Metroid

Metroid is for me… one of the most influential games I played as a kid, even if it wasn’t one of the first ones I owned (in fact, I may not have ever actually owned the cart). I think I was around six when I first got access to it, after already beating stuff like Zelda, Super Mario Bros., and Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out (I may not have been able to beat Mike Tyson at this point, but I could definitely get up to him). I’m pretty sure we borrowed it from a friend of my brothers who was more well off than we were.

What stood out to me when I first played it was that It wasn’t a level based game at all. You get dropped into a world and told basically nothing. You immediately hit a wall you can’t pass when you go right… which is the normal direction you’d travel in a classic video game, forcing you to backtrack, get the morph ball, and immediately, your brain clicks to the style of game this is, even if you don’t know it yet. You explore, you get upgrades, and those upgrades let you reach new areas. That whole structure was completely wild at the time, and there’s a reason “Metroidvania” is a thing now.

What I liked about Metroid (NES)

The open world design absolutely blew my mind as a kid. Realizing that you couldn’t go somewhere yet because you needed an upgrade was such a cool feeling. Missiles opening doors, bombs breaking walls, the ice beam letting you freeze enemies to reach new places, high jump boots opening up vertical paths. It all felt very forward thinking.

It was also very mysterious. It was the first game I played where you had to exhaustively shoot every wall and look for hidden paths (there are a lot of them). There are false lava floors with hidden chambers and tons of hidden paths and upgrades to find. I don’t really know if there is a timeline of what game did it first, but for me, this was definitely one of the first of it’s kind.

Metroid was also a big group game for me, of which, I didn’t have many of. I often played it with my brother and cousins, and because we didn’t have Nintendo Power or guides, we literally drew maps. The password system was brutal and easy to mess up, but it also made progress feel important. This game took us forever to beat back then but I think a modern gamer could beat this in just a few hours without much help once they get the flow.

The atmosphere carries a lot of weight. The game feels rough around the edges compared to Mario or Zelda, but the music and mood do a ton of work. The opening theme is very iconic, with it’s low boom…. boom… and some of the area music really sticks with you (I really like Kraid’s Hideout music but I’m sure Brinstar is likely the favorite and more catchy). The sci-fi vibe felt mysterious and kind of lonely in a way other NES games didn’t, especially the music in Secret Areas or Upgrade rooms where it almost sounds like a sci-fi telephone (it’s hard to articulate).

The reveal that Samus is a woman was a huge deal at the time, especially since nothing in the game really tells you that beforehand. Another interesting detail is the fact that the game is called Metroid even though you play as Samus, and you barely even see Metroids until the very end, just adds to that strange mystery. They’re dangerous, memorable enemies, but not even the final boss and you basely encounter them for much of your entire playthrough. There are many memes around these two facts like “Metroid was a Girl?!”.

Mother Brain is still an incredible finale. The fight feels tense and awkward in a good way, and the escape sequence afterward is genuinely stressful the first time you see it. That whole idea gets carried forward later and still works.

The upgrades in general are great. Energy tanks, missile expansions, the screw attack (iconic), suits that reduce damage. Even stuff like the wave beam that barely gets used still feels cool to find, at least on your first play through.

What I didn’t like about Metroid (NES)

It’s definitely not the most polished or friendly game. The visuals can be hard to read, and a lot of things are never explained, especially in game, which was normal for the time. As a kid, I had no idea areas had names like Brinstar or Norfair. I barely knew who Kraid was. Mother Braind and maybe Ridley were about the only boss/enemies name that stuck, other than Metroids, and even then either probably from the manual or maybe I’m rewriting my brain after playing Super Metroid.

I can totally see modern players bouncing off this hard if this was a brand new release (or giving it a low score due to it’s length or not having any modern features). But even for it’s time… If you didn’t already understand this style of game, it would have been easy to get lost, frustrated, or just quit. The password system is rough, and dying with a bad password hurts, and I’m sure some percentage of the human race lost their progress because they wrote an O o or 0 incorrectly.

Later games in the series completely outclass it. Super Metroid perfects basically everything this game started and is probably the best entry in the series.

Overall thoughts about Metroid (NES)

This is a weird one for me. Objectively, it’s probably a B-tier game. Personally, it ranks way higher because of what it meant to me and how important it was. It’s not as complete or clean as The Legend of Zelda, but it’s incredibly influential and still memorable decades later.

I replayed it recently while going for RetroAchievements, and even now the final area and Mother Brain are nerve-wracking. That says a lot. We’ll see where this lands over time but it’s definitely worth an experience if you have never played it.