Metroid was the “click.” I remember well the first time I realised that Metroid was going to be different – and it wasn’t going to be on a Sega console – I know that sounds sacrilegious since I am a die-hard Sega fan. I am ten years old in 1987 and my neighbour Danny had just gotten this weird Nintendo game that none of us kids could make heads or tails of. We had all become so familiar with Mario – you know, run right, jump on top of bad guys, save Princess Peach – we were all hooked on it. Metroid was a totally different story.
Danny and I were hanging out in the finished basement of his house, probably eating tons of cereal and bickering over whether Transformers or GI Joe was better when his older brother Mike fired up Metroid for the first time. The creepy, atmospheric theme music was haunting to me like nothing I had ever heard before. There was no happy Mario tune, no epic Zelda music to help prepare me for battle, just this eerie, alien sound that made me feel like I was entering a place that I shouldn’t be in. Then, the game started and Samus, the armour-clad bounty hunter, was standing in a cave and…that was it. No tutorial, no “save these people,” nothing. You were completely on your own on an alien planet.
“So, what do you do?” Danny asked. Mike just shrugged and said “Figure it out. That’s the point.”
I was intrigued. This was a game that didn’t want to tell you where to go or what to do. It wanted you to explore. To think creatively. To pay attention to your surroundings. In the first ten minutes of playing, I witnessed Mike learn that Samus could turn into a ball – which blew my mind – and then he used that ability to access places he had previously been unable to. I mean think about it. He went backwards. In a video game. What a concept.
I begged my parents for weeks to purchase a copy of Metroid. Getting a new game was a family investment. Sixty dollars was a lot of money, and my dad would study the back of the box in the video game aisle of Toys R Us like he was buying a car. They eventually caved, and I walked out of the store with my very own copy of Metroid in my hands.
The Feeling of True Isolation
Playing Metroid for the first time that night in my bedroom by myself with a 13-inch television was the moment I finally figured out what Metroid was all about. It was about the exploration, of course. But more than anything else, it was about the feeling of being completely isolated in an alien world. There were no friendly non-player characters (NPCs) to hang out with, no villages to take a break in, and no travelling companions trailing along beside you. Only hostile alien creatures, abandoned alien technology, and the constant knowledge that you were in a place you didn’t belong in.
I kept a notebook. I needed to, since the game didn’t come with a map. Something I can hardly believe today, given that basically every modern game comes with a map. I would sketch out the rooms I visited in graph paper, labelling each one, and I would write down which doors I couldn’t enter yet. “Do I need missiles?” I would write next to certain doors. “Will I need an ice beam for those?”
As I continued to play the notebook became my most treasured gaming related possession. I took more care of it than I took care of my cartridges.
The password system was both a blessing and a curse. Finally a game that let you save your progress! Sort of. If you could accurately write down those ridiculously long 24-character codes without making a mistake. I lost count of how many times I carefully wrote down a password and received the dreaded “password invalid” message the next day when I attempted to load up a previous save. I developed a complex system of double checking every single character, and I would repeat it out loud to myself as I wrote it down. “Dash dash dash N A R password”, I would whisper to myself. My mother thought I was going crazy.
When you were able to write down a valid password though, oh boy, it was pure joy. I had specific passwords memorised for major events – once I got the Ice Beam, once I got the Varia Suit, once I defeated Kraid. These weren’t random strings of letters and numbers – they were keys to unlock new parts of my journey.
A Game That Trusted You to Figure It Out
One thing I found particularly impressive about the game was how difficult it made you work to discover everything for yourself. Modern games essentially lead you to secret areas with a glowing arrow pointing the way. “Hey player, I know you’re curious, so here is a hint about a secret area behind this slightly differently coloured wall!” Metroid forced you to figure it out for yourself. You’d notice a section of the wall that seemed to be slightly differently coloured, so you’d shoot a bullet at it. Nothing. You’d bomb it. Boom! Secret area. The game rewarded you for being curious and for using trial and error to figure things out.
To this day, I can remember the first time I successfully sequence broke without realising that was even possible. I had been trying what seemed like an impossible jump in Norfair for what felt like an eternity, simply because it seemed like maybe, just possibly, if I timed it just right…and eventually I found myself perched on a ledge that I was reasonably certain I wasn’t supposed to be on. I found an energy tank there and I felt like I’d cheated the entire Nintendo development team. Years later, I would learn that speedrunners had taken sequence breaking and turned it into an art form, but at the time, it just felt like I’d stumbled onto something cool.
The music in each area set the tone. Brinstar was all adventurous, somewhat optimistic music that made the act of exploration feel fun and exciting rather than scary. As soon as you descended into Norfair, the music instantly became dissonant and alien and fit perfectly with the lava flows and bizarre, organic looking walls. Don’t even get me started on Tourian – that rapid-fire, ear-piercing music that played while you were swamped by actual Metroids was designed to scare you, and it scared me too.
The overall atmosphere was something new to me. Mario games were colourful and lighthearted. Zelda had wise old men in caves that would give you hints and tips. Metroid was solo. You were the only thinking being on an entire planet and there were creatures everywhere that were determined to kill you, and you were exploring the ruins of an ancient civilisation. At ten years old, I found it both thrilling and terrifying. I would often hold my breath during the quietest moments waiting for whatever monster was hiding in the shadows to pop out.
And the ending? Oh boy, the ending. After spending months with this mysterious, armoured bounty hunter, and after you had explored every last inch of the planet, and after you had finally completed the game…Samus is a girl! In 1987?! That was a huge shock. Female protagonists were rare in video games, and especially in action-adventure games. The instruction manual referred to her as “it”, the game never suggested otherwise. I was shocked. I immediately called Danny to ask if he had seen the ending, and we spent nearly an hour on the phone discussing this revelation as if it was the biggest discovery mankind had ever made.
This was more than just a clever twist – it was a perfect conclusion to a game that had pushed boundaries from the beginning. Did you think you knew how platformers worked? Wrong! Sometimes you go left! Did you think games would tell you what to do? Wrong again! You have to figure it out for yourself. Did you think you knew who you were playing as? Haha!
Does Metroid Still Hold Up?
I’ve replayed Metroid countless times over the years and it never gets old. Okay, fine, the controls are a bit stiff now, and it can be infuriating when you can’t shoot diagonally after playing Super Metroid. But that fundamental exploration loop is still super engaging. I can navigate Zebes from memory now, but I still get that little rush of excitement when I stumble upon a hidden missile upgrade, or a secret path I forgot about.
Metroid has shaped my gaming preferences in ways I can barely begin to articulate. Even as I became a die-hard Sega fan-boy, I always liked games that encouraged players to figure things out for themselves. When Phantasy Star came out for the Master System, part of the reason I liked it was how it just dumped you into a world and then told you to explore it yourself. The same was true of Wonder Boy III – that game combined Metroid-style exploration with RPG elements, and it felt like I was coming home.
These days, I’m constantly frustrated with modern game design. All of today’s games have waypoints, objective markers, breadcrumb trails that lead you directly to where the developers want you to go. My students are playing games that have cluttered screens filled with icons and notifications, and the game does almost all of the work for them. When I try to explain why Metroid is such an influential game, I can see the confusion in their eyes. “But how do you know what to do?” they ask, and I reply with the same answer Mike gave us all those years ago: “You figure it out. That’s the point.”
Recently, I replayed Metroid through the Switch Online service, and my teenage daughter sat and watched for a while. She was baffled by the lack of direction, confused by the password system, and frustrated that the game didn’t give you any information about its mechanics. However, she became invested in the atmosphere and started asking me questions about the world and the story. “Why are all these monsters trying to kill you?” “What happened to the people who lived here?” “How did these creatures get here?” Same questions I was asking thirty-five years earlier.
This was what made Metroid unique, and why it is still worth playing today. It presented you with a puzzle, and trusted you to solve it. It presented you with a world, and allowed you to explore it at your own pace, in your own style. In an era where games are constantly telling you exactly where to go and what to do, trusting you to use your own intelligence seems almost radical.
I still have that original notebook, with all my hand drawn maps, and all my carefully written passwords. The pages are yellow now, and the pencil marks are faded, but every time I look at it, it takes me back to all of those moments of discovery and exploration. Every time I hear that jingle when you pick up a new power-up – you know, that triumphant little ditty that plays when you acquire a new power-up – I am again ten years old, lying in bed, mapping out the alien world room-by-room.
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