50 Years of Video Games: Super Metroid (SNES)

While the exploration-focused platformers known as Metroidvanias derive their genre name from two different series, there’s one game they’re all judged by. Super Metroid wasn’t the first Metroidvania, the first Metroid game also had the focus on exploring a large interconnected map and using new abilities to open up new areas, but its polish, visual direction, and atmosphere all created a more involved experience than its predecessors. Released in 1994, Super Metroid’s shadow looms over every game in the genre since and comes up in comparisons more often than the Castlevania side of the genre name. It’s the kind of game with such an incredible legacy in the minds of gamers that speaking ill against it can lead to fervent anger or immediate dismissal. That is one reason I hesitated in ever covering it on The Game Hoard, even though I do believe it is an incredibly well put together game in many ways and certainly excellent in many regards. However, since I don’t believe it is a perfect masterpiece free of flaws I might be putting myself in some peoples’ crosshairs. It’s a shame that such a great game must have such things hanging over it, but if we can pierce through the veil of fanaticism for a moment, let’s take a close look at both Super Metroid’s triumphs and the blemishes that should be addressed not only for honesty’s sake, but so new generations of gamers can come to the game without their expectations inflated beyond the actual substance of the game.

Super Metroid definitely does a phenomenal job establishing an eerie tone in its opening moments. Players assume the role of bounty hunter Samus Aran after she has wiped out most of the energy-sucking menace known as Metroids, but she hands the last one over, a baby that had imprinted on her, for study by the Galactic Federation. After the necessary recap for this framing, the title screen comes into view, the last living Metroid floating in a tank in a research lab, the scientists who were studying it dead on the ground. The action begins with you entering the lab and finding it hauntingly still, but the Metroid is still safe and sound… until the leader of the Space Pirates, Ridley, reveals himself. The large space dragon snatches the Metroid away and flies off to the nearby planet of Zebes, the planet where Samus had previously clashed with the Space Pirates as they tried to weaponize the Metroid species. On landing though, the planet itself seems rather quiet as well. Some natural life is moving about, but as you plunge deeper beneath the planet’s surface, you begin to find the wrecked areas from Samus’s previous visit to the planet. There is no sign of your foes until suddenly weird sensors on the wall light up, tracking you until suddenly the Space Pirates do start appearing again, ready for a fight and truly beginning your quest to stop this enemy force once more.

Life returns both to the planet and the music after this quiet and measured opening. The adventure truly begins, Samus needing to defeat four boss monsters before she can go deeper into the planet to truly stop the plans to revive the Metroid menace. Despite the game beginning to become more adventurous and bright after the opening segments, Super Metroid still does pull back at parts or leans on other methods to emphasize the alien feeling of the planet or the hostility it poses. The Wrecked Ship is an obvious highlight, a ruined space craft providing a small portion where you explore its dark insides with almost ghost-like creatures appearing from thin air. In some areas beneath the planet, walls almost look more like organic surfaces than stone or metal without being so morbid as to be flesh. Odd vegetation pokes out the floor, the planet both feeling alive and yet often quiet. There are many aggressive creatures, some of the alien wildlife defending itself but there are many that just seem to be going about their normal lives. That spiky creature on a platform doesn’t appear actively hostile, but it’s on the platform you need to cross, Super Metroid creating a fairly natural looking world for the most part. The side-scrolling presentation and need to make interesting platforming segments does lead to some more artificial looking rock formations and some interior spaces don’t have clear purposes beyond their role as a navigational challenge, but it does enough to establish Zebes elsewhere that it doesn’t harm the atmosphere. The music in particular continues to carry the mood, helping a sense of exploring the unknown hang over things even if the area you are in isn’t particularly off-putting or unusual.

The big interconnected map has many secrets to uncover and areas with different feels, and with the game sometimes having you weave in and out of them in a short span it’s good that they often go for some stark visual differences. If you go to Norfair you can expect rocky lava-filled areas, Maridia is the underwater region, and Crateria’s more natural surface world focuses on greenery much more. As you start getting new abilities you’ll be able to return to previous areas to find additional goodies like health upgrades and improvements to your missile capacity while also using those acquired skills and weapons to reach new places in familiar settings. The game actually doles out many of the abilities at a surprisingly rapid pace to get you started, a fortunate choice as you don’t start with too much. Samus’s arm cannon begins as a basic blaster but can start to get add-ons to spread the shot, charge it up, or even freeze foes, and your movement abilities become more expansive as well as you start to be able to jump higher, roll into a ball to enter tight spaces, or even run at exceptional speeds. Admittedly before the Speed Booster is introduced there is little reason to run as most spaces are built more for jumping around repeatedly instead of sprinting, and that is one reason an early room can baffle players as it requires running to clear whereas it was mostly useless prior.

It’s probably time to address the downsides I hinted at with my apprehensive opener, and they mostly tie to Samus’s abilities and their role in navigation. Samus’s jumps are perhaps the first small snag. Both of them are rather floaty although one has Samus leap forward in a stiff position and the other she curls up into a somersault as she does so. They do have different purposes as the stiff jump is a more precise maneuver but the curled up one is necessary if you are trying to utilize later abilities like the space jump that lets you continuously jump through the air so long as you can figure out the rhythm of when to jump at risk of plummeting back down if you miss your moment. You also need to spin jump towards walls to pull off the wall jump maneuver, the action requiring you to actually pull away from the wall once you touch it and then jump with a small window of time between the button presses or the action won’t work properly. It’s all a touch awkward but not overly so, but then a bit more awkwardness is layered on with weapon swapping.

Going from your regular beam, to missiles, to super missiles, to power bombs, to X ray scope, and back to regular shots is all tied to one button you just rapidly press to go down this list that grows the deeper in the game you get. During regular navigation you can come to a halt and do all the button presses to pull out what you need, use it, and then switch back to regular shots, but boss fights often encourage missile usage on top of beam usage so swapping between them ends up a sometimes fiddly affair. Bosses do at least often provide ways to earn a little more health and missiles to offset some of the injuries and resource loss when you’re dealing with this, although many of the bosses are surprisingly easy. Some like the enormous Kraid or the tunnel-filling Crocomire do have some trick you need to figure out first while others like the ghostly Phantoon just take their time making themselves vulnerable, but the fights are often about consistent damage output while avoiding a few attacks. They are not bad skirmishes as they are often action-packed and keep you moving around trying to manage your dodging and damage output, but ones that could definitely benefit from some additional depth or variation.

Some of the unituitive design does impact the navigation beyond just trying to get something like the Space Jump working. There are certainly a few moments in Super Metroid where it feels like you’re left to drop power bombs around in hopes of finding which part of the environment can be destroyed to make progress, and while the X Ray Scope is meant to help you find these without experimentation via blasting all the walls and floors, it replaces your jump button with the scan while it’s equipped so when you’re in a large room with a lot of surface to cover it can take a long time to find the false wall or flooring. This isn’t my first time playing or beating Super Metroid and there were still moments where I found myself bumbling around in search of the one correct bit of destructible environment before I could continue my journey, a shame as there are many parts where you get that delightful moment of realizing you can explore a previously inaccessible area you encountered with your newly acquired skills.

Super Metroid can be a flexible game though, your abilities sometimes allowing you to complete the game more quickly than intended, and even if you don’t go out of your way to break the sequence of events expected of you, there is a satisfaction in becoming more capable and powerful and able to breeze through previously dangerous areas thanks to your new powers and built up skills. The map on the pause screen is a big help in finding your way around or noticing areas that could still require some exploration, although there is an odd choice to have areas with helpful items marked with a dot that doesn’t go away after you’ve grabbed whatever item was hidden there. Overcoming the environment and wildlife is pretty much the main challenge of the experience and beyond a few moments where the clues for doing so are perhaps too subtle it is intriguing to pass through a room door and see what’s waiting on the other side, new creatures and navigational obstacles asking for thought and quick action to overcome.

THE VERDICT: A few unintuitive aspects aside, Super Metroid does a superb job making its exploration captivating and its platforming a solid challenge. Zebes is a remarkably textured world whose locations weave through each other in interesting ways, Super Metroid throwing in new trials and wildlife to keep navigating it engaging and diverse. The music and environmental design set the tone wonderfully and the bosses are impressive if not the most substantial fights, but the overall experience is definitely enhanced by moments devoted to intense action, quiet forging forward, or puzzling out what needs to be done next.

And so, I give Super Metroid for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System…

A GREAT rating. It can be difficult for people who have learned a game inside out or played through it over and over again to consider the game with a fresh perspective. If you have spent years replaying a game like Super Metroid, you’ll know by heart how to find room exits that require poking around or trial and error to find in your first play through, and the awkwardness of learning maneuvers like the wall jump or space jump will have long faded as muscle memory has made it second nature. While these can lead to getting a bit lost and the weapon cycling is just outright clunkier than it should be, Super Metroid is still an excellent game, but one done a disservice by placing it on an unqualified pedestal. It deserves praise for making a game world that can evoke such strong feelings of trepidation, unease, and isolation even with the limitations at the time of its creation. Its bosses are still imposing creatures with energetic fights even if some more complexity would have made them more textured battles. Its area design still provides plenty of unique challenges to keep the navigation involved both in how it asks you to tackle hazards and enemies and in how you need to consider how to find new ways out of a room or reach special upgrades. Super Metroid definitely deserves a lot of love, and future games in the series would iron out the movement problems or make more substantial bosses. The original Super Metroid definitely has lasting appeal, but deifying it does it a disservice as you will get players put off by such a powerful reputation.

Super Metroid is definitely a stand out experience on the Super Nintendo, one with layers over its platforming to give it more depth and consideration than simply trying to move your character to the right places. Abilities open up new opportunities, the areas invite you to not only poke around for extras but drink in their atmosphere, and unless you get lost or accidentally stuck on the wrong side of a one way entrance it can keep up its pace pretty well as well. Super Metroid goes from a very moody opener to lavishing you with ability after ability to give you a quick surge of the excitement of new opportunity, and when the game does start spacing things out more you’re trained up to consider how the new tools can help you when you return to previous areas of the map. It’s a classic, remarkably well designed, and certainly worthy of continued attention even now, and while some can overlook the small unpolished elements, they should be accepted as part of this experience rather than dismissed as some sort of nitpick. Funnily enough a remake could easily just smooth out a few things like weapon swapping and the game would easily live up to the legend, but even in its current form it still provides an excellent experience within the genre it helped propel into popularity without needing to be absolutely perfect to do so.