Samus Aran's grand adventure redefined an entire genre and provided me the gaming experience of a lifetime.
When I started up this block back in the early months of 2014, I did so with the belief that giving my video-game memories physical and textual form would be a simple matter of briefly chronicling my history with a game and sharing a few stories about the ways in which it affected and shaped my personal relationships with family members and friends. "I'll probably be able to complete a piece in about an hour," I thought, "and pump out two or three pieces a day!"
I didn't anticipate that it wouldn't be anywhere near as easy. I didn't know that the process of authentically, satisfactorily giving form to memories and the thoughts and feelings attached to them would instead require me to engage in the highest levels of contemplation, introspection and reflection. I learned that lesson suddenly and painfully.
It so happened that I was about halfway into my first The Legend of Zelda piece before it became apparent to me that I was going to have to start applying myself like I never had before if I had any hope of properly conveying what these games truly mean to me.
Ever since that moment of realization, it's been my lingering fear that along would come a game that was so profusely rich with historical significance and emotional resonance that it might be impossible for me to properly express my feelings for it with mere text. "I might fall well short of doing what's absolutely necessary: finding the right words and using them to perfectly communicate the feelings I have for the game," I worried. "And I might instead produce a piece that's lacking any true substance and barely representative of my actual experiences."
Mainly, I've long been dreading the day when it was time for me to finally talk about my history with Super Metroid, upon which I've been nervously reflecting for about a year now.
Honestly, I still don't know how to approach this piece.
I mean, sure: It would be easy for me to spend hours raving about the game's technical achievements and mechanical advancements and telling you why my younger self loved how it looked, sounded and played, but I know that if I did only that, I wouldn't come close to capturing how I truly feel about Super Metroid and explaining what it really means to me. I wouldn't be giving genuine form to memories that the game left me with--memories that are formed not just of high sprite-counts, stunning graphical displays, and impressive special effects but also the wonderful feelings and emotions they worked so hard to evoke.
I have to do much more. I have to make an extra effort. I have to dig down deep and find the words that I need to perfectly express how Super Metroid has impacted my life.
I can't state with confidence that I'll fully succeed in doing so because I know that sometimes I find it very difficult to put feelings into words, but I can assure you that my efforts will nonetheless be diligent and sincere.
So begins my mission to bravely tread new ground and share my Super Metroid memories in a way that I've never dared to before.
Though, still, I feel that a little context is necessary.
So what you should know is that my story started with the original Metroid, which came into my life as a curious enigma and an unsolvable riddle whose style of play completely negated all of my attempts to classify it and understand it. And because I didn't know what it was supposed to be, I ignorantly dismissed it and proceeded to avoid it.
Months later, I returned to Metroid and made a genuine effort to understand it, and consequently I finally got a true sense of what it was. In that time, the game revealed itself to be an absorbing epic, and in doing so, it opened my eyes to the potential of this new genre of game.
Metroid was able to engross me like no other game ever had before with its mysterious, wondrously labyrinthine settings and its propensity to tell captivating, powerfully evocative stories with its wonderfully novel invention: environmental and aural conveyance. It made me feel as though I was a part of its world.
Metroid II: Return of Samus, its belated sequel, won me over in a similar way. It overcame both my personal biases and the limitations of its host platform and proved itself to be one of the most deeply compelling, enchantingly evocative side-scrolling adventure games I'd ever had the privilege of playing. It remained a staple of my Friday nights for years following its release, and thus its visual, aural and aesthetic qualities became intrinsically linked to my memories of the Game Boy (which is also an important piece of my history).
I learned to love both of these games, and the deeper I delved into their incredibly engrossing, wondrously enormous worlds, the more my adoration for them grew.
I had fun playing through them again and again and reliving two of gaming's best action-adventure experiences, and in particular, I found great joy in spending time leisurely exploring their environments and letting them exercise their power to stir my imagination.
I'd intently examine all of their environments' visual features and attempt to interpret their meanings. I'd think about how they'd look if I was able to see them from a first-person perspective. I'd wonder about the potentially infinite number of secrets that were lying in wait beyond their walls and surfaces. I'd let their otherworldly tunes wash over me, and as they were doing so, I'd seek to decipher their messages and explore the feelings that they were evoking. And above all, I'd aim to immerse myself in them and thus gain the opportunity to soak in and absorb their every captivating atmospheric quality and vibe.
"A third game isn't necessary," I felt.
This continued to be my mindset even during the time when there were whispers of a third series entry in Nintendo Power. I wasn't interested. I didn't see the point of a sequel--especially in this new 16-bit era.
Because by then, you see, I'd established a narrow set of rules for what I felt constituted a true Metroid game. For a new series entry to hold that distinction, it needed to be 8-bit in form and have graphics and music whose simplicity was enough to stir the imagination and inspire the creation of glorious visualizations.
And there was, of course, no chance that a technologically advanced SNES entry would be capable of possessing these necessary qualities!
Well, that's what I thought until I saw the sequel in question.
The new Metroid game made its formal appearance in the chrome-covered Nintendo Power Volume 56. It headlined the issue's 16-page "Member's Special" insert, which previewed 1994's biggest releases.
Its official title was "Super Metroid."
There wasn't a whole lot to the game's coverage. It consisted merely of one and a half pages' worth of illustrations, screenshots, and the usual suspect commentary (according to the preview's author, Super Metroid was allegedly going to represent "the end of the Metroid series" and Samus Aran would "have a new galactic menace to overcome in future games").
But nevertheless, I was blown away by the information that it was providing. As I read through the text and observed the accompanying imagery, I remained in a state of complete captivation.
Some of what the preview was suggesting was so astounding to me that I almost couldn't believe that it was real: Samus, apparently, was going to be returning to Planet Zebes--the place I knew so well and loved so much! Ridley and Kraid were going to be brought back! All of the cool new power-ups from Metroid II were going to be brought over, as was Samus' gunship (which, as one screenshot showed, was going to appear in glorious 16-bit form)! And the game's world was going to be so much larger in scale that the developers would necessarily need to up the memory to "24 megabits" to contain it!
(Honestly, I had no idea what "having to use 24 megabits of memory" actually meant, but still it sounded monumental to me!)
But what excited me most was the content that was on display in the second page's middle portion. It showed Samus using an electric wire to swing across a gap. That was a very interesting bit on its own, yeah, but what actually caught my eye was the environment in which the action was occurring. It had some graphical elements that looked entirely familiar!
"Those are the bubbly surface textures from Norfair's green area!" I said with great enthusiasm. "They look almost exactly the same as they do in Metroid!"
I was fascinated by that fact.
"Since when does that happen?!" I wondered while in a state of amazement. "8-bit graphical assets being brought over to a 16-bit game but not updated in any perceivable way?!"
This occurrence was surprising to me in the best way possible.
I mean, sure: It would have been nice to have a new planet to explore, but in truth, the prospect of returning to Zebes was simply more exciting-sounding to me. Because there was, after all, still so much more of Zebes that I wanted to see! I was extremely happy that Super Metroid was going to give me the opportunity to explore more of it and finally see what was lying beyond its walls and find out whether or not those spaces matched up to the grand visualizations that I'd put together in my head over the previous five years.
I had to wait two months to see more of Super Metroid, and that was more than enough time (a small eternity to a young teenager) for me to (a) think up numerous possible storyline scenarios and write about them and (b) draw several images that illustrated what I thought the newly renovated Zebes might look like.
Also, I spent many school hours wondering about how Ridley and Kraid were going to be resurrected and how Zebes' survived the presumably-large-scale-explosion that occurred after Samus escaped from its interior.
The game had me in a spell. I was constantly thinking about it and making it the center of my creative projects.
So when Nintendo Power Volume 58 arrived with some fresh new Super Metroid info, I was ready to devour it!
Normally I would have been pissed by what the magazine did. I would have been angered by how its coverage spoiled game elements that would have been better left to surprise. But on this occasion, I felt no desire to express such an emotion because I was greatly excited by what was being reported!
This newest preview, which appeared in the Pak Watch section, was even shorter than the last (it was given only a half a page worth of space). But even its scarce amount of information was enough to leave me feeling thunderstruck!
It had some interesting information about the implementation of vertically placed entry hatches and all of the memory upgrades that were required to make Super Metroid's action possible, and it had some screenshots that depicted an intriguing-looking map system and a decipherable Ridley sprite. (I say "decipherable" because I was never able to adequately interpret his NES sprite's cranial structure or visualize how his head looked. The person who illustrated Metroid's manual obviously shared my confusion.)
But the whole time, my eyes couldn't help but be drawn to the preview's top-left screenshot. It grabbed my attention because it showed Samus fighting a reptilian-looking creature within the confines of an instantly recognizable location: the Mother Brain chamber from Metroid! It was going to be accessible in this game!
And to my great delight, the chamber's ravaged interior contained all of the familiar objects: the remnants of the destroyed Zebetite barriers, the circular turrets, and the conclave and grid-patterned surface tiles!
"This is unbelievable!" I thought to myself as I intently examined the chamber's graphical elements and marveled at how faithful they were to the original Metroid's.
The text above the screenshots confirmed that what I was thinking was correct: My travels would indeed be taking me through the rooms that formed Metroid's endgame portion--the mechanical halls of Tourian, from which I escaped in thrilling fashion!
This revelation set my imagination into overdrive and inspired me to excitedly consider the possibilities. "How else," I wondered, "will areas from the original Metroid be incorporated into Super Metroid's exponentially larger world? And how many of them will return? Also, will the purple area from Norfair be included? And how about Ridley and Kraid's hideouts? Will I be revisiting them, too?"
I thought about those possibilities and so many others!
The next issue of Nintendo Power (Volume 59) gave me the only answer I'd ever need!
Its preview, too, spoiled a major game element, but I was so amazed by what it was showing that I didn't care to express feelings of annoyance.
As I read through the piece, I learned that I'd be returning not just to Mother Brain's old Tourian hangout but also to the blue-colored area of Brinstar!
The preview's author was even nice enough to supply two handy comparative-type screenshots that served to illustrate how faithfully Super Metroid's blue Brinstar matched up to the original Metroid's. It was practically a pixel-for-pixel, tile-for-tile, and texture-for-texture recreation of the latter's! (The only difference, understandably, was that Super Metroid's recreated areas were a bit cramped-looking. The character sprites had been scaled up, so this was an unavoidable graphical compromise.)
I was stoked by this news. It made my lifetime!
I couldn't wait to revisit Super Metroid's blue Brinstar and see how well it compared to Metroid's version of it!
Everything else contained within the preview--the information about awesome-sounding items and abilities like the Speed Booster, the Grapple Beat, the X-Ray Scope and the wall-jump plus the sneak peeks of mysterious- and intriguing-looking new locales--was gravy on what was looking to be one of the finest dishes Nintendo had ever cooked up!
By that point, I was certain that Super Metroid was going to be a top-tier game that played just as brilliantly as masterpieces like Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but I was looking forward to it more so for other reasons--for reasons that were quite disparate from those that other kids considered normal. Mainly, I was eager to get my hands on the game because I couldn't wait to toss myself into its world and begin immersing myself in its every environment, whether it was newly designed or recycled!
And as soon as the game arrived in stores that April, I made sure to immediately run out and buy a copy of it!
When I got it home, I was extremely eager to start tearing into it, but I refrained from doing so right away because my obsessive-compulsive proclivities were requiring me to first engage in my customary pre-game ritual: reading through and thoroughly examining the game's manual. It was something that I felt obligated to do. I simply couldn't move on to playing the game with a clear mind until I satisfied my compulsion.
In retrospect, I'm glad that I stuck to tradition because reading Super Metroid's manual beforehand turned out to be an important part of the experience. As a continuity hound, I loved how the manual's storyline explanation included the chronicled histories that appeared in the previous games' manuals. Their presence helped to provide Super Metroid an instantly rich mythos and a sense of enormity that made me feel as though a huge culmination was about to occur and a universe's entire future was depending upon the outcome of Samus' latest mission. (It captured me in the same way that A Link to the Past's storyline explanation did, which is to say that it masterfully engrossed me and made me feel as though I was about to play a big part in a grand epic.)
The manual also had a beautifully drawn Zebes map illustration that showed the exact positioning of the new areas and established where they were in relation to known areas like Brinstar, Norfair and old Tourian (all three of which, I was delighted to discover, retained their proper orientations and interconnections!). I especially loved how it retrofitted the new areas (Crateria, Maridia and such) into Metroid's existing structure. The way in which it positioned them and tied them into the structure had me convinced that they had always been there.
"We didn't see those areas in Metroid because Samus had no reason to visit them at that point in time," I was happy to believe.
Otherwise, the map illustration was just fun to look at and examine. It contained a lot of cool little visual details, each of which told me something interesting about the game's environments.
I greatly enjoyed reading through those sections and looking at all of their accompanying hand-drawn art. What I was seeing was making me feel even more hyped!
So even though I didn't know who or what "Crocomire," "Phantoon" and "Draygon" were, I was keen on the idea of encountering them and finding out what they were all about!
And I was particularly intrigued by the "fake Metroid" enemies called "Mochtroids" (they were, I had to admit, far more interesting and thought-provoking than any of the weirdly named enemies that I read about in Metroid II's manual). I couldn't wait to encounter them, too, and find out how they operated and how, exactly, they compared to Metroids!
As I read through the manual, I was filled with a feeling of excitement that spoke of my great investment in the presented images and subjects, but I knew that it was more so speaking of my eagerness to hurry up and get to the game already!
Soon I did.
So I break up my Super Metroid experience into three distinct parts: (1) My first play-through of the game, during which it made an utterly indelible first impression on me. (2) The following years in which I played through the game an incalculable number of times and became intimately familiar with its world and formed all of my all of my fondest memories of exploring it. And (3) the modern era in which I fondly reflect upon my time with Nintendo's transcendent masterwork and obsessively talk about how strongly it resonates with me.
Here's how it all started!
The First Play-Through
In truth, my memories of my first Super Metroid play-through are largely fragmented, so I'm not able to provide a coherent narrative. What I can do, rather, is talk about the play-through's most strongly resonant moments. There were a large number of them, and I remember each of them vividly.
I recall, for instance, how riveted I was by the game's intro scene, in which the shadowy visage of Samus recapped the events that led into Super Metroid. I was immediately engrossed by its musical theme, which was haunting in an indescribable way. I intently observed as its sharply struck notes, intense percussion, and spirited progression did their work and provided the scene a powerfully entrancing energy and, most strikingly, somehow rendered a tune that was simultaneously chills-inducing and empowering. The whole time, I was in awe of what it was doing. I was completely in its grip.
That's the reason why the intro theme instantly became one of my favorite video-game tunes of all time!
And I especially appreciated how the intro recreated Metroid and Metroid II's ending sequences using Super Metroid's assets. These respectful recreations did a lot to bring the previous two games in line visually and aesthetically while demonstrating for me the designers' ambition to faithfully reproduce their environments and graphical elements down to even the smallest detail. Also, they looked really cool!
I loved every aspect of the intro. Each one was thoroughly captivating and immersing. And by the time their collective finished doing their work, I was deeply engaged and ready to spiritedly explore Zebes and blast some Space Pirates!
The Ceres Station was memorable to me for three reasons. The first was its disquieting ambiance, which was generated by its unease-inducing whirring and humming sounds. As I traveled through the station, these discordant sounds (and the absence of music) put me on edge and filled me with the sense that the quite, desolate atmosphere was an illusion and that at any moment, some deadly creature was going to jump out from the background or foreground and attack me. I felt that way the whole time I was there.
Then there was the surprise ambush from Ridley, whose spectacular entrance made an amazing and unforgettable first impression. Everything about the encounter--how it initiated, how it played out, and how it ended (with Ridley making his escape by flying across multiple planes and toward the camera)--was dramatic, intense and stirring. (I liked the encounter, also, because it created a link to Mega Man X, whose opening area featured a very similar scripted battle.)
And finally, there was the tense escape sequence, which was notable for the impressive graphical display that occurred at its end potion: As I platformed my way back up to the entrance point, the entire corridor began to sway from left to right! I was taken with this effect because it reminded me of Super Castlevania IV's breathtaking visual displays and specifically its twisting and turning towers, which were objects of my fascination.
These elements combined to create one of the best openings in video-game history.
Though, nothing that occurred in the Ceres Station could compare to what came next.
I was, to put it bluntly, in absolute awe of what I was seeing and experiencing during the opening moments of my arrival on Planet Zebes.
Each of the previous two games greeted me with an energizing phase-in animation and a heroic, invigorating starting-area theme, so it seemed logical to think that Super Metroid would do the same. It didn't. Surprisingly, it went in a completely different direction and hit me with one of the most memorably distinct openings I'd ever experienced.
I arrived not by phasing in somewhere within Zebes' blue-colored interior but rather by flying in with my ship and touching down on the planet's surface, which was, strikingly, far darker- and more-desolate-looking than I ever imagined it to be.
The atmosphere was grim. A thick fog was covering the entire skyline. The mountains in the distance appeared to be depressingly barren and untraversable. The surface was being pounded by a relentless deluge of acid rain (as it was described in the manual), the downpour a product of a violent thunderstorm whose intermittent lighting strikes were providing eerie accompaniment to the quietly foreboding music. And these environmental elements combined to create a remarkably foreboding scene whose vibrations filled me with a feeling of apprehension and caused me to have cold chills.
These weren't the happy fun times I remembered experiencing in Brinstar back in 1988, no. What I was experiencing here was just plainly ominous.
And in only a matter of seconds, Super Metroid had strongly distinguished itself from its predecessors in terms of tone and gravity. I was honestly caught off guard by how dark and bleak its atmosphere was in comparison to theirs.
And consequently, I entered into a state of complete captivation. "What happened to this place?" I wondered as I intently surveyed the environment and listened to what the foreboding music had to say about the situation.
The storm's influence faded as I entered into the cavern on the left, but the feeling of unease was still very palpable. The music sustained its quietly eerie presence and created the sense that a silent threat was lurking somewhere within the cavern's seemingly abandoned and lifeless passageways.
There were no Zoomers climbing along the walls or encircling the stony platforms, there were no ceiling-perched Skrees waiting to dive-bomb me, and there were no Rippers mindlessly flying back and forth. Rather, there was only desolation.
Any and all activity was limited to tiny insects fluttering about and feeding off the planet's decaying plant life. Their presence suggested to me that Zebes had become uninhabitable, presumably as a result of the devastating blast that rocked its interior at the end of Metroid. Apparently the explosion had robbed the planet of a functioning ecosystem.
This was an extremely effective setup. I totally bought into it: As I continued exploring the cavern's earliest set of passages, I did so while wondering if the entire game was going to be lacking for enemy involvement--or, at least, the involvement of enemies beyond those that were depicted in the manual ("Is this why there are so few entries on its enemy list?" I questioned).
And what happened next was even more intriguing to me.
As I descended down into the ruins or Tourian, I became filled with goosebumps.
I was home again.
"So the area I just came from--that's the place to which Samus escaped at the end of Metroid?!" I thought to myself as I entered into state of realization. At that moment, I began putting together a visualization of the familiar-yet-contrastingly-disconsolate version of Zebes and using the new information to update the visualization that had been in my head for the previous four years.
Tourian's misty, neglected interior suggested that the pirates had since ceased their nefarious occupation of the planet, but I knew that couldn't be true. "Something's off here," I felt.
And as I entered into the Mother Brain room, I experienced a moment of surreality. It caused me to stop in my tracks and become completely entranced. All I could do was observe my surroundings with a fascinated energy.
Everything was as I remembered it: Mother Brain's stasis tank (or what remained of it) lied at the room's far-left side. There were five Zebetite stations. The mounted turrets were in the same positions. And the narrow blue platforms were still resting between the stations and firmly holding their place despite being cracked and tattered.
Everything was the same, that is, except for the proceeding room: What should have been a tall, northward-stretching vertical corridor was instead a one-screen elevator room that carried me down to an unexpected place.
"Woah!" was all I could think as the elevator dropped me off at what looked to be the starting area of the original Metroid.
"I can't believe that I'm back here," I thought to myself as I once again experienced moments of surreality and captivation.
Upon immediate inspection, though, it became obvious to me that the familiar blue Brinstar wasn't quite the same as I remembered it. Its once-brightly-colored, enliveningly vibrant environments had lost their sheen, and resultantly they were now displaying unwelcomingly drab, cheerless shades of dark blue. It had lost its vigorous energy.
This was surprising to me because I didn't get that sense when I was examining Nintendo Power's screenshots of blue Brinstar. I didn't recall them conveying a sense of gloom (perhaps because they were brightened a bit).
That's when it became apparent to me that static imagery could never hope to truly capture the atmosphere of an amazingly evocative game like Super Metroid. There was no replacement for the actual experience of being in its environments and feeling their energy.
And as I examined blue Brinstar's environments, I was blown away by how closely they matched Metroid's.
First there was the Morph Ball area. It looked exactly the same, structurally. And the Morph Ball was still there on the pedestal that rested beyond the large S-shaped obstruction! (Though, I couldn't help but wonder how it was still there after I clearly obtained it in Metroid.)
The only curiosity was a wall-mounted sentinel eyeball that suddenly sprang to life immediately I after obtained the Morph Ball. I couldn't tell if it was trying to attack me or not--if its tracking beam was actually a laser that was designed to drain my health--but still I sensed that it wasn't in my best interest to let it continue shining light on me. I felt compelled to leave the vicinity before something really bad had a chance to happen.
Then I headed rightward and entered into another familiar room: the passage with the destructible blocks on its surfaces.
I was able to blast my way downward, just like I could in Metroid (this time, though, I didn't have to use bombs because Samus had since learned to fire shots downward), but disappointingly, the path didn't take me to the entry to Kraid's hideout. It had since been cut in half by ecological change, and thus it no longer offered access to that area of the game. And its newly formed surface now contained a leftward bubble door that led into a distinctly crafted Chozo-statue/missile-pack room.
There was no indication that it was possible to blast through the surface's blocks, and that made me sad for a moment. I was really hoping that I would get the chance to revisit Kraid's hideout and find out if it still looked the same.
Though, I got excited again when I traveled over to blue Brinstar's second horizontal passage and discovered that its ceiling tiles were once again concealing an energy tank (the only minor difference was that the tank was placed a little to the left of its original position, which I didn't mind)! I was surprised and astounded by this occurrence. I didn't think that the energy tank would actually be there. I had no idea that the designers were going to go that far in their efforts to faithfully replicate the original blue Brinstar's structure.
I wanted that energy tank, and even the nearby sentinel eyeball's continued beam-spray couldn't deter me from determinedly trying to obtain the item. Unfortunately it was simply too high to reach at this point. So I decided to move on.
Because there were, most likely, many more familiar places to visit!
However, my excitement once again became somewhat muted when I learned that the room's dominantly featured low-hanging obstruction, which was originally intended to deny Morph Ball-lacking intruders further access to the rest of the planet, now served as nothing more than a gatekeeper for a lone missile pack.
That was all that stood beyond the obstruction. The rest of the room was no longer there. It, like the passage that led to Kraid's hideout, had been cut off by ecological change and specifically a newly formed solid wall. And consequently, the areas that lied beyond--the areas that formed the rest of Metroid's map--were now permanently inaccessible!
This bummed me out because I desired to visit many more familiar places. I was hoping (perhaps naively) that the designers would find a way to somehow stuff the entirety of the original Metroid's map into Super Metroid's and use it as a foundation for the latter's. But apparently they weren't interested in doing that. What I'd seen in the last few minutes was, sadly, all that they cared to include.
"That's too bad," I thought as I lamented the fact that I wasn't going to be able to revisit the gold or green areas of Brinstar or Ridley's old hideout.
But I couldn't get too upset about the situation because, really, Super Metroid had already done more than enough for me. It had introduced me to its world in the most captivating, memorable way possible and amazed me at each step in the process.
The rest of the game was going to be completely new--which, I accepted, was what it needed to be--and I was ready to enjoy all of the new things it was about to throw at me. That was the first of Super Metroid's many major triumphs: With its clever scripting and wonderfully entrancing recreation of old Brinstar and Tourian, it had done a beautiful job of easing me in to the game; and resultantly, I now felt right at home in this reimagined version of planet Zebes.
At that point, I'd only been playing Super Metroid for 8-10 minutes, and I'd seen no more than 1 or 2% of its world, but in just that very small amount of time, I already felt as though the experience was legendary.
Before I moved on, though, I made sure to hang around old Brinstar for a few minutes and take the opportunity to intently examine every part of it and reverently admire the care and effort that designers put into making it faithful to the original blue Brinstar. Their doing so meant the world to me.
And while I was there, I also made sure to take some time to blissfully soak in the game's unsettling-yet-incredibly-alluring atmosphere. Because it was so enchanting and immersing that I felt as though I'd be missing out on an important part of the experience if I didn't take the chance to absorb it and savor it for a while.
Much like Nintendo Power's screenshots had hinted it would, my trek back through Tourian was impeded by Space Pirates (and I realized, then, that those "sentinel eyeballs" were actually cameras that alerted the lurking pirates to my presence), who were making a sudden appearance. I should have been scared or alarmed by their presence, but honestly I wasn't. Rather I was happy that I was finally getting the chance to see them in physical form!
Because up until that point, the Space Pirates existed only as a nebulously defined race of beings (I imagined that they were high-tech ninjas who brandished swords and used jetpacks to fly around) and a completely unseen group whose villainous activities were chronicled only in instruction manuals. So I was glad that they were finally able to participate in a story over which they were having so much influence. And I was excited to see what they actually looked like!
More so, I was impressed with how the game scripted their sudden appearance. It was done in such a way that it dramatically and forcefully shattered my theory that the planet was largely abandoned.
They almost had me there!
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