Refresh Rate – Metroid II: The Return of Samus
As a kid I never actually owned a Game Boy. I was one of the “turncoats” who went straight from the NES to the SEGA Genesis in Sonic the Hedgehog’s brilliant blue wake. That is not to say that I didn’t ever play any Game Boy games at the time. I had this good friend whose Game Boy was practically communal between him, myself, and his twin sister. We used to play Super Mario Land and Tetris almost constantly, draining a King’s ransom in batteries. I distinctly remember playing Metroid II shortly after it was released in Chris’s basement; making maps on foolscap, color coding different sections, the whole nine.
As a child I never did beat the original Metroid, nor did I complete its sequel, come to think of it. The Metroid games were something of mystery, an impossible enigma. There was an older kid in my neighborhood who had a code (his own personal password, you see) for the original NES game. He wouldn’t allow us into his parents basement until he had entered it, for fear of his password becoming common knowledge. We didn’t really care, though, because we just wanted to watch in awe while he decimated Motherbrain and gutted the white whale that was Metroid right in front of us.
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