My Favorite Game Designs Of 2017 Gamasutra

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I mentioned it in the title, but let me say first that DREAD SPOILERS WILL BE MARKED! Any other game in the series will have UNMARKED spoilers. You've been warned, and are safe if you haven't played Dread yet. With that said, let's get onto it.

Introduction

Super Metroid is often considered a pioneer in the genre. While it wasn't the first game in the Metroid or Vania part of that, it was one that definitely brought the genre closer to what it is today. Metroid 1 of course had one of the first notable instances of having this 2D open structure. Super Metroid was really the game to drive this home with a world that stood out thanks to the visuals of the SNES.

My personal history with this game consists of my first time playing it being back on the Wii Virtual Console back in 2007 and absolutely loved it. It was released in the marketing cycle for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. I never owned an SNES when I was a kid. I had an NES all the way through about a year after the N64 came out and I got that. I rented Metroid 1 from a rental store, didn't get incredibly far in it and got frustrated with it. Before Super Metroid came out on the Wii Virtual Console, I had played Metroid Prime, Prime 2, Fusion, and Zero Mission up to that point. They were all excellent games, albeit Prime 2 got a bit difficult, but it was still very good, and honestly aged even better. I had heard so much talk about Super Metroid that I was excited to dive in. People kept talking about how Zero Mission and Fusion took a lot from that game.

While I'm not here to talk about Metroid 1, it's a game I have tried to play through many times and have given up every single time. At the time, yes, it was absolutely revolutionary, but now it's extremely hard to play and I cannot wrap my head around it without getting frustrated by it. I get caught stuck under a platform in acid. I get caught in a hatch with an enemy that I can't do anything about obliterates me. Sitting there and farming pipe bugs is so time consuming and frustrating (and yes, I know Super has that, I'll get to that). Starting out with 30 energy, no matter how many energy tanks you collected, is absurd. Hitting anything is an absolute chore unless it's right perfectly level with you. I know a lot of people complain about Metroid 1's lack of map, but I don't even think that's really an issue with it. It's layout is fairly simple and you can generally make mental notes about what was in the hallways going off of each shaft, how to get back. It's not an incredibly complicated layout. You can keep a mental count (or write it down) of how many hatches you passed on the way down a shaft, what was at the end of hallways, etc. Metroid II was a different structure, where the map was technically open, but more linear with an objective to kill Metroids and as you killed more, the acid receeded more for you to go explore more in the map. Samus did control a lot better in Metroid 2, being able to crouch, and just feeling better to control in general.

Super Metroid went back to a more Metroid 1-like structure, but with a more varied and interesting map. The map was so complex, it really required you to have a built-in in-game map. Like in Metroid 2, Samus can crouch and now also shoot diagonally! You can tell the series really came a long way since Metroid 1.

Gameplay

I think this game is better to start off with gameplay, mainly because there's a lot to discuss in the story, but I think gameplay still reigns supreme in these games. Super Metroid sets you up with a scenario of trying to find the baby Metroid you rescued on SR388, only to find out Ridley attacked the space station, stole it, and fled to planet Zebes. You land on Zebes, and from here on, your mission is only one mission, and is very clear: Find that Metroid. Every time you die, the game once again tells you to find the baby Metroid. Coming to the planet you see everything is quiet, until going through the only path you can, obtaining the Morph Ball and some missiles, and everything springs to life. The game slowly gives you the tools you need to explore the planet, in search for that Metroid. Given that this is a video game, you know you won't randomly stumble upon it, so you have to find out what obstacles are in the way to searching places you might need to go. One room you can access once you get the bombs is a room down a long metal hallway, with some standing water, and four statues of monsters with eyes shining in different colors. You might recognize Kraid and Ridley if you played Metroid 1, but then there's two new ones, Draygon and Phantoon. In Metroid 1, you had to defeat Kraid and Ridley to be able to clear the statues and advance to Tourian, and beat the game. You most likely assume this is a similar situation. Now it's time to find those four bad guys and beat them.

Doing this requires exploration, so you naturally look at the abilities you have, and see where you have and haven't been on the map. One thing the map has is some useful icons: There's one for save stations, map stations, energy/ammo stations, and bosses. Other things of interest are represented by white dots, usually upgrades, whether you picked them up or not. If you find you're unable to go one direction, you can always take a look at the map and see where you haven't been or had been previously, but couldn't progress with your current items at the time. You might say this style of progression is slightly more closed than Metroid 1's, but I think this is for the better. Metroid 1 would be a lot of frustration and not getting anywhere, while in Super you can get somewhere a lot easier. However Super Metroid doesn't simply have one path to complete the game. In fact, there's upgrades you can totally miss and still finish the game with. On most of my playthroughs of this game, I miss the Spring Ball. In this one, I actually got the Spring Ball and missed the X-Ray visor! There's also some very neat sequence break tricks out there, many of which are utilized in speedruns, as this game is a popular choice for them. Wall jumping is a thing in this game and due to the game's physics, you can actually wall jump up a single wall if you know what you're doing. There's two rooms in the game where they teach you how to do wall jumps, and how to use the Shinespark feature of the Speed Booster. Both of these techniques can be useful for sequence breaking.

There's two things I see Super Metroid get complaints about, and they are among the few things I ever seen complained about in this game of: The physics and controls/cycling through weapons.

The physics I actually like the way they are. They're very floaty, Samus falls pretty slowly, but also when you do a running jump, you get a lot more air off of it. The physics enable you to single wall jump relatively easily, since you fall pretty slowly and can easily reposition yourself on the same wall. The gravity is roughly the same as Metroid 1 and Metroid 2, but I think still feels a lot better than those games. The only time this really becomes an annoyance is if you're using Morph Ball bombs and don't actually want to jump, but you take incredibly long to hit the ground. It's a very minor thing though.

The other issue is how you cycle through weapons, which this one DOES bother me. You press Select (or whatever button you remap it to) to go through Missiles, Super Missiles, Power Bombs, Grapple Beam, and X-Ray visor. You can press Y to cancel (or whatever button you have mapped to it), but still quickly switching weapons can be very cumbersome. Fusion, Zero Mission, Samus Returns, and Dread all got this right. Missiles was changed to holding R and pressing the fire button. This may have been done because the GBA only had two face buttons, but I think it was a change for the better, as this stayed with Samus Returns and Dread. If they were to ever remake Super Metroid, this is the ONLY thing I would want changed, and keep the rest as it was before. Particularly with the Grapple Beam, this can get kind of annoying to use. L and R by default in this game are used for aiming diagonally up and down. In the GBA games, this was changed to one button and pressing the d-pad. In Samus Returns and Dread, this is of course replaced by the free aim button.

There's one other issue with the controls I have that's a little less important: The fact that there's a run button. There's some times early on in the game where you have to use the run button to get across a bridge of collapsing blocks. When I first played this game on the Wii Virtual Console, this part absolutely stumped me because I had played Fusion and Zero Mission before. This bridge was apparently called the "noob bridge". The default control scheme has B as the run button, X as fire, Y as cancel, and A as jump. Trying to run, jump, and shoot all at the same time gets incredibly awkward. You can remap the controls, but I never could really find anything that felt just right. Most of the time I would just not use the run button since you're moderately fast without it, but I really think that by default, you should go full speed. In Fusion and Zero Mission, you could run full speed by default, but this is likely because there were only two face buttons on the GBA. In Dread, you also run full speed, but to activate the speed booster, you click the left stick once as you're running and it will trigger. I think Dread's method of it works the best.

One of my favorite things about the map is just how connected everything feels. There's pretty clear separations of areas, but you also find they connect in different ways. Most of these are separated by elevators, but some aren't. There's the area where a particularly memorable tune plays:

This tune has been remixed and used multiple times throughout the series, one that comes to mind is the underwater areas in Torvus Bog in Metroid Prime 2. In Super Metroid, you hear this tune in the area surrounding where Brinstar, Norfair, and Maridia all meet up in one focal point. There's a glass tube that goes through Maridia and takes you from Brinstar to the elevator that leads to Norfair. I always found this cool how these areas basically overlap. The glass tube is pretty infamous because it wasn't necessarily obvious what to do, but you try things and eventually figure it out: A Power Bomb will blow it up, allowing you access to Maridia.

There's one feature in this game that's generally unsung, and was never included in a future game: The ability to turn specific upgrades on and off in your suit. Why would you ever want to do this? Secret techniques! There's also another reason of if you don't want to freeze everything with the Ice Beam. It didn't have too many uses, but it was still a cool feature nonetheless.

Bosses are something of a mixed bag in this game. I know one hot button issue in the discourse of Dread was the bosses in particular. Dread's bosses were very difficult, and there was a small number of people that wanted bosses that were more based on how much you explored and collected to survive. This would mean tanking hits with enough energy tanks, or having enough missiles. Dread's bosses take off large chunks of health when you get hit, and are often more about dodging and skillful play. Personally, I prefer Dread's style of bosses. Lots of beating Super Metroid's bosses are just spamming your weapons at them until they die, attempting to dodge their attacks, but more realistically just only dodging enough of them so you can stay alive and be victorious. Draygon was honestly the most interesting boss in the game just because of the secret method of defeating them: Destroy the turrets on the side of the room, let Draygon grab you, and when you get close enough to one of the destroyed turrets, latch onto it with your Grapple Beam and hold on. Samus' suit will act as a conduit for the electricity that will shock Draygon and very quickly kill them. A lot of the bosses in Super Metroid are more style than substance. That's not necessarily bad, but I prefer Dread's more substantial bosses. I think the final boss, while the spectacle of it is cool, is extremely easy and you also get a superweapon to destroy it with in the last phase.

Storyline

Being "Metroid III", it picks up where Metroid II left off. Samus took the baby Metroid to Ceres Space Station for research, and then there was a distress call of it being under attack. You find out Ridley stole it, and fled to Zebes, and the game truly begins. There isn't a whole lot of storytelling other than the start and end of the game. Most of it is environmental or comes from supplemental material, but this is fine and even a good thing. I honestly wonder if Super Metroid was ever going to be a remake of Metroid 1. I can't find any evidence of this and it's probably not true, but having things like the starting area from Metroid 1, as well as old Tourian, and the name of the game often taking the same naming scheme many games took at the time (SNES games including "Super" in the name). They never really explain why Samus lost all her upgrades from Metroid 1 and 2, but it doesn't bother me too much as it still makes for a better game. The Morph Ball is still in the same place it was, and you get to see a bit of old Brinstar and the ruins of Tourian from Metroid 1, and then the rest turns out to be very new areas.

Occasionally you get glimpses of what happened. You see the space pirates in the old Tourian area after getting the Morph Ball, the rest of the map is crawling with life. On the way to fight Kraid, you can see a dead Galactic Federation soldier being feasted on by bugs. Oddly enough this was pretty similar to the design they would keep in future games, such as Metroid Prime 2 and 3. You don't completely know the circumstances of Kraid and Ridley's revivals, although since the Prime series came after this, you did see Meta Ridley in those games. Proteus Ridley was also a form of Meta Ridley at the end of Samus Returns, and he was clearly restoring more of his organic body. Phantoon, it's hard to say what his deal is. He haunts the wrecked ship of unknown origin. Draygon is probably the most interesting. You see many baby Draygons throughout Maridia, and then you fight Draygon. After defeating him, you see the baby Draygons carry his corpse down into the sand. It's hard to say if they're feasting on their mother, or just trying to see if they can resuscitate her.

After you defeat Ridley, you find the jar the baby Metroid was in in the next room....broken in two pieces, with the Metroid nowhere to be seen. Now you've likely defeated all four bosses to get to Tourian though, and you can reasonably assume that's where you have to go next. Your objective in this game always stays the same "find that Metroid", except for the very end when you have to get off the planet before it explodes.

The ending sequence is where a lot of the story really kicks in. You go through many rooms of energy-drained creatures that just disintegrate into dust when you touch them, and then suddenly, a giant Metroid shows up and latches onto Samus, stopping right before killing her. It makes the sound of being the baby Metroid, and this is quite literally the "Super Metroid" the game refers to. It leaves and lets you continue. You move on to once again, fight the Mother Brain in her tank. She's easy to dispatch in this form, and then as everything around explodes, she seemingly starts to wake up, and has a very t-rex like body. This fight is actually very easy, you just have to spam missiles at her head, and many of the attacks are easy to dodge. There's a point that's very scripted where she hits you with a charged up beam, that leaves Samus kneeling on the ground and vulnerable. As she's about to do it again, the Super Metroid shows up again and latches onto Mother Brain's head, draining her energy. It then latches onto Samus, giving her that energy, and then as it's floating up, Mother Brain destroys it with that same beam, but the particles give Samus a new power of a rainbow beam she can fire. You shoot Mother Brain a number of times and she dies, and then you have to escape by getting back to the ship. This fight was cool to see the first time, however in retrospect it really has very little substance to it with how stupidly easy it is. Even if you didn't collect a whole lot of items, it's really not hard. Ridley and Phantoon were tougher than this.

Characters

Given that there's not a whole lot of dialogue, mainly Samus' brief monologues at the beginning and end of the game, most of the characterization is done through actions, and it's something I really love seeing. I'm also going to count bosses as "characters" for the purposes of this thread.

Samus Aran

The game's heroine, she has brief monologues at the start and end of the game, but everything else you see about her is portrayed in her actions. She's animated with her suit rising and falling as she breathes, showing her slight trepidation, but willingness to press forward. She has a soft spot for the baby Metroid she rescued from SR388, that seemingly thinks she's it's mother. Her Power Suit was Chozo technology, enhanced by various Chozo-made upgrades found throughout the game.

Super Metroid

The game's namesake. This is originally known as "the baby", but after Ridley steals it, it's not seen until the end of the game, where it's grown to a supersize, larger than the other Metroids. It starts to attack Samus, but then stops when it realizes who she is, and makes the sound the baby made. This Metroid also helped Samus escape SR388 at the end of Metroid II by breaking blocks she couldn't break. In Samus Returns, it attacks Ridley and helps her defeat him.

Kraid

One of the major Space Pirate bosses, and one of the four bosses required to beat the game. Kraid worked with Ridley in Metroid 1, and has seemingly been revived in Super Metroid. He's very large, and has a week point of being shot in his mouth with missiles. Kraid was meant to have an appearance in Metroid Prime 1 as Meta Kraid, but this was scrapped.

Phantoon

The required boss most players will face second. He's a ghost haunting Wrecked Ship. It has no power while he's still alive, as well as ghosts spawning throughout the place. He spawns lots of blue flames and moves around the room, vulnerable to missiles. This battle I always found tough just because of how hard it can be to dodge the segment where he stays at the top with his eye close, and flames spawn in half circle radiating outwards. After beating him, the power is restored to the ship, but this also means all the previously dead robots will be back online.Draygon

Draygon is the boss of the Maridia area, hanging out underwater with it's babies. It frequently swoops across the room, shooting sticky webs that can entangle Samus and he can pick her up, while damaging her with his tail. I remember my very first playthrough of this game, when Draygon gave me a ton of trouble. On subsequent playthroughs, I knew about the secret to beating him: Shoot the turrets on the wall, and let him pick you up, then use the grapple beam to grab one of the electric currents by the turrets, and hold on as the electric current while kill him, while damaging Samus slightly. His children seemingly take him under the sand after being killed.

Ridley

Everyone's favorite space dragon who was once too big for Smash, but as of Ultimate, was not! He's appeared in most games in the series, as a leader of the Space Pirates. He is usually more well known than Mother Brain herself. He's the first villain you encounter, and Samus follows him to Zebes. Ridley and Samus have a history. She's canonically faced him a number of times at this point: Metroid 1, Samus Returns, Metroid Prime 1, Metroid Prime 3, and now Super Metroid. Ridley had killed Samus' biological parents, giving her more of a personal rivalry against him. His battle in Super Metroid is fairly simple, he generally stays on the left side of the room, but the room is pretty tall and you have room to space jump upward. I always found the best strategy in this fight was to spam Power Bombs, and then start hitting him in the mouth with Super Missiles then Missiles. He can be fairly difficult to dodge, and this was one of the things that I didn't think the bosses in this game particularly stand out much. A lot of it is having collected enough stuff and hoping for the best rather than skill. Skill DOES play a role in it, but it's more how much E tanks you have.

Crocomire

While he's not one of the major 4 bosses required to beat the game, he's quite a famous one worth mentioning! You often see his skull referenced in other games, one such reference I can think of is Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze. His skull is incredibly iconic with him. He's a lizard thing that you fall down into a room with, and he tries to push you toward spikes in a long hallway. You don't beat him by depleting his health, but by shooting him with missiles or charged shots to get him to back up, eventually into acid. Once you get him into the acid, you get a very memorable sequence: His skin melts off of his bones! You see bubbles float toward the left of the screen. You follow it, all the way to the spikes, and then there's a rumbling with the boss music kicking back on: His skeleton forms, getting ready to fight you! Then the skeleton collapses, leaving the iconic skull behind, and the wall of spikes is cleared. This boss was always a particularly memorable one. Fun fact: Crocomire was actually cut from Metroid Zero Mission! I think it would have been really neat if he appeared in that game.

Mother Brain

Once you make it to Tourian, you have a fairly standard trek through it, and then you go into Mother Brain's room, which is very much like the original Metroid: You're shooting at a brain in a jar. She doesn't do much, and mainly everything else in the room is what does the fighting for her. You defeat her, her brain falls out of the jar and is on the floor, seemingly dead. Then a rumbling begins and this monstrosity comes out, with the brain as her head! Like I said before, this boss is a nice spectacle to see the first time, but on repeat playthroughs it really doesn't hold up as it's rather shallow in substance. You keep shooting the head, eventually she hits you with the rainbow beam, and then the Super Metroid comes to save the day.

The big question: My favorite game in the series

Up until Metroid Dread, Super Metroid was definitely my favorite game in the series. After playing through Metroid Dread and 100%ing the game, I'm honestly not sure which I like better, and this was the reason I replayed Super Metroid. Fortunately, it's available conveniently on the Nintendo Switch Online SNES app. Super Metroid was a game that continued to get the right amount of exploration without handholding just right. The level design funnels you in the right direction, but you're welcome to go off the beaten path. The environments were a lot more memorable, allowing the map to be much less straightforward made of corridors and shafts. Before Metroid Dread released, this was how my personal tier list of the series played out:

As of right now, I consider Dread up there with Super, maybe a bit below it, but I don't know if that opinion will change. Dread did a particularly good job at something that Zero Mission didn't do as good at: Not handholding the player. Zero Mission had the unfortunate Chozo Statues that give you a waypoint on the map and tell you where to go, many that you're forced to sit in to be told where to go. Dread did this more like Super Metroid, where the objective stays the same the entire game: Get to the ship! Every time you talk to Adam, he tells you some useful tips about items you got, or things progressing in the story, but still it's always "Get to the ship" There's no waypoints, just tells you to do one thing and do it by any means necessary. Not only that, Dread actively supports and rewards sequence breaking, there's a couple of bosses that have a secret thing you can use on them if you managed to obtain a certain item early. It's something such a small number of players will actually see, but it's definitely intentionally there. Dread's bosses are also better than Super's overall. They do take off huge chunks of health, making it all the more important that you collect those energy tanks, but also they have more cues for moves and require a lot more skill and finesse to navigate. I'd probably compare them to something more like a boss in the Metroid Prime games than something in 2D Metroid. Samus Returns did a bit of this, but I think Dread really drove it home.

What Dread doesn't have compared to Super though is the feeling of the map being connected. Super Metroid has elevators between the zones, and Dread has this as well, but often there's points where areas connect without elevators in Super, such as that focal point of Brinstar, Maridia, and Norfair. Dread's areas feel very distinct, and so do Super's, but Dread's do feel like more areas independent from each other, if that makes sense. There's teleporters that are two way in Dread, but this is not quite the same thing as what I was describing in Super.

I think the EMMI in Dread have advantages and disadvantages compared to the SA-X in Fusion. The EMMI are restricted to certain areas in the game, but their encounters are mostly unscripted. You have to adapt and track where it moves around the area, and then figure out what you'll do if it figures out where you are. You generally can't escape from it if it manages to grab you, but there's a small chance of it, where successfully escaping feels really satisfying. The SA-X in Fusion is of course, all scripted encounters, other than if you get yourself caught by it and have to run from it. There's plenty of times you'll see it and be able to hide, but there's also an encounter or two where you actually have to let it see you, and run from it. If you've played the game before, you know what it's going to do and when it will show up, but if you haven't, it does instill a sense of fear of this thing. I think given how the SA-X is a thing hunting you all over the map, it definitely instills a better sense of fear, but the unpredictability of the EMMI really causes you to have to think quickly.

Something to appreciate in both games is that they take slightly different approaches to the storyline, but also do one thing in common: Keep it fairly minimal. I'll detail what this means for Dread in a spoiler below, but for Super Metroid, you get the monologue, and from there everything is told through what happens. You see Ridley take the Metroid to Zebes, explore the place find out it's springing back to life. You see the wrecked ship and find out why the power is out. You learn where Ridley was hiding. You find out what happened to the baby Metroid, and how it's still devoted to Samus, etc. There's not much storyline, but it's honestly not needed here.

Dread took a different approach. While there's still a moderate amount of dialogue from Adam throughout the game (even though he turns out not to really be Adam, but I'll address that in a minute). You're given a basic setup at the start that there's video of an X still on ZDR, the EMMI were sent, communication lost, find out what's going on. You get captured by Raven Beak, who was the Chozo Leader of the Mawkin tribe, that you saw started the war between the Mawkin and Thoha in the secret ending of Samus Returns. He takes most of your suit's powers and just leaves you stranded very deep in the planet. You can go to network rooms to talk to Adam and he basically tells you you can get out, and he'll bring you more information as he has it. From here, the game will give you some tutorials on how to do basic things, most of it is really just stopping the action when the right time for something comes up and telling you what to do, so you know in the future. It's a more of a "show" than a "tell" approach, given how you immediately do it. Other than what Adam says you're free to do what you want. Adam will reveal more to you throughout the game, but by the end of the game, the "Adam" you've been talking to since Raven Beak captured you was not Adam, but was an illusion created by Raven Beak.

The game is more action oriented, and with items like the Aeion ability that lets you shift left or right, you really have to get good at dodging. The counter mechanic is not as relied upon as it was in Samus Returns, but it can be pretty important. I liked the direction they went for bosses like this. I think it makes them much more interesting. Fighting Raven Beak at the end was very satisfying once I finally pulled it off. Something Dread does particularly well is actually present you with a villain that talks and isn't some mindless monster. While there's relatively little dialogue, there's scenes of Raven Beak taunting you, and one scene of you under attack by an EMMI, and it suddenly stops. You meet a Chozo named Quiet Robe, who was basically forced by Raven Beak to work with him. Quiet Robe explains the conflict, some of which you might have known from the Chozo Memories in Samus Returns, but recaps that anyway for those that did not know. In this scene, Samus utters the ONLY dialogue she ever says in the game: "Don't worry...I'll end this. Once and for all." The entire conversation, both Samus and Quiet Robe, is in the Chozo language.

Given that the game uses a 2.5D approach, it can use things in the background to really set up scenes. For instance, in Burenia, the water area, you see these giant whale things swimming in the background. As you get further down in the giant pool of water, you actually see those things up close!

Super Metroid to this day, remains a timeless classic, and I think Dread is the closest game to being better than it, but I'm still not completely decided on it. Either way, I was really happy to play through Super Metroid again, as I love this game.

As for how you can play it if you haven't before, there's tons of options:

The SNES cartridge
SNES Switch Online app is probably the easiest way, as you likely have NSO and it's right there.
Wii U Virtual Console
new 3DS Virtual Console (only works on the n3DS, not the regular 3DS)
Wii Virtual Console (if you managed to buy it before it got shut down)

If you started the series with Dread, I highly recommend playing this one. While there is a sequential story with Metroid 1/Zero Mission, 2/Samus Returns, Super, Fusion, and Dread, you can start out with any and not ruin the previous ones. I think Metroid 1 can be extremely difficult to approach if you aren't used to it, and I have tried multiple times and got frustrated and gave up. Zero Mission is probably the way to experience Metroid 1, but it does have a thing that annoys me where it gives you waypoints of where to go. However there's a ton of content in the game that was not in the original game, and really makes it a neat package. Metroid II, the original, I think is doable, but does definitely have some older school jank to it, but I think it's a lot more playable than Metroid 1. Samus Returns is a good remake of Metroid 2 and I think is better. Fusion is a great game, but is more guided and often gives you waypoints. Dread...well you've heard all about that.

Super Metroid is just dripping with atmosphere. How it remains (almost) unmatched in this regard 25 years later is mind boggling. I love this game so much.

Super Metroid is just dripping with atmosphere. How it remains (almost) unmatched in this regard 25 years later is mind boggling. I love this game so much.

Agreed with this. MB fight is fucking terrifying, even if it mostly is a glorified cutscene

It's a masterpiece. I only played it a few years ago but it blew me away. So many iconic moments.

As someone who played it ~20 years after release I will never relate to people claiming it didn't age well. A perfect video game.

As someone who played it ~20 years after release I will never relate to people claiming it didn't age well. A perfect video game.

Same, I played it about 15 years after it's release for the first time. I think most people bring up the physics, but I have to disagree as the physics suit the game perfectly. Fusion, Zero Mission, Samus Returns, and Dread would all use heavier and faster physics, and that worked fine for those games, but I would not want that change in Super.

Still maybe the best level design of any game.

It's crazy how good you can get at this game and how much it has to offer the more you play it.

Just playing it for the first time...pretty fun but I feel like not playing it upon release some of the magic is just not capturable by me.

But I do see the appeal for sure. Great graphics and atmosphere still.

It's a masterpiece. I only played it a few years ago but it blew me away. So many iconic moments.

This is something that I feel is glossed over when people talk about Super Metroid. There is literally no wasted space in this game. Every piece of it is memorable, be it areas, music, bosses, or whatever else. Like, I've never talked to anyone who's played Super Metroid and they've said, "Oh yeah; I forgot about that!" It's not any one thing that makes Super Metroid special—it's everything.

Played it for the first time a couple of years ago as well. Was having a blast with it but then my save file got corrupted or something like right before the final boss and I never went back. So annoying.

The atmosphere of Super Metroid is so good.

Like, I got into the series with Prime. Prime and Prime 2 are my favorite Metroid games. I played Fusion and Zero Mission and even the original Metroid before Super Metroid. And yet Super Metroid still floored me with how immersive Planet Zebes is. I love how the beginning shows the Space Pirates rebuilding the damage from the first game.

Want people who played dread first than super to weigh in. Very interested

Super Metroid is as close to a perfect game as you can get.
It is truly a masterpiece that cannot be replicated even if they tried.
The best game of its kind.

Shoutout to the Super Metroid Redux romhack for fixing damn near every issue with the game. Highly recommended.

That freaking OST. Can't remember any themes from Dread.

The way I feel about Super is the way I probably would feel about Prime 1, if I actually played it first: Probably the best game to tie all it's cohesive themes into one explorative package, but if you've been exposed to any of the other games before it, the magic feels a lot less impactful due to the first memory syndrome associated with it. If I played Prime 2 before 1, I probably would have preferred 2 and saw 1 as more of the same and potentially lesser, rather than the unparalleled first exposure to the Prime series I feel about it now.

Fusion was my first metroid game. Despite the music not being as memorable, it's setpieces were 100% more memorable, on top of including an atmosphere that not only left you isolated, but absolutely terrified about what might be around the next corner. Combine that with the better movement and arguably more intriguing storyline, going back to beat Super Metroid felt somewhat hollow in comparison. It's more open and the music is far better, but there was no real hook past the more basic adventure it featured. Add to the fact that near every (at least well respected) Metroid game always features these same vibes ad nauseum, and not only does it feel less unique among it's more evolved peers, but almost like the series could move on to greater heights if the reverence it has for it were allowed to grow into new and different ways, like Fusion did at the cost of the openness.

For Dread, I don't know where I stand with it specifically yet, as while I like a lot of the things it did, there are some game design aspects I feel that might have been handled better; in spite of that however, it takes the series in a direction that I didn't expect, a comparatively new direction, and for that I couldn't be happier. Super Metroid, to me, is a game that defines the metroid experience better than any other game, but is reveared too much for it's own good, and coming off of Dread, I am incredibly interested to see what the Metroid series can do without feeling like it has to emulate the game 1-to-1 for worthy follow ups.

Watching my friend who has never played a Metroid game play Super and he's already at Ridley's lair after like 4-5 hours. He's also doing single wall jumps pretty consistently WITH AN ANALOG STICK.

It's just funny after seeing so many people complain about not being able to walljump.

That freaking OST. Can't remember any themes from Dread.

Dread dropped the ball on music.

Super is the king because it still has the best interconnected world (think ways in and out of Maridia) and, as people say, is dripping with atmosphere.

It's the GOAT. Metroid NES codified the genre. Super Metroid modernized it. It remains the best because it continues to do more than its successors with less. That includes Dread, a game I consider one of the best in the genre as well. 27 years have passed and games have tried to add RPG mechanics, Souls inspired combat, bigger maps, analogue sticks and triggers to the mix. None of it has resulted in a better game, though.

Super Metroid is just dripping with atmosphere. How it remains (almost) unmatched in this regard 25 years later is mind boggling. I love this game so much.

This.

I agree dread is up there with super metroid but there is still a big gap because of that.

Not only music wise (which is the biggest issue), but while dread has some beautyfull envoriments, a lot of factory based level designs are been made like fusion. I prefer alien worlds.

The other issue is how you cycle through weapons, which this one DOES bother me. You press Select (or whatever button you remap it to) to go through Missiles, Super Missiles, Power Bombs, Grapple Beam, and X-Ray visor. You can press Y to cancel (or whatever button you have mapped to it), but still quickly switching weapons can be very cumbersome. Fusion, Zero Mission, Samus Returns, and Dread all got this right. Missiles was changed to holding R and pressing the fire button. This may have been done because the GBA only had two face buttons, but I think it was a change for the better, as this stayed with Samus Returns and Dread. If they were to ever remake Super Metroid, this is the ONLY thing I would want changed, and keep the rest as it was before. Particularly with the Grapple Beam, this can get kind of annoying to use. L and R by default in this game are used for aiming diagonally up and down. In the GBA games, this was changed to one button and pressing the d-pad. In Samus Returns and Dread, this is of course replaced by the free aim button.
There's one other issue with the controls I have that's a little less important: The fact that there's a run button. There's some times early on in the game where you have to use the run button to get across a bridge of collapsing blocks. When I first played this game on the Wii Virtual Console, this part absolutely stumped me because I had played Fusion and Zero Mission before. This bridge was apparently called the "noob bridge". The default control scheme has B as the run button, X as fire, Y as cancel, and A as jump. Trying to run, jump, and shoot all at the same time gets incredibly awkward. You can remap the controls, but I never could really find anything that felt just right. Most of the time I would just not use the run button since you're moderately fast without it, but I really think that by default, you should go full speed. In Fusion and Zero Mission, you could run full speed by default, but this is likely because there were only two face buttons on the GBA. In Dread, you also run full speed, but to activate the speed booster, you click the left stick once as you're running and it will trigger. I think Dread's method of it works the best.

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Shoutout to the Super Metroid Redux romhack for fixing damn near every issue with the game. Highly recommended.

Redux fixes those control issues by letting you "brandish" weapons like in the GBA games and giving you autorun. There's also lots of other QOL features like single missile doors and fast door and elevator transitions. But I'm conflicted on the faster acceleration into speed booster; it made me overshoot some small platforms I'd normally land on perfectly in my last playthrough. There is an older hack called Control Freak that only changes the controls if you think Redux goes too far with changes.

As someone who played it ~20 years after release I will never relate to people claiming it didn't age well. A perfect video game.

The controls I can kinda concede being tricky to adjust to (but they're customizable; a rarity for that era), but everything else about Super is entirely deliberate design and a better game for it. Absolutely the closest thing to a perfect game I've ever played.

I recently did a stream series where I tried to complete all of the games before my copy of Metroid Dread arrived (spoilers: I succeeded), I can confirm the above.

Super Metroid was amazing when it was released, and barring slight floaty issues with the controls, it is still amazing today.

While I'm working my way through Dread still so I can't rank it, Super Metroid is still tied with Fusion as my favorite Metroid, and is definitely still in my top 10 Metroidvanias of all time. Such a good game, both in atmosphere and gameplay.

The atmosphere is absolutely why I return to it every so often. I think it and Prime are near perfect in creating a feeling of isolation and exploration. Bioshock, Dark Souls and The Outer Wilds nail it too. Just that feeling of knowing enough, but never everything, has influenced why I love the games I love since I played it first way back when. It's a true classic and easily in my top 10 (maybe 5) games ever. Haven't played Dread yet for various reasons but when I have time next month I'm so excited to dive in given reactions.

The controls I can kinda concede being tricky to adjust to (but they're customizable; a rarity for that era), but everything else about Super is entirely deliberate design and a better game for it. Absolutely the closest thing to a perfect game I've ever played.

SM's controls squeeze a lot of functionality into a pad with eight buttons. Switching weapons (and crucially, switching back) is a little unwieldy at first, but I'm not sure it's more initially unwieldy than Dread's unnecessary button combinations. Like why is Dread forcing us to hold a shoulder button and press Y to shoot missiles…when I could just shoot the damn missiles with the shoulder button alone?

Played this for the first time less than 10 years ago and can't believe how well it held up. Don't really have much to add besides Mother Brain being my favorite final boss in any game. I've never wanted to destroy a boss more than after it kills the Metroid protecting you, and the game lets you do so in a very satisfying way.

Same, I played it about 15 years after it's release for the first time. I think most people bring up the physics, but I have to disagree as the physics suit the game perfectly. Fusion, Zero Mission, Samus Returns, and Dread would all use heavier and faster physics, and that worked fine for those games, but I would not want that change in Super.

The only not great part of the controls is the Grapple Beam. Everything else is perfect. I love how the wall jump actually takes skill to pull off.

Super Metroid is just dripping with atmosphere. How it remains (almost) unmatched in this regard 25 years later is mind boggling. I love this game so much.

Yes. To this day still one of the most atmospheric games ever made.

Weiss

It's pronounced 'Vice'

Super Metroid is just dripping with atmosphere. How it remains (almost) unmatched in this regard 25 years later is mind boggling. I love this game so much.

You do the best with what you've got at the time.

If you wanted to create a living, breathing world on the SNES, you probably only had the power to make it in a bunch of closed off caves, and by guv did they succeed.

I'm just going to say this about Metroid 1: the game is much less frustrating if you take the time to map out the world with pen and paper. It's esoteric and clunky considering the way modern day games handle maps, but it's a bit what was expected of you back in the day.

Literally just finished Super Metroid for the first time 5 minutes ago. Godlike game.

It has the exploration, level design, mechanics, and mood down to a T. It's just a shame it has next to no challenge combat wise.

It has the exploration, level design, mechanics, and mood down to a T. It's just a shame it has next to no challenge combat wise.

Um, I've seen Phantoon end many speedruns.

SM still reigns supreme for me. Dread was severely lacking in varied locations, and how the levels connect. Also, SM shows that you can have melodic music that can also be atmospheric, unlike Dread, which just goes the atmospheric route and fails imo. Still a solid game, but far removed from SM.

Um, I've seen Phantoon end many speedruns.

Yeah, because they've skipped over tons of stuff most people would get on a normal playthrough. Over the course of playing the game naturally he's embarrassingly easy.

Yeah, because they've skipped over tons of stuff most people would get on a normal playthrough. Over the course of playing the game naturally he's embarrassingly easy.

If you say so, Mr. Nintendo Power. I've seen Phantoon merc players who have put well over 10,000 hours into the game. Super Metroid's combat isn't as punishing as Dread's or unforgiving as Metroid NES, but to say it has next to no combat challenge is putting extras on it.

Nice writeup. I've said this in all the recent Metroid threads but SM is the GOAT and at this point I don't think it will ever be topped. Dread gets a lot of things right but also has it's fair share of missteps which bring it down from greatness and I think when the honeymoon period has worn off we'll see Dread in a more realistic light. People like to give SM shit for the way it plays (spoiler alert: Just because it's floaty doesn't make it bad, just different) but Dread controls worse than SM.

I disagree with the idea that the newer Metroid style of "hold down button to change weapon" makes it better because it leads to the issues i had in Dread where i'm having to use multiple buttons at the same time as well as trying to dodge the fast attacks from bosses and shoot and it become an awkward mess. I've been gaming for over 35 years and played countless Metroid style games so when I have issues tripping over the controls i know there is a problem. In Dread at one point I found myself having to use my fingers to hold down one button to use missiles, one button to hold Samus in place so i could aim, left thumb on the analogue stick to aim and dodge attacks and then my right thumb having to rapidly alternate between shooting, jumping and using the Aeon dodge move. Of course if you run out of missiles then charge beam attacks is all thats left to use so then it becomes even more difficult. So that's five (five!) buttons i'm juggling at the same time as well as the analogue stick. I'm sorry everyone but those are not good controls and i would question the judgement of anyone that thinks they are. Not to mention the fact that if I, an able bodied gamer struggled I can't imagine anyone with disabilities or anyone who uses custom controller parts trying to play that game.

Super Metroid is cumbersome but it is also a slower paced game so it's mostly fine. Really, Metroid Prime fixed this issue already ages ago and I don't know why Nintendo haven't just copied that: Map missile/beam/grapple selection to the D-Pad. I also never liked the Mercury Steam games aiming of holding a button to lock Samus in place, using a button to do diagonal aiming should make a comeback and they're way too much in love with their melee counter system. I found the moment to moment shooting and gameplay in SM much better.

There's one thing the OP highlighted which i think might be what still makes SM the best Metroid game and that is the incredible map design. It's a bit like how many players' favourite Souls game is Dark Souls 1. Both SM and Dark Souls have the best world/level design in their respective games and it's one of the most important things to get right in both of these genres. I'd love to know just how intentional the sequence breaking in the game is or if some of it is a happy accident like Street Fighter 2's combos cause being able to do things like the reverse boss order is just mindblowing to me. Obviously the wall jump/bomb jump is a very deliberate choice but all the other many tricks? If it's all intentional then it's pure genius in its execution.

EDIT: I wanna highlight one thing in particular about the map design. After battling through the toughest area and boss in the game (lower Norfair/Ridley) the game sort of nudges you in a certain direction where instead of backtracking the player finds themselves exploring one last bit of lower Norfair that then leads directly back into upper Norfair. I can't speak for anyone else but when i found myself emerging from that morph ball tunnel back into familiar and safer territory it was a wonderful cathartic moment. I breathed a sigh of relief of escaping the difficult and oppressive area i was just in and also knew exactly what i needed to do and where i needed to go to continue the game without a single map screen or directional marker telling me what to do. That right there is officially good game design. END EDIT

I could talk about SM for literally hours but everyone else has pretty much said everything there is to say. Super Metroid is my favourite game ever made and it is gonna take something pretty damn spectacular to knock it off its perch. Deer Force: I salute you.

Last edited: Oct 21, 2021

I think Super Metroid can also be considered the first game in the series to introduce the quick kill on bosses, which people have praised Dread for. You can beat Kraid before he ever leaves the ground. Draygon can be defeated quickly through electrocution, as you mentioned, but also with a shinespark to the belly. It was an exceptionally clever game, a real masterwork.

There is also the murder beam exploit that can make Ridley take constant damage. It even sets his tail on fire! But I don't want to count that, since it does not seem intended.

And speaking of dread… I don't think the series has ever topped the absolute monstrous fear of that Mother Brain fight. When she rises from the ground and that horrifying music starts, the way she moves… it's a moment no other game has been able to effectively capture. I am glad the Metroid series has tried different angles at horror, but I don't think any of them have been as effective as the ending of SM.

Last edited: Oct 21, 2021

Metroid Prime had some intense encounters with the music. Fusion also had the SA-X.
One thing mostly missing now from the older games is how bosses changed colour or took battle damage as fights went on, like fighting Nightmare in Fusion and he gets more and more melty.

I think Super Metroid can also be considered the first game in the series to introduce the quick kill on bosses, which people have praised Dread for. You can beat Kraid before he ever leaves the ground. Draygon can be defeated quickly through electrocution, as you mentioned, but also with a shinespark to the belly. It was an exceptionally clever game, a real masterwork.

Metroid II had a quick kill with bombing the Queen's stomach.

One thing mostly missing now from the older games is how bosses changed colour or took battle damage as fights went on, like fighting Nightmare in Fusion and he gets more and more melty.

I was sad when Raven Beak only had that for a bit of the first phase.

It has the exploration, level design, mechanics, and mood down to a T. It's just a shame it has next to no challenge combat wise.

I think game difficulty is a tricky thing to get right in Metroid games. Especially because the games don't have the traditional difficulty curve of a game getting harder the further into the game you are, in actual fact it's the opposite, by the end of the game Samus is a walking death machine capable of annihilating anything that so much as looks at her funny. The Ori games struggled with this as well, the first game's manual save system meant that sometimes there was that frustration of having to repeat parts of the game if you died but both Will of the Wisps and Metroid Dread basically negated the risk of dying because of their generous checkpoints. There are a lot of instant death moments in Dread where the only penalty is waiting for the game to reload, kind of takes all the bite out of them. Compare that to say Alien Isolation, where the instant death moments were much more impactful and meaningful because you mostly wouldn't just be put back to where you were 2 minutes ago.

The big criticism i level at Dread is that it goes from insultingly easy to teeth grinding hard at the drop of a hat because MS didn't tune the boss fights very well (IMO of course). I hated fighting every single boss in that game. Did i feel a sense of relief when i beat them? Sure. Did i enjoy the experience? Absolutely not.

And speaking of dread… I don't think the series has ever topped the absolute monstrous fear of that Mother Brain fight. When she rises from the ground and that horrifying music starts, the way she moves… it's a moment no other game has been able to effectively capture. I am glad the Metroid series has tried different angles at horror, but I don't think any of them have been as effective as the ending of SM.

I'm not sure where else Metroid as a franchise can go without a hard reboot but as much as it would probably cause Other M levels of anger I would love to see a stripped down, more horror take on Metroid. As other people have pointed out Mother Brain isn't a difficult boss fight, it's all spectacle and i love it for that.

I like the idea of a spinoff game, don't have it be a "main numbered" entry and perhaps Samus isn't the main character, or she is stripped of her powers (yes, again) but this time she doesn't collect all the weaponry that makes her unstoppable. Have the game use the SA-X mechanic but for the whole game. Make it dark, scary, oppressive, pure horror vibe. Something like a 2D Alien Isolation where a powerful single Metroid takes the place of the Alien/SA-X. I don't know what it would look like or how it would play but i would like to see it.

EDIT: I've just had a brain wave. Metroid spinoff. You play as a Galactic Federation soldier sent to spy/get recon on the activities of the rebuilt Space Pirate base on Zebes. You're weak and vulnerable and stealth is a big part of the gameplay. It takes place just before Super Metroid happens and early in the game Ridley arrives, having just stolen the baby Metroid and it breaks out of containment and becomes the main threat in the game, gradually becoming bigger and even more dangerous the more it feeds which the player experiences first hand. You learn to Dread (ah ha!) the familiar Metroid chirping noise echoing around the room you're in because it means instant death could be right around the corner. The map will reward familiarity with Super Metroid in the same way that Zelda Link Between Worlds does with Link to the Past. The last encounter in the game is an unwinnable fight against Kraid who kicks your arse and you die just outside the boss room. Turns out you were playing as the guy who was the corpse that Samus later finds before confronting Kraid. Could be an interesting idea for a game?

Last edited: Oct 21, 2021

Yup Super Metroid is incredible and I first played it in 2013 or so. Probably has the best layout in any 2D game. Honestly though I think I like Dread a smidge better. Level design isn't as clever and the music is lacking, but the controls, combat, and boss fights are so much in Dread than in Super. That might change once I give Super another replay though.

It's the best game on SNES and that's a platform with SMW and LTTP for god's sake . It's possibly the best 2d game of all time

Metroid II had a quick kill with bombing the Queen's stomach.

Is that a quick kill? I understood it to be the intended way to win.

Is that a quick kill? I always understood it to be the intended way to win.

It's definitely a quick kill. You can still just repeatedly fire missiles at the Queen until it just dies as the standard method.

It's definitely a quick kill. You can still just repeatedly fire missiles at the Queen until it just dies as the standard method.

Huh. More you know.

The atmosphere and sense of isolation in Super Metroid is still unmatched, maybe in any videogame ever. I'm playing through Dread now and I think it does a lot of things better than Super and it might end up being my favorite in the end, but one thing I can say for sure is that it's not as atmospheric as Super.

Ironically, I think the only game that came closer on that department was the original Metroid II, but it lacks in variety while Super constantly gives you different vibes for each area but all of them are moody and oppressive in their own way.

I really should probably replay Super Metroid. I think it has legitimately been 15 years since I last played. Its just sitting there on my switch too.

I think game difficulty is a tricky thing to get right in Metroid games. Especially because the games don't have the traditional difficulty curve of a game getting harder the further into the game you are, in actual fact it's the opposite, by the end of the game Samus is a walking death machine capable of annihilating anything that so much as looks at her funny. The Ori games struggled with this as well, the first game's manual save system meant that sometimes there was that frustration of having to repeat parts of the game if you died but both Will of the Wisps and Metroid Dread basically negated the risk of dying because of their generous checkpoints. There are a lot of instant death moments in Dread where the only penalty is waiting for the game to reload, kind of takes all the bite out of them. Compare that to say Alien Isolation, where the instant death moments were much more impactful and meaningful because you mostly wouldn't just be put back to where you were 2 minutes ago.
The big criticism i level at Dread is that it goes from insultingly easy to teeth grinding hard at the drop of a hat because MS didn't tune the boss fights very well (IMO of course). I hated fighting every single boss in that game. Did i feel a sense of relief when i beat them? Sure. Did i enjoy the experience? Absolutely not.

Interesting. I actually thought Dread's difficulty curve was near perfect. In fact, I think most Metroid games have pretty damn good difficulty curves, with Super being the exception. Zero Mission is too easy as well though, at least until you unlock hard mode.