Between Tera going to school full time and me trying to balance work and writing, we can be fairly awful at getting wedding stuff done. 

I wish I was a vampire cause then I could not sleep and have an extra 8 hours to do stuff every day. That’s the only thing I took from Twilight.

Quick question before I jump back in to Metroid. Planet Zebes is supposedly the Space Pirate fortress right? So why is it that of the 32 enemies in the game, not a single one of them is a Space Pirate? What the hell were they so occupied with??

Anyway, back to the game.

Picking up where I left off, I discovered that I had not explored the first two areas nearly as thoroughly as I had thought. I went back and discovered tons of powerups and add-ons and let me tell you, I may have started out feeling a bit like a weakling but that quickly started to change.

Along the way, my health and missiles were growing constantly. Then i get the Varia suit, which reduces damage by half. I also got the Ice-beam, which freezes enemies in their tracks.

In Norfair I discovered the high-jump and the screw-attack, which are just incredible. I then stumbled upon the Wave-Beam, which is super powerful (if a smidge inaccurate).

Combine all that and no longer did I cower in fear at the sight of an enemy, in fact I started destroying with abandon. Zebes became my blood-lust fueled subterranean playground; all that power made me feel like a FREAKING SUPER SAIYAN!

What’s great about the power-ups is that they are largely optional. You can get through the game with very few of them, though it would be excruciating. I myself am not a masochistic gamer, more often than not opting for the path of least resistance, but there are those who would play through this game with as few powers as possible and have an absolute blasty blast.

After gearing up I figured I should try to take on Kraid and Ridley, the two mini-bosses of the game. I assumed that starting with Kraid would be the way to go, as he is located in Hideout 1 and Ridley is in Hideout 2. In actuality, though I found Ridley to be a bit of a chump, Kraid was an absolute douche.

Ridley took me like a minute and a half to take down, but Kraid took at least half an hour.

After defeating both baddies my missile reserves were sitting at around 250, which made me feel like even more of a badass. But there is a twist dear reader, for all of this power, all of these extra energy tanks and missiles just lured me into a false sense of security. “This should be easy right?” I thought to myself, “I can take this, right?”

Upon entering Tourien, reality punched me right in the face and my frail humanity became oh so very tangible. I am talking of course about the titular Metroids, the jellyfish-crab monsters that the space pirates so desperately want to use against the galactic federation. These things are completely evil; if they attach themselves to your face, you are going to die. That’s it. The sudden uptick in difficulty left me a bit shocked.

After barely making it through Tourien and destroying mother-brain, I escaped the depths of Planet Zebes with only 1 HP. 

Upon reaching the surface I made a shocking discovery, Samus Aran is a GIRL???

Seriously though, Samus being of the female persuasion is common knowledge now, but back then it was a huge plot-twist! 
I guess when you barely have a plot, you don’t need much of a twist.

All in all, Metroid is a great game. It has some archaic game-design as all NES games do, but I’d say this game holds up better than most. More than anything it makes me so uncontrollably excited to see where the series goes from here; and as I write these words, Metroid II: The Return Of Samus is downloading onto my 3DS.

Check back soon and follow my adventure as I enter the great unknown of the Gameboy sequel.

Specifically this comic is about Beyond Good And Evil, but I do this ALL THE TIME. 

Also, I just realized I gave myself Tera’s colors in panel 2. Oh well.

Metroid; one of the most beloved games of all time, a genre defining science-fiction masterpiece, and I’ve never played it. Seems odd doesn’t it? I like to think of myself as a well-read (well-played?) gamer, and if anything lean Nintendo, yet I’ve never played Metroid. “Alright” you say, “you may not have played the original, but surely you’ve played one of the many sequels? Perhaps Super Metroid, which is considered by some to be the best game of all time”? Well that dear reader, is where the plot thickens. Not only have I never played the 1987 original, I have never finished a single game in the series, never even played more than a few hours. 

That’s right terribly drawn Mario. Let eternal shame rain down upon me.

I am of course familiar with one miss Samus Aran (the 4.8 billion hours I have put into the Super Smash Brothers series saw to that). I know words like Brinstar, Ridly, Space-Pirate and morph ball. I know what a Metroid is, (and that it should of course be avoided) but that is all I really have, a passing knowledge. So that is why I am setting out on this mission; to play though the Metroid series. It may take a while and have many pit-stops along the way, but any great journey starts with a single step.

And so it is that I, armed only with my 3DS and a map from a very old issue of Nintendo Power, begin my play-through of Metroid.

From the very beginning, Metroid feels like a fight for survival. Not only does the first beam only shoot 8 freaking feet,

but you start with only 30 health. Now, many games start you out with fairly low health capacity, but Samus has a capacity of 99 health from the very beginning. It’s like this cocky bounty hunter left for planet Zebes all like

I like to think of the beginning of the game as Samus hunting the local wildlife, eating anything she can to stay alive.

Let me tell you about the enemies in Metroid. Those sumbitches take 5, 10, even 20 health from the get-go and to describe some of their attack patterns as erratic is an understatement, so Samus’ first task is to hunt and build up some resistance. That brings me to my first point; Metroid is freaking hard. Everybody knows that modern games have lost their edge in many ways - that NES era difficulty was so much more sinister, and this game is no different. Is it the most difficult game on the NES? Lord no! But it does make me praise the Nintendo Gods for the beautiful invention that is the Virtual Console suspend feature.

What really strikes me about this game though is the way ahead of its time non-linearity. How many NES games give you the option to explore a large game-world on your own, giving you the freedom to find your own way? The game world is pretty huge, and it has some pretty opaque secret paths. Zebes would be pretty damned difficult to navigate without that Nintendo Power map.

At this point, I have pretty sufficiently explored Brinstar and Norfair, delving deeply into their dank rocky crevices and fiery chasms, and I can barely wait to explore the rest.

Check back soon to read all about my continuing adventures on planet Zebes!

And I’m not totally sure how to draw it…

We all know I have issues drawing myself consistently but the hair has always tied that shiz together..

Whatever happens, I feel as if the cowlick has to stay. Not only does it seem to exist no matter how I cut my hair, but it has pretty much become the signature characteristic of my illustrated avatar.

Anyway, here’s one so you can draw your own version of my hair!

It’s like one of them activity books given to the children of parents who want some damn quiet for once. So shut up and enjoy your book kid, daddy has a meeting with his friend Jack Daniels…

Wow that got dark. 

Well guys it’s been a while, but…. hold on a sec. Do me a favor, go ahead and play this song while you read this post, yeah? I feel like it’ll really add to the mood.

Anyway hi. Where was I? Oh right. I’m back!

I know it’s been a while, and I apologize for that, but rest easy 10 to 20 readers, for the gaping hole in your soul can now be mended. 

My absence is do to a few things, chief among which is pure and simple laziness. Not so much laziness on the writing front, but rather on that of the art. The thought of drawing a comic on paper, then scanning and editing it…

I have honestly doodled a few things for this blog in the last 9 months only to leave them on my desk and forget about them entirely.

The fact is that my focus in life has veered greatly away from art, and toward writing. I am now a regular contributor to WhatCulture.com, where I cover comics and games. It’s something that I have wanted to do for a long time, and it’s so fantastic to finally have the opportunity. 

So why am I starting this Blog back up again? Well firstly, I’ve missed it. There’s some weird crap that happens to me that really just needs to be shared.

Secondly, now that I am writing for real on the interweb it will be nice to have my own space to write stuff that wouldn’t fit elsewhere.

And thirdly, I drunkenly purchased a Nintendo 3DS on Ebay at 2 AM.

I tell you this not just because I enjoy telling a good drunk story (which I very much do), but because it is on said device that I am drawing these doodles. It’s unspeakably awesome to be able to reach into my pocket at any moment, draw a picture, and upload it instantly. I use a program called Colors 3D, which is not only fantastic and intuitive but it allows me to post videos of the drawing process like so. It’s pretty great.

So anyway, a few big things have happened since my last post.*

1. Despite this comic, I actually did grow a beard. 

2. I adopted a Puppy. His name is Timothy Drake.

And 3, I asked Tera, my best friend and the love of my life, to marry me! (dressed as Link)

*More on these later.

So yeah, here we go! Check back in a few days for some ridiculous stories, unsettling doodles and a few surprises.