Metroid

Metroid : A popular NES platform/adventure game. One of the first games that could be called in adventure game in that there’s some sense of exploring/invading foreign territory.

Story : Nintendo doesn’t view bounty hunters as the mulletarian white trash on television that hunts down pre-cast, harmless law breakers, or intergalactic, armoured villains awaiting a comic death. No, deceased producer Gumpei Yokei viewed bounty hunters are purveyors of justice! Samus Aran is ordered by the Galactic Federation (?) to stop the Mother Brain and wipe out the metroids, for this was a time when environmentalism wasn’t concerned with endangered species.

Now, to learn of the above, you would’ve had to have read the instruction manual or the back of the box for this was a Nintendo Entertainment System video game and back then, exposition was a luxury, not a requirement. The in-game storytelling is limited to the following…and spoilers be damned, this is a 22-odd year old game that’s not leaning on story anyways.

1. Samus lands on the planet Zebes
2. Samus realizes that the two world bosses must be destroyed to advance to the final world.
3. Samus advances to the final world
4. Samus destroys the metroids and Mother Brain, the latter setting off a time bomb
5. Samus escapes the planet Zebes
6. Samus takes helmet off to reveal that he is really a she.

Back then, the revelation of Samus being a woman was a very clever, shocking surprise. I wouldn’t call it much of a push in the women’s rights movement though, being that players who beat the game fast enough are rewarded with the sight of a bikini-clad bounty hunter.

The road to intergalactic swimsuit modeling is an arduous one.  Back in its heyday, Metroid set itself from other side scrollers by not presenting itself in a series of stages where the player travels from one side of the screen to the other. Rather, Zebes is a large, sprawling mass of dark caves, filled with assorted wildlife flying around trying to mind their own business and not be killed. Samus touches down on Zebes armed with only a gun that shoots about two feet in front of her, begging the question of “what kind of bounty hunter goes into foreign territory to stop an intergalactic terrorist with only a Nerf gun?”

The crux of the Metroid exploration is that Samus collects assorted power-ups; to the immediate left of ground-zero is the Morph ball, in which allows the player to roll into a ball to enter smaller surfaces by double-tapping down (something that the player will only know by playing other Metroid games, reading the manual or this review for the game has NO in-game tutorials or explanations) These include missiles needed to kill bosses, bombs for cracking open hidden entrances, an armor upgrade, upgrades to your health bar and the ever amusingly-named SCREW ATTACK. There’s also a power to make you jump higher and thus explore more areas, and the “long beam” that actually makes your gun a gun!

Certain items are key for exploring more areas in Zebes and furthering your progress. Howeverm the relationship between power-ups and the world around you is better realized in later Metroid games. Here, the game gives you no indication of where you need to be or what items you need to be looking for. There are five sub-worlds within the main , and in particular Norfair is a large maze filled with dead end rooms. The game has no actual map, and all of the halls in a given area look near-identical. So either the player needs a great photogenic memory, likes to draw maps, has already memorized the levels or has some kind of strategy guide at hand. Back then, this was a cheap opportunity from Nintendo to hock their 1-800 number or magazine strategy guides. In 2009, our Web 2.0 existence provides plenty of free solutions, but this still doesn’t strike me as remotely intuitive game design.

On the positive, and I guess this is throwing planks of wood on the fire that is this game’s learning curve, but Metroid has merits as a challenging game. Samus starts the game naked (in terms of armaments) and there’s a sense of barely getting by as you struggle with the few health power-ups you stumble across. When you die, you go back to the start of the level, which sucks, but isn’t so bad as starting the entire game all over. And this is the Virtual Console edition, which saves the game automatically, as to save you the trouble of scribbling down one password after another.

Metroid’s greatest source of relevance in 2009 is that of a speed-running game. There’s a determined internet subculture dedicated to people trying to finish Metroid as fast as possible. I guess part of that comes from the balance that one must strike between collecting as few power ups as possible while still beating the game’s tough bosses. Actually, the three bosses have mastered the martial art of “stand still and fire projectiles at you”, but you’ll still need as much energy tanks and missiles as possible. I’ll give credit to Mother Brain; for an immobile target that just fires…stuff at you, she’s a hell of a combatant. 

While Metroid was relatively cutting edge for its day, in 2009 it’s rather sadistic and merciless. Old time gamers can call me soft for not being more welcoming of its challenge but quite frankly, this is not the kind of game one should present to a girlfriend, nephew, son or other non-gamer and say “this is a video game, my hobby.” Play it if you have an urge to discover the series’ roots, you like speed-running games or all this blind exploration sounds appealing but otherwise move on; Super Metroid does the whole exploration aspect a lot better than this game. And if you’re willing to go game-hunting, Metroid Zero Mission on the Game Boy Advance, the frivolous but well-rounded remake of this game, has the NES original as an unlockable so hunt for that instead.

Pros: Unlike the Virtual Console rendition of Kid Icarus, the password cheat codes work here.

Cons: You can only have either the Ice Beam or Wave Beam equipped at a time. If you want one over the other (or at least when you realize the greater strategic benefit of the Ice Beam) you have to venture to their original hiding spot to get it.

3 stars

You can also unlock this game in Metroid Prime, but doing so requires the dreaded Gamecube/Game Boy Advance link cable, both systems and a finished copy of Metroid Fusion. And the Gamecube controller just wasn’t made for this kind of game, let alone many kinds of games.