Metroid: Zero Mission/Metroid 35th Anniversary Review
For Metroid's 35th anniversary I'm taking a look at the game that revolutionised the industry and created a whole game genre as well as one of the best remakes ever made.
35 years ago today Metroid was unleashed upon the world and with it changed video games forever. Its mission was simple; as Samus Aran, you are to explore the planet Zebes, destroy the Metroids and stop Mother Brain from weaponising the parasitic creatures to take over the universe. And with the cretinous cranium defeated and Metroids slain, you race for freedom in a tense countdown. You’re rewarded with a congratulations message and, if you’ve played through quick enough, see the reveal of Samus unmasking, revealing this mysterious robotic character you’ve been playing as for the last 4 hours is a woman. Something that blew everyone’s mind back in 1986. It was unheard of! Not a mustachioed plumber, not an adventurous boy, but a spacefaring warrior lady. While Ms.Pacman had preceded Samus Aran as the first playable female character in a video game, Samus has arguably paved the way for future female leads in video games. Lara Croft, Aloy, Jill Valentine, Tifa Lockheart, all might not have existed if not for Samus opening up that opportunity.
Not only was Metroid responsible for establishing and popularising playable female lead characters in video games, the game itself also defined a genre laying a foundation that is heavily emulated and carried on today. Coupled with Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Metroid is responsible for the term Metroidvania. A game where you are dumped in a setting and forced to explore in isolation, gathering items to power yourself up along the way, secret items hidden in walls, secret bosses tucked away in a corner somewhere, and backtracking across an ever expanding map finding new areas thanks to the newest items you’ve acquired. Indie games heavily use this genre; Ori and the Blind Forest, Hollow Knight, Guacamelee, Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse, Steamworld Dig, and Blasphemous. Even mainstream studios use this for games such as Shadow Complex, Batman Arkham Asylum, and Dark Souls. There aren’t many games that define a game genre and Metroid was one of the first to do it, creating something that would still be heavily utilised 35 years on.
Metroid had revolutionised the games industry in such a significant and drastic way, yet frustratingly at times it doesn’t seem to get the recognition it deserves for it. Outside of the Smash Bros. games hardly anyone in the general audience even knows about the Metroid games, and if they do it’s the Metroid Prime games. In Japan the games tend to sell poorly yet are still highly critically praised and seem to fair much better in the west. Even Nintendo themselves overlook Metroid’s significance having ignored Samus’ 25th and 30th anniversaries. If they can throw celebrations for Luigi they can absolutely celebrate the mother of video games. It’s her 35th! They did it for Mario and Zelda so they have no excuse to not do so for Samus!
So without further babble, I’m going to look at the seminal isolative exploration video game and one of the best modern remakes of a video game ever made with Metroid and Metroid: Zero Mission!
Metroid: Zero Mission
Developer: Nintendo R&D1
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: 8th April 2004 (EU), 9th February 2004 (NA), 19th March 2004 (AUS), 27th May 2004 (Japan)
Platform: GameBoy Advance.
Alright, so I’m starting with this first but Metroid: Zero Mission is undoubtedly one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest, video game remake ever made. Released two years after Metroid Fusion and using the same engine, Zero Mission is a complete retelling and overhaul of the original NES game.
As Samus Aran, you explore the depths of Zebes journeying through Crateria, Brinstar, Norfair and Tourian. Your mission is to defeat Kraid, Ridley and Mother Brain and destroy the Metroids stopping the Space Pirates from weaponising them to take over the universe. There’s nothing much in way of cutscenes or explicit storytelling, but it does have beautiful comicbook style illustrations as you traverse into newer areas. The mighty Kraid looming tall over Samus, the watchful eye of Mother Brain spying on Samus as she descends lower into Zebes, Ridley swooping towards us with devastating speed initiating his boss battle, and Metroids feasting on an unlucky Space Pirate are a few memorable illustrations you get to see throughout as you progress the story. The story is simple yet still compelling enough to get you involved. There was even a two volume tie-in manga that told of Samus’ origin starting from her days as a toddler on the Earth colony K-2L all the way up to the start of this game.
Utilising the control scheme of Fusion, and to an extent Super Metroid, you can do so much more now with Samus compared to her NES outing. The controls are nice and simple enough and controlling Samus feels pretty much perfect. Everything is so responsive and quick you feel like a super fast and agile warrior capable of anything and like nothing ahead of you can stop you. If you’re careful anyway, because at the start you have just one energy tank, the weakest version of the power suit, no missiles, a short range beam of fire and not even the morphball. Well, until you go left anyway. While starting off limited in what you have, you’re not limited in terms of mobility and control over Samus. You can shoot in all directions using L, grab onto ledges (with the power grip later on) and you can shoot while crouching to get to those lower level targets easier. A jumps and B shoots and B with R fires the readied missiles. Down twice enters morphball mode and B in morphball mode uses bombs (once you pick those up too.) Over the course of the game after grabbing more and more power-ups you feel like an overpowered action hero. You especially feel much more of an invincible action hero by the end of the game. Once you’re equipped with the wave beam and fully powered varia suit you feel like a walking tank destroying everything in your wake. Once I got my suit and ran around obliterating Space Pirates in their mothership I imagined them freaking out running around helplessly going “Oh shit! She’s got her sui—*zap!*” A little like the end of Super Metroid when you blast the shit out of them with the rainbow beam of death. The fact that it feels so good and satisfying running around and shooting things up as Samus is one thing that makes this game incredible. And what good is a game that feels horrible controlling your character?
What good is a Metroid game without exploration either? Gladly there’s lots to explore here. As you explore through Crateria, Brinstar, Norfair and Tourian you’ll find there’s tons of secret items hidden in nooks and crannies, power-ups tucked away behind obstacles and enemies, distinct areas to roam around in all four spaces, impressive arenas to battle the bosses and lots of enemy creatures to discover. While you’re free to explore these spaces as you want, you will find that there are parts of Zebes you cannot get past until you get certain items or meet a certain Chozo statue that help guide your way. These statues help point you in the right direction on where to go but it doesn’t limit you on where you want to look before then. Handily they also heal you and replenish your ammo! Everything is depicted in an artful comicbook/manga style and it serves its intended tone wonderfully. It is such a fantastic looking game to look at. And it sounds even better.
If someone were to ask me what is the best thing about the Metroid games other than its exploration or feelings of isolation I would say its music. The music in Metroid is so iconic and easily one of the greatest game soundtracks I will probably ever hear. Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka composed the original game’s soundtrack and created some of the most legendary themes in any video game ever and his themes have been used ever since for pretty much all Metroid games. Kenji Yamamoto (who also did the music for Super Metroid, Fusion and Prime) and Minako Hamano do the music for Zero Mission using Hip Tanaka’s themes and bring in other inspired tracks into the game’s soundtrack, such as some tracks from the Metroid Prime series. It has tracks that are greatly atmospheric which impose that isolation on you further and tracks that are so cinematically heroic that invigorate that spacefaring warrior badass inside you and makes you feel like that invincible action hero that you are and Samus Aran is. It has tracks that makes battles against Kraid, Ridley and Mother Brain even more intense and suspenseful. The game’s soundtrack is just incredible and I could gush over it and its themes all day long. There’s a reason Metroid’s tracks are covered by fans and musicians so much, there’s a reason why the Harmony of a Hunter album exists and it’s because Hip Tanaka created a soundtrack that is so inspiring and worthy of imitation! And to those who think video game soundtracks aren’t worth it or have this unwarranted taboo against them; you close-minded, ignorant dolt! You’re stifling yourself on some musical masterpieces!
Fanboying over the soundtrack now out of the way, its sound effects are also incredibly well done. The blaster fire of Samus’ arm cannon, her missile fire, her footsteps, speed boosts, oofs and jumps and bumps and screw attacks, everything feels impactful and creates a solid soundscape. Even with the enemies with their weird alien vocal ticks and squeeks and Ridley’s ear-piercing shrieking. This game is pleasing on the thumbs, eyes and ears. Everything about it is a sensory delight.
So, you’ve landed on Zebes. You’ve fought through all manner of creatures. You’ve powered up your suit little by little. You’ve overfed Kraid his daily supply of missiles. You’ve slapped Ridley’s shit around, blown him up and got revenge for him killing your parents. You’ve shattered Metroids into frozen chunks and you’ve given Mother Brain a tremendous migraine she might never recover from. And you’ve escaped with barely enough time after Mother Brain acted like a sore loser and decided to blow up Zebes like a petty child “If I can’t have Zebes and the Metroids, no one can!” Well done! Mission complete! We can all go home now… Right?
No. That’s not all there is to this remake! Once you beat Mother Brain there’s more to the story!
The original NES game was overall kinda short in length and content. To add more to Zero Mission they threw in some additional content, the aforementioned story illustrations and expansion on the Chozo for example to add a more comprehensive story. With items they included super missiles to find even more items and super bombs and they also included four more bosses to fight. Yet even with added bosses to this game and subtle Chozo lore to build it up more it was still too short. So, what happens? Well as you escape from Zebes, Samus thinks her job is all done so she gets her stifling boots off and slips into something a little more comfortable as it were until Space Pirates come swarming in and shoot Samus’ ship out of the sky sending her crashing back down onto Zebes! The Space Pirates fly off back to their mothership thinking they had slain the bounty hunter hero, but Samus survives! Although, she is without a ship and her powersuit. This leads to an entirely new segment and ending for Metroid debuting Samus’ zero suit. In this zero suit segment you now have to inflitrate the Space Pirate mothership to get to a ruinous section of Zebes called Chozodia where you will attain a new powersuit. You don’t have any of your previous weapons save for a plasma pistol which is only good enough to paralyse Space Pirates temporarily. So without sufficient firepower or defence you have to rely on stealth and guile to get through the Space Pirates.
I’ve seen some negative criticisms towards this part but really it is a ton of fun to do. It’s interesting to see and play as another side of Samus going all zero suit, being even more vulnerable and limited to how you began this game, to see her be just as nimble and athletic and even more capable to survive outside of her powersuit and even BE ABLE TO CRAWL! It’s a fun challenge to try and go through it as stealthily as possible without being detected by the Space Pirates but I don’t think there’s any way to get through it without getting caught at least once. To my knowledge anyway. Everytime I’ve done it no matter how careful I am I still get caught. Yet even when getting caught there’s that imposing sense of dread avoiding detection by patrolling Space Pirates and being chased by them as you make your way into Chozodia. There’s great tension there to avoid detection, that fearful dread that is incredibly reminiscent of facing off against the SAX in Fusion, or rather trying to avoid it. And being able to run down the length of a corridor after being swarmed by half a dozen Space Pirates at once only to swiftly turn, fire and pull the ground out from underneath them and watch the pursuing Space Pirates plumet below is so satisfying to see. I argue against the criticisms that this is the weakest part of the remake when circumstantially it works incredibly well to not have firepower enough in the zero suit to face off against the Space Pirates. It throws another side of survival and isolation and threat at Samus bringing her to her most vulnerable and forcing her to attain power enough to overcome the threat around her. Which is what Metroid is all about. That dread and gathering resources enough to fight back against that threat no matter how low or vulnerable you get. Which I feel is rather inspiring and detrimental to Samus as a character. No matter how low you get beaten down to or how much gets taken from you, you’ve just got to gather the strength enough to get back up, use what you’ve got to get what you need to get you back to your highest potential.
So you sneak and fight your way through the Space Pirate mothership and Chozodia and discover within ancient Chozo ruins. Ruins that hold a test for Samus and yet another new boss battle! Sort of. There are four circles surrounding a Chozo warrior spirit that holds a crystal ball and within that ball is Samus. If you shoot that enemy Samus however you lose health. So what do you do? When that Samus in the ball disappears and turns to a Chozo symbol you shoot that. You repeat this three more times avoiding the Chozo spirit and lightning strikes. Pass the test and you are rewarded the fully powered varia suit! NOW you’re the invincible action hero! The ultimate warrior of the galaxy! From starting with nothing in the zero suit your efforts are rewarded with everything you could possibly want! You leave the Chozo Ruins, head back through the Space Pirate mothership and within seek vengeance upon them all and leave none alive with the hero theme harping on. You head for the top section of the ship and encounter… something. *Krrzt-clunk* *Krrzt-clunk* over and over. Mechanical footsteps. Closer and closer it comes, giant claws scratching, dragging along some kind of figure lined by glowing green lines and emerald orbs. It claws its way into the light and reveals itself to be MECHA-RIDLEY! Yet another new boss to battle! You blast the vulnerable core at its chest until it collapses and deactivates. For a moment nothing until its beady green eye flashes red. It beeps an alarm. Its self-destruct mechanism activates! You dash back through the Space Pirate ship, blasting every sorry Space Pirate dumb enough to try and stop you, head for the mothership’s hangar and escape in a flying sperm as the mothership explodes!
Finally it is done! Mission complete!
A final Chozo illustration appears, Samus does her heroic poses and you see how quickly you completed the game and percentage of items attained. It is finished. And want to know what’s the best part about completing the game other than the numerous fancy endings you get? It’s not even the childhood scribble Samus scratched on the ruin’s walls. You unlock the original NES Metroid game. Well, technically the emulated version from the Classic NES series for the GBA. But two games in one GBA cartridge and what a faithful remake this is and a gratuitous game to give you the original game it remade.
This game is a masterpiece. Metroid Zero Mission is undoubtedly one of the greatest and best made remakes ever. It takes what was and overhauls it to perfection and as a reward for completion you’re given the original NES game, giving you more value for your money and more worth for the game.
And of the game responsible that started it all…
Metroid
Developer: Nintendo R&D1, Intelligent Systems.
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: 6th August 1986 (Japan), 15th August 1987 (NA), 15th January 1988 (EU)
Platforms: Famicom Disk System, NES, Arcade.
I had played Metroid once before years ago after completing Zero Mission, but I never got very far with it. I knew what to do in the opening area easily. Go left, grab the morphball, head right, use the morphball to craw—roll underneath and head out into the wide open world of Zebes. It was here that I ran into problems. For starters, the controls are much, much stiffer and limited to what I have been used to with Super Metroid and Zero Mission. It is a NES game afterall and it is the first of its kind so the controls would be like that. That’s ok, I can manage. You jump with A and shoot with B. You shoot forward and up and that’s it outside of morphball controls which you press down to go into the morphball and B for bombs. You cannot crouch and shoot which makes facing the knee-high Zoomers annoying to defeat and then you have to be careful with the Skrees and Mellows above you until you get the long beam and screw attack. Immediately everything is hostile and out to kill you. And it will, too. You have no energy tanks and only 30 health, also what you start with after every time you die. Each health orb you’re lucky enough to get replenishes 5 points of health (though some in tougher areas restores 10) and enemy attacks can knock off up to 10, so even then until you get your varia suit you need to be very, very careful getting around. I got further into Brinstar and saw there was a loooong, long climb up to the next door. Headed through that and—oh, everything is orange now. Ok, new area. Head forward through the next door, head down this perilous corridor, through the next door, through the next perilous corridor that looked exactly the same as the last one, carried on and on and—wait a minute, am I lost? Is this thing looping? I turned back around and found myself back in the orange chamber area place. I was so lost and then I died.
I didn’t touch the game again until recently, having got a little discouraged, and I was determined to complete it before today and experience its end. I needed to experience where it all started, see that foundation, see how Metroid grew game after game and see its beginnings. It is Metroid’s 35th after all.
So I sat down, stuck in, grabbed a walkthrough to help guide me through it (because what’s the harm in asking for directions?) and commited to it. And I ran into the same problems again with the controls and directions. Until I took my time to learn how the enemies worked and how Samus works and I got the hang of it. I studied the walkthrough and learned what was the best path to take and what was the most easiest for me to access and I was getting it. But Metroid was still frustrating in its limitations and everything tring to kill you and getting lost. I’d grab my first missiles, grab the long beam, my first energy tank, another couple more missiles and— ahh, now I’m getting it! Now I’m feeling more capable getting through this hellscape!— Oh, nevermind. I died again. At this point I didn’t really mind dying and starting at the beginning of Brinstar again, kinda made things easier working around backtracking. What I did mind was having to restore my health all over again, especially once I had gotten 3 energy tanks things got tedious refilling them. But even through my failures I was learning more about this game and that was very good.
Then looking through the walkthrough I saw the next two big items I should get are the hi-jump and the varia suit. I had the ice beam already and the walkthrough suggested for getting the varia suit you trick a Waver to fly up a gap in the roof of this small corridor you can shoot through and freeze the Waver up in the section above so I can use it as a platform to reach the room that holds the varia suit. This was another frustrating thing because this was a trick experienced players can do and not something new players to the game can pull off (unless you’re particularly skilled in which case ooh, get you, you clever bastard.) But I tried it still to see if I could trick the Waver up into the gap but it just wasn’t working, I couldn’t ever get the timing right. So I thought fuck this and headed back for Norfair.
I hate Norfair. Even in Super Metroid and Zero Mission Norfair can be a pain if you’re either new to the game or rusty. What with its enemies and lava everywhere it’s almost… Norfair to the player. Get it? Not fair, Norfair, no fair—ahh, fuck it. Anyway. Norfair can be tricky because the enemies are stronger so they weaken you quicker and if you’re not careful you can fall down into the lava below and get slowly cooked. It’s a lot of fun really. But I pressed onward until I found the hi-jump boots. And then I saw in the walkthrough that a little whiles off from the hi-jump boots you can grab the screw attack! Well I had to get that, that would make things so much easier. So I leapt onward breaking in my new boots, found the screw attack and now I was starting to feel more capable and invincible. I’ve got a good few missiles and energy packs on me, got the ice beam, hi-jump and screw attack so my arsenal and mobility was enhanced. I just needed that varia suit. So I travelled all the way out of Norfair and back to Brinstar, nabbed the varia suit and now I felt good playing this. Going back through Brinstar I saw that I was taking hits so much better than last time making me feel more confident I could endure more, which is where I continued learning more about this game and the more I learned and practiced the better I got and the more I was enjoying this, getting sucked in more and more. And with that confidence and enjoyment it meant I felt confident enough now to start facing the bosses; Kraid and Ridley.
Kraid’s a dodgy little shit. He swarms you with flying claws and shoots three levels of spikes out of his gut and if you’re using the ice beam instead of the wave beam (I never picked up or used the wave beam because even though I know you can grab either or at anytime the ice beam overall felt more useful to me considering it’s the Metroid’s weakness) you’ll freeze these projectiles in place, and if you freeze them too close to Kraid you end up making a shield for him so nothing save for morphball bombs can harm him. And the walkthrough said either be decisive in your beam blasts or use morphball bombs on him. I had enough energy tanks and health, I could take a bit of a pounding so I spammed him with bombs and I defeated him!
And then came Ridley. The ferociously fearsome fiery purple space pterodactyl, leader of the Space Pirates with an unyeilding grudge against Samus. Swift and deadly is he with claws that can tear anything to shreds, a speared tail that can make a shishkebab of Galactic Federation soldiers in a second and a devastating plasma breath to cook them dead. An unforgiving and formidable killing machine. You can stand right at his feet, avoid all fireballs he shoots at you with ease, blast away at him with missiles and kill him in seconds without getting touched. He is the easiest boss in the entire game. And he’s Ridley! Imagine if Ganondorf was that easy or Bowser or Father Gascoigne. I found it more hilarious than anything, but in that it is interesting to see how he starts off as the easiest, goofiest boss in the game, much easier than Kraid, to becoming a much more difficult and imposing threat in Super Metroid. I love it.
But with Kraid and Ridley defeated that meant one last thing. The Metroids and Mother Brain herself.
I climbed all the way to the top of Brinstar, shot the flashing statues of Kraid and Ridley and descended down to Tourian. I went in with prior knowledge that Metroids were weak to ice and you blast them with missiles so I wasn’t afraid because I knew how to handle them. That is until the first schute down I got blindsided by the first three Metroids and got sucked to death. Then I reloaded the save state (I was playing this and Zero Mission on the Wii U.) Then I tried again! But this time I took it slower. Froze each Metroid one by one and blasted it with missiles, got to the first door— an orange door? That was new, the only one in this game too. Blasted that with 10 missiles as opposed to the 5 normally and on I went. Past the rinkas, shooting and freezing off swarming Metroids— which was making me feel much like the same action hero as Zero Mission and Super Metroid does being able to shoot them so swiftly and easily. Further I go, killing all the Metroids along the way. But then came the final stretch…
Swarms of rinkas and blaster fire around me from roving cannons hindered and bothered me, knocking me from side to side as I tried missile blasting the Zebetites, which I found if you aren’t quick enough they start to regenerate, which made things more frustrating and annoying and difficult to try and smash them quick enough around the harassment. But I pushed on and on until I was faced with Mother Brain herself. And this part I hated. I don’t normally, or if ever, get mad at games but this was testing me. I kept blasting at Mother Brain at every opportunity I got around dodging rinkas and cannon fire and freezing the rinkas but soon enough I would either die from a rinka or get knocked to the other side of Mother Brain into the lava and struggle to get back out again and die. After my third attempt my brother walked in on my efforts, I blurted out my frustrations as I died yet again and he asked “What are you trying to do?” “WIN!” I shouted. But then, then I got it. A little more care and effort and then everything started flashing and—OHHH SHE’S EXPLODING! I BEAT THE BIG UGLY BRAIN BITCH! The countdown blared, I dashed up the escape shaft perilously jumping from tiny platform to tiny platform an— oh. That’s it. That’s a kinda short escape route to what I’m used to. But I did it! I completed Metroid!!! All that frustration had passed and paid off for such a satisfying end! A little under 3 hours and I got the ending where Samus took her helmet off. Good enough for me. I don’t know how the fuck speedrunners can do this in 44 minutes. The credits rolled and a fancy The End scrawled the screen.
Then I hit start.
And the game started again. In Brinstar, with the varia suit. There was a difference this time around. I had the ice beam and the long beam. I went left to see if the morphball was there and it wasn’t. I pressed down and I already had the morph ball. I had the hi-jump and screw attack! I had everything but the missiles and energy tanks! This was basically new game plus! So of course I felt compelled to go through it all over again, grabbing all the energy tanks and missiles I could get, working on memory as best as I could to see what I would get in the end and see if I could finish it any faster. And maybe through this run I could unlock the best ending. It was during this run going after all of the energy tanks I learned that though there are eight energy tanks available you can only have six energy tanks. I also started to learn and understand how speedrunners can get through it so quick. Unless they can from a fresh game, to my knowledge at the moment I can only see doing a fast run on this new game plus mode. I know it’s not really that but technically it is. Then, two hours later and battling through the same frustrations with Mother Brain one more time I got the ending with Samus out of her suit and in the Justin Bailey leotard! That was the best ending I could achieve but I am so happy with it because pressing start again I can go through it all in the leotard suit! A whole new costume!!! That was so exciting!
Maybe I could beat Metroid in under an hour one day, but I don’t want to face Mother Brain again anytime soon. Enough is enough. But I’ve figured out how to best organise a speedrun route anyhow.
And with that, two playthroughs of Metroid left a big grin on my face. I finally completed it, experienced all it has to offer and I loved it. Dated controls and glitches and designs aside, I love it all. The music is the greatest part of this game again and I couldn’t praise that any higher. Incredibly designed with a genius idea behind it. If Legend of Zelda was Lord of the Rings and Mario Bros. was Saturday morning cartoons, Metroid is undeniably Alien. It’s no secret that the game and the rest of the series takes heavy cues and inspiraton from the Ridley Scott film series from its designs reminiscent of H. R. Giger right down to plot points. Metroid is a survival horror action adventure game and it’s perfect.
Metroid is a fantastic game and absolutely must be played sometime during everyone’s life. However, to contradict that, while Metroid must be played and experienced, to compare it to its remake Zero Mission I would say Zero Mission is the definitive version of it to play. It’s much more up to date, plays better, looks better, sounds better, has more to do. It improves everything that worked best with Metroid and fully realises it into a game that deserves to exist, that could have existed back then if not to be limited by the technology of its time. But you get Metroid completing Zero Mission anyway so everything is a win here.
I forget where exactly I fell in love with the Metroid games and the series. Most likely Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, I did play Prime first, but playing Metroid Zero Mission (and Fusion too but that’ll be gotten to later on) only grew and deepened that love I have for the series, especially with it going deeper into Samus as a character and the mythology of the Chozo. And getting to experience the original Metroid for all it has to offer has grown that love even more.
There is no denying the incredible impact and legacy that Samus Aran and Metroid has had on the game industry. Metroid was really the first to depict a strong, capable, interesting, compassionate and relatable female lead character in Samus who can more than stand up to Link and Mario. She is the archetype, the Rosetta stone as it were of which other female lead game characters have followed. And the Metroid game series as a whole has revolutionised games drastically and inspired widley many a generation of games developers, musicians and artists. Coupled with Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Metroid is responsible for an entire game genre that has been emulated and copied over and over again and will continue to do so. Metroid laid down a very strong foundation to which games are still being built upon today.
Metroid and Samus Aran deserve every once of praise, respect, admiration and thanks for what it has established and the legacy it has created. Especially so, too, do the developers who created Metroid; Satoru Okada, Hip Tanaka, Gunpei Yokoi, and Yoshio Sakamoto.
And you know what? One of these days I’m going to make a damn Metroid film.
Where to Purchase:
Ebay: £30-£110 / $130 - $1000
Amazon: $130 / Unavailble in UK
CeX: £60-210
Wii U Store: £6.29 / $7.99