcast even with its 2 hour length.

Overtime, I wanted to cover some more varied shows since I was getting burned out with talking about Nickelodeon or Disney over and over and over again. Plus, I felt that maybe Old School Lane was becoming one-note with its content and maybe I should shake things up a bit with covering shows I never saw before or interview people that I respect that weren't the usual former Nickelodeon star from the 90's. Boy, did that backfire badly.

The Father Ted podcast got the minimum amount of views with people leaving at the 5 minute mark. Comments were low and no subscribers were gained from it. 

Then there's the Darrell Vickers interview which got the minimum amount of view with people leaving less than 3 minutes in. There were no comments and no subscribers were gained. 

Finally, there's the podcast I posted on YouTube yesterday which was the interview with Ryan James, Jeff MacIntyre, and Melissa Disney on The Quarantine Bunch which got very low views with people leaving 5 minutes in with no subscribers gained. To be fair, it's a fairly new video so maybe things will change, but at this point in time, I doubt it.

My subscriber count has been very slow. I had gained 7,000 subscribers in January with the current subscriber count being 7,550. I gained 550 subscribers in 6 months which is pretty sad. What made me feel even sadder was a comment I received from someone that said "When was the last time you made a video?" even though I've been posting content on YouTube for the past month. Here at Old School Lane we're all about posting things that makes us happy and (hoping) it'll make you happy. I'm sorry that what I've been posting over the next few months hasn't gotten my viewers coming by the droves, but I just wanted to try something new. I have a few more podcasts I've recorded and scripts I've written and after that, I may need to take a quick break to refocus on myself and for Old School Lane. Thank you for those who've been sticking around. Hope to see you around soon. Take care.

-Patricia

Old School Lane Update: 5/19/2020

Hey everyone, Patricia here. Wow, it's been a while since I've been on this blog site. For those who have followed Old School Lane exclusively on this blog, I have NOT stopped doing online content. Far from it. For those who aren't following me on my other social media, I have been archiving Casual Chats, We're in Between, PixMix, DreamMachine, Old School Lane Interviews, Nick Jukebox, The Roald Dahl Retrospective, and other miscellaneous podcasts on Anchor for the past 5 months. I also upload new episodes of Casual Chats and Old School Lane Interviews on Anchor before going on YouTube. Click on the link here to check it out Anchor or any of the other podcast streaming sites to listen to the classics as well as the new episodes.



Then there's the YouTube channel where my cohosts and I have continued to do podcasts and videos. My most recent uploads were the Casual Chats on A Goofy Movie, An Extremely Goofy Movie, and Father Ted, the premiere of Old School Lane Reads and the Old School Lane Book Club reading Things I Can't Explain: A Clarissa Novel written by Mitchell Kreigman, and Parts 1 and 2 of The Pros and Cons of Hey Arnold: The Jungle Movie. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do so. We're almost at 8,000 subscribers. It would be great if we can reach 10,000 subscribers at the end of the year, but 8,000 would be a great feat to reach.

For those who have been following me on my social media, then you've noticed that I haven't been posting online content lately. Well, I've been very preoccupied with many things. First off, I've been taking summer courses online to continue getting my classes done for school so that I can graduate. Second off, I've had a lot of other commitments that has been taking up my time so I haven't been sitting down on my laptop writing or editing audio. Finally, and here's the biggest one, I have had severe technical issues on my laptop where I've been doing my online content over the last few years.

For those who have seen me trying to do a livestream Q&A or livestreaming one of the Jackbox Games, you've noticed major slowdown, crashes, and errors where I had to restart my stream to get things going. Well, everyone, I would like to introduce you to the laptop that I was working with for the last 7 years.

It was barely hanging on by a thread due to the broken screen and loose wiring. Then there's the fact that I live in small town that doesn't have great connection and tends to have severe winds and rains during certain seasons. It tends to chug at a slow rate whenever I turn it on, I have bad video and audio connections whenever I'm on a livestream talking to someone, and sometimes the computer freezes on a certain site. If it wasn't for the fact that it has a touchscreen, the situation would be much, much worse. I'm very thankful it has survived producing over 70 episodes of Casual Chats, every episode of We're in Between, every video I ever posted, all the livestreams, and other miscellaneous content. But it's time to move on.

With my birthday approaching, my wonderful co-host Arun Mehta from The Arun Mehta Show gave me a new laptop that is more powerful than my old one. I'm very thankful for this gift as it'll help me with producing more stuff efficiently as well as other uses. I'm in the process of transferring my files to this new laptop and maybe fixing the screen to put away in case of emergencies. 

Another major transition I'm planning on doing is a new website for Old School Lane. I'm very appreciative for what Blogger has done over the past 7 years hosting all my blogs and videos, but again, it's time to move on. More details on the new website will be coming soon.

That's it for now! Thank you so much for being incredibly patient (what else is new?) with me as I transition with new hardware, my online classes, and other endeavors. Hope to see you around soon. Take care.

-Patricia

Old School Lane Update: August 13, 2019

Hey everyone, Patricia here. It's been a very hectic summer content wise. Arun and I have officially watched every single DreamWorks film on DreamMachine, I've been chipping away with my newest video for All That Month, and had just started a brand new monthly podcast with my former Nickelodeon Slimecast Podcast co-host Zee El looking back on Rugrats from season to season called Rugrats: View from the Crib. There's also some personal struggles, but I'm not going to go into that.

Tomorrow, I'll be going back to school as a sophomore and will be mostly focused on homework and other activities. My first year of school after graduating from college the first time over 10 years ago has been a combination of exciting, grueling, amazing, exhausting, and an eye-opening experience. I have made a lot of friends and had participated in a lot of media gigs for the school. I am at a much better place than I was over a year ago where I was working at a nowhere job feeling depressed and defeated at myself. Watch Should We Say Goodbye to Halcyon Days? to get a bit of an understanding of how lost I was to where I was going to go in my life. Maybe when I turn 40, I could make a sequel of Halcyon Days to where my life would be. I believe I would be a lot more stable and happier once I graduate from school, the relationship with my loved one goes to the next level, and my new goal of becoming healthier by losing weight succeeds. We'll see what happens.

The Old School Lane YouTube channel has reached over 5,200 subscribers, which I cannot thank all of you enough for your amazing support. I know that I promised all of you guys a special prize giveaway when I had reached 5,000. I'm sorry, but I've been severely low on cash lately. But once I save up some money, I will get some very special items for the event. Old School Lane doesn't have any sponsors or are associated with any major company, so any little amount of money I make, I use it to support my family. I wish I could give one of you guys a really awesome prize like a Nintendo Switch, but I can't. Even after doing Old School Lane for almost 8 years, we're still very low on the radar. We've come a very long way from where we first started, but nowhere near at the million subscriber milestone. But I'm hoping that things will pick up real soon.

As for upcoming plans for Old School Lane, Remington Keyes from The Nerd Talk Podcast and I had just posted a new episode of Casual Chats on Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling, the newest Nickelodeon special on Netflix. He and I will cover Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus this weekend and Dora and the Lost City of Gold next weekend. 

Arun and I will be doing our top 5 best and worst DreamWorks films, talking about the newest film Abominable, and a few other bonus episodes until we conclude DreamMachine until next year's release of Trolls: World Tour. After that, we'll be planning on doing another podcast series that'll be coming out this September, but it will not be another animation studio. It's going to be looking back on a series of films written by a particular author in honor of a film coming out next year. There's also an in depth analysis video on Hey Arnold: The Jungle Movie that I've been hard at work at for almost a year that I hope to have out this October, the premiere of Heroic Gem or Junk this September (yes, I know that I've been saying that over the past 3 years, but I mean it this time), and something special for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have a lot of plans for Old School Lane, but just not enough time or resources to get it done. 

I'm well aware that some people have been fed up with my podcasts and want to see more videos. Some have even moved elsewhere to get what they're looking for, which is completely fair. That's the YouTube game nowadays. If you don't post the content that people want to see on a consistent basis, they leave. My number of views on my podcasts are nowhere compared to the number of views from my videos, unless I cover a popular topic such as I did recently for Rocko's Modern Life: Static Cling. I just want to say from the bottom of my heart that I am really sorry. I hope that someday I will make the content you really enjoy watching, but I hope that you'll be a little bit more patient and enjoy the stuff I'm posting now. I'm just as passionate about it and I've had so much fun with my co-hosts talking about all these great topics. 

That's all for now. Hope to see you around Old School Lane soon. Thanks for reading.

-Patricia

Patricia's Hamacon 2019 Experience

Hey everyone, Patricia here. It's been a very, very long while since I posted something on this blog site. Sorry about that. It's been a hectic summer. But I will update it again soon with some backlog podcasts and videos. In the meantime, I will talk about my experience with my first convention in Alabama called Hamacon. It was a very small convention compared to the massive ones I attended in Florida, but I still had a blast experiencing a group of like minded people gathering together with their love of anime, video games, and comic books. Here are some of the people I met at the con.

Micah Solusod and Apphia Yu.

Micah and Apphia are voice actors who have worked in many anime and video games. Micah is well known for his portrayals as Soul from Soul Eater, Midnight from Black Butler, Gakushu from Assassination Classroom, Tagoma from Dragon Ball Super, Yuri from Yuri on Ice, and many more. Apphia is known for her portrayals as Maki from Dragon Ball Super, Laki from Fairy Tail, Hat Kid from A Hat in Time, and many more. They were really nice and complimented my Azumanga Daioh shirt saying that it was "pretty cool". I had gotten their autographs as well as the first issue of their graphic novel Ties that Bind.

 

Chuck Huber

Chuck Huber is a voice actor very well known for his roles as Android 17 and Emperor Pilaf in Dragon Ball Z and Super, Hiei from Yu Yu Hakusho, Shou Tucker from Full Metal Alchemist, and many more. I had even got his autograph as Hiei, which was awesome.

Tiffany Grant

Tiffany Grant is a voice actress mostly known as the voice of Asuka from Neon Genesis: Evangelion. However, she has had many other roles such as Misaki in Excel Saga, Marta in Full Metal Alchemist, Nojiko in One Piece, and Kaorin in Azumanga Daioh. She had recognized my shirt and had even autographed my DVD. She was very sweet and talked about her enjoyment of voicing a minor character of my favorite Japanese slice of life anime of all time.

Other fun things I did in the convention was playing Cards Against Humanity with 10 people coming up with hilarious, yet wrong answers to make people uncomfortable yet laugh, a few panels with the voice actors, played a few video games, played some classic arcade games courtesy of Pints & Pixels, and looked at the amazing art work and merchandise available at the artist's alley tables. One of my favorite moments in the convention was seeing a Pikachu parade led by a T-rex. Yes. It's as awesome as it sounds.

Just when I thought that I found a new convention to go to yearly, I had found out that my first Hamacon was going to be my last. The people behind the convention had decided to conclude it due to burnout, being busy with other projects, and more. It's sad because I had a great time despite the convention being small. It's true that there are other conventions around the Alabama area. Too bad that the nearest convention is in Birmingham, which is an hour and a half away from where I live. But that's okay because next year's event, Kami-Con, is the state's biggest convention and has some awesome events and guests. Maybe I'll try again with getting a panel since my last attempt failed. We'll see. 

That's it for now. I'll be updating this blog site and announce some new stuff to come. Until then, hope to see you around Old School Lane soon. 

-Patricia

A Lookback into Super Metroid: My Favorite Video of All Time

For those who've followed me for a while, you will know that one of my favorite video game franchises is the Metroid series. Out of the 10+ games that has been released, Super Metroid is my favorite. Not only that, but it's my favorite video game of all time. As of yesterday, Super Metroid has celebrated its 25th anniversary in Japan with the North American release being on April 18th. My introduction of the series is a simple one: when I was a kid living in Philadelphia with my mom and sister after my parents separated with my dad living in New York. Every Friday afternoon after class, if we behaved well and did our assignments with good grades, my teacher had a 30 minute "free time" where we could watch a movie, read a book, do arts and crafts, or play her NES with a handful of video games such as Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Battletoads & Double Dragon, Yoshi, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, and Metroid. 



I tried Metroid after playing the other games and found it really cool, but got lost really quickly. Shortly after, when my sister and I would be finished with school, we would go to my aunt's house until my mom would pick us up after work. My cousin had just gotten a Super Nintendo from his dad and included were Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Mortal Kombat II, Aladdin, and Super Metroid. I had recognized the main protagonist of Metroid when I first saw the now iconic image on the cartridge and wanted to play it right away. But instead we played Super Mario World and Aladdin instead. Later on, I eventually played the game and really liked it a lot. The atmosphere was foreboding, creepy, and eerie matched with its music. The different sections of Planet Zebes has improved a lot from the NES and the SNES, but was familiar, and the weapons and power ups were awesome. However, similar to Metroid, I had gotten lost after wandering around for a few minutes. After that, I would play the other SNES games and had more fun with its simpler level design.



Believe it or not, I wouldn't get back into Metroid and Super Metroid until I was in high school around the early 2000's, when Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion were the newest games in the series. I had learned about emulation and ROMS of classic NES and SNES games and downloaded it on the bulky family computer with slow, slow DSL. Reintroducing myself to Metroid for the first time in years, I had realized how far video games had come, especially since I had owned a PlayStation 2 playing games such as Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter, and Sly Cooper. I thought that the game was harder than I remembered, the gameplay felt very limited, and the graphics were simple and limited. However, I was able to maneuver and find my way around the sections much easier. I was able to travel to Crateria and the early parts of Norfair without a walkthrough. I found the morph ball, missiles, energy tanks, long beam, and jump boots with ease. However, at Kraid's stage, that's when I got super lost. I wouldn't beat Metroid until college after I completed my first playthrough of Metroid: Zero Mission. It would be the last time I would play the original because I have since replaced with its remake. I took a break and then uploaded Super Metroid and found out that it was much, much better than I remembered it.



The introduction and the Ceres space station had gotten me immediately hooked. I had gotten drawn in to the recap of the first two games, Samus wandering around the space station with the dead scientists, and the battle of Ridley where he would kidnap the last Metroid and return back to their lair on Planet Zebes. After landing in Zebes with the rain falling down, Samus enters back to Tourian where she fought Mother Brain. The shattered glass dome where Mother Brain was at is still empty, the room is filled with fog, and is crawling creatures on the walls. Even as someone who wasn't able to defeat Mother Brain at the time and didn't understand the context of the room, it filled me with a sense of dread that stood with me as one of my favorite moments of the game. This was probably one of my first introductions of subtle storytelling where the music and atmosphere was more than enough to tell the story as oppose to cutscenes with voice acting that was becoming more common. It was even more clever when after getting the morph ball and missiles at the same room as the original Metroid, returning to Mother Brain's room is now filled with Space Pirates because the light beacon by the elevator activated and let the antagonists know that Samus was in Zebes looking for the baby Metroid.



Looking around the sections of Zebes, I had gotten hooked with the amazing soundtrack done by the talented Kenji Yamamoto, who would become the main composer of the Metroid series afterwards doing the music for Fusion, Zero Mission, the Prime series, Hunters, Pinball, and Samus Returns. It had since became my background music every time I would work on a video script. While Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka is a great composer and did some iconic songs for the first game such as the intro, Crateria, Kraid's theme, and the outro, Yamamoto just nailed it with the Super Metroid soundtrack. There's a great mixture of quiet, subdue music mixed with catchy, head rocking music. The creepy intro, the story recap, Crateria, Brinstar, Maradia, the wrecked ship, Norfair, Tourian, and outro are all amazing. Even around the early 2000's when video game music had started using orchestral music with real instruments, I had gotten a bigger appreciation of the music Yamamoto was able to craft with limited resources. I would highly recommend to check out this interview alongside with Yoshio Sakamoto, the writer of the Metroid series, discussing about the making of Super Metroid. 

The bosses are also incredibly memorable. The first battle with Ridley is a great introduction to the boss fight that Samus would have with him later on. The 2nd battle at Norfair is fantastic as a challenge even after collecting enough missiles, energy tanks, beams, and spare tanks. This would also be the introduction of Ridley's theme song that would carry on later in the Metroid Prime series, Fusion, Zero Mission, and even the Super Smash Bros. series. It wouldn't be until I was in college when I was discovered the Metroid manga that came out to promote Metroid: Zero Mission and learned on why Ridley and Samus were enemies. Ridley was the one responsible for killing Samus' parents and left her as an orphan. Samus was then raised by the Chozo, a group of alien birds who were warriors and scientists and became their prized warrior. She would meet up with Ridley again in Zebes and starts remembering who he was. When trying to attack him, she suffers from PTSD and anxiety with Ridley escaping when Samus' friends approach her. The Chozo sees her shaking and tells her to cry after years of holding her emotions back to function the Power Suit. This works out a billion times better than the train wreck scene of Metroid: Other M for many reasons. Samus was 14 years old when she meets up with Ridley again so she wasn't the badass she would later become. Ridley talked about how after killing her mother, he ate her to restore the explosion damage Samus' father caused when blowing up the spaceship. That's right, Ridley talks in the manga and he's a ruthless, evil, intelligent bastard. He really showcases himself as the ruler of the Space Pirates until Mother Brain comes along after betraying the Chozo. Samus' 3rd encounter with Ridley is when she goes to Zebes for the first time in years to stop Kraid, Ridley, and Mother Brain. It's beyond satisfying and makes the Metroid: Other M moment an absolute fail. Seriously, that scene sucks so hard! This scene is the true reintroduction of Samus and Ridley.



The other villains in Super Metroid are no slouch. When I first saw Kraid's full size, I was beyond shocked and amazed! Around the time I played this level, I had just defeated the giant fire boss in Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy where Jak shot yellow ego for him to drop a giant rock at him. I found the Kraid boss so much more impressive because Samus fought him more directly. Plus, the buildup to get to the boss fight was fantastic: the music, the mini Kraids that were the same size Kraid was in the original Metroid, and the dead Galactic Federation soldier. While the boss battle is really easy, it's a great experience. Plus, you get the Varia suit afterwards. It's great!



The new bosses such as Crocomire and Phantoon are great additions to the series. Again, they are easy if you get enough missiles and energy tanks, but man, they're memorable. Crocomire is slowly charging Samus with spikes in the back and his only weakness is shooting missiles or a charged beam in his mouth. With every shot in his mouth, he would take a step back until he would fall into a pool of acid where he would disintegrate into bones which is beyond disturbing, even in 1994 standards. Phantoon is from the wrecked ship where all of the enemies are the ghosts of the ship crew who died. This is a similar fate to the wrecked ship from Super Mario World where the manual states that the Boos are the spirits of the crew from an airship from Super Mario Bros. 3 who died. Sure, fighting ghosts may sound strange, but they would carry this in the Metroid Prime series with the Chozo ghosts or even Metroid: Fusion where the bosses are the remnants of the X Parasite after killing the original host and copying their body. Then there's Draygon from Maradia where you could easily defeat it if you shoot the electrical spheres open and shock it with the grapple beam. But it's a pretty cool looking boss and get the very useful space jump, but it's very somber when its babies take the body away.



After defeating Ridley, Kraid, Phantoon, and Draygon, Samus goes down to Tourian again where she would confront the baby Metroid which has grown to a gigantic size becoming the Super Metroid. When the Super Metroid hears Samus' alarm reaching low health, it realizes it was attacking its "mother" and goes away until it saves Samus from almost being killed by Mother Brain. Mother Brain's battle is, hands down, the best battle in the game because of its scale and tense fight. It looks like a rehash of the original fight from Metroid, but takes a complete twist revealing its true form and it's terrifying, ugly, and threatening. When the Super Metroid drains Mother Brain's energy to give to Samus, Mother Brain wakes up and shoots the Super Metroid until it explodes. Then Samus gets the hyper beam, kills Mother Brain, the timer goes off, and the whole planet explodes. Wow, just wow! Zebes is gone! While it would be referenced in Metroid Prime and Super Smash Bros., Zebes would never return in the series ever again.



While I do love this game, I do have some issues with it. First off, the controls.While I'm used to it, it's weird to go back to the old SNES controls when I'm used to the Zero Mission, Fusion, and Prime series controls where it's a lot more streamlined with aiming, jumping, wall jumping, and morph ball bombing. Also, power ups such as the X-ray scope and spare tanks were pretty unnecessary. I almost never used it and sometimes forgotten that I even had it. I liked spare tanks in Mega Man X where it was needed for a pinch when I was fighting the Mavericks and Sigma, but I didn't need it for Super Metroid as much when I had reached at least 8 tanks and go around the game just fine. The X-ray scope may be good for newcomers who need help to find out where to morph bomb a wall, but as a veteran like me, I like exploring and learning about my surroundings. I think that the spiritual successor to the X-ray scope, the scan visor from the Metroid Prime series did much better to incorporate it to the game. Another minor complaint is that there are some forgettable bosses in the game. The Spore Spawn on Brinstar is so boring and is the worst boss in the game and the Botwoon was just Phantoon, but going inside the holes in the wall, and Crocomire where its weakness was around its head. It's pretty forgettable. Then there's the Super Missiles, which is a separate item as oppose to being stacked to the regular missiles in the later games. That's a much better choice since they did that to the beams in Super Metroid, Metroid: Fusion, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption making it easier to manage.

Those are my only issues of the game. I love this game so much. Yes, it's true that conceptually the later games refine and improve Super Metroid, I have many reasons why I love it out of all the games in the series. Metroid Prime is my 2nd favorite matching the closest in music, atmosphere, bosses, and solid levels to Super Metroid, but the game goes into a complete halt when Samus has to look for the Chozo Artifacts in order to get into the room where Metroid Prime is. That mission sucks and was not needed at all! This isn't The Legend of Zelda. It's Metroid! Anyway, back on topic, Super Metroid is a groundbreaking and influential game that many has copied from: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Shadow Complex, Strider, Alien: Isolation, Guacamelee, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Hollow Night, and more. Samus Arun has become an iconic female protagonist that would lead the way to characters like Chun-Li, Cammy, Lara Croft, and more. Believe it or not, the Japanese don't really care about the series compared to the Americans and the series' game sales are pretty low. That's why there's a lot more Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon games than Metroid games. Metroid fans may be smaller than Mario and Zelda's fan base, but they're just as dedicated. The music has been remixed as many times as Mario, Zelda, and Final Fantasy, the fan sites are just as dedicated as a Zelda fan site with the confusing 3 split timelines, and then there's the hard work that Milton "DoctorM64" Gausti and his crew did to working on a fan game of Metroid 2: Return of Samus for 10 years because Nintendo wouldn't do it at the time. Another Metroid 2: Remake to Samus Returns is a fantastic game because of the love and passion that they did to give hardcore fans the game the series deserved, especially since it was released on Metroid's 25th anniversary and Nintendo released Metroid Prime: Federation Force, a game the fans didn't ask for and has been pushed to the wayside.



It seems now Nintendo is caring for Metroid again. Metroid: Samus Returns, their remake of Metroid 2: Return of Samus was released on the 3DS and Metroid Prime 4 will be coming out for the Nintendo Switch. It was far into development until Nintendo made the announcement that they were going to scrap their work and redo it again from scratch because "it didn't fit the quality of Metroid". That's fantastic to hear that Nintendo will take a risk like that since fans have been waiting for another game for a long time. But give it time and I'm sure it'll be great and hopefully give Metroid the same popularity that it got around the 2000's. But only time will tell. So yes, Super Metroid is my favorite game of all time. The subtle storytelling, bosses, levels, weapons, and music are incredible. Sure, there are some things that have been improved in later games, but I still love it, warts and all. I'm hoping for a Super Metroid remake on the Nintendo Switch. That would be amazing! So happy 25th anniversary, Super Metroid! 



If you want to hear more information on the Metroid franchise from me, then check out my favorite episode of Casual Chats where I talked about the series with Jim Bevan and Lily from Dom and the Chapel of Church.

You can also check out my lifestream of playing Super Metroid during Metroid Month! 

Finally, you can check out my interview with Milton about Another Metroid 2 Remake.

That's it for now! Tune in around April where I will showcase my next themed month of videos. Hope to see you around Old School Lane soon.

-Patricia