The first full release of AM2R 1.0 has gone live for public consumption. You can download the full game right now from over on the official Metroid 2 Remake website.
The game is only 71MB as a zipped download, so you won’t have to worry about having a lot of hard drive space or processing power to run the game. It’s a basic exe file and doesn’t require any emulators or third-party software to run. It also hooks into Steam nicely, so if you plan on using your Steam Controller to play the game, all you have to do is tweak it to operate like an xinput device and you’re good to go. If you don’t know how to tweak it to do so, just import one of the Xbox 360 controller configurations from the community recommended section for the Another Metroid 2 Remake Steam Controller configuration.
As for the game itself… it plays out like a much faster version of Metroid 2. You start the game with the basic arm cannon and the missiles, which you can switch between just like in the older games; and you can turn into a small ball just like in the other titles.
The music is upscaled to run in ogg vorbis format, so it sounds cleaner and crisper than the original NES version, and the graphics and audio have been improved to make use of higher quality assets, including smoother animations and improved enemy artwork.
Gameplay wise, it’s pretty cool… but it ran a little too fast for my tastes. If you have Fraps, you can set it to 30fps and when you start recording it will limit the game’s frame-rate for you. Alternatively, you can download a down-clocker to limit the clock-speed for older games that may run a little rich on your machine. In the case of Another Metroid 2, the fast frame-rates made for fidgety controls, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a little time and a bit of tweaking.
In addition to making the game available for free from various download sites, you can also get your hands on some awesome looking wallpapers that have accompanied version 1.0’s release.
You can download the game right now from over on the Metroid 2 Remake website or from alternate links provided in the AMR2 sub-Reddit.
