Game Center CX Season 2 – Back to Contents
#5
「メトロイド」オモロイド
"Metroid" is Oddroid

Chousen

Nintendo’s classic sci-fi game is thrust upon Arino this time, and his goal is to unmask Samus. He has little trouble getting through the first few doors in the first part of Zebes, but the tricky enemies overwhelm him and he starts dying. He turns to one of the Metroid strategy guides at his side and checks the map. He gets some missiles, which helps with the red door he ran into earlier, and gets the Long Beam. It’s not long before he gets an energy tank and the bombs, too, so things seem to be picking up.

With the bombs he finds a secret passage in a floor, impressing the staff somewhat. The path leads him to collect the Ice Beam, but when he tries to get back up, he can’t jump high enough. 20 minutes pass as Arino tries to figure something out. Eventually, he cleverly uses the bombs to gain extra height and jump out.

After four hours of play, Arino is shocked when he looks out the window to see darkness. But by now he’s collected a couple more energy tanks and more upgrade items. He stumbles upon a fourth energy tank in a narrow hall, but it’s a trap — when he goes to get it, he falls through the floor. 20 minutes later, he returns to the hall. He tries vainly to figure out which blocks in the floor are the false ones, but he ends up falling through again.

On the third try, he tiptoes across the floor, and stops unknowingly right next to the false part of the floor. He takes another step forward and decides he’s seen enough. He runs back and then leaps over the hole, grabbing the tank. The next few doors lead Arino to Ridley’s lair, where he immediately runs back out of the room in fear. He takes a breather, then goes back in.

Normal shots aren’t doing anything to Ridley, and eventually he falls into the lava (space lava). He gets back up and starts shooting missiles at the boss in combination with the Screw Attack. But Ridley drains Arino’s energy at an accelerated pace and he eventually dies.

In the second attempt, he meets the same fate. It’s now been six hours. Arino looks at the guide and learns a decisive technique. But he won’t tell — he’ll just go try it out. His technique is dangerous, but effective: he purposefully hops down into the lava and positions himself right below Ridley, shooting up at him and jumping constantly to keep damage down. And after a few minutes, Ridley is destroyed! Turns out the strategy guide’s manga pages contributed to that one.

Later on, Arino happens upon the other boss, Kraid, and also runs away upon seeing him. But when he comes back, his only strategy is to keep pumping shots into the big yellow guy. And it works, all in one attempt! With seven hours on the clock and the two bosses down, Arino now heads down into Tourian to go after the Mother Brain.

Arino meets the Metroids and naturally panics a little. He gets them off of him with bombs and then runs down into the next section of the zone. However, the next batch of Metroids are particularly hard to deal with, as Arino flails around wildly until the Metroids eventually drain his life and kill him.

He checks the guide. He learns that the Metroids are vulnerable to the Ice Beam; the one item he previously had, but replaced it with the Wave Beam. He goes back to get it, and since restarting leaves him with empty energy tanks, he also spends time refilling all six of them. With those tasks down, he returns to Tourian. The Ice Beam helps Arino blow past the Metroids and eventually enter Mother Brain’s chamber. He goes in for the kill — a little recklessly, to be honest, and his eagerness gets the better of him. He restarts, fills up his energy and tries for the second time.

The same technique begets the same results. Arino tries a few more approaches, but nothing’s working. Nine hours have passed; can he do it before the day is done? On the fifth try, Arino remarkably manages to do it, with the staff moaning in panic the entire time. Arino applauds himself, but quickly gets back to the controller as he notices the self-destruct message. A repeat of the Konami WaiWai World incident is not what he needs!

The tension mounts like never before as Arino tries valiantly to climb up the chamber to safety, but he keeps slipping! He eventually pauses the game to laugh the stress away. He goes back and does better, getting to the exit with just 400 points left on the clock.

He sits back and watches the ending, but Samus doesn’t take off her helmet. He even waits through the credits, but it’s no use. Obviously he needed to beat it much sooner than nine hours. AD Sasano’s playthrough with the best ending is shown over the credits.

TamaGe

Arino visits Chiba Kanteidan, a humongous warehouse market in Shisui that sells all sorts of stuff. Most importantly, they have racks and racks of used video games and hardware for sale. Arino checks out the retro game corner, which has thousands of Famicom games lining the shelves, both bare and boxed. Our host takes a look at everything, from obscure games to tattered and marked-up cartridges.

The store also has a sampling corner to try out the games, so Arino does just that. He starts with the one that garnered the most laughs: the Famicom game based on the metal band Seikima II. He also tries Obake Q-Taro (Chubby Cherub), Galg (which describes itself as a "scroll RPG" despite just being a shooter), Karateka and Masuzoe Yoichi’s Asamade Famicom.

Arino goes on to look at the hardware shelf (including a Super Scope) and then the store’s "premier corner," a glass case filled with rare and/or expensive items such as AV Famicoms and the gold version of Punch-Out!! The store also has a selection of "mystery bags" with random cheap games and other junk. He calls over Kibe-kun to help him pick. Arino tries peeking in through the slits of the fastened bags to see what he can get. He ends up buying a bag and the Super Scope for around 20 bucks. Unfortunately, his bag doesn’t have any games in it, just random figures and other goods. Kibe, however, got a few games, including the dreaded Atlantis no Nazo.

I’d Like to Meet This Man: Momotaro Dentetsu

Arino once again speaks to the minds between Momotaro Dentetsu on the occasion of the latest game’s release. He joins Akira Sakuma, Doi Takayuki and voice actress Chisa Yokoyama to talk more about Momotaro and their days with Jump magazine.

Game Collections: Talent games