Section Z

One of my favorite [read: “only”] childhood Nintendo games was Capcom‘s “Section Z“. Section Z was like the poor-man’s version of Metroid: guy in a space-suit killing things in order to kill a bigger ‘Brain’ thing.

The one important thing about this game was that it taught me how to non-linearly map things. I was used to pen-and-paper RPGs, so I was used to drawing areas that had rooms that lined up. After a few days of frustration trying to map Section Z, I realized that it didn’t matter where I put the rooms on my map. At the end of each room there were two teleporters. The key to mapping [and beating] the game was to note where the teleporters took your character. By the time I was done with the game, I had dispensed with graph paper, and just had a list of section names and where their ‘up’ or ‘down’ teleporters took me.