...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.

Well hey at least you finally played it. One of the 2 best games of all time alongside Vagrant Story; a masterpiece. If you haven't played Metroid Prime you should probably get around to that as well.

No mention of Phantoon, that seems to be the most difficult part of the game other than maybe the ninjas first time around.

@fredchuckdave: Yeah, Vagrant Story is definitely on the list. As a fan of Yasumi Matsuno, it's ridiculous that I haven't played that game yet.

I must have been lucky with Phantoon. I quickly figured out you could hang out in a corner, shoot the flames for power-ups, and when the flames started to spread across the floor, he was going to appear and you could shoot him with a power beam. It took forever, granted, but it wasn't nearly as frustrating as Draygon.

@viking_funeral: Oh well, somehow you fought Draygon without knowing the trick to him, which kudos to you for not learning that through osmosis at some point (I really wish games were more about figuring them out now instead of just looking up whatever you have to do online). You can blow up the nubs on the wall and then shoot the grappling hook at them when he's grasping you, pretty much instant kills him.

I really like the Ridley fight in Super Metroid, just an outright slugfest of silliness; doesn't follow the standard rule of 3 bullshit that applies to every Nintendo game post Mario 64 either; it's just a matter of you pumping more lead into him before he kills you.

Seriously?

I'm equally impressed and frustrated by that fact.

Fusion and Zero Mission are fantastic, too. I didn't play Super Metroid til... maybe 10 years ago. Didn't really hit with me at first since I played so many Castlevania games by that point. But after another runthrough, I grew to appreciate all the things it does well. These days, however, I would prefer to play Symphony of the Night if I'm looking for an explorable map from the 90's.

And Vagrant Story is top tier, of course, but Super Mario World continues to be the best game of all time (and this was before I knew the site's views on it).

@csl316: Mario World is really good, but it doesn't have break arts/Shine Spark. Prerequisite for being the best game ever is being able to hurt yourself to do damage to enemies.

Does Valkyrie Profile 2 have one of those or not? Can't remember. Either way another really good game.

You have to have more than four full energy tanks to do it, though by that point in the game you should definitely have more than four energy tanks available.

Yep! The rule of 3 allows for some really creative boss fights - Nintendo hasn't been using it for nearly thirty years now for no reason. Still, it's nice to find a boss fight that's just a knock-down, drag-out, pull-no-punches fight. Blast away as best you can.

I love this game. I usually consider it my favorite game ever, equaled pretty much only by Metroid Prime. Prime, by the way, is still one of the best-looking games I've ever played.

Strangely enough, I have never really gotten into many of the other Metroid games. I really like Fusion and Zero Mission, Prime 2 is pretty great, but Prime 3 doesn't have that sense of isolation and the rest of them aren't really all that good. I never played that Pinball game, though.

@fredchuckdave: Silmeria is my favorite JRPG, I'm sure it does.

@believer258: Prime almost certainly wins art design of the ever, though Final Fantasy XII is up there because it looks like Vagrant Story. And I played Starcraft for 10 years so that's up there too. Aesthetics are an extremely objective measure as you can see.

Prime 2 has some of the best bosses in the series and the best area; shame the first area's a pain in the butt.

I mean, I agree, but how are aesthetics objective?

@believer258: Just joking, a little self deprecation.

From a technical perspective both VP2 and Final Fantasy XII look better than the vast majority of PS3 games.

Its one of the best games out there. There is a reason so many games try to ape what super metroid did now days. Because it was bad-ass.

Incredible game, good that you got around to it. The first part and the lingering dread of it blew my youthful mind back then. Took me ten hours first time, little under 3 the 2nd lol.

Just watched Zoast's speed run from SGDQ 2013. Impressive. No wonder he is a record holder.

Also, my count seemed to be way off on the missiles. I missed 15 missile upgrades total, not 3. I can only imagine how long it would have taken me to find all those.

Sorry to resurrect a very old post....but....(I got myself a Super NT)

I finally got around to finishing this last week, after playing the first section (probably up to the wall jump bit) numerous times over the past 20 odd years.

This time, I stuck with it, and saw it through to the end, and it was pretty great.

Towards the end, I felt like it got a bit obtuse with where to go next, but not so bad for an old game.

Deciding what else in the SNES library I should finish next now :)