Another Metroid II Remake

[A Black Falcon]

I have heard of AM2R of course, and I think we discussed Nintendo's killing the project before, but it's interesting to hear your thoughts on the game itself. I probably should try the game, but haven't gotten around to it, yet anyway... of course I'm not a big Metroid or Metroidvania fan, so I wasn't following this in development and still haven't gotten around to trying to find somewhere to download it, but some of the Metroid games are pretty good, particularly when they have a good map and aren't too annoyingly reliant on backtracking with few clues. On the other hand, I don't exactly go out of my way to play Metroidvania games, with how I generally prefer traditional platformers, and have rarely played rom hacks or fangames. I like the idea of creating your own levels for games of course, but there is so much stuff out there and the quality is so uneven that I've usually just stayed away... I probably shouldn't, as while many are rough some are surely very good much like player-created levels in Mario Maker, but yeah, I haven't looked into AM2R too much, beyond being frustrated with Nintendo's awful response to it. As you say, there are good ways to deal with the IP issues here that do not involve sending fan teams takedowns like that.

Now of course, this isn't an entirely original game, it's based on Metroid II for the GB. I'm sure basing it on a real Metroid game helped a lot, versus entirely original ones, but I've never cared for fan retellings of things made by others... I'd probably rather see an entirely original game or a strict remake with some basic added features (like the badly needed map!) than something like this, unless it was an official product of course. Maybe the creators should have turned this into an unrelated game inspired by Metroid games, instead of a fan-made Metroid game that was asking for trouble with how badly Nintendo acts on the internet at times -- see their taking Youtube video revenue all the time, etc. But they clearly really wanted to make a Metroid game, and Nintendo shows no interest in such things so if something like this was going to exist it almost certainly HAD to be unlicensed, unfortunately, but still... I don't know, this isn't the "real" Metroid 2. On the other hand Metroid Zero Mission is not the "real" Metroid 1, it's a better game (in my opinion) with the same basic story but quite different gameplay along the way, so something like this or the fan remake of Quest for Glory 2 are pretty interesting, in taking a classic and updating it with features from newer games in the series... though it sounds like this game goes a lot farther than that one does in changing things from the source material. I often prefer to play the original versions of games when I can (I still have not bought any of the remakes of Cave Story for instance, because I have and played the original freeware version back in the mid '00s... or I'd rather play the NES Mario games than their SNES All-Stars remakes... etc) , but yes, sometimes later versions of a game are better than the original one was, no question. And in this case, adding a map alone certainly makes this better than the original! That it doesn't have a map is one of the reasons why I stopped playing Metroid 2 fairly early on; it seemed alright, but I want to know where I am... so yeah, a map would be very nice. But if they really did add as much as you say here, this isn't really 'Metroid 2 but with a map', it's a new and probably better game with a similar concept, so I guess we still don't have that game... if it is better maybe that doesn't matter too much, but if they don't exist, it'd be awesome to see hacks of Metroids 1 and 2 which add maps in. I pay some attention to rom translation projects, but not hacks, so I wouldn't know...