...or more accurately, finally played, 20 years later.
I cannot, for the life of me, explain why I avoided this game for two decades. The Super Nintendo remains my favorite console, I was making enough money doing a paper route in 1994 to buy my own games, and I love games that don't hold your hand and reward exploration like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Dark Souls.
Maybe it's my poor experience with the original Metroid when I was 6. Who knows?
The atmosphere in this game is outstanding. It's easy to tell that the Metroid series originally drew quite a bit of inspiration from the Alien series, including its pacing. From the opening cinematic leading to the abandoned research facility, to landing your ship in the rain on a seemingly desolate planet with a crashed ship on its surface, the game weaves a story with the little details, escalating into clever and challenging fights with the bosses awaiting below the surface.
It doesn't hurt that the mostly ambient music is top notch. The closest comparison I can come up with is that it reminds me of a more foreboding FTL soundtrack, and that's high praise coming from me. The hauntingly sparse, electronic notes do a good job of indicating both a sense of the future and desolation.
The game certainly doesn't hold your hand. There was more than a few necessary parts that, while clever and amazing that they actually let you perform those actions, I'm not sure my younger self would have discovered without a game guide. (Such as exploding the glass tube to get to Draygon or even the hidden gap in the elevator leading to Kraid, despite the map being somewhat of a help on that second one.)
There is a seemingly quick and rewarding power gain as you find the hidden items, the joy of finding something like the Wave Beam after wandering if you can somehow jump through that hole you made in the ceiling is hard to describe. Enemies that suddenly took a bit of damage start melting before you. Then the challenge starts to bump up again, and you find the Freeze Beam. It's practically like you're cheating. Then the cycle continued.
It helps that you find yourself constantly traversing the same ground to get new areas with your new toys, à la The Legend of Zelda, but without being as hand-holdy as the later games. Your power feels commensurate with the new areas you open up, but you still overwhelm the enemies in earlier areas that previously gave some challenge.
Not that some of the paths you find yourself re-traversing ever get less punishing. That room with the spikes, mouth traps, and pseudo-bee swarms was a constant pain in my ass, even near the end of the game. There are others, but that one stands out.
The controls mostly felt tight, except for wall jumping. I suspect that may have been my equally old SNES controller. The 20 or so minutes that it took me to wall jump up that pit with the creatures was equally embarrassing and frustrating.
I didn't find everything on my first run. I still had 2 energy tanks and 2 reserve tanks to find, and I'm guessing a few more missiles, etc. I ended up with 135 missiles, 45 super missiles, and 40 power bombs. So... 3 more missiles, 1 more super missile, and 2 more power bombs? I'm still not 100% sure how I found most of what I did find, especially in Maridia. (Not my favorite area of the game. Stupid sand pits.)
This game probably won't go into my personal Top 10 list, except maybe in regards to SNES games. It's quite easy to see why it has remained so popular with so many people, along with how much it has influenced games that I love. I think I simply got around to it too late, though I immensely enjoyed what I did play of it.
Okay... this game might make an overall Top 50 list.
It happens occasionally that I really wish I got around to checking out something sooner, and this is definitely one of those times. What an amazing game.
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