The legendary “JUSTIN BAILEY” password that lets you play as Samus in her leotard or whatever the hell it was used to be seen as a joke meaning “just in a bailey,” with “bailey” meaning “swimsuit” or something like that, but I’ve since read that that isn’t true, that nobody ever called a swimsuit a “bailey” prior to 1986. I did not know that the instruction manual said that Samus was male or that there was a primitive map in it. I would still like to play the second game and if I ever see a Super Game Boy for sale I’ll buy one right away. Then I’d go hunt down Wario Land and Donkey Kong 94, the two Game Boy games I legitimately love.

I do agree that the password system in Metroid is pretty crappy but the password system that irks me the most is Zombies Ate My Neighbors. There’s no way in hell I’d ever play that game on cartridge ever again–it’s all emulators and ROMs from here on out or nothing. Of course, I haven’t gone through the game in about 25 years, so there’s that.

I thought when you fought Kraid there was a place you could stand where you could easily blast him with the Wave Beam. Ridley…uh, I weirdly don’t remember what I ever did when fighting him, but I don’t remember having trouble with him. I think it’s always been possible that AVGN deliberately plays the games badly so as to give examples of what he’s complaining about; when he bashed parts of Majora’s Mask I was mystified as I had not had such trouble with some of that part. I didn’t like that he trashed Kid Icarus, but I could see how that could be a very frustrating game to play without emulator savestates, which of course I never have.

I knew well before ever playing the game that there was a huge pit right in front of that one energy tank. That must have really cheesed off gamers back in the day. Of course nothing in Metroid compares IMO to the idea of people getting through the Great Palace in Zelda II (and all those lava caves before it) back in 1988 when there wasn’t even any Nintendo Power. I seriously have no idea how people did that.

Should I have wished for AVGN to cover the “secret rooms” stuff in the original game? I think that stuff is hilarious and recalled reading many very long threads of discussion on the Metroid Database website (is that still up?) of people hunting for more and more secret rooms in the game. And they were mentioned in some Nintendo Power magazine offshoot or something like that back in the day, too.

That Sondra Locke pic is pretty disgusting. I mean, she doesn’t have a bad body but her ghastly skeleton face has always given me the oogies so that expression she’s got on it isn’t helping any. It’s too hard for me to find it funny even though I dislike her as an actress.