How would you like to be part of an elite club with only 1,000 members? I’m talking about the official “People Who Own a Limited Edition Physical Copy of the New Bad Dudes Metroid Album” club. It’s very exclusive, but we can make it happen (we know a guy).

Club benefits include having a copy of Metroid Arrange 25th Anniversary Album by the Bad Dudes (including a bonus track not available in the digital version), the ability to feast your eyeballs on a glorious, double-sided poster and four panel comic, and the satisfaction of knowing that you’re now just a bit better than everyone else out there.

All you have to do is follow the instructions below and let us know what your favorite Metroid powerup is in the comments of this post. Do you like tearing through enemies with the screw attack? Or maybe you prefer turning enemies into platforms with the ice beam. Space jump over to the comments section and let us know!

Contest Rules:

1. Leave a comment below and tell us your favorite powerup from the Metroid series
2. Limit one entry per person
3. All entries must be made by legal U.S. residents
4. Entries must be accepted by 5:00pm PST on Friday, December 30th. We will then randomly select one winner

If you thought we were done paying tribute to the 25th anniversary of Metroid, well… then you haven’t met the Bad Dudes. They don’t play by our rules. They don’t celebrate when we celebrate. But they do make music that will save the galaxy.

I’m talking about the same dudes that brought you the fantastic CHRONOTORIOUS album and fought the OverClocked ReMix community in musical combat. We are talking about some seriously bad dudes here. Dudes so bad they were commissioned by Samus herself to make the Metroid Arrange 25th Anniversary Album (if their totally rad trailer below is to be believed).

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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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Image Credit: Chris Furniss. Click the image for more or to order prints.

“I had a concept that the music for Metroid should be created not as game music. . . . I wanted to create the sound without any distinctions between music and sound effects.”

This quote from a Gamasutra interview with Hip Tanaka (composer of the original Metroid) sums up the beginning of the atypical sound the Metroid series is now known for. While it has definitely evolved as the series progressed through the changes in composers and hardware, the spirit and tone of the original has mostly remained throughout.
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On a very special episode of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, Jonah, Jesse and Adam Milecki talk about Metroid.

OK, that might be a little bit of an understatement. They don’t just talk about some of the games, they go through all of the games. It’s a super sized episode of ridiculous proportions and may have nearly been too big to process in Jonah’s audio editing software. We also announce the winner to our Humble Bundle Giveaway.

All music is taken from “Harmony of A Hunter“.

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How would you like to hear Super Metroid remixed by the co-composer of Mass Effect 2? Heroes vs. Villains, a free album of game music arrangements by fans of the medium, has turned such a scenario into reality.

This is the first official collaboration between game remixing giant, OverClocked ReMix, and The Bad Dudes. Two opposing factions. One album. Who will survive this climactic battle of epic proportions?

Heroes vs. Villains features 20 songs from 10 different franchises including Monkey Island, Streets of Rage, Kirby, and many more. (more…)

"A very controversial entry in an established series."

I remember when Metroid Prime was first revealed. “An FPS? How dare they do this to my precious Metroid!” I exclaimed. I generally don’t like First Person Shooters save for the occasional local multiplayer. Fast forward to today. Metroid Prime is now among my favorite games.

It’s for this reason that I was less skeptical about Metroid: Other M going in. History gave me faith that a drastic change from what’s been established is not necessarily bad. Now that I’ve completed Other M, I can answer the question “Does this new take on Metroid reinvent it as successfully as Prime did?”

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If there’s one thing I hate about the digital age we live in, it’s that everybody complains too much. For whatever reason, people in comment threads, forums, and even videos feel the need to aggressively shove their cynicism down the throats of everyone in their digital vicinity.

What if all those comment threads were combined into the form of one person, and that person wouldn’t stop talking as you try to play a game? It might sounds something like the video above.

We here at WingDamage consider ourselves pretty serious gamers. We play and discuss games on a regular basis; in reviews, opinion pieces, and the occasional anecdote. Everyone here has their own tastes, opinions, and feelings on what makes a quality game.

I believe everyone has a game that they have a special connection with. A game that you can point to, and confidently call it your favorite.

For me, that game is Cave Story. When Cave Story was first released, indie games were essentially quirky mini games you found on the internet. Cave Story’s independent status had no right to be as fun, thoughtful, and intelligent as it’s commercial cousins, Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of The Night.

Yet, Cave Story got it all right: great pacing coupled with tactile shooting and tight platforming. It seemed to come from a completely different universe as other independent games of the time. It is a game blessed with a unique hindsight that its contemporaries don’t seem to share, mixing and matching small elements of various classics games like Gunstar Heroes and the afore mentioned Metroid series.

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I think it is fair to say that the surprise at the end of Metroid has to rank amongst the all time great surprises in the Surprise Hall of Fame in Branson, Missouri.

And if that actually does exist, I am as surprised as you.

For those of you that don’t know by now, Samus is a girl. Yeah, that dude in the crazy cool power armor is actually a girl.

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