Super Metroid

Released in North America on April 18, 1994 by Nintendo, and developed for the Super Nintendo by Nintendo R&D1 and Intelligent Systems, Super Metroid sends bounty hunter, Samus Aran, into the 2D caves of Zebes to hunt down the titular creatures.

Everybody's got that game: you spend hours upon hours on it, get close to the end...and then your save file gets erased. You slam the game back into the box, and you move on. Stupid game. Well, if that game is Super Metroid, you better boot it back up.

It's super! I wish Nintendo would have continued to title their consoles with superlatives. We could have had the Excellent Nintendo, the Incredible Nintendo, the Awesome Nintendo and the Magnificent Nintendo, the latter of which would have surely sold better than the Wii U. No confusion about what a Magnificent Nintendo is. It's magnificent!

My Super Metroid tale is twisted, but brief. The first Metroid for NES was too obtuse for me. I skipped the SNES one, though I did play it a little bit at Toys r Us. Finally, the greatest game of all time candidate, Metroid Prime, woke me from my Metroid stupor. That game blew my mind, and was a one-of-a-kind, personal experience. I then decided to break my Super Metroid fast. I picked it up for my SNES, and dove in, enjoying the experience on the same level I did Metroid Prime...and then, just before Ridley, right before the final portion of the game, my file was erased. Goodbye Super Metroid.

I guess I'll find some other planet full of life-force sucking jellyfish!

I don't know what recently brought me back, but I think it was a combination of Axiom Verge re-awakening those Metroid feelings, and me just missing the eight-years dormant Metroid series. Whatever the case, I booted up my SNES and dove back into the caves of Zebes. Super Metroid is awesome on such a fundamental level, reviewing it will be easily brief.

Even for me, though that means I'll have to cut my 28-paragraphs of remarks about the game's awesome weather effects.

Super Metroid immediately establishes the series' trademark feelings of isolation,. The opening cinematic, set to haunting, atmospheric music, catches the player up to speed with series protagonist, the heavily-armored bounty hunter, Samus Aran. After answering a distress call in a remote, lonely corner of space, Samus ends up on the planet Zebes. She finds that those dastardly Space Pirates are again experimenting with the terrifying, life-force sucking creatures known as Metroids, and only she can stop them. To do so, she must traverse the vast, environmentally diverse, underground caves of Zebes, fighting Zebes' antagonistic native life forms, and avoiding its spiky, often lava-filled perils. Along the way, she'll earn new items and abilities to help her in her quest.

Out of the mouth of madness. Did I mention the architecture in this game is awesome?

Super Metroid helped introduce the concept of exploring a large, 2D world, where gaining new abilities allows the player to explore heretofore inaccessible portions of the map. The map, which is accesible at all times, shows visited areas as pink, and unvisited as blue. The blue portions will tantalize all but the least curious gamers. Opening more and more of the map is incredibly satisfying--it's nuts that Nintendo was able to perfect this concept on the first try. While some other 2-D games following suit have been excellent, particularly those in the Castlevania series, they're all pretenders to Super Metroid. The map layout is incredible, and the terrain is so varied and full of well-designed, sometimes dastardly life, it's always a joy to explore. Samus' isolation (she doesn't run into a single other speaking character throughout the game) gives Super Metroid a meditative quality, an incredible feat given the game's high-octane action.

Teach me your ways, oh wise bird!

Samus can run at blazing fast speeds, and is given an ever more destructive arsenal to destroy aggressive alien life, as well as parts of her surroundings. The game encourages running and firing at the same time, and maps the weapons and Samus' expanding gamut of abilities to the controller with precision and excellence. Samus also has several inborn abilities that the game only shows to the player when Samus runs into some of Zebes' less antagonistic lifeforms. There's a section where the player learns how to high jump by watching a native bird-like creature do it, which is so fluid and intuitive, it is miraculous that at no point does the game actually spell out how to do it. There are even some abilities, like wall jumping, that take mastery to consistently pull-off, and yet aren't actually needed to complete the game. They're just welcome augmentations on perfection. The same goes for the game's dozens of hidden areas, which don't have to be found, but hold upgrades that give Samus a larger life meter, and more ammo capacity for missiles and bombs.

I'm coming for you, Ridley, you freaking pansy.

Boss battles are especially satisfying in their epic, cinematic qualities, with some bosses filling, or larger than the entire screen, and often having death animations or scripted moments that only make Super Metroid feel like the greatest 16-bit movie ever made even more. The greatest part is that these moments are only accessible because of your efforts. Indeed, Super Metroid never holds the player's hand and offers quite a challenge, in all of its alien-battling, lava-pit-jumping glory. Save points are generously placed around Zebes (the game offers three save slots), but not to the degree that the game is coddling the player. The aforementioned exploration isn't only encouraged, but also necessary. Sometimes, rolling into Samus' tradmark "morph-ball" form, and finding a tiny, bomb-able crevice, might be the only way to progress.

I'm gonna shove that tail down your throat, bitch. Er...sorry, my video game trash-talk isn't appropriate here. This is a family review site. I'm gonna shove that tail down your throat...sir?

Super Metroid features a very cohesive, beautiful, minimalist art style. The animations, particularly of Samus herself, as well as the game's mammoth bosses, are excellent. Gameplay is never negatively affected by performance issues, no matter how many of those trademark SNES explosions are filling the screen. The soundtrack is immersive and diverse, creepily ambient when it needs to be, and high-energy and melodious in its livelier moments. It's just perfect. It i's essentially, like the SNES-sharing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the archetypal perfect game. While the latter is THE isometric action-RPG game, Super Metroid is THE 2-D explorative action game.

Eh, now you do eventually plan to have Metroids in your Metroid game, right? *Five minutes later* Get them away! Get them away!!!

So if you've avoided Super Metroid to this point because you're too young, you're too old, you just missed it, or your save file got erased right before the end, and you're still angry, just play it. It's one of the greatest games of all time. The main mission may only take you 15-20 hours to complete, but it's a perfect 15-20 hours. There are seemingly hundreds of hidden items strewn around Zebes that you can collect afterward, and doing so will increase your completion percentage...which leads to a better ending. For completionists, or those who simply don't want to leave the orbit of FS-176, this essentially doubles the gameplay. I can't overstate it: Super Metroid is gaming perfection.


Graphics: 10.0/10.0

Sound: 10.0/10.0

Gameplay: 10.0/10.0

Lasting Value: 10.0/10.0


Overall: 10.0/10.0