Game

So I’ve been doing my Retro Achievements Mastery series for quite a while now, where I post a mini review of every game I master on Retro Achievements. However, there’s a thing about Retro Achievements: Sometimes, I don’t fully master a game. Either the set is annoying or too hard, but I just feel like I’m done and don’t want to 100% it. It’s usually that first one tbh lol. But sometimes these games are really interesting, and I want to talk about them. So I’m making this side series where I can talk about games I’ve played recently but not mastered, so I still have a way to review em.

Today’s game is Metroid Rogue Dawn, an NES Metroid romhack released in 2017 by Grimlock, Optomon, and snarfblam. It’s a full reworking of the original Metroid, with new graphics, new areas, and some new mechanics. The story is that it’s a prequel, taking place during the canon events in the manual of Metroid 1, where some Federation scientists discover the Metroids, and then are ambushed and attacked by Space Pirates, who take the Metroids for themselves. In this game you play as Dawn Aran, a mysterious woman who was taken by Ridely as a child from some place he blew up, and has been trained to be her agent, spy, and weapon. So, it’s Evil Metroid basically. You spend the game harassing and being mean to Federation people. It’s still NES Metroid though, so all dialogue and text is just like, floating text in a room where the sprite of a dude is standing who you can’t interact with in any way. But it’s a good vehicle for hints and story. It’s cute.

Game

The game sets itself up as the darker edgier metroid, but it’s really not that? Like, the tones and music and graphics are kinda dark and dour, in a good way, and then there’s a lot of hidden rooms with goofy shit. I found a hidden room with a word search floating in it. This was clearly made by some big Metroid nerds, and as a big Metroid nerd, I’m a fan. I do have one major complaint, though. The game is gorgeous, with lots of great animation and art, but the original Metroid is NOT made for worlds that aren’t like, made of 8x8 blocks. This world has a lot of slopes and half blocks to make it look like an actual planet and not a Weird Bubble Tunnel, but this means you get stuck on shit in weird ways. I got stuck in one of these cool looking things and shoved against the reskinned Mother Brain fight, and it killed me instantly, because I-frames aren’t really a thing in Metroid, it just throws you out of the thing hurting you, but it COULDN’T cause I got stuck. That throwing you comes back to bite you too, cause the weird geomtry does WEIRD things with that. I found myself getting thrown all over the place and just haven’t a REAL trouble actually moving against things, cause the geometry felt so weird.

Game

Despite all this, it was a fun romhack. So why did I not master it? Well, it’s a fun romhack, but the mastery would require me to beat it, like, 5-6 times. And it had a LOT of challenge achievements, like “get through this entire area while taking no damage”. I could probably do this eventually, but do I really WANT to? Nah, not really. I enjoyed it enough, I didn’t want to ruin that by pushing myself so hard. Not everything has to be a master. My brain doesn’t like that too much, but I really gotta push myself on this lol