Metroid II: Return of Samus and the way to bring a franchise to the handheld realm

It was many months ago when it occurred to me that the missing link in my Metroid journey could possibly come to the Nintendo 3DS in the form of a virtual console release. The game, of course, is Metroid II: Return of Samus. I would have discussed this one a lot earlier if I had been given the chance. It's not like I could wait for it, so I went from Metroid to Super Metroid.

So here we have Metroid II: Return of Samus, released for GameBoy in 1991 and for Nintendo 3DS virtual console in 2011. Not all game franchises have such a smooth transition to a handheld as this one. And I think Metroid II serves as a great example of how that transition should be made. Simplifying the original so the gameplay remains the highlight, making the objective easy to remember, and maybe adding something the original didn't have to make it worth playing. Metroid II only had one problem: save points were far and few between, and that can be the undoing of a handheld experience. However, the virtual console remedies this problem in one fell swoop.

I look forward to playing some more Metroid in the near future!