I’ll be having so much fun

Then boom

Maridia

I don't think there's anything NEW I or anyone else can say about this game. It is, rightfully so, regarded as a pillar of modern game design. It is an absolute master class in its design, stupefying in its depth as the world loops back in on itself over and over, creating confounding connections and new paths forward. If you pay attention, there will be an "aha!" moment so often that it is difficult to keep up, as your arsenal expands rapidly, fundamentally changing your relationship to Zebes every single time you get a new upgrade. And all of that is just speaking on the gameplay loop itself, not even touching upon its excellent art, music, environmental storytelling, replayability, the depth of its many mechanics, the multitude of techniques to perfect, how it teaches the player through its design...

And yet, despite how influential and groundbreaking it is, it still feels extremely fresh and exciting. Plenty of games wear this influence on their sleeves, from Symphony of the Night to Hollow Knight, and although many of them succeed in their own ways, nothing may ever surpass the towering achievement that this game is.

So in anticipation of Metroid Dread coming out, I replayed through one of my favorite games in the series, and boy howdy is it a good one! I love the ways in which it incentives sequence breaks and creative solutions for problems it gives you the answers to eventually.

Movement feels so good, and interestingly skill based. In general I find that older Nintendo games have a creative relationship with unlimited vertical movement, generally requiring skill with executing on some kind of rhythm. Whether it be the diving and soaring of the cape in Super Mario World or the song-like beat of bomb jumping in Super Metroid or even the awful Wing Cap in Mario 64, Nintendo was never quite satisfied with the concept of letting the player totally off the leash when it came to ascending beyond basic jumps.

I also adore the aesthetics and music of Super Metroid. The gentle way that Samus' armor breathes, the pulsing backgrounds of Norfair or the not-quite stagnant underground water of Maridia, I love the way this game looks. The music is also an amazing example of gentle but unsettling ambience, punctuated by amazing boss and panic tunes. Any more grandiose and the music would have taken away from the feeling of being alone on a hostile alien planet. Instead it merely creeps in the background, like some kind of silent killer.

Story wise there isn't a whole lot but I do love the plot of the baby Metroid forgetting Samus only to save her in the final moments, in what is probably my favorite SNES cutscene. The relationship between Samus and her little baby Metroid is so endearing even when told without words or really much actual bespoke animation. It's a shame they never made a game that fleshed that out!! Oh well!!!!

In conclusion I really like Super Metroid and had a good time playing it in the leadup to Dread! I actually finished it the night before the game came out, and am currently well on my way through my journey into Dread.

Thanks for reading!

Random thoughts from a first-time Metroid player:

-I love how cinematic the intro looks for a 1994 game.
-I would've loved to know that I needed to shoot 5 missiles to open pink doors.
-So many secret walls. Did this inspired Dark Souls?
-Pacing is great. You get new abilities so quickly.
-Atmosphere is impeccable.
-HOLY… WALL JUMPING IS HORRIBLE.
-They put an important boss behind a secret wall. This is somehow worse than Dark Souls.
-The special interaction with the charge beam and jump/morph ball is pretty cool.
-This boss is not attacking…
-God, his death animation was horrific
-Did I just kill an innocent creature just to get to the other side?
-Is Samus Doom Guy, but evil?
-I'm getting the hang of wall jumping now.
-Interesting how very little improvements modern metroidvanias had to implement.
-Oh cool, if I speedboost then crouch, I can propel upwards.
-THE GLASS TUNNEL BREAKS WITH THE POWER BOMB? I wasn't expecting for it to actually work.
-I HATE PHANTOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111
-It took me like 5 whole minutes to figure out how to get out of sand.
-Now this game has transformed into Pathfinder (Apex) gameplay.
-Botwoon was a cakewalk.
-Wow, that's a really cool way to kill a boss. (Draygon)
-Draygon's babies :(
-Samus is Doom Guy, but evil. Confirmed.
-That Chonzo Statue just yeeted my Super Missile at me.
-Aww, the metroid.
-Final boss is hands down the best boss of any retro game I've played so far.
-This game was awesome. There are other endings? Let's check them out…
-… Oh.

Played on Nintendo Switch Online with Yuzu Emulator. Added Reshade with CRTNewPixie + CRTFakeLottes + CRT_Royale shaders. For reference: https://imgur.com/a/xYaZwlI

★★★½ – Great ✅

Although I was definitely curious to see what the first game in the series was like when I sat down to beat it last year, Super Metroid was the game that I was actually excited about, and a lot of that anticipation came from my experience with the game's intro sequence. At one point during what must've been middle school, I went on an online emulator and decided to boot up Super Metroid on a whim in between bite-sized play sessions of Contra and Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!, and the music, environmental storytelling, and especially that fight against Ridley all made the game intriguing to me. That sequence ended up being stuck in my mind for years, and on top of how great it was to relive it when I began my playthrough with this game, I ended up really enjoying Super Metroid as a whole, even if I didn't think that it was perfect.

Like all good sequels (or threequels, in this case, but I haven't played Metroid II: Return of Samus yet), Super Metroid took what worked with the first game and expanded on it, and the game did this while also injecting some of its own unique ideas. The sense of isolation from the first game is much thicker and more atmospheric here, as the decrepit environments and occasionally grotesque enemy design made venturing into the unknown feel eerie and unsettling, along with the areas feeling genuinely distinct from one another rather than just being simple color swaps like in the original game. The gameplay loop of exploring to find new items and areas felt exciting rather than tedious here thanks to the substantially larger map and decreased amounts of required backtracking, with the addition of an actual map being a lifesaver (although remembering which rooms were which was still a bit difficult). The sense of progression through the power-ups and items in Super Metroid is palpable, as having the initially annoying enemies get decimated by your missiles and arm cannon upgrades is satisfying in ways that the original Metroid struggled to convey. This directly ties into the game's tense and chaotic boss fights, with some of the scripted moments making for some surprisingly effective bits of silent storytelling. The score by Kenji Yamamoto and Minako Hamano was superb, as their memorable, yet evocative and ominous tracks were very effective in conveying the mood of each of the game's areas.

One of my least favorite aspects of the original Metroid was when I'd end up in an empty room, shoot the walls and ceiling at random in order to see where to go next, and then being annoyed with the fact that I was supposed to blow up some arbitrary block that looked just like the rest of the room, and this issue of random, cryptic design unfortunately found its way to Super Metroid on multiple occasions. Granted, the addition of the X-Ray Scope fixes this issue to an extent, but it arrives a bit too late into the game for it to be as useful as it could have been. The only area of the game that I straight up disliked in its entirety would be Maridia, as the spike in backtracking and the inclusion of quicksand that is unreasonably vexing to get out of made it a slog to get through. For the most part, the controls are an improvement on the first game, but I still found Samus' jumps to be inconsistent, with wall jumps being especially fiddly to pull off without eventually unlocking the Space Jump. Despite my gripes with the game, I still thought that Super Metroid was a great game that refined what was set up by the first game, and since I've heard good things about Metroid Fusion, I'll check that out at some point.

”The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy… is at peace.”

Boy, the Federation sure has a bad habit of just straight-up lying to Samus, huh?

Anyways, what can I say about Super Metroid that hasn’t already been said thousands of times before? The game is a masterpiece, one of the greatest in its medium, and a near-perfect sci-fi adventure that stands tall even amongst giants like Star Wars, Star Trek, or the works of H.G. Wells, Ridley Scott, and John Carpenter.

Now, while Super Metroid is undoubtedly a masterpiece, is it completely perfect? No, of course not; no game is. The Grapple Beam is a bit finicky to control, there’s this one really useful secret exit in Norfair that just doesn’t register on the X-Ray Beam for some reason, and I flat-out don’t like the Phantoon boss fight. But aside from those blemishes, the game is practically flawless (plus, once you get used to the Grapple Beam, you can fling yourself across the screen like a certain web-slinging menace).

While I definitely prefer the controls from Fusion onward, there’s something so… freeing about Samus’ more floaty jump physics in this game. When paired with run button, the Speed Booster, and the wall kicks, Samus’ moveset can practically break this game’s progression in half. In this particular playthrough, I used all of those abilities to cut corners and access areas early (mainly Kraid’s lair), which led to me shaving off a whopping TWO HOURS from my original save file. The best part? It’s pretty much impossible to soft lock yourself in this game. If you can get somewhere out of the intended order, there will always be a way back.

On that note, that’s a big part of what makes Planet Zebes such a masterclass in world design. The game always subtly guides you in the right direction, but never grips your hand too tightly or punishes you for exploring. The environments are all remarkably distinct. You’ve got Crateria, which is basically just a shrunken version of the first game’s world; Brinstar, a lush, green cave system with music that screams “adventure”; Norfair, the hellish, foreboding home of Ridley; the Wrecked Ship, the haunted remains of a spacecraft shrouded in darkness; Maridia, a treacherous aquatic region filled with quicksand and powerful enemies; and finally, Tourian, Mother Brain’s base of operations, where she continues to experiment on and cultivate the Metroids for her nefarious goals. These distinctive, well-designed regions are precisely what make Super Metroid such a timeless classic.

The story is minimal, but what’s there is well-conveyed and highly impactful. Despite the complete lack of dialogue after the opening cutscene, the characters are all easy to understand based on their actions. Samus, despite being a mercenary who mainly does heroic stuff for money, immediately jumps into action to save the Baby Metroid for no personal benefit, because she’s just a good person. The Baby Metroid itself clearly views Samus as its mother (even though she, y’know, killed its actual mother and all of its siblings), and her presence is the main thing keeping it from being as monstrous and bestial as the rest of its species. Ridley introduces himself by massacring everyone aboard as space station, getting his claws on the Baby Metroid and… just sitting there, waiting for Samus to show up, which serves as an early indicator of his sadistic personality that’s become central to his character. Then there’s Mother Brain, a calculating mastermind who keeps tabs on Samus at all times and is capable of harnessing the powers of the Metroids and building her own body, yet whose sheer pettiness and arrogance end up costing her dearly. None of these characters talk other than Samus in a single scene, yet their personalities are still very clear and very memorable.

The story is very much a culmination of the previous two games, effectively making it the series’ climax until Dread came along decades later. With almost total silence, we understand that this is a battle for the fate of the galaxy and the ultimate showdown between Samus and her two nemeses. Without a single word, the finale is one of the most devastating things I’ve ever seen, as the Baby Metroid, now forcefully mutated into a giant monster, saves Samus’ life before being heartlessly killed by Mother Brain out of sheer spite. Then Samus gets the Hyper Beam, and both you and the bounty hunter use it to utterly annihilate that big-headed bitch on behalf of your lost child. Fuck Mother Brain, killing her is IMMENSELY satisfying, akin to killing Makarov at the end of the original MW3.

Visuals and music? Check. Super Metroid is one of the most detailed games on the SNES in terms of graphics, without sacrificing the excellent character design or moody art style. The music has so many bangers, and the fact that this is the debut of Ridley’s theme automatically makes it an S-tier OST for me.

Yeah, that’s Super Metroid, and surprising absolutely nobody, it’s still a phenomenal experience through and through. Despite it not being my first Metroid game (technically, that’d be Prime Hunters when I was like 5 years old, followed by the first game, which I never finished because it sucks), Super was the first one I fully got into and the one that made me a Metroid fan.

The Geek Critique seems to have sent me on another Metroid bender and now I’m replaying Fusion, so stay tuned for that.

Widely regarded as the benchmark of the genre, Super Metroid offers an incomparable lesson in level design. The exceptional vitality of this genre today sometimes forgets the golden rules, which allow to get the best out of Metroidvania. At first glance, Zebes is finely designed, so that each of the zones is interconnected, which limits the too tiring and repetitive back and forth, but the real strength of the title is to give the player the ability to accelerate the pace, even without having picked up any objects: mastering the wall-jump from the beginning of the game allows you to pass through advanced zones very quickly, giving the title a real replayability. Thus, many passages are open to the most adventurous and gifted, proving that the science of a Metroidvania lies in the emergent gameplay more than in the backtracking. Beyond this essential aspect, the title amazes with its fabulous graphic and musical score. Everything responds very well and it is difficult to find frustrating moments. One might regret the difficulty in switching between missiles and different objects, but the SNES controller requires it. Super Metroid is, without a shadow of a doubt, a shining star in the Nintendo sky.

After playing the remake titles, this game's physics feels wrong to me because this game feels like gravity with %50 less also it's pretty slippery if you hold the run button. But once I get used to movement I found a treasure of a game. Why? Because this game is full of content in. Every. Side. Of. The. Corner. Not even previous games are that full you know. I really find this damn fantastic! There is only one downside to this tho. Upgrades that required to progress in this game are hidden like the other upgrades and at some places it feels a bit frustrating for me. For the compensation they give you a xray machine for seeing hidden walls, but it's range is pretty pathetic so if you forget to spam in every corner, you will probably stuck like me for a while until looking up a guide(I didn't find the ice beam and finding that really took a lot of time for me). But still I love this game, for me it's still have the most realized map and best free exploration of this franchise(currently not played metroid dread)

Atmospheric masterpiece which contrary to popular belief, isn't rivaled by the Donkey Kong Country series. The exposition test with a close-up of Samus is one of the most iconic still frames to not be a title screen.

There's next to no exposition throughout the rest of the game, actually, yet there's storytelling all around. In a small room you meet the Mocktroids, the first failed attempts at cloning Metroids, there's the remaining non-hostile wildlife teaches you how to use abilities such as the Shinespark, and the wrecked ship which hints at ill-fated previous attempts by humanity to make contact with Zebes. Already hours into your adventure and the planet's hostility is still making itself clearer.

Super Metroid also becomes rewarding on subsequent playthroughs, since you're easily capable of sequence breaking once you know where you need to go to make essential progress. Developers deliberately added the wall jump feature, which shows they were accepting of players circumventing the game's structure to play their own way, and this trust adds another layer of maturity to the vibe of the game, one that goes beyond any lonely paranoia or horror aesthetics.

Still, there are aspects later games would improve on. Fusion improves the control scheme, and a greater portion of its bosses feel impossible to cheese your way through. Here, you can sort of get through some fights without quite figuring out what you're doing by the end. Metroid Prime, due to its first person POV (already hard to deny as an improvement), has fairer enemy placements, plus also more interesting boss encounters. But what the series has never reached again is a level of detail and cohesiveness that filled Super Metroid to the brim with memorable ideas and moments of rewarding pause. Everything comes together here, and the more I play this, the more every indie Metroidvania success story of the modern day feels utterly lacking in anything besides spritework and polish.

Super Metroid extraí todo o potencial da franquia, por trabalhar em um hardware superior, os desenvolvedores finalmente executaram o que queriam desde o NES, um Action/Adventure rico em exploração.

A narrativa é uma sequência direta de seu antecessor do Gameboy e, por mais que não seja o foco, conta uma boa história e tem uma das introduções mais icônicas que vi, causa um impacto imediato assim que você começa o jogo.

A interconexão do mundo é primorosa, tudo se conecta de uma forma orgânica, cheio de atalhos e segredos, é muito recompensador explorar cada canto dele, os upgrades que vc ganha são demonstrados como funcionam na mesma sessão que os pega, ou seja, é um tutorial prático in game, fica claro como e onde usa-los, dificilmente deixando o jogador perdido, o mapa é uma adição mais do que bem-vinda, pois te localiza e mostra onde precisa ir, mas não te guia para achar os upgrades necessários para tal nem onde estão os itens para aumentar sua munição, mantendo a exploração natural. Um dos level designs mais impressionantes que eu já vi, ainda mais quando você coloca a época que o jogo foi lançado em pauta.

Em action, o gameplay é muito bom, finalmente tornou Metroid jogável, sem muitos problemas com exceção de falta de responsividade em alguns comandos, porém, é muito mais dinâmico no combate, te dando 5 posições diferentes para mirar, tiro carregado, variação de munição e um botão de correr, as sessões de plataformas têm um hit box problemático, no entanto. As boss battles variam entre desafiadoras e fáceis, só que são bem distintas em design, tornando-as únicas.

Já a dificuldade, não só dos bosses, como do jogo no geral, variam em cada sessão e, claro, nos upgrades e itens que vc têm disponíveis, é bem equilibrado de acordo com a progressão do jogador, caso sinta que tal sessão está difícil, é apenas pq você não está forte o suficiente ou não tem o que é preciso para avançar.

A ambientação é absurda, o sentimendo de solidão e perigo que o jogo passa através da atmosfera é brilhante, graças a direção de arte macabra com cenários que contam uma história própria do que aconteceu em Zebes, os seres que o habitaram e habitam. Outro ponto forte nisso é o sound design fantástico, os ruídos dos inimigos num silêncio completo, o som da chuva ou da lava, a OST misteriosa que te causa suspense ou apenas os ecos dos passos de Samus, tudo isso contribui muito para te inserir naquele planeta, é maravilhoso. Um trabalho técnico incrível.

Super Metroid é um jogo à frente do seu tempo e muito importante para a construção de seu sub-gênero, diversos Metroidvania usaram, usam e usarão o que foi feito aqui. Jogo excelente.

What could I possibly add to the conversation about this game that hasn't been said a million times? Not much is the answer, so I'll keep it short. As my first experience with this game, with absolutely zero nostalgia involved, I can confidently say that if I didn't know this game came out in 1994 and someone told me it came out today, I'd believe them, It's been almost 30 years and yet it still feels like it's so ahead everyone else, I've played so many Metroidvanias in my life that I now realize were merely attempting to replicate what this game achieves. Super Metroid is and probably always will be the blueprint for one of gaming's best genres right now, that's the best compliment I could possibly give it.

The only reason I'm not giving it a perfect rating is because there's a few nitpicks I have regarding some boss-fights being a little gimmicky, and some hidden items being way too hidden for anyone to be able to find during a regular playthrough, besides that however, no reason not to love this game. If you haven't played it, stop reading this, do yourself a favor and play it right now, if you have played it, replay it, it probably gets even better, I might do that right now actually.

This is undoubtedly one of the best games of all time. It’s definitely dated in some ways like how you can get softlocked at the end there. The game also doesn’t hold your hand which is both one of it’s biggest strengths and also one of its biggest weaknesses. I had to transform into a 90s kid because I needed to use a game guide to get me through this game lmfao

The soundtrack is fire and the spritework is nothing short of magnificent. People say the environmental storytelling is some of the best in gaming but I wasn’t too impressed by that aspect.

The rate at unlocking everything is well paced and it really makes you feel like you’re actually on a mission to save this cute lil metroid. The ending is dope, however, the final boss took me well over an hour to try to beat. I was ready to give up and watch the ending on youtube but I persevered and actually got it done. What helped was that I destroyed those barriers then I went back up a floor to restore all of my energy and missiles for the fight. I managed to do it in one go after that.

So yeah, this was awesome and I loved it, despite the moments where I became frustrated (I notice games do that to me a lot lol). What elevates this for me is the aesthetic, I just love the borderline-horror sci-fi shit that’s going on here. I’m a big fan

It's a fantastic game, especially considering how much of an innovation it was and how influential it became for so many games that followed it.

The problem with having played it for the first time in 2020, though, is that there's so many games that are cut from its cloth that it's hard to really get an appreciation for how distinct and amazing Super Metroid really was - especially when there are games that are just "Super Metroid, but X" that fill in niches and shortcomings that the game can't fill on its own.

For example, Rabi-Ribi - my go-to Metroid-like fills the problem I have with Metroid's combat. Aiming missiles is clunky; too many bosses have specific weaknesses and vulnerabilities and gimmicky attack patterns; and Samus' hitbox is simply too big with too clumsy movement controls - Rabi-Ribi solves all these problems by basically being Kirby meets Touhou in boss battles.

But I don't really want to spend this... review? gushing about Rabi-Ribi. What Super Metroid does get right, even moreso than other games like it, is atmosphere and storytelling through sheer intrigue and its world. The brief glimpse at what looks like a Metroid in the drop in Maridia, the menacing statues of the four bosses encountered early in Crateria, the Chozo statues and so much more...

And honestly, this and Zero Mission combined really do absolve the sins of the first game, huh.