I think what fans value about the GameCube is its cruelty. Not presenting a challenge with fair parameters and sending you off to give it your best shot, but tripping you up and hammering at your skull every step of the way. The warping, shifting eyesore levels in Super Monkey Ball, or seeing thirty Pikmin fall off a cliff and destroy your entire playthrough, or every aspect of F-Zero GX's design. It's a hostile format, and it's unlikely you'll accomplish much on there without becoming emotional. Double Dash is absolutely the GameCube's Mario Kart.

This bastard game.

There's malice in its code. Opponents can out-drift your red shells, while attempting to nullify an opponent's red shell by dropping an item almost never works. If an opponent bumps into you, your items are gone. There are traps and narrow, winding walkways that are tricky to drift over, and if there's a single surprise element like an opposing racer with a speed boost, or a rogue obstacle, you can guarantee that you're going in the drink and getting your items taken away from you. This is anecdotal, but I don't hear many people say they loved Double Dash as a kid. This was the game for college-aged competitors, with players going outside afterwards to swing punches.

The pain comes from the fact that Double Dash isn't actually hard to play. It's a fairly simple Mario Kart, lacking the coins and ramp tricks that fans of the newer games have developed instinctive responses to. If you're lucky, winning a race doesn't feel like a big deal. Not something you had to put a lot of effort into, and quite often it goes that way. It's when you're going for those Gold Trophies and 100% completion status where they'll throw in the last-second 8th place finishes.

The game's tone seems designed to irritate. The origin of Baby Park and "HI I'M DAISY!!". Garishly saturated colours, and constant noise from co-pilots switching positions. Hell as a theme park. The bitterness in your Spice Orange.

When you win, though, you are the bastard. The world's worst man. Death is coming, and has been earned. Enjoy these fleeting moments on your throne.

I dearly love Double Dash.

Before release, Metroid Dread was pitched to the world as the conclusion of a “five-story arc that has been going on for 35 years” although specifically not the “ultimate end.” Speaking to CNET, series producer Yoshio Sakamoto stated that “as long as the character Samus exists, I think her adventure will continue.”

What a cruel fate.

I started my own journey with 2004’s Metroid: Zero Mission, the Game Boy Advance remake of the original 1986 genre-establishing classic. In it, bounty hunter Samus Aran is hired by a galactic federation to eradicate stolen biological samples from a group of space pirates. The samples are in fact creatures known as the titular “metroids,” a horrific jellyfish-esque parasite that feeds on the literal lifeforce of anything it comes into contact with. Throughout the game, Samus squares off against recurring series bosses like the big lizard Kraid and the big winged lizard Ridley, culminating in the first destruction of the space pirate leader Mother Brain. Sure!

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about Metroid as a franchise is that despite its very 1980s B-sci fi premise, the sense of atmosphere is palpable in its minimalist environments and sparse sound design. The strength of the games is perhaps best highlighted by the frequent choice to drop music entirely in some areas, leaving you with only the sound of Samus’ feet as she wanders with aimless purpose through metal corridors and forgotten tunnel systems. When the ambiance clicks in these moments, players feel the isolation inherent to the journey and settings therein — we get to experience the emotion beneath the armor, and that emotion is tense dissolution. Without the need for dialogue or explicit story, fans of Metroid have a firm grasp on who Samus Aran is as a person through an almost imperceptible excellence in the cohesion between art direction, sound design, and gameplay.

But to accept our read of Samus Aran as a person is to accept that for 35 years, she’s been through hell. As sequels to the original, Metroid II: Return of Samus, Super Metroid, and Metroid Fusion see our hero facing off against the same threats over and over and over again in the pursuit of her original goal: destroy the metroids. Even by the end of 2002’s Fusion, this goal has merely evolved slightly, though it still remained wholly unaccomplished. What it must be like to be trapped in such a cyclical nightmare, to never emerge victorious and only emerge alive; it’s no wonder the series slowly morphed from a focus on tension to a focus on horror.

Nineteen years later and we’re met with Metroid Dread, the end of a story that started with galactic federations and space pirates as an almost laughable scenario now repeated to the point of tactility and abject trauma for its protagonist. After all these years, Nintendo EPD and MercurySteam seem to have a firm understanding of the anguish and exhaustion Samus must feel knowingly heading down to the surface of a new planet to fight the same old threats all over again. But by allowing the game to be an ending from the outset, the developers are able to ask how Samus has grown as a person throughout her journey and how she’d react when thrust into both new and similar circumstances. A key component of Dread’s success comes from the subtleties in the way she’s animated — whether it’s killing a boss with her back turned or standing motionless in almost annoyed disbelief as one of the series’ recurring bosses emerges from the dark and lunges towards her — Samus has had enough of this shit. How has she changed since 1986? She’s become even more of a badass, thank you very much.

So isn’t it fitting that Dread is probably the best Metroid has ever been? Isn’t it almost too perfect that the catharsis and triumphant rage Samus feels when finally coming to the end of her journey also makes for the most emotive and expressive highs in the 35 years of the franchise existing? By taking its time and choosing to contextualize all of her adventures as one cohesive narrative, Dread delivers a chest-pounding and tense exultation with some of the most difficult gameplay Nintendo has ever committed to a video game in a mainline franchise. I was glad to see Samus hint at relief by the time Metroid Dread came to a close, because as with the palpability of isolation in the quietest moments of previous games, I too felt the same way. It’s done. It’s finally done.

But I return to that quote from Sakamoto: “As long as the character Samus exists, I think her adventure will continue.”

What a cruel fate.