AM2R

Judge a remake by the feeling it creates, not the mechanics kept. Metroid II was built on purpose to feel dark, lonely and claustrophobic. AM2R keeps its broad layouts but, like Nintendo's Samus Returns, loses much of that disorienting dread.

Producer Gunpei Yokoi invented the Game Boy and the R&D1 team shaped the game around its limits. Mark Brown: "it's just as important to talk about how they change how Metroid 2 feels."

Before fixing a limitation, check whether it was creating the mood. The tiny screen, narrow winding paths, no backtracking and no return to the ship all fed Metroid II's horror. AM2R zoomed out, added lively backgrounds and backtracking, which made the planet feel welcoming and less alien.

The tiny screen worked like a torch in a pitch black room, and giant caverns made the player feel small. "So many of the factors that contributed to Metroid 2's feeling were seen as issues to fix."

A popular remake becomes the default and buries the original. AM2R raises Metroid II to Zero Mission and Super Metroid standards and is called a terrific fan project, but its familiar design swaps out the original's experience.

Brown compares it to remaking the oppressive Far Cry 2 to play like Far Cry 3, and expects the already misunderstood original to become even less popular. He suggests the themes may have needed a different set of modern mechanics, not the same form with a different experience.

AM2R keeps the empty lower caves that tell a story by absence. In Metroid II normal enemies thin out as you descend, and before the Queen Metroid there are none. AM2R keeps those empty depths; Samus Returns fills them with a noisy enemy gauntlet.

The player infers either they have gone deeper than any other life, or the Metroids wiped out every other animal. "The lower bowels of the planet are practically empty."

AM2R keeps the smashed Chozo statue but gives the ice beam earlier. Every other Chozo statue is preserved, but the one deep in the Metroid lair is smashed, with the ice beam, the only weapon that stops a normal Metroid, pushed aside. AM2R keeps the statue, but handing out the ice beam much earlier loses the detail.

The statue shows the Metroids' power without any text. Samus Returns seems to drop it entirely.

AM2R keeps the tense limp back to a save point. In Metroid II you finish a Metroid fight battered and stagger back to save, which feels tense. AM2R eases this with post-fight pickups and save stations that refill health and ammo, but the anxiety is "just about there."

Samus Returns puts invisible checkpoints after every boss: "That stressful journey back up through the level and to a save point is just gone."

AM2R recreates the quiet ending that gives the killing moral weight. Samus spares a baby Metroid that thinks she is its mother, and the escape has no enemies or puzzles, only calm music. AM2R keeps this faithfully with a subtle music update.

The ending recasts the mission as genocide; Samus Returns adds a boss fight and a fast electronic remix that drown it out.

Repeated bosses got new patterns, smaller weakpoints and extra attacks. Metroid II makes you fight the same simple bosses repeatedly. AM2R adds new patterns, smaller weakpoints and extra Metroid attacks in later fights, plus new bosses: a Torizo, a door guardian and a bullet hell weapons trainer.

It also adds the ledge grab, a morph ball button, the speedboost, Charge Shot, Super Bomb, Super Missile and Gravity Suit.

New locks came with a route and a reason to go back. AM2R adds paths that need abilities found elsewhere, then unlocks a distribution centre with pipes back to earlier areas, where new powers open previously unreachable goodies.

Samus Returns solves the same problem with teleport stations across the planet. "Both remakes provide a method and a reason to return to previous areas."

AM2R lets players get lost, miss items and sequence break. AM2R tolerates missed items and allows more sequence breaking, preserving some of the lost, uneasy feeling. Samus Returns guides far more with a flashing Metroid indicator, a detailed map and a map-revealing Aeion power.

"Samus Returns is just less interested in letting you get lost."

Upbeat music replaced the silence that made lairs hostile. Metroid II plays a hopeful tune on the route to the ship, then quiet, discordant tunes or just footsteps and odd sounds in the lairs. AM2R replaced many tracks with jazzy, upbeat, Prime-style music, weakening that contrast.

"Metroid 2 sometimes just uses silence, some weird electronic sound effects, and Samus's footsteps, to throw you off."

AM2R kept the rooms and built an invented story on top. AM2R preserves the original rooms and items and adds a Chozo backstory, turning pipe tiles into a water treatment plant and a beam area into a weapons testing facility.

It also adds a robot section and a weapons lab escape, and turns the original's unnamed liquid into lava.