Deck the halls and put on your Metroid themed party hats. After six long years of waiting, we finally have another Metroid game. No, I don’t care that it’s not an official Nintendo release. There’s one real Metroid game coming out this fall and it’s not the one with Chibi Robo’s cousins as its protagonists.

For the uninitiated, AM2R is a fan made remake of Metroid 2: Return of Samus. So, yeah, it isn't a completely new full blown Metroid game. It’s a remake, in much the same way that Zero Mission was a remake of the original Metroid. But don't let the fan part of that turn you off, because it's incredibly well made, looking as good as Zero Mission. And like Zero Mission, it changes so much that basically everything besides the major boss names and the general layout of the areas is new. Even the plot is altered from before; now instead of simply going down to hunt Metroids, you’re also there to investigate what happened to some Federation troopers that tried the same thing before you. All of which is good, if a little familiar. If this plot extension sounds similar to the beginning of Metroid Prime 2, then you’re right on a number of levels, though for what it’s worth, AM2R doesn’t just resolve that plot point within the first 20 minutes and then just focus on something else for the rest of the game.

But that’s a minor complaint compared to how much AM2R does right. The original Metroid 2 is pretty much the only Metroid at this point that I find unplayable without a walkthrough and an online crash course in navigating Gameboy worlds. Finding a bunch of Metroids is one thing, finding them with no map and a bunch of samey old black and white areas is another entirely. Happily, AM2R addresses all of these issues and then some. There’s a fully detailed map that goes so far as to show you entrances to rooms, the environments are fully colored, far better looking and, perhaps most importantly, easily distinguishable. The game even goes so far as to mark the position of Metroids on your map that you have encountered or killed, so you don’t bother re-checking rooms if you’re searching for the last one in an area. There’s even a feature that I’ve wanted included in Metroid games for a long time; the ability to place a custom marker in a room. The game also tells you not only how many Metroids are left on the whole planet, but how many are in your particular region, so you know how many you have to go before you get to move on.

The enemies have received a major overhaul as well, particularly the Metroids. The AI is much smarter and will even adapt over time. At several points, I had an Alpha Metroid do a quick dodge back as soon as I aimed my arm cannon diagonally, so either the enemies get smarter the more of them you fight or a sect of Metroids have formed a cult based around clairvoyance. The designs of some of the later Metroids have been overhauled as well, making their fights far more different than they were in the original game; which is good. Along with that, a number of entirely new bosses have been added, and these are by far some of the most creative fights you’ll find in 2D Metroid. One habit you’ll have to learn very early on, though, is to make sure to check the scans for any boss; one boss in particular steamrolled me until I figured out that the secret to beating him was hidden inside the logbook. A habit I’ve gotten into for the Prime games, but not so much the 2D ones.

With that said, while redesigning enemies is good, there’s a certain nuance to redesigning them in ways that aren’t going to just kick the player in the balls until they figure out the patterns, which is probably AM2R’s biggest stumbling block. Like in Metroid 2, you’re required to shoot certain points of the Metroid’s body in order to deal damage, but unlike Metroid 2, enemies will move around very quickly, meaning that the target you’re aiming for is moving around very quickly as well. This isn’t a problem so much for the earlier Metroids, which die in from only a few missiles, but when you’re up against Omega Metroids in the late game, and you’re working with a fairly limited amount of Super Missiles, things can get kind of frustrating as the weak point the size of Donald Trump’s hands keeps moving up and down and your once perfectly lined up shots bounces off harmlessly. It requires a lot of pattern memorization, which I’d argue other 2D Metroid games have generally done a good job of avoiding. The final boss is particularly guilty of this, in which you have to learn multiple patterns and switch between them on the fly.

And speaking of bosses, I thought we had learned back in Metroid Prime 2 that putting the nearest save point a good half mile away from the boss fight was a slap in the face, but apparently not, because this game does it on at least three separate occasions, most egregiously, again, with the final boss fight. Which is particularly noteworthy because there was a save point before that boss fight in the original game, but it’s completely gone here. I guess the bright side is you’ll have plenty of time to go over which patterns mean which attack as you spend several minutes walking back to its lair every single time.

I wouldn’t be the resident board jerk without nitpicking at everything, so one last thing I’ll throw out there are glitches. One of the biggest for me was that acquiring a certain item caused Samus to turn invisible, meaning that I had to keep deactivating said item whenever I wasn’t using it. Another rather annoying glitch would cause the game to crash at seemingly random points when I would open up the map, which taught me to be very cautious with when I opened the map. And since the only way you can access Samus’ powerups is through the map screen, that proved doubly annoying whenever I need to switch out the aforementioned invisibility causing item.

So on that note, what is new for Samus in the remake? Well, the first neat touch is something I’ve already mentioned; the ability to deactivate Samus’ items from the menu, which I would’ve been glad to see even if that glitch didn’t exist. Admittedly this is from games (well, a game) past, but it’s still nice to see it return, especially since it hasn't shown up in 22 years. The aforementioned scanning is new for 2D games as well, and occurs automatically at certain points in the game, usually when entering a new area or coming across a boss/new Metroid type. This allows the game to elaborate a lot more on lore and backstory than any 2D game in the past, which is a definite plus. Like Zero Mission, the entirety of Samus’ standard 2D arsenal appears, even that which didn’t show up in the original game. Beams also stack this time around, so there’s no need to swap things out like there was in the original RoS. Perhaps most importantly, Samus controls almost exactly like she does in Zero Mission, with the exception of one wall wall jumping being far more difficult to pull off.

And, again, like Zero Mission, AM2R has some new areas of its own to explore, though these tend to be smaller and more spread out as opposed to ZM sticking Chozodia and the Pirate Mothership altogether and basically having the rest of the game be from the NES Metroid. I kind of prefer AM2R’s method of sticking in some smaller new areas that can be explored during the progress of a normal run through as opposed to ZM letting us finish the original game and then sticking us in a stealth game, as it doesn’t break up the flow of gameplay.

There really isn’t a lot to complain about as far as AM2R goes outside of the nits I’ve already picked, and most of the flaws that I can point out are issues with the original game itself. For the unaware, Metroid 2 and AM2R both limit Samus’ progression deeper into the planet by blocking off the descending passage with lava that will drain enough to allow access into a new location only once all the Metroids in the preceding area have been killed. The game feels a lot more segmented and linear as a result, but there’s not a lot AM2R could’ve done to fix that without drastically moving away from the original game’s formula.

Another issue is that, no matter how much the game gets changed up, it’s still ultimately about killing a whole bunch of what essentially amount to minibosses. While fighting Metroids is far less tedious than Metroid 2, you’re still going to be fighting the same mini bosses multiple times over. Some of these, especially the Omega Metroid fights, can be long, drawn out battles, so beating one only to have two more to kill can turn the later parts of the game into something of a drag.

Ultimately, though, these are minor issues in what is a fantastic remake. I speak no hyperbole when I say that you could let someone unfamiliar with the Metroid series play Fusion, Zero Mission, and AM2R, and they would have a difficult time determining which was a fan made game (glitches aside). Doctor M64 has done an amazing job with this, and it honestly feels like a title up there with Fusion and ZM in terms of quality. Despite Nintendo doing their best to ignore Samus, she has still managed to receive the 30th birthday present she deserved.