Title: Super Metroid

Platform: SNES

Year: 1994

Final Vote Percentage: 66.67%

In the long storied history of video games there are certain benchmark titles where nothing is ever the same afterward. That list is pretty long, and includes games like Pac-Man and Tetris. Nintendo has the lion’s share of these games, though: Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Wii Sports. But we’d be remiss for leaving out one of their crowning achievements: 1994’s seminal Super Metroid.

Super Metroid is the game Metroid was meant to be: an inventive open-world action game where self-guided exploration was the goal, not some unfortunate side effect. This philosophy was even present on the NES. The Legend of Zelda pioneered the form and Metroid proved to be a beautiful failure compared to its far superior SNES sequel. Heck, without the “go anywhere, do anything” attitude that Super Metroid fostered, we might not have games like Super Mario 64 and Wind Waker.

In fact, Super Metroid is often (incorrectly) credited with inventing a brand-new sub-genre of platforming action game. Koji Igarashi would credit Super Metroid with inspiring his PSOne masterpiece Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and this sub-genre got an unfortunate title: Metroidvania. The gist is that the player does not move through the game level-by-level, but area by area, hindered only by equipment they don’t currently possess, but the fortuitous discovery of new equipment allows access to more areas of the large persistent map. While there’s no actual evidence for this, I have to wonder if Nintendo R&D1 was at all inspired by the Game Boy game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Radical Rescue (released a year prior) which featured the same kind of gameplay.

Functioning as both a sequel to and remake of Metroid, Super Metroid has series heroine Samus Aran journey back to planet Zebes to destroy a Space Pirate installation (again), fight Mother Brain (again), and battle her lieutenants Kraid and Ridley (again). She journeys to many of the same areas—Brinstar, Norfair, and Tourian all reappear along with new places Crateria, Maridia, and a crashed space ship. She gets, for the most part, the same equipment like the Morph Ball, Morph Ball Bombs, Space Jump, and Varia Suit. Oh sure, there’s new stuff like the Gravity Suit, Grapple Beam, and Super Missiles among others, but Super Metroid looks feels very much like Metroid 2.0. And that’s not a bad thing. Metroid is great in theory; Super Metroid is great in practice.

I’d be doing a disservice to the game if I didn’t mention its fantastic cinematic style. There are so many moments that leave you breathless—the “final” confrontation with Crocomire, the tense hallways leading up to Samus’ acquaintance with the Baby Metroid, and of course, the Baby’s tearful sacrifice to give Samus the Hyper Beam (spoilers expire after 20 years) are all standouts. Little things like Zebes creatures teaching players how to wall-jump and boost jump are also endearing and would absolutely be told with text today. The storytelling in Super Metroid is great, and something of a lost art.

Nowadays, the Metroidvania subgenre is filled with pretenders. Some are more successful than others, but they all owe a great debt to Super Metroid. There can be little doubt that it deserves a spot in the NWR Hall of Fame.