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Customer Reviews of Metroid

One classic game on a CLASSIC system!
Metroid was one of the best games of all time! Kids back in the late 80's, early 90's had the best toys! Of course Im just saying that because Im a child of the 80's, everything back then was a total winner in my eyes. Metroid is a classic, plain and simple. The idea behind it is pretty simple. You play as this hardcore chick named "Samus", through the game you explore new worlds and fight different creatures. The more you play the game, the more Samus up grades her wepons. Missles, lazer beams and bombs are the order of the day. Yeah', sure. The graphics are really [dorky] compared to the games of today, but isn't it about play value? Metroid has ALOT of it too! Good 'ol NES! Warms my heart to see others writting comments about this
"old school" classic. Other games that are note worthy I listed below. ENJOY YOURSELF!

1) ABADOX
2) MEGA MAN (any of the series)
3) KID ICARUS
4) BLASTER MASTER
5) DR. MARIO

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Metroid - Der Kommissar's Definitive Review
...With the release of the two new Metroid games, I thought it seemed only right to review the game that started it all. So, here goes!

Graphics: 4/5 - For the NES you really can't do a whole lot better. But still, I have seen better NES graphics than this, and this game really could have pulled it off a little better.

Play Control: 4.5/5 - Simple but effective scheme. Shoot and jump. It feels a bit strange at times but it's good overall.

Challenge: 4.25/5 - For being released in 1986 this game's TOUGH! You've got difficult platform jumps, sometimes over pits of acid. You've got enemies of all shapes and sizes, as well as three boss characters. And in the final area, you'll meet a deadly series of villains (the title characters.) These guys are not easy to kill by any means. This game uses passwords to save progress, not batteries like later Metroid games. I would've liked batteries in this game, but I'm just thankful you can save your progress.

Theme/Fun: 4.5/5 - Excellent overall. In this game, as you go on, you collect items which basically upgrade yourself. Missile Batteries allow you to carry and fire rockets. Each additional one adds 10 to your maximum total, up to 255. Energy tanks add 100 units to your life, to a maximum of 699. The round ball lets you turn into a ball and explore tight spaces. The bomb power-up lets you drop bombs in ball form. The Long Beam gives you shots that travel the length of the screen. The Ice Beam gives you a beam that freezes almost any enemy. The Wave Beam is an ultra-powerful beam that goes through walls. The Screw Attack transforms your spin jump into a deadly weapon. The Varia decreases the damage total you take. The High Jump Boots do just what they say they do. However, the ice beam overrides the wave beam, and vice versa, meaning for the final showdown you'll have to find another ice beam. That's a little annoying but no big deal. With these upgrades you'll be more than a match for your enemies.

If you own an NES this is a game you should not be without. If you don't own an NES, but have a GCN, GBA, cable to connect the two, Metroid Prime, and Metroid Fusion, and you beat Metroid Fusion, you can play this original NES title on the GCN (and save progress on a memory card!) This game is just too cool to pass by.

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The game that defined open-ended exploration; a true classic
In 1986, METROID forever changed the face of video gaming. A richly atmospheric title, METROID offered a darker, grainier side to the bright images and sunshine gaming that were at that time populating Nintendo. (To this day Nintendo still specialises in that 'sunshine gaming,' with more titles for little kids than adults, but that's rather beside the point). SUPER MARIO BROTHERS, the 8-Bit's flagship title, was colourful, woefully short, and a fun jaunt to rescue Princess Toadstool from the evil Bowser. SUPER MARIO BROTHERS displayed a mastery of excellent level design, but it did not take long to beat. The rest of the video games at that time, san ZELDA and KID ICARUS, were also of a relative simple nature.

Enter Samus Aran. This was a game that offered unprecedented depth of play, was dark and grisly, and had great, mood setting music, and long, twisting corridors that led you deep into the Space Pirates' lair. An incredibly large game for the time, comparable only to THE LEGEND OF ZELDA and KID ICARUS of the first generation Nintendo titles, you could wander around for hours, exploring and gaining access to new areas with new items. I tend to think of KID ICARUS (why didn't this become a franchise???) and METROID as brothers, and ZELDA and METROID as first cousins. While ZELDA offers a very innovative, opened-ended (for the time) overworld experience with fantasy elements, METROID does the same type of innovation for side-scrollers, with a map just as expansive (though in a different format) as ZELDA. Which brings me to the actual game play of METROID.

Metroid operates as one long map broke off into sections. There is no level progressions like Mario. But the game does contain you too certain areas that only opens up after you had receive new items. These items are cleverly hidden throughout the game's map, and just when you think you've come to a dead end, suddenly you bomb the floor and a whole new area opens before you. And the game isn't too kind when it set you down in that opening area of Brinstar. Equipped with only 30 energy units, Samus has to be tough to survive. Energy is scarce and can be time-consuming to collect. (Compare obtaining life in METROID to SUPER METROID; in SUPER METROID there's all sorts of energy). The energy being so hard to collect, and the ungodly complex password system, do flaw the game, but we have to remember this is a first gen NES title, so you have to cut it some slack.

Now would be a good time to talk about METROID's glitch. Much like the negative world in SUPER MARIO BROTHERS, METROID has one of the most famous glitches in the video gaming world. Called the Secret Worlds, you use a wall jumping technique that enables you to get to "new areas" of the game that are otherwise unreachable. Thought to be a secret, an intentional programming easter egg, these Secret Worlds, while still fun to search for, are not intentional. They are glitches. Search the Internet to find out all about these secret areas.

After transversing Brinstar and Norfair, getting new items, then Samus has to fight through the two bosses' hideouts and put them down before the final confrontation: Mother Brain. My favorite old school enemy, Mother Brain is a proven nemesis, much harder to beat than the laughably pathetic Bowser or even the more challenging Gannon. On top of that, once you beat her you have to get out of Tourian within a certain time limit (admittedly, it's more than enough time to get out). Even though Mother Brain's tough, we video gamers led Samus to victory countless times because of the stupendous game play and the compelling story. Once Mother Brain is dead and we get Samus out of Tourian, then the real payoff is unleashed. Samus is a WOMAN! And if you beat the game under certain time limits, you get different endings. During the days of rescuing damsels in distresses with a Brooklyn plumber or a green-clad boy, Samus's gender is very revolutionary, which brings me to the story aspect of METROID, which is currently under attack by ZERO MISSION.

METROID's best features are successfully combines rich story-telling (for the NES) with innovative gameplay. This isn't a kid's game like Mario. This is a classic science fiction story, heavily influenced by Ridley Scott's ALIEN. Metroid is a story of a Space Federation fighting for its very survival against the fearsome Mother Brain and its two subordinates, Ridley and Kraid, who had stolen the Metroids and had their own devious designs for them. I have a sneaking suspicion that the boss Ridley was named after Sigourney Weaver's character and Ridley Scott. Gunpei Yokoi, executive produce of METROID (and also one of the chief developers of the original Game Boy), said that while ALIEN was never specifically discussed during Metroid's development, it cast a heavy shadow over METROID. That same dark terror, about never knowing what was around the next corner and how you were hoping, against all odds, that Ridley in ALIEN and Samus in the game would come out on top, forever cemented both tales in the imaginations of their prospective audiences.

Because of the gameplay and atmospheric story, Samus Aran has become a classic video game icon. Thankfully, after many long years the METROID franchise has become alive again with new releases. But for those who want to relive the Samus's first glory, then this game would hold you enthralled. This is truly a classic game.

P. S. Unfortunately, do to the realitive simplicity of the NES version of events, Nintendo has saw fit to introduce a radical remake of the game on METROID: ZERO MISSION, enlarging it and changing around events. While I enjoyed ZM, I felt it much to linear and went against what made the original so great to begin with: open-ended exploration. See my METROID: ZERO MISSION review for more details.