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.