If you haven’t heard of Mirror’s Edge, the first-person parkour fest from EA and DICE, you should really come out from under that rock you’ve been living under. Seriously, everybody can get behind jumping around on skyscrapers and giant construction equipment. Think Assassin’s Creed minus the knives and ancient architecture, with a slick monochrome aesthetic that makes the city appear almost too clean and perfect – something that stands in stark contrast to the abundant political corruption in the story.

What’s puzzling to many people (myself included) is that Mirror’s Edge achieved great review scores (averaging 79-81 on Metacritic, depending on platform), yet has somehow fallen by the wayside. Several representatives from both EA and DICE have expressed a love for the game and a desire to see a sequel, but so far nothing concrete has happened aside from hints at a second game during E3 2011. This is a sad scenario indeed, but it begs the question of why. With a cult following backing it up and people within the development and publishing companies both advocating it, why hasn’t a sequel already been made?

The obvious answer is that it didn’t sell well. Mirror’s Edge sold less than 150,000 copies during its first month on shelves, a relatively small number for a game that was supposed to kick start a new series for EA. With such low numbers, it’s no wonder EA decided a second game wasn’t worth backing. But why didn’t the game sell well? What was it that kept people from picking up an excellent title with high review scores and general praise from critics and players alike? What turned Mirror’s Edge into a sleeper hit?

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Video game narratives have so much potential. Through this interactive medium, we are often able to forge our own version of a story with the power of player choice. But despite so many games providing us with options, we are often left creating not the story we want, but the one that fits in line with predetermined binary extremes.

The moment a game rewards you with good or evil points, you start to decide which of the two moralities you want to base all future decisions on. This is because we have been trained to assume that there are far greater benefits from leaning to one side than finding a happy middle ground. Sadly, this assumption is usually correct.

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Most gamers were introduced to the Super Nintendo through the latest adventures of a certain portly plumber, but for me things were a little different. I was too young to have a job when the system released, and I still had only experienced a fraction of the NES library anyway. But as time went on, focus increasingly shifted to the more Super of Nintendos on the market, and eventually a cheaper package was released sans-Super Mario World. It was after this that one of my older brothers surprised me with what I still consider to be the greatest video game system ever made.

A Super Nintendo, the very same one that is hooked up behind me right now, sat on my bed and I was beside myself with excitement. The cheaper model came with a mail-in voucher for Super Mario All-Stars, but what was I to play in the meantime? It turned out the other surprise my brother had in store was a copy of Cybernator, a game I had never heard of before.

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Superlatives are interesting things. Even though most reduce down to simply “better” or “best”, countless hundreds have become mainstays of the English lexicon. Just pick up any thesaurus and take a look. Seriously, try it. Oh, and when you’re done, look up the word “lexicon”. You know what it means? Thesaurus. I know, right? It’s all so meta. So meta in fact, it’s beyond meta. Fun fact: Meta comes from a Greek root meaning “beyond”. What does all this have to do with the Super Nintendo you ask? You’ve got some nerve mister.

One day, way back in the summer of 1986, my friend Franklin called me and said he had just got something called a “Nine Ten Doetainment Sister” for his birthday and that he wanted me to come over and “play it”. I had no idea what he was talking about. I assumed Franklin was high (again) and was seeing ‘skin spiders’ (again). But you know Franklin, what a nut. Anyway, I didn’t really have any friends and I was intrigued at this whole ‘Doetainment Sisters’ idea. So over I went. Once there, I discovered two things: 1) Franklins’ parents had actually got him a “Nintendo Entertainment System” for his birthday and, 2) Franklin wasn’t high at all. He was drunk. Very, very drunk. Seriously kids, stay in school.

That summer Franklin and I played his NES (a term I just invented just now) until school started. I remember it well. There were so many games. My favorite? It was a tie. Between all of them. I found it to be an amazing toy game system. It was better than an Odyssey, taped to the back of a ColecoVision, stapled to an Atari 2600. But as often happens, time passed and Franklin and his NES (mostly the latter) grew apart. Little did I know at the time, but the best was yet to come.

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It’s hard to believe that it has been twenty years since the launch of the Super Nintendo. It may have taken us an extra nine months to get the machine here in North America, but I’m sure we can all agree it was worth the wait. My friends and I had been drooling over the screenshots in gaming magazines for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a few months. They showed off the latest Mario, where he was riding some kind of crazy looking dinosaur.

There were screenshots of games we had no idea what they were about, like Act Raiser. There was this flying game that looked like they were pulling off actual 3D. Our minds were sufficiently blown.

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Let me be clear: Metroid is my absolute favorite video game series of all time. While I realize it’s quite common for longtime gamers to identify with a particular Nintendo franchise, I’ve always felt that Metroid was something special. The isolation, the atmosphere, the sense of progression; everything about the franchise reaches out to me.

That being said, I realize that the franchise has fallen on some hard times. The release of Metroid Prime 3 was practically ignored by Nintendo and its PR teams, Trilogy is almost impossible to find in stores and even harder to get for a decent price, and Other M was such a disappointment (both in terms of quality and in sales) that many a fan’s faith in Nintendo’s ability to handle the franchise has been shaken.

That’s why I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands. Below, I’ve compiled a list of the top four things that I believe should be done with the next entry in the Metroid franchise.

Note: these are just this writer’s opinions. Currently, Nintendo has announced no plans regarding a new Metroid title.

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It is a hard thing for me to admit, but the original Metroid is a tough game to go back to. While the graphics and controls hold up well, its insane difficulty and incredibly tedious health replenishment make it a frustrating ride. But I’m not here to focus on the few bad things. I want to talk about the things it did amazingly right.

The 8-bit era was a time when many developers were unsure how to make games for the home market. Looking through the NES library, you’ll find a huge selection of the games, particularly the early ones, are ports of arcade classics. The quarter munching arcade mentality was so ingrained in developers that even some of the best entries on the NES still have that feeling that they are after your allowance.

Let’s look at what set Metroid apart from the pack.

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The music intensifies as all other sound becomes a damp whisper. A single gunshot is fired and a beloved character slowly falls to the ground while their comrades yell out in shock. What an emotional scene! Or at least, it would be if it weren’t for the fact that the character in question already received about a thousand bullet wounds earlier in a gameplay segment.

This is a problem that plagues many gaming narratives. Story is often governed by a very different set of rules than gameplay, resulting in some very awkward and even comical moments in what should be distressing scenes. Because of the interactive nature of games, it’s difficult to avoid these pitfalls. Yet, some games manage to handle it a cut above the rest.

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We are in that time of year which traditionally gives gamers a break. A break from the seemingly endless stream of high-profile, triple-A titles from the industry’s biggest publishers. Many use this time to catch up on their backlogs, like our friends over at SideQuesting. Others, whom I can only guess are younger gamers with a lot of free time on their hands, don’t really know what to play during this slow period. Maybe they use this time to get even better at [insert popular FPS here]?

It has given me a chance to take a step back and reflect on my habits as a gamer and how they relate to the industry as a whole. Video games have become increasingly disposable as entertainment. As soon as you finish one title (or more often than not, before you even get a chance to really dig into the game you just purchased), there are ten more waiting on the shelves vying for your hard earned cash.

Media coverage is all around us as citizens of the internet. The big gaming blogs generally can’t linger on any one title because they work in a medium that is only rewarded when things are kept fresh on their home page. That isn’t a dig at what they do, it is just the nature of the beast. Core gamers are more than happy to jump from game to game every week. I find this odd considering the cost of new games has been in the $35 to $60 range this entire console generation, and those price points are driven even higher with special editions.

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If you read the site frequently or are a long time listener of our podcast, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that most of the staff here really likes the Monster Hunter series. With each new iteration, the games see a lot of refinement. Having spent over 100 hours with the currently Japan-only Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, I can honestly say it’s really hard to go back to Monster Hunter Tri, a game we collectively decided to call the #3 best game of 2010.

That said, when spending hundreds of hours with the same game, you still run the risk of things going a bit stale. While I’m still having a great time with Portable 3rd, I can’t help but think what the future of Monster Hunter might bring. Call it wishful thinking, but here are some of my ideas on how the series could continue to improve.

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