Ah Metroid. Who could forget Metroid. In Metroid (the video game) the titular protagonist, Metroid, runs amok on an alien planet murdering all of the native wildlife/fauna and killing a single mother before blowing everything up. Based.

After finishing Metroid for the first time, there is no doubt in my mind that it's aged extremely poorly- just a genuinely exhausting experience.

The level design is archaic and antiquated, difficulty is often just a factor of how many enemies are on screen at a time, and some elements are so bafflingly un-user friendly you'd think they were just mistakes left in by the developers.

Particular moments that come to mind:
[1] There are lava pits in Norfair that cannot be escaped from if fallen into. Post Varia suit and energy tanks this can become extremely tedious as the only solution becomes waiting to die.
[2] All of the boss fights are stinky. The Momther Brain room genuinely sucks. Plus if you get unlucky with missile drops in the previous rooms 🤷‍♂️
[3] This is a symptom suffered by many NES games, but secret passages with no indication as to their existence will never fail to grab upon my goat.

All that said though, I'd be lying if I didn't mention that there were moments of genuine joy and satisfaction during my playthrough of this game. It definitely stands out as one of the "not completely unplayable today" NES titles.

Blah, blah, blah, NES games are bad and old and antiquated and I am full of hate.

I'd be remiss not to mention while I'm here: the Nintendo Switch NES emulator is hilariously bad. Any time there's enemies on screen the system chugs to a hault, lags, and drops frames on a game from 1986. It's honestly and genuinely unacceptable.

The original Metroid gets a "I would have given my controller bite marks on original hardware without save states/10"

[Game Played on Emulator]
[Game Played with Save States]
[Game Played with Walkthrough]