Trivia Time!

Shigeru Miyamoto stated that the name "Metroid" was chosen in honor of American lawyer Metroid Smith, who defended Nintendo in the Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd. case.

During the case, Miyamoto paid Smith a visit, who took Miyamoto on the NYC Metro, and then to a Mets game. The serendipity of these Met-based names left Miyamoto no choice, and the word "Metroid" was trademarked that very afternoon.

While trying to find his way back to his hotel after the baseball game, Miyamoto found himself lost in the metro system, encountering terrifying street performers throughout his journey. This underground exploration would inspire the gameplay of the Metroid series, and the game's bosses would each be based on the most upsetting performers that Miyamoto fled from.

Kraid in particular was based on a large man with a rickety green sousaphone, which shot screws and bolts out whenever the man blew too hard into his instrument.

Stay tuned for more Trivia Time segments in the near future!

Everyone knows Mario is cool as fuck. But who knows what he's thinking? Who knows why he touches flowers? And why do we think about him as fondly as we think of the mystical (nonexistent?) Dr Pepper? Perchance.

I believe it was Kant who said "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." Mario exhibits experience by tushing flowes all day, but he exhibits theory by stating "Lets-a go!" Keep it up, baby!

When Mario leaves his place of safety to grab a flowey, he knows that he may Die. And yet, for a man who can purchase lives with money, a life becomes a mere store of value. A tax that can be paid for, much as a rich man feels any law with a fine is a price. We think of Mario as a hero, but he is simply a one percenter of a more privileged variety. The lifekind. Perchance.

lemme just start by saying that i have zero nostalgia for this game at all. i played it as a kid, but always gravitated more towards platinum because that game had infernape in it. it literally took me fourteen years, two cartridges and three save files to finally beat this game, and i gotta say. i really didn't like it all that much.

it hits this sort of weird middle ground for me where it doesn't have all the bells and whistles (aka things that made the game actually feel quality) of the DS games onwards, such as the phys/special split and being able to run indoors, but it's also more complex than gens 1 and 2, which i can excuse being shit cause they were running on like. less than a megabyte of data. so even though it looked nice and i love the art design, music and spritework, god damn do i dislike this game mechanically.

idk if i sound like a massive zoomer here or what, but putting together teams just doesn't feel good here thanks to no phys/special split and having to constantly keep track of which moves go to which stats. there's a bigger movepool variety which i'm very thankful for, and it's not like gen 1/2 where you're taking water gun and vine whip into the elite four cause there are zero other moves. combine that with single use TMs (which i've never been a fan of, even if they were a product of their time) and it feels like you're constantly grappling with putting together movesets and teams that actually function.

now that i think about it, actually. i think most of my issues with this game come from the generations after it (which i'm much more used to) just being better mechanically. like, i don't think this game is terrible! hoenn is a pretty good region aesthetically. it still stands out as a game setting 20 years later. plus the soundtrack is great, and i love a ton of the designs from gen 3. maybe this is just one of those games where i'm sad i don't have any nostalgia associated with it when everyone else does, and i can only look at this from the lens of someone who's a massive snob about RPGs. sorry! i dunno! goddamn this is the worst review i've ever written for this site

cheesing wallace with toxic shedinja was really funny though.

"Unfortunate" doesn't begin to describe my series, this game rewards blind luck and nothing else, I am beyond convinced at this point. After getting completely tooled by scheduling with my opponent changing times on me last minute and refusing to provide confirmation prior to the day of the match as to play times, losing this way somehow felt even worse than I had thought possible. My preparation was superior, my play was superior, and I lost, so I don't see a reason to continue engaging in an activity where what is within my control is overwhelmingly outweighed by what is not.

I am done with competitive Pokemon, and you won't get a fond farewell. This community is infected to its roots with a degenerative disease that grows stronger over time but stops short of killing its host. Tournaments used to have a competitive spirit at their heart, this has been transplanted and replaced with an artificial organ that feeds on vitriol and mockery from insecure little boys that heckle by the sidelines and tear each other to shreds over scraps of attention. The environment we fostered has trapped us all like this in a vicious cycle, and escaping it requires acceptance of the harshest reality we all scramble to explain away, that none of the countless straining efforts we put ourselves through here will ever amount to one single shining glimmer of significance. I would make this the end, but World Cup is still ongoing, and I would never leave so many great friends out to dry, so I'll suffer through a few more games for them.

One last thing before I leave you all to react with disdain, ridicule, and self-righteous fervor, before you do everything in your power to minimize my words and thoughts, box them up and shove them to some cobwebbed corner of your memory, and hope they disappear forever as a stain on your finite time ground to dust. From this moment on, nothing you say matters to me. The foulest insults you hurl with intent to wound will calmly settle at the earth before my feet, and the venom you spit will bring all the pain of a warm summer breeze. You are less than anything you can conceive, while I carry on, brimming with joy distilled from detachment.

I've played 3 to 4 hours, so like 15 to 20% of the game I believe. It feels unfair to give it a score, but it's enough to give my thoughts.


I was kinda excited for this one after playing the demo some time ago, and this continued during the beginning of the game proper. The 1st battle I thought I was hooked - you throw a "Soaked" status at the boss, send her into the future, and that becomes "Rusted", a pretty interesting idea!

Sadly, that's it. The game does nothing else with its core mechanic. In fact, the time manipulation thing soon proved to be just a gimmick.

I was hit by the realization I wasn't getting what I wanted from this game in one particular boss fight, this robot thing with two arms. Simply put, none of the mechanics of the game work in this fight. Sending the arms to the past or future does nothing at all., not even their HP changes. All you can do is, when the core comes out... soak it, then rust it in the future...

The two arms do this charging attack, and none of my ideas to disrupt it worked. Sending either arm to the past/future, so maybe that part of the mechanism is broken/not finished? Nope. The past version is even called "prototype", but that doesn't mean a damn thing,

You can "pass" your turn, and trade it with whoever is next. Okay, so maybe I put myself in between each arm's turn? Nothing.

One of them was paralyzed by my thunder attack. Will that do it? It didn't. All I could do was tank the damage, or try to kill one of the arms before they executed it. That's it.

I was flabbergasted. The whole fight was just a matter of having bigger numbers than your opponent, which is the case for most RPGs, plenty of which I enjoy - e.g. Suikoden 1 is of the most shallow games I can think of, but I've enjoyed it.

But Cris Tales pacing isn't compatible with its complexity, as this game takes too long for anything to happen. Battles are much longer than they should, when you're not really doing anything beyond "hit it with your best stuff". Again, the future and past stuff is completely meaningless.

It's painful to say all of this, because the game looks great, but I honest to God think they spent all their resources on the art department, neglecting the core mechanics almost entirely.

It's very much possible I'm being super unfair to the game, and it does use all of its mechanics later on, but I find that very hard to believe.

If you finished it and this does happen, let me know. I'd love to be wrong!