Unlike a majority of people I did not grow up with a Super Nintendo. In fact I wasn’t born until thirteen years after the purple button brick came out. I was born the year Halo 2 came out, so for now on when you tell people about me you can say, “He was born the year Halo 2 released!” So the Super Nintendo is basically a relic of the past to me. Obtaining a used Super Nintendo is easy through the means of Ebay and other sources, but trying to obtain a good chunk of its library is much harder. The Super Nintendo was home to a lot of gems outside of mainline titles, and as the saying goes rarer games will often be charged for five hundred dollars by a complete stranger who isn’t afraid to lay a dukey in your shipment box. You want to know how bad online scalping is and the terrible job Nintendo has done to preserve their games? Trying to buy a used copy of Earthbound is going to cost you the same price of a Playstation 5. That’s how bad it is. Well it’s a good thing the world of emulation exists. A nice way to preserve classics, let them be readily accessible, and allow you to tweak them in the way you think is best playable. That is if you can find a safe site to download a ROM of the game from and not get caught doing so. That or one person doesn’t ruin the fun, reveals this to Nintendo, and sees the whole thing shut down.
I think emulation is fantastic, but I don’t know if it’s exactly the perfect way to preserve games. I can’t imagine trying to play a Nintendo DS game on PC, because those games were designed with the console’s gimmicks in mind. Don’t know how exactly you’d get DS games to work and make sure it’s comfortable to play with keyboard and mouse. Anyways, enough blabbering about game preservation, let's talk about the title of the review. Super Metroid, the third mainline entry in the Metroid series and what a lot of people consider one of the best Super Nintendo games to ever be released. One of the greatest games of all time actually! It wasn’t just a technical leap forward for the series, but also the biggest innovator the franchise had seen at the time until a few years later Metroid Prime morph balled out. The world was larger in scope. The powers you unlocked were more creative than ever. There was a bigger emphasis on action & horror. The story has more thought and depth put into the characters despite the only lines of dialogue being in the intro cutscene. It was what the developers of Metroid dreamt the game would be back on the NES, but now thanks to better technology they could expand upon the basis they formed. It was impressive for its time and it still is now. When it comes to games people speedrun this is one of the first few games to enter my mind. As I watch clips of people jetting around rooms like crazy and performing the wall jump as if being tasked with simply blowing up a balloon.
Super Metroid is great, but is as good as people say it is? Now any person who has read some of my reviews would know I’m a huge fan of metroidvanias. It’s my favorite video game genre and I’m always excited to play a new one. I’ve covered maybe over thirty metroidvanias on this blog, but I never fully covered the games which they were inspired from. So that’s why I’ve started to go through the earlier Metroid titles and 2D Castlevania games. To see what made them special enough to influence what is now one of the most cluttered genres for indie games outside of the roguelike genre. Back in middle school I was a dumb lad who thought the Super Nintendo Mini was cool and spent eighty bucks on it when I finally managed to find one in the wild. I played Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, Castlevania 4, Kirby Super Star, and Mega Man X for the third time in a row. However, I never played any of the other games. I wasn’t very skilled, but this year I’ve started going through them. Star Fox, F-Zero, A Link To The Past, and here we are with Super Metroid. I was planning on covering A Link To The Past before this, but I gave up on the final boss because the second phase was too tedious. Great game though! After having finished Super Metroid for the first time I can confidently say that it is without a doubt one of the best Super Nintendo games out there. Is it my favorite Metroid game? No, that would still go to Metroid Dread but it’s probably second place for being my favorite in the series. I really liked this game and I want to explain to you how almost thirty plus years later it still holds up. Today we’re gonna be talking about why I liked Super Metroid and why it’s timeless.
Story
So this game takes place shortly after the events of Metroid II: Return of Samus, or if you are me and you grew up with a Nintendo 3DS as a kid you’d know it’s remake, Metroid: Samus Returns. You follow legendary space bounty hunter Samus Aran, a strong woman who was raised by the alien bird race known as the Chozo after her parents were killed by space pirates. Now she’s doing the best to protect the galaxy and make sure no one else ends up like her. On her last mission she was sent to investigate the disappearance of a task force sent to eradicate the Metroids. An alien species that feeds off living organisms and multiplies like rabbits. She was supposed to get the job done by massecering every last one of them including the mother, but she stumbles upon a baby Metroid that sees her as the mother and is non-hostile. Samus believes this being can be trained and researched for good, so she hands them over to scientists at the Ceres space colony. All is going well as she sails off to her next mission, but a few days after giving the baby up she gets a distress call saying the space colony has been attacked. All the scientists are dead and the baby has been stolen by space pirate leader Ridley, the one who killed her parents.
The space pirates now retreat to Zebes, the planet where Samus originally defeated Mother Brain all that time ago. Each one has taken control of a different region of Zebes and they all lock the path to what Samus believes is the path to where the baby Metroid is being held. Samus doesn’t want to see the baby Metroid to be used for evil or to rapidly multiply the Metroid population again, so it’s up to her and her alone to stop the space pirates. Locate each one of them, uncover ancient Chozo artifacts that’ll make her become stronger, kill everything that stands in her way, and save the galaxy once again. As if anyone else in space knows what Samus is doing at all times. Good luck space cowboy. You’re gonna need what is coming your way.
Gameplay
For anyone who ever played Metroid, Castlevania, or one of the many indie games it influenced like Hollow Knight and allow me to summarize the gameplay. YOU. F*CKING. KNOW. HOW. ONE. OF. THESE. GAMES. PLAY. Explore a vast interconnected world, unlock upgrades for your character that only expand their arsenal of moves but also open the way forward, battle a handful of foes, and try to figure out where you need to go. Samus’ arsenal of moves is pretty limited early on where all you can do is jump, run, and wall jump if you figure out the inputs to perform it. Over time you’ll unlock new moves, a lot of which you may recognize or seen in Super Smash Bros because it seems like that’s where a majority of people get their knowledge of Nintendo games from. A high jump to jump to higher areas. Suit enhancements that allow her to navigate areas that are too hot or weigh down Samus’ body. Different kinds of explosives to deal heavy damage and blast done doors you normally wouldn’t be able to. A grapple to swing off certain ceiling tiles. A freeze beam, the ability to shoot through walls, split your projectiles into three, or have them wave around like surfing Hawaii.
Enemies come in a variety of flavors and you can choose to either kill them or ignore them so you can just focus on the task at hand.. Killing them is usually the better choice as they’ll drop health and ammo refills. It’s not often you stumble upon an energy or ammo refill station, and if you die you’re sent back to where you last saved, which is usually a save station. That’s why it is important to save often and become familiar with the world, so you may chart a safe path to the place you need to be in. Be sure to check every corner too as sometimes there will be secrets that contain maximum health and ammo increases. All needed to stay alive longer or keep pressure up during a chaotic boss fight. Each region usually has a boss or too, and normally they are only weak to missiles. Normal projectiles don’t work unless you pick up certain blaster upgrades later on and use charged shots. That’s why you want to always be stocked up on missiles, because while you can refill on missiles during fights by destroying projectiles a boss may send at you it usually isn’t much. There’s a lot of bosses in Super Metroid, but it’s mainly four you have to kill to access the final area. Those being the space pirates and their leader Ridley. Come prepared for those fights as they are quite tricky. Outside of that there’s not much else for me to say. This is a pretty well made game with only slight annoyances during my playthrough. Let’s just hope you can kill the space pirates, find the baby, and stop another catastrophe. Again.
Thoughts
Super Metroid is a game looked back upon for numerous good reasons, and when you compare it to other games that came out around the time you realize there was no other game doing what the Metroid series was doing. A majority of side scrolling games were usually platformers, or very linear in design. Any backtracking the player would do was usually for secrets. Every player at some point was conditioned to follow what I call the “GO GO GO!” mindset. To push forward and never look back. To rush towards the objective as soon as possible, and along the way be given sprinkles of excitement. Adrenaline rushes or small nonexistent rewards that gave them a reason to move on. Basically, a majority of video games now. Don’t get me wrong I love these sorts of games, but the older I get the more I appreciate games that are slower or require you to take your time to think. Hence why I love metroidvanias and RPGs so much. These are games not for everybody, and that’s okay. Everyone has a different mindset and mine is one built upon player discovery and freedom. One that rewards you for either paying attention, going back to see what you missed, and doing things differently so that the next time around it’s better. It’s why Hollow Knight is one of my favorite games. It’s simplistic in design, but the tougher challenges require you to pay attention and learn. You’ll never get things done right the first time around, but it’s through either practicing or coming back when you are better prepared that you’ll do a bit better. That you finally accomplish the goal you had for yourself and make a big leap forward. I like big leaps forward in small doses versus a ton of small ones happening often.
Super Metroid is the blueprint for why so many indie metroidvanias follow this design mindset so often. Run into a wall, get confused, figure it out later, and feel amazed for cracking another piece of the puzzle. The world is vast and I found myself getting lost often, but there were nice touches to the world signaling when to come back later. For example, there’s a pit you can’t jump over and there’s no platforms to get to the other side. However, the tiles on the ceiling are labeled differently almost as if you could interact with them. This is a sign that maybe you should come back when you have an item to do so. The different colored door barriers are signs that maybe you’ll find different weaponry with the yellow doors not being operable until you are halfway through the game. It’s great game design, because it’s not only a signal to come back later but it says “Hey, you will be stronger at some point.” The whole goal of the game is to kill the nasty sky pirate you couldn’t kill at the beginning. Navigating an exploding shaftway that most likely you clumsily went through because you weren’t very good at controlling Samus and your moves were quite limited. By the end you are much more skilled and powerful. You can jump infinitely, jump incredibly fast, and enemies who were threats to you earlier are easier to kill.
Yet, I never felt too powerful as the game ramps up the damage output and difficulty of bosses to match the abilities of the player. I liked the final boss, because while it’s easy it pulls a move on you that knocks you nearly dead even if you are at full health. Another reminder that yes you are powerful, but not invincible. You are Samus Aran, legendary space bounty hunter. She doesn’t have a voice or personality, but god damn she is still one of gaming’s most badass protagonists. Not because you are powerful. Again, you are weak at the start of Super Metroid. It’s through earning the power fantasy that the protagonist and their journey works. It’s why the “GO GO GO” mindset isn’t always good because constantly handing down momentary gratification leads to numbness with the game. To not feel rewarded when you are being rewarded. I like the world design a lot like a majority of metroidvanias, but one thing Metroid has always done really well is the atmosphere and setting. There’s occasional music to match the environment, but the one feeling Metroid handles well is feeling alien. That you are alone and no one can come save you if you cried for help. That you’re all on your own in this hostile world and all you can do is survive the harshness. That is what I love about Metroid in general, and when the action kicks into full gear it works because you’ve come prepared for the worst to happen in this world.
I’ve been praising Super Metroid a lot for the last few minutes, but just because I’ve been doing so does not mean I think the game is immune to criticism. There are things that have not aged well with this game, and while I don’t think they harm the game immensely they are noticeable. I’m gonna get some flack for saying this, but I don’t think Super Metroid has the best controls in the world. They might even be the worst I’ve seen in a metroidvania. Jumping isn’t always fluid, performing your infinite jumps once you acquire the power for it later on takes timing, the inputs to perform a wall jump are finicky, and while I understand how limited tech was at the time I still feel aiming could be better. It’s odd how bosses can only be damaged with charged attacks or by the use of missiles. After you run around the world for a while a fast travel system sounds nice, but later games added this so at least they improved. While I didn’t mind getting lost there were bits where I felt the use of a guide was needed. Just to know where to start heading next because the game didn’t give me enough environmental cues or trying to remember was hard. I feel like there’s more to list, but as of writing I can’t think of anything else. Super Metroid is a fantastic game to play even now. I strongly recommend it, but trying to figure out how to play it is hard. Your best bet is to either subscribe to Nintendo Online for the Switch or emulation, which a lot of people won’t prefer either due to the downsides they come with but it is what it is. Metroid is great. I hope you think so too. I am going to Super Metroid a 9/10 for excellence at best.
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