Very few games can claim to have nearly single-handedly invented an entire genre while also cementing a myriad of other tropes in gaming that we nowadays take for granted. Metroid is one of those watershed moments in gaming that comes around only once or twice a console generation, changing the entire gaming landscape while simultaneously being a mainstream success. Nowadays the series maintains a dedicated audience, though it seems most people respect the original Metroid more than they like it. I can empathize with that point of view but despite a plethora of deep flaws, I found myself enjoying Metroid more than I thought.
It's hard to describe the impact that Metroid had on game design philosophy. Exploring a large open world with branching paths, hidden secrets, and strong powerups is a lot of fun. It's beyond impressive what Nintendo managed to pull off here, especially on hardware as limited as the NES. Sure, this does result in things like room layout repetition, but I didn't take a large amount of issue with this. A lot of players have complained about the lack of a map, but I enjoyed making my own on a piece of paper. Eventually, over halfway through the game, I didn't even need one anymore. The game's map, as nondescript as it can be, had mostly internalized as second nature. Exploring this world, finding new abilities, returning to previously difficult areas, and blowing aliens to smithereens is satisfying as all hell. Returning to Norfair after finally finding the ice beam and turning those stupid bees into a joke is a feeling like no other. It is very successful at making you feel alone, lost in a terrifying alien planet with a highly hostile environment. Another saving grace Metroid has is the infinite continues. This game very easily could have been hellish had it had limited continues, but Nintendo had the smarts to realize that making the player restart from the beginning would murder the game's nonlinear structure. This means that as frustrating as death can be in Metroid, it's not nearly as punishing as many other NES titles. I was also highly impressed by just how innovative Metroid was. It was one of the first games to push passwords, prioritize nonlinear level design, have multiple endings, and deliberately push feelings of isolation onto the player. It may seem like faint praise nowadays, but as someone familiar with the NES's library, it is vastly remarkable.
Metroid is very rough around the edges, naturally, seeing as it's essentially the first of its genre. Some things do come down to technical limitations: the room layouts can often repeat and this can make areas less interesting than they possibly could be. The game's performance often slows to a crawl and this can not only make the game feel sluggish, but downright harder too (looking at you, Mother Brain). These are sort of excusable, especially when the game was originally made for the somewhat more powerful Famicom Disc System. However, most of my issues with the game are things I feel were easily avoidable regardless of limitations. The gamet/geega/zeb enemies are a massive nuisance until you get the ice beam, nearly constantly respawning to pummel you right into your firey doom. Although they give you a moment of respite after you've killed a few in a row, they're far too brutal and punishing towards the player, and when multiple spawn points can be right next to one another it's often infuriating. This is mitigated when you get the ice beam, which nearly trivializes their difficulty, but the problem there is that the ice beam is hidden so discreetly that you'd likely struggle to find it naturally no matter how inquisitive you are. Most of the powerups in the game are fun to find and well-thought-out but the ice beam and the varia suit are hidden too deeply to find without Nintendo Power, at least for me. It also doesn't help that the game's boss fights are mostly awful. Ridley is fine, if trivially easy, but Kraid and Mother Brain are both hair-pulling bosses. Kraid's spike attacks, airborne projectiles, and unfairly placed lava pits lead to a grueling fight that requires a lot of grinding beforehand. Mother Brain wouldn't be so bad had it not been for the constantly spawning rinkas pushing Samus around the entire time. I feel most of these problems aren't a result of the game's limitations but rather poor design decisions. They don't ruin the game but they do leave a black mark on what is otherwise very solid.
Metroid is famously one of the first games to try to convey an oppressive, alien atmosphere and it does so with high marks. While not the most visually standout NES game out there, its presentation effectively conveys a hostile alien world. From the cobblestone and shrubbery of Kraid's Lair, to the oozing purple bubbles and the cocooned eyeballs in Norfair, Zebes is a bizarre planet to explore and each level's theme is unique and discernable. The creatures that inhabit this world are bizarre yet do feel like real alien fauna, and the iconic metroids themselves are such a cool monster design. If there are any negatives, it's that Samus Aran herself looks a little strange. Her sprite is undetailed and formless-looking, which stands out compared to how relatively detailed the rest of the game is. It's a minor complaint, but she is the protagonist, so you'll be staring at her for a while.
Metroid's iconic score was composed by Hirokazu Tanaka, who had a different approach to sound design. Instead of the pop-inspired tunes most games featured at the time, he wanted to compose a soundtrack that felt like a living organism. He succeeded. Each stage is represented perfectly through their dedicated tracks. Brinstar's heroic melodies encapsulate the feeling of starting on a new adventure, but that's the last time you'll hear such music, as from that point on the songs become far more sinister and atmospheric. Kraid's Lair has some of the most memorable chord progressions in any game I've ever played, lending his hideout a menacing and isolating feeling of being alone in a space pirate base infested with hostile creatures. The plodding notes of Norfair's theme sound like dripping lava, and when the score eventually turns into a pulsating, undulating soundscape in Tourian, you feel like you're in the belly of the beast. While not necessarily perfect (Ridley's Lair is one of the weaker tracks), this is a hugely ambitious score for a game from the mid-80s and would set the standard for darker soundscapes to come.
It's difficult to evaluate Metroid in the modern day. I prefer viewing media in the context of their times, and within that context Metroid is mindblowing. The large maps, exploration-focused gameplay, innovative soundtrack, and creative visual design create an experience that has stuck to my mind like glue over the past week. Unfortunately, Metroid is a deeply flawed game too. While some flaws are understandable, if not outright unavoidable, such as performance issues and room reuse, some were flaws regardless of hardware limitations. The boss fights and overly punishing enemies must've frustrated many in 1986 as well, and they dragged down my experience with the game fairly significantly. Still, I had a fairly good time with Metroid. I respect the hell out of it, and it deserves to be seen as an all-time classic, but not every classic has to be perfect. I am very interested in playing the rest of the series.
It's hard to describe the impact that Metroid had on game design philosophy. Exploring a large open world with branching paths, hidden secrets, and strong powerups is a lot of fun. It's beyond impressive what Nintendo managed to pull off here, especially on hardware as limited as the NES. Sure, this does result in things like room layout repetition, but I didn't take a large amount of issue with this. A lot of players have complained about the lack of a map, but I enjoyed making my own on a piece of paper. Eventually, over halfway through the game, I didn't even need one anymore. The game's map, as nondescript as it can be, had mostly internalized as second nature. Exploring this world, finding new abilities, returning to previously difficult areas, and blowing aliens to smithereens is satisfying as all hell. Returning to Norfair after finally finding the ice beam and turning those stupid bees into a joke is a feeling like no other. It is very successful at making you feel alone, lost in a terrifying alien planet with a highly hostile environment. Another saving grace Metroid has is the infinite continues. This game very easily could have been hellish had it had limited continues, but Nintendo had the smarts to realize that making the player restart from the beginning would murder the game's nonlinear structure. This means that as frustrating as death can be in Metroid, it's not nearly as punishing as many other NES titles. I was also highly impressed by just how innovative Metroid was. It was one of the first games to push passwords, prioritize nonlinear level design, have multiple endings, and deliberately push feelings of isolation onto the player. It may seem like faint praise nowadays, but as someone familiar with the NES's library, it is vastly remarkable.
Metroid is very rough around the edges, naturally, seeing as it's essentially the first of its genre. Some things do come down to technical limitations: the room layouts can often repeat and this can make areas less interesting than they possibly could be. The game's performance often slows to a crawl and this can not only make the game feel sluggish, but downright harder too (looking at you, Mother Brain). These are sort of excusable, especially when the game was originally made for the somewhat more powerful Famicom Disc System. However, most of my issues with the game are things I feel were easily avoidable regardless of limitations. The gamet/geega/zeb enemies are a massive nuisance until you get the ice beam, nearly constantly respawning to pummel you right into your firey doom. Although they give you a moment of respite after you've killed a few in a row, they're far too brutal and punishing towards the player, and when multiple spawn points can be right next to one another it's often infuriating. This is mitigated when you get the ice beam, which nearly trivializes their difficulty, but the problem there is that the ice beam is hidden so discreetly that you'd likely struggle to find it naturally no matter how inquisitive you are. Most of the powerups in the game are fun to find and well-thought-out but the ice beam and the varia suit are hidden too deeply to find without Nintendo Power, at least for me. It also doesn't help that the game's boss fights are mostly awful. Ridley is fine, if trivially easy, but Kraid and Mother Brain are both hair-pulling bosses. Kraid's spike attacks, airborne projectiles, and unfairly placed lava pits lead to a grueling fight that requires a lot of grinding beforehand. Mother Brain wouldn't be so bad had it not been for the constantly spawning rinkas pushing Samus around the entire time. I feel most of these problems aren't a result of the game's limitations but rather poor design decisions. They don't ruin the game but they do leave a black mark on what is otherwise very solid.
Metroid is famously one of the first games to try to convey an oppressive, alien atmosphere and it does so with high marks. While not the most visually standout NES game out there, its presentation effectively conveys a hostile alien world. From the cobblestone and shrubbery of Kraid's Lair, to the oozing purple bubbles and the cocooned eyeballs in Norfair, Zebes is a bizarre planet to explore and each level's theme is unique and discernable. The creatures that inhabit this world are bizarre yet do feel like real alien fauna, and the iconic metroids themselves are such a cool monster design. If there are any negatives, it's that Samus Aran herself looks a little strange. Her sprite is undetailed and formless-looking, which stands out compared to how relatively detailed the rest of the game is. It's a minor complaint, but she is the protagonist, so you'll be staring at her for a while.
Metroid's iconic score was composed by Hirokazu Tanaka, who had a different approach to sound design. Instead of the pop-inspired tunes most games featured at the time, he wanted to compose a soundtrack that felt like a living organism. He succeeded. Each stage is represented perfectly through their dedicated tracks. Brinstar's heroic melodies encapsulate the feeling of starting on a new adventure, but that's the last time you'll hear such music, as from that point on the songs become far more sinister and atmospheric. Kraid's Lair has some of the most memorable chord progressions in any game I've ever played, lending his hideout a menacing and isolating feeling of being alone in a space pirate base infested with hostile creatures. The plodding notes of Norfair's theme sound like dripping lava, and when the score eventually turns into a pulsating, undulating soundscape in Tourian, you feel like you're in the belly of the beast. While not necessarily perfect (Ridley's Lair is one of the weaker tracks), this is a hugely ambitious score for a game from the mid-80s and would set the standard for darker soundscapes to come.
It's difficult to evaluate Metroid in the modern day. I prefer viewing media in the context of their times, and within that context Metroid is mindblowing. The large maps, exploration-focused gameplay, innovative soundtrack, and creative visual design create an experience that has stuck to my mind like glue over the past week. Unfortunately, Metroid is a deeply flawed game too. While some flaws are understandable, if not outright unavoidable, such as performance issues and room reuse, some were flaws regardless of hardware limitations. The boss fights and overly punishing enemies must've frustrated many in 1986 as well, and they dragged down my experience with the game fairly significantly. Still, I had a fairly good time with Metroid. I respect the hell out of it, and it deserves to be seen as an all-time classic, but not every classic has to be perfect. I am very interested in playing the rest of the series.