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Review: Metroid for NES
A reader emailed me to let me know that they missed the old school game reviews that I used to do and I didn't have a good excuse to why I haven't done any in a long time. I got the new Metroid Fusion for Gameboy Advance this week and have been intending to write a review of it. So First to get in a Metroid mood I thought I would review the original NES game.
Metroid is one of the greatest and most innovative game of all time.
Metroid is one of the first non linear action adventure games on the NES that featured really fun action and game play. The Legand of Zelda had more exploring but it didn't have as much white knuckle action game play that Metroid has. If it were not for Metroid there would be no Castlevania 2 and Symphony of Night.
The story is pretty good for a scifi-game and when I was 9 I thought it was pretty cool. The graphics are pretty damn good for being a first generation Nintendo game and only using the first cartridge chip set. Also Metroid was the first real game to have a female hero that wasn't Ms. Pac-Man. At the end of the game you find out that Samus is a woman underneath her robotic suit when she takes off her helmet.
You would gradually upgrade Samus with the items that you would find and unlock more abilities and areas as the game progressed. The music was very moody and catchy but it created some great moody effects and was a good change to the super happy Mario style music that came before it. The sound effects on the doors are still really cool.
The game originally shipped on the Nintendo Famicom Disk System in Japan so the game's progress was saved to the floppy disk. The Floppy Disk system never made it to the states so a password system was added. This is actually my only complaint in that it became a bit of a pain to use the password system but it probably shaved 10 bucks off the price by not using a battery in the cartridge.
US games really loved this game and it's cult following was the main reason that they brought it back on the Gameboy, Super Nintendo and now Gameboy Advance and Gamecube. Metroid is still one of the greatest and most innovative game of all time and capital FUN to play.
Nintendo actually has the original Metroid as an unlockable reward for beating Metroid Prime on GameCube and Metroid Fusion on Gameboy Advance. If you use the GBA Gamecube Link after you finished both games it unlocks the classic in a NES emulator. Super sweet.
It is proof that there was more to Nintendo than Mario and Pokemon.
My only question is what the hell happened to Kid Icarus?
Jake at November 21, 2002 
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I always sucked at games, there were quite a few that I simply never finished because they got to a point where it was too hard for me (bad hand-eye coordination, I got much more into games like SimCity and Populous, and much later MYST)
But Metroid was always one of my favorites, like Mario Zelda (first one, I didn't like the second, though the SNES one was great)
Posted by: Jamison at November 21, 2002 5:14 PM
Yeah and the doors i can hear in my head right now!!!!! damn you jake!!!!
Posted by: PETER PETER THE METER READER at November 21, 2002 11:04 PM
Nintnedo just ported Zelda:A link to the Past for Super Nintendo to Gameboy Advance. There are some good non hand eye action game out there. Final Fantasy, The Sims, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Most RPG games.
Posted by: Jake at November 22, 2002 1:06 AM
hell yeah!! finally someone else who apreciate's kid icarus!!.... anyone remember the cartoon w/ kid icarus and mega-man and simon belvont and it mother-brain as one of the bad guys?? but i remember being a lil kid and crying my head off cuz my grandma wouldn't let me rent metroid *L*.....
Posted by: Wednesday at February 23, 2004 1:55 AM
That show was called Captain-N The Game Master. Do you remember the Mario and Zelda cereal?
Posted by: Jake at February 23, 2004 9:40 AM
Hell yeah! My mom used to get me the cereal at times when I was a kid. I actually have a copy of the "Kid Icarus" and "Metroid Cartridges". Lemme tell ya, our version of Kid was actually "Better" than Japan's DiskSystem ver. from what I've read. Despite we didn't get the cool save feature or high-score list, we actually got four endings (depends on whether you managed to max out strength, life, get all training weapons, and max out your heart total or not.. the more the better the ending) as well as credits. Plus I still consider it one of THE most difficult platform games of all time (due to the fact you friggin' DIE a lot from falling).
Posted by: Justin at October 12, 2004 10:52 PM
