Dancing on the Corpse of the Mother Brain

Posted by Gary Hodges at 10:43 PM Jun 27, 2008

CAUTION: This blog contains Metal Gear Solid 4 spoilers – specifically, discussion of a location in the game. Don’t click through if you care about that sort of thing.

I’ve never really gotten into the Final Fantasy games. I don’t hate the games – I’ve liked some, detested others – but if I had to come up with my top 10 favorite game series, Final Fantasy wouldn’t even rank. Actually, Final Fantasy wouldn’t even occur to me long enough to dismiss.

There are different reasons why, but the biggest? There was no continuity between games. You spent weeks earning a hard-fought victory in a Final Fantasy, saving the world and becoming a hero only after dozens of hours of grinding, searching, mapping, talking and fighting… then all your accomplishments were swept away, forgotten by the next game in the series. Nobody in Final Fantasy VII cared about your triumph over Kefka in Final Fantasy III¹. It might not have even been the same planet.

To me, this was deeply unsatisfying. I cut my teeth on RPGs like Phantasy Star and Ultima – games that not only had a timeline and a sense of continuity, but the events of each title often directly influenced a sequel’s plot. Best were TSR’s legendary AD&D “Gold Box” games, where Pool of Radiance players were able to transfer their characters right on over to Curse of the Azure Bonds with levels, experience and inventory intact.

That sort of continuity was rare in console games, but as a kid I craved it. I was proud of my virtual heroics, and wanted them acknowledged in some way. When a game actually did, I loved it all the more for it. A few examples stick out in my mind, one very recent.

Personally, I didn't think Metal Gear Solid 4 did much right. I think most of the mainstream press has grandfathered it in to the "10 out of 10!" club (meanwhile kowtowing to Konami's ridiculous review conditions), I think the superfans do a good job of shouting down dissent on the message boards, and I think Hideo Kojima is in a rare and lucky position - the George Lucas club - where nobody dares tell him no.

But I loved Metal Gear Solid. And for a fan of that game (and nostalgia), Metal Gear Solid 4 has one of the best nods around: a full tour of Shadow Moses, the MGS1 environment.

The map is (mostly) barren, the outpost abandoned since your mission there years before, and as you walk through taking in the familiar sights, you hear echoey codec conversations from your first visit, giving the whole tour the feel of a walk through a colossal haunted house, listening to ghosts whisper about your intrusion. It's melancholy and eerie, one of the game's high points.

Reminders of past victories aren't always landscapes. Sagat of the Street Fighter series was a walking, talking, tiger-uppercutting Shadow Moses, a huge, ugly scar on his chest a reminder of Ryu's victory over him in the first game in the series.

Ryu vs. Sagat in the original Street Fighter

As the lore goes, Ryu defeated Sagat with a mighty dragon punch that seared a wound into the champion's chest, setting him on a quest for vengeance from that day forward. Later on Capcom decided Sagat actually beat Ryu initially, but Ryu (in his Akuma moment) lashed out after the fight was over, scarring Sagat - but in any case, playing as Ryu against Sagat in Street Fighter II always felt a little more fun to me than the other brawls, since there was real hate there. And as if to prove a point, I always tried to finish off Sagat with a dragon punch.

Before and After

Castlevania has always been pretty good about continuity, almost every game in the series having certain recurring landmarks (the clocktower, the long open-air staircase to Dracula's pad, etc.). I didn't notice it back in the day, but even Simon's Quest had a subtle little wink towards the prior game: It seems like the ruins you visit at the end of Simon's Quest are the same ones you created in Castlevania "1" by collapsing Dracula's Castle:

Castlevania:

Simon's Quest:

Look at the pillars, the windows, everything. Yeah, it's not exact, but pretty darn close. Kinda neat, huh?

Here's another one a lot people miss. Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link are the only two Zelda games that can clearly be said to feature the same incarnation of Link.² Now as a kid, I was a HUGE Zelda fan - LoZ might be the game that turned me at a young age from a casual Missile Command buff to a hardcore, drooling, manual-sniffing obsessed gamer. So as soon as I finally got my paws on Adventure of Link (after Nintendo's many infuriating delays), I was desperate to see some connections between Zelda I and II beyond just Link himself.

It was a bummer at first. Why were the Darknuts called Ironknuckles? Why were the overworld graphics so shitty? Why didn't I get to fight Ganon!? And what the fuck happen to Hyrule? - it's totally unrecognizable!

Or so I thought. On a second or third playthrough, I was looking at a part of the map and something struck me... the southernmost part of the map, home of nothing but a measly hammer. Compare:

Southwest Hyrule, Zelda II

Hyrule, Zelda I

It's all there: the graveyard, the lakes, even a newly vibrantly green Lost Woods. And of course Spectacle Rock - the stomping grounds of your youth where you saved Hyrule was now just an ignoble little corner of a much, much larger world. Good god, and so tiny. It was like going back to your grammar school as an adult, seeing how the monkey bars you were so terrified to climb to the very top of were only a few feet off the ground.

It wasn't what I wanted, though: recognizing "Old Hyrule", I wanted to explore it - kinda like I did a couple weeks ago in MGS4. I wanted to go into the old labyrinths and see the dusty old bones of Dodongo and Aquamentus, find the pile of ash where Ganon was incinerated by my silver arrow, check in on the old man who gave me my first wooden sword - alas, nothing to see here.

Super Metroid finally fulfilled that fantasy, right in the first few minutes. Journeying back to Zebes for some unfinished business on a dark and stormy night, Samus quickly finds herself marching through the Mother Brain's headquarters - and over her shattered corpse. It was a scene Nintendo played for dramatic effect: cloaked in fog with the feel of a tomb, a few space cockroaches scurry from the dead villain's old "throne" as you walk in.

Metroid "I"

Super Metroid

I mentioned this scene in a blog about my favorite games a few years back, causing a friend - who hadn't yet played the game - to remark:

I didn't know that parts of Super Metroid were set in the remains of Metroid, and that you could dance on the corpse of the Mother Brain. Genius.

Like Forest Gump, that's all I have to say about that. Can you guys think of any other examples?



Notes:

1 Yes, I know Final Fantasy III in the U.S.A. is actual Final Fantasy VI. Don't e-mail me about it.

2 The story is that Zelda III - aka Link to the Past - actually is a direct sequel to Zelda II, right from the mouth of Miyamoto himself, and the notion that it's a prequel to Zelda I and II is bad info perpetuated by - of all things - the instruction manual. But trying to unravel the Zelda timeline is virtually impossible and - more importantly - a fucking headache.