30 Games That Made Me Who I Am: 2002

If you know me or digitaleidoscope at all, you may be surprised that not a single Metroid game has appeared on this list yet. Metroid is my favorite videogame franchise, and by the 2000s a good portion of the series was already released. The first game hit in 1986, followed by Metroid II in 1991 and what most people would consider Metroid’s peak, Super Metroid, in 1994. Truth is that I almost completely missed out on all the Metroid games during my childhood, and didn’t get into the series until Other M was already on the horizon. An old friend finally convinced me around 2010 that

A Diehard Metroid Fan Defends Federation Force

Well, the Metroid news has dropped… and Nintendo fans aren’t pleased. The trailer was lumped in with a bunch of other short 3DS teases, but there’s no denying it — we’re getting a new Metroid game. The real shocker is that despite hints from Nintendo, and even from Miyamoto himself, that we’d maybe be seeing both a classic siderscrolling Metroid and a Metroid Prime-style game released in the near future, Federation Force isn’t either of those; not really. Metroid Prime: Federation Force uses the perspective of Metroid Prime, but it looks to be a squad-based multiplayer shooter with an oddly cartoony art

High Heels and Hard Light: Sexism, Pandering, and the Fall of Samus Aran

Samus Aran. Badass bounty hunter. Galactic savior. Hero and protagonist of a videogame series that has endured for almost thirty years. Samus Aran is among the most iconic videogame characters of all time. As far as female protagonists go, Samus is the earliest surviving one. Aside, I guess, from Ms. Pac-Man, but can you really count an anthropomorphized yellow blob? Samus is — at the very least — the oldest surviving female protagonist we can identify with. You know, since she’s human. Or at least humanoid. Back in 1986, even if you owned the original Metroid, even if you’d beaten