Metroid

released on Aug 06, 1986

It's you against the evil Mother Brain in the thrilling battle of Metroid! You're inside the fortress planet Zebes. The planet of endless secret passageways where the Metroid are multiplying. Left alone the Metroid are harmless. But in the wrong hands they could destroy the galaxy. It's up to you to prevent the Mother Brain that controls Zebes from using the Metroid for evil purposes. But that won't be easy. You'll have to use your spacesuit to absorb valuable energy for your search to gain the use of power items like the Ice Beam, Wave Beam, High Jump Boots and Varia. If you survive, it will be you and your acquired powers against the Mother Brain.


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I think this game is Castlevania's sci-fi equivalent in terms of impact and there's a reason the term Metroidvania is a portmanteau of the two games. Much like with Vlad's castle, you work your way through the depths of planet Zebes, exploring in a free-form way similar to the original Zelda and Vampire Killer. The music and stark visuals help to highlight the feel of isolation and danger, and even the weapons and item upgrades act as tools to explore further. Just like with Castlevania, I have issues with the precision of the controls which can be frustrating at times, and it doesn't nail the balance between exploration and tedium perfectly, but the achievements here far outweigh the niggles.

Yeah, it's dated to death and hard to get a grip on compared to modern games, but it's hard to be too mad at a game so obviously instrumental in founding a subgenre I love. For a first foray into this kind of game, it's amazing how fully-formed it feels in places, particularly in its hidden power-ups and emphasis on technical precision. Kind of wild to think we had games in the 80s that sought to not only challenge a player this hard but reward them accordingly upon success.

That said, the challenge transcends your run-of-the-mill "hard" pretty egregiously in a few places, particularly the final run in Norad. I figured Mother Brain would be an easy fight considering the ease of the other bosses, but the difficulty spike was frankly jaw-dropping. Contextually, I understand that a vernacular of final boss difficulty hadn't been as thoroughly established, so I both empathize with where the developers were at and am still absolutely infuriated by their design decisions.

Still, the amount of essential gaming history that comes from this game is frankly staggering, and as such I feel immensely grateful for having taken the chance to play it through in full. Not really looking to play this again anytime soon, but the respect I have for this first Metroid and its creators will never fade.

Samus really said "lets go to the left first"

Played on Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online, but didn't make it very far. I made a genuine attempt to give it a chance, but there's several aspects of the original Metroid that make it hard to get into nowadays. I will not be returning to this game.

My thoughts: ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I really want to like this game but it does everything it can to make it so I hate it. WHY DO YOU START FROM 30 HEALTH EVERYTIME YOU DIE, WHERE DO I NEED TO GO, WHY IS THERE NO CROUCH BUTTON. Normally I finish every game I play no matter how boring or difficult. Somehow I can't for this game. I'm havin no fun whatsoever and I think It'd be a waste of time to continue....
BUT
I have still decided to play a Metroid game, I've just decided to move on to Super Metroid and I'm currently loving everything about it and the best thing is I'm getting to appreciate the game more, because it is so much more comfortable to play than this frustrating mess. I never thought I would ever appreciate a crouch button as much as I did but here we are. Also I recognise the surroundings, which is neat.
Therefore: 3/10 for making me appreciate Super Metroid u piece a shit

Game doesn't have a crouch function
Game has a lot of enemies that would require crouching to kill