The Metroid Reveal was a Dirty Setup (part 6)

Series starts here.

The very next day, I somehow managed to pull my wits together and defeat Ridley.

With the space dragon destroyed, I rushed to the mysterious statue corridor to see if the path had opened, the path I was certain must lead to “Mother Brain”.

And what do I see? Only one of the two statues are blinking. The Ridley statue, to be precise.

A single shot is all it takes to make the statue raise proud above its pedestal. But why wouldn’t the Kraid statue similarly raise?

Something was wrong.

So I headed back into Miniboss Hideout #1 to slay “Fake Kraid” yet again, still thinking he was the real deal. (Remember, I’d drawn maps and knew just where to find him.)

With Kraid seemingly re-slain, I made the trip back to the corridor at the highest point in Brinstar. Still didn’t work. Kraid’s statue was firmly affixed to his pedestal and the mysterious unreachable blue door continued to tease me.

Disheartened, I let my character die, quietly wrote down the password on the game over screen, and powered off my NES. I was going to have to start all over, it seemed.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized something was seriously off. Ridley took a good amount of firepower to beat and had his own room, and the music was different. “Kraid”, on the other hand, could be dispatched with a single screw attack or missile, was in a room full of other enemies, and would respawn anytime I re-entered the room.

The next day, I headed back to Miniboss Hideout #1, determined to figure out what I had missed.

By this time, I’d gotten a full load of energy tanks, a payload of missiles, and managed to find the Varia Suit (which halves damage).

Heck, I was even dreaming about the game. I had a vivid dream and told my little brother all about it. I somehow knew it was the sequel to Metroid.

He got wide-eyed and asked if there were more detailed backgrounds, and I told him oddly no. Samus looked more detailed, but the whole game was green with black backgrounds.

Maybe they were lucky guesses, but it turns out that’s exactly how Metroid II: Return of Samus ended up looking:

I had that dream Fall 1987. The Game Boy didn’t come out until July 1989, and Metroid II didn’t come out until November 1991. Prophetic dream? You be the judge.

Anyway, back unto the breach. I went in with an explorer’s heart and it paid off. After having seen Ridley’s boss room, this room telegraphed I was getting close:

How I managed to miss this room before, I don’t know. There are two pitfalls that practically guide the player here, and if anything, it’s the Fake Kraid that’s harder to find.

Five missiles later, I’d opened the door to the real deal:

Now THIS is more like it. This guy puts up a fight. The music, menacing. I knew I had the true Kraid.

I tried everything: Freezing his projectiles, bombing him, missiling his face. Eventually, he went down. (I would only later discover (thanks to Nintendo Power) that there’s a hidden energy tank in this room for a free and timely Energy refill.)

As I headed back to the statue corridor, my palms began to sweat. I was certain the Kraid statue was going to work now, but where would this new path lead?

Bingo!

Would I soon face actual Metroids? Would I run into Space Pirates? And would I finally see what Mother Brain looks like?

…But one more question lingered: Why the heck would the game designers troll us with a Fake Kraid in the first place?