Collection essentials #269: Super Metroid (SNES)

The original Metroid was a popular and significant game on the NES, helping to establish a type of 2D platformer/action game where the player is basically in one huge interconnected level. There was a Metroid sequel on Game Boy, a system of roughly equal power. And then Metroid arrived in the following console generation. And perhaps no series saw a greater leap from NES to SNES than Metroid did. The original Metroid is viewed as a game that was great for its time but tends to feel outdated and clunky when played now. Super Metroid, however, is considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest games of all time.

Story-wise, the game is a direct sequel to the first two, recapping events from those games in the opening scene. After Samus’s campaign to destroy the alien Metroids in the last game, only one specimen remains, and it is turned over for scientific study. But upon turning it over and leaving, Samus gets a distress call asking her to return, and finds that the lab has been ravaged by space pirates and the Metroid stolen. Samus sets out to find the creature and thwart the evil pirates. The opening cutscene is told using text as Samus narrates, but the rest of the game has no dialogue. It’s not supposed to be a particularly plot-driven game, and rather the game communicates things about its world and characters through subtle visual clues and eventually big action sequences at the end.

On a surface level, the concepts of the gameplay seem about the same as the original Metroid. The game is all about permanent power-ups as Samus finds more gear to make her more powerful and capable. The game is rather non-linear, meaning that the player isn’t restricted to an order that things need to be accomplished in, but the player will be limited on where they can go when they don’t have many power-ups. As you find more of them, more of the map will be accessible, and there is incentive for the player to go and check out areas they’ve already been to once they have new equipment to see what secrets they can uncover, which can be pretty exciting and rewarding.

So what makes Super Metroid such a huge step up? Well, the first thing is ATMOSPHERE. This game greatly benefits from the enhanced graphics and sound provided by the SNES hardware. The developers were so much more able to create and set the atmosphere for a hostile alien world. The music and sound is masterfully done to create an often-haunting atmosphere that very much enhances the experience.

But even more are the enhancements to gameplay. This is an instance where the additional buttons were a huge boon. For example, the shoulder buttons on top of the controller, can be used to aim diagonally upward and downward, something not possible on the NES. The developers also refined a lot of frustrating things about the original Metroid; for example, there was no fast way to get back to maximum health in that game, so Super Metroid added “energy charge stations” that quickly bring you back up to 100%. Being on the SNES meant that they could make a game that was bigger, too, with a lot more to find and collect. If you try out the original Metroid and then switch to Super, it doesn’t take long at all to realize just how massive of an upgrade it is. Playing all the way through it makes the quality leap even more apparent.

Many find Super Metroid to be a particularly fun game to master. When players are truly skilled at utilizing the various mechanics, they can even “sequence break”, performing difficult maneuvers to reach points in the game much earlier than intended. It’s a really popular game to “speedrun”, and Nintendo seemed to be aware of that back in the day, rewarding the player with a better ending if cleared in a shorter amount of time.

As for my experience, despite being a SNES game, believe it or not, I was completely unaware of this game’s existence for years. I was unacquainted with the Metroid series and Samus as a character until I played the first Super Smash Bros. game in 1999. Not too long after that, my dad and I were at Funco Land in West Springfield, MA, and I wanted to buy a SNES game, but I wasn’t sure which. I remember the cashier looking in his cabinet of games behind the desk, and he mentioned he had Super Metroid, and I immediately decided eagerly that I wanted to get that one. Dad commented that I went from “0 to 60”. However, I actually had some trouble getting into the game when I tried to play it. I got stuck really easily. And I wouldn’t properly play through the game for years. It was a future Metroid game that is a little more friendly to new players that wound up endearing me to the series.

You’ll notice there are two cartridges in the photo. The one below the manual is my original cartridge that I bought at that Funco Land many years ago. The other cartridge along with the box, manual and inserts are a copy I acquired in adulthood, and it’s actually the Canadian release of the game, with both English and French text included in the instruction manual. Canada and the USA are typically considered the same region for game releases, but sometimes there are significant differences, which seem to not be very well-documented to this day.

I have to admit, my reverence for Super Metroid is just a smidge below that of its many fans. I found the game unintuitive and puzzling for a long time, and I got a little frustrated with it at times. Once I was an older and more experienced gamer, of course, it became more manageable and I was able to greatly enjoy it. It’s a common sight near or at the top when people list the best SNES games of all-time. I wouldn’t place it quite that high, though that’s not really an insult with how stacked the console’s library is. It’s still a marvelous game and an obvious essential.