In the inevitable wake of another console generation, the new guard is objectively supposed to be better than the old one, right? Why spend time and resources making a new product if it doesn’t outshine the old one in every way possible? That was the impetus for Nintendo’s SNES console, essentially acting as an NES 2.0 that blew the previous system out of the water in every fathomable way possible. Comparing and contrasting the features between both the NES and SNES seeing where each system stacks up with one another would prove to be futile. Think of it like this; when playing the NES console, anything one might notice about the NES from the graphics, control, hardware, etc., the SNES surpasses it in every single category without question. It’s like debating the evolutionary stature between primates and man, and I don’t think I have to spell out which one the SNES is in this metaphor.

Many familiar Nintendo franchises that made their debuts on the NES jumped over to the SNES with flying colors. While many aspects of these franchise's entries on the SNES are better than their previous outputs on the NES, is it to a degree where the NES titles are rendered unplayable by comparison? I’ve claimed that Super Mario World is the ultimate 2D Mario title, but some aspects are unique to Super Mario Bros. 3 that still hold my attention. A Link to the Past is a more realized version of the NES Legend of Zelda, but this makes the game a long slog at times and makes me appreciate the simplicity of the NES game. All of these NES games retain a certain level of quality even if their sequels are flashier and are presented on a larger scope. The one SNES sequel to an NES game that does significantly improve upon every single aspect of its predecessor to the point where the previous game is rendered obsolete is Super Metroid. Super Metroid dwarfs the NES Metroid so much that it turned it into a speck of insignificant dust.

It’s no secret that I am not a fan of the first Metroid game on the NES. I felt as if the developers of the first Metroid bit off a bit more than they could chew, and the teeth of the minimal, 8-bit NES system were the equivalent of trying to chew a filet with crooked dentures. The NES simply could not deliver on the ambitious heights that Nintendo wished for the first Metroid, resulting in an inadvertently obtuse and tedious experience that grated on every one of my senses. A new console generation not only expands upon the successes of the previous one but also breathes new life into a franchise by giving it a stark advantage with the new hardware. A Link to the Past is arguably what Nintendo wanted the first Zelda game to be but was beset by the limitations of the NES’s hardware. Don’t quote me, but from what I can tell, the same prerogative was put in place for Super Metroid. The soft-reboot imperative of the SNES was put on full display with Super Metroid. The game may be a soft reboot of the NES Metroid by definition, but it feels more like a rock-hard, turbo reboot as far as I’m concerned.

Super Metroid is tangentially a soft reboot in the eyes of the eagerly creative Metroid fan such as I. More technically, it’s a direct sequel that carries on the plots of the NES Metroid and Metroid II on the Gameboy. Samus receives a distress call from the facility that she brought the baby Metroid to be experimented on in the last game. Once she arrives, she finds all of the scientists dead in the remnants of a shocking massacre. She finds the familiar space pirate Ridley with a tube that houses the baby Metroid, clutching it with his extraterrestrial talons. Samus fights Ridley for the baby Metroid, but he escapes and initiates a destruction sequence for the entire lab. Samus scurries away from the facility and follows Ridley to the planet Zebes to pursue the baby Metroid. While Super Metroid primarily acts as a revamped, fully realized version of the NES Metroid with next-generation hardware supporting it, Super Metroid is not without its level of ambition. The 16-bit era was still a time before video game narratives could deliver on the same caliber as a film. Yet, Super Metroid does astounding things with its presentation despite the limitations of the SNES’s hardware. The game opens with a relieving line about the last Metroid being in captivity. It’s the only spoken line of dialogue in the game, and it sounds decent considering it’s being uttered on a 16-bit system. The slideshow with text that recaps the series thus far is neat, but the real groundbreaking moment comes before the title screen. A terrestrial setting with dim lighting and eerie music pans back and forth to set the scene of the aftermath of slaughtering the scientists. The scene sets an aura of mystery and terror that directly contradicts the claim presented on the beginning screen. A pang of dread fills the player with this ghastly scene without the use of dialogue, showing that the mission the player will find themselves on will be a hectic one. Super Metroid will use this masterful “show, don’t tell” type of narrative in its presentation at many points in the game that are just as effective as the one in the beginning cutscene.

The one saving grace of the NES Metroid was its ability to convey the isolation of an alien planet with its graphics. Minimalism is a legitimate art form, but the type of minimalism the first Metroid conveyed was a coincidental factor of the primitive NES hardware. Intentional minimalism is one thing, but I have a feeling the effectiveness of the first Metroid’s atmosphere was entirely due to dumb luck. A new console generation naturally comes with an enhanced set of graphics, and I’ll take the frills of aesthetic progress over blocky pixels with sheer delight. What the developers did in the graphics department of Super Metroid was craft something that seems like what the first game intended to be. The biggest overall improvement is being able to discern the difference between each section of a given area, so the player no longer feels hopelessly lost and confused due to the fault of the graphics. The long corridors are rendered well enough that the player can see the crags between the earth and the vegetation budding from the soil. The insectoid aliens that crawl around these corridors are more discernible and no longer blend in with the foreground like camouflage. The more futuristic, robotic-looking sections are now full setpieces of space-age architecture. The HR Giger influence finally shows here with these sections. Norfair looks like the player has traveled to the center of Zebes, and the lava looks like a menacing hazard that seems about as uninviting as humanly possible. The graphical improvements that Super Metroid makes to the familiar areas of the first game are too numerous to fully detail. If it looks similar to the areas of the first Metroid, then it’s been revitalized to an exceptional degree.

The question is: is the atmosphere in Metroid still effective? Yes, but it conveys a different feeling. I’d say that Super Metroid exudes an aura, not of isolation but one of claustrophobia. As Samus deviates further from the wetlands of Crateria, the player becomes increasingly uncomfortable with every new area they venture to. The starting area of Crateria is hospitable enough to carry Samus’s ship for the game's duration. It can be used as a reference to where everything else on Zebes is located. Small alien creatures roam about along the walls and can be dispatched without any problem. Taking the elevator down to Brinstar will introduce the player to an area with two bizarre vegetation types. One is green and has engulfed the area in vines and pronounced green brambles. The other vegetation on Brinstar has a queer-looking, pink aesthetic that looks very delicate. These areas look more distinctive than the wetlands above and exude an alien ambiance. The depths of Brinstar feel very open, but The apex of this claustrophobic feeling are Norfair and Maridia, the two furthest places from Crateria and the most alien of the areas of Zebes. Norfair is so hostile that Samus needs a suit upgrade to traverse even the slightest bit of ground here. The atmosphere here is sulfurous, and the omnipresent threat of the stinging lava adds to the overall threat of this place. The depths of Norfair house some of the steepest hazards and the toughest enemies in the game. Maridia achieves a sense of claustrophobia through alternate means. Half of this area takes place in an underwater cavern, and the other half is like a celestial freezer where the chills seem just as severe as the heat on Norfair. The sense of claustrophobia is achieved by how dangerous and unfriendly the areas become the further Samus strays from the starting point. The tension becomes more and more palpable the further Samus descends into Zebes, making it seem harder to breathe.

All of the areas that make up Zebes are also superbly designed. I mentioned that the first Metroid was akin to a “proto-Metroidvania game.” Still, Super Metroid is the first proper Metroidvania game that all of the other games in the genre take inspiration from. The first Metroid has a design initiative like the first Zelda, which encouraged the player to explore to get lost. Super Metroid, on the other hand, encourages the player to explore until they get stuck. The design philosophy of the Metroidvania subgenre is that there are obstacles around every corner that can be solved with solutions that will seem obvious to the player. If they don’t seem obvious enough, the player is missing something vital to progression and will have to come back later when they find that easy solution. The player will search every route they can until they find a path that’s manageable to traverse through, logically pointing to that path as the intended point of progression. An example of this in Super Metroid is needing a suit upgrade to cross into Norfair. Unless the player is as dense as this area’s atmosphere, they might get the impression that they aren’t intended to be here yet when Samus’s life energy plummets quicker than a skydiving anvil. The player also can’t go back up to the vegetation area of Brinstar, so one might conclude to check around the Brinstar area closer to Norfair. They’ll fight Kraid and gain the Varia Suit, which allows them to withstand the atmosphere of Norfair. Once the player gains the speed booster, they can blow open the series of rocks located next to Samus’s ship on Crateria. Soon after, they’ll come across a room flooded with water where Samus can’t jump to cross the tall beam in the center. There’s a series of peculiar-looking cubes aligned up top that might indicate some importance in getting across the water, and the player has to locate this upgrade somewhere else. The beauty of the Metroidvania level design established here is that the player truly can’t get lost. For any obstacle that the player comes across, the solution is either in plain sight or the player will have to return at a later time. The player will always have at least one clear progression route, even if the first one they come across can’t be accessed quite yet. The design method always assures that the player will never halt to a complete stop and interrupt the flow of gameplay. It’s also satisfying to uncover an area that was obstructed once the player has the means to traverse it. The first Metroid relied too much on the ethos of Zelda, and the enclosed passageways that made up Metroid’s framework did not translate well with seamless exploration. The innovative design of Super Metroid puts up enough parameters without making the game seem restricted. It strikes a perfect compromise that works well with Super Metroid’s oppressive yet curious atmosphere.

It also helps that there have been many quality-of-life improvements to Super Metroid. The first Metroid would have benefited greatly from a save function, but the technology wasn’t readily available then. Save features became second nature in the 16-but era, so Super Metroid having one is no surprise. At least three rooms in each area of Super Metroid are reserved for a place for the player to save. Despite the violent waves that emit from the saving chamber, each room feels like a comfy place of respite from the hostility of the alien planet. Super Metroid also builds upon some of the features from Metroid II, namely the charging and ammo stations. Like the save rooms, these cozier locations appear off the side at least three times in every major game area. Visiting these places will replenish either Samus’s health or her ammunition, a sizable convenience compared to stocking up on both by grinding off weaker enemies in the first game. The only inconvenient aspect is that both the save rooms and recharge rooms aren’t always close to one another, making the player trek across the area if they don’t feel like camping next to one of those tubes with the insect enemies for five minutes to grind for health. I assume the developers thought incorporating both into one room might have made the game too easy, and the repressive feeling of withstanding the harsh elements of Zebes could’ve faltered. As it is, I never found too much difficulty in this regard, but the convenience would’ve been nice. Without a doubt, the most convenient quality of life improvement Super Metroid gives us is a map. Pieces of an area’s map will be uncovered as Samus explores, but the entire map will be revealed once Samus finds a map station situated like a charging/save station. The absence of a map in the first Metroid was the most frustrating aspect of that game. I understand that the intention was to make the player feel alone and helpless, like they were lost in space, but all it was doing was frustrating me beyond belief. The map makes sure that the player is never really lost and can always be used as a point of reference to where they have not visited yet. The inclusion of a map was the factor that made Super Metroid playable, and it has become an essential feature for every Metroidvania game that followed.

The advanced hardware of the SNES also gives way to making Samus feel much more capable. The iconic Nintendo heroine could finally showcase the full potential of her bounty-hunting prowess. Samus here feels much less stilted and far more acrobatic than her more pixelated, 8-bit self. Fundamentally, Samus’s controls and moves aren’t much different than they were on the NES. Samus can still squeeze into a ball, jump to heights to the point where she hits the ceiling, and execute multiple somersaults with the same questionable gravity. The differences Super Metroid makes to Samus are relatively minute, but they make a world of difference in the game. The most essential improvement upon Samus from a gameplay standpoint is the ability to aim at a 45-degree angle. While playing the first Metroid, I often had difficulties dealing with airborne enemies, especially ones that swooped down on Samus from above. I wished for a way to deal with flying enemies in a more indirect manner that didn’t force me to gamble with Samus’s health. Shooting manually from an angle that doesn’t require Samus to be directly under the enemy or parallel to it keeps the player at a manageable distance. I commented in my review of the first Metroid that the player seemingly had to exploit the game to progress or gain access to a vital item which I thought expected too much from the player. All of the items in Super Metroid can be obtained through logical means that seem like a natural course of progression. The player never has to perform feats beyond themselves in Super Metroid…unless they want to. The developers were in such a comfortable place with Samus’s control scheme that they secretly implemented a wall jump ability. Samus can either bounce between two parallel surfaces or off the same surface as another means to access high places. Executing the wall jump can be quite finicky, so practice makes perfect. Mastering this secret move can allow the player to blow through entire sections of the game and manipulate the natural progression of the game. Forcing the player to perform obtuse tasks is one thing, but allowing more advanced players to exploit the malleable design of Super Metroid adds a whole level of depth and control.

Samus is also made much more capable due to the extensive arsenal Super Metroid provides. All of the items from the first game return here, along with a plethora of more powerful additions to the already established items like the super missiles and power bombs. New items like the gravity suit and space jump experiment with Samus’s movement, progressively making her more fluid with each new power-up. The grapple beam allows Samus to get across gaps, and the spring ball conveniently allows Samus to bounce in ball form without needing to be propelled upward by a piddly bomb. New offensive features like the charge and plasma beam stack onto the familiar ice beam to make the default beam a force to be reckoned with while the spazer beam increases its accuracy. A new item that combines the innovation of Samus’s movement and unforeseen power is the speed booster which allows Samus to run at inhuman speeds, obliterating everything in her way (provided the path is long enough to build up speed). In the first Metroid, every new power-up Samus obtained made the player feel less helpless. The player went from being subdued in seconds to exploring the depths of Zebes with marginal ease. The additions Super Metroid makes to Samus’s arsenal make players feel like they can conquer anything on this alien planet. It’s the only proper way to feel while playing as the badass, one-woman space army that is Samus Aran.

The fluid controls and high-octane weaponry still don’t render Super Metroid an effortless excursion. These features simply give the player a means of dealing with the harsh conditions of Zebes, namely the enemies. Overall, the enemies here are much less relentless than the more pixelated ones that made up the first game. The space creatures here act more naturally in their home environment, with fewer per screen. The game compensates with the hostile space pirates that appear in every area and some enemies in the late game that can deal some serious damage. While the enemies of the first Metroid defended their hive like a swarm of angry bees, the bosses did not deal with Samus with the same passion and rancor. Like everything else in Super Metroid, the once pitiful, munchkin-sized Ridley and Kraid have been revamped as the intimidating, otherworldly behemoths they deserve to be. Kraid’s encounter has him bursting through the arena with Samus scaling a series of platforms just to meet Kraid at an adequate angle. The first Ridley encounter shows the space dragon in a more menacing light, but the scope this scene sets makes him even more formidable. His second encounter at the end of the game is the ultimate arc coming full circle. While the player finally has the necessary assets to deal with Ridley, the player will pump so much ammunition into him and still merely survive by the skin of their teeth. Super Metroid also offers a few new bosses with their Zebes strongholds. Phantoon is a giant ugly space testicle that is the bane of my existence due to one attack that I’m not entirely sure is avoidable. The well-known exploit in Draygon’s fight is another excellent case of the gameplay’s malleable initiative. The standout boss of Super Metroid for me is Crocomire, a sub-boss sandwiched in the fiery crevices of Norfair. The player has to unload enough missiles into his dopy mouth to push him into the lava. Once the player succeeds, he wails and cries as the flesh from his bones dissolves quicker than saliva on cotton candy. The outcome of this fight was so shocking and disturbing that I started to feel a tad remorseful.

A small room that borders Ridley’s second fight arena unveils a shocking revelation: the Metroid that was in captivity has broken free from its capsule. Samus then treks back to a corridor in Crateria and unlocks the route to the final area of Tourian. Immediately, this section should signal a dreadful sense of deja vu for anyone who has played the first Metroid. Samus will descend through misty, space-age vestibules using the ice beam to defend herself from an ambush of metroids. One of the metroids she encounters proves to be too sizable to vanquish, and it nearly kills her. Through flashbacks, it’s revealed that this is the Metroid from the capsule. It spares Samus because it remembers when Samus saved it during the events of Metroid II. The sense of deja vu will continue when Samus is confronted with an all-too-familiar setup of a long room consisting of blasters and bouncing energy ovals with a giant brain on the other end protected by a glass casing and rows of flesh tubes. The player may notice that this event is much easier this time, but this isn’t because Super Metroid is going soft on them. Blasting through Mother Brain’s forces like before only reveals her final form: a monstrous, bipedal creature with the stature of a T-rex. After unloading rounds of (super) missiles at Mother Brain, she unleashes a rainbow-colored ray of energy that the player must have enough health to withstand. All seems grim when Mother Brain charges another beam to finish Samus off, but the friendly Metroid from before stops this in the nick of time. Mother Brain kills the Metroid, but not before it harnesses its energy to Samus in the form of the hyper beam. Samus lays into Mother Brain with her new ability with a vengeance and defeats the foul beast, but not before Samus has to escape Zebes due to a countdown signaling its destruction yet again. Words cannot describe this final fight between Samus and Mother Brain, and I mean that quite literally. There is not a single line of spoken dialogue throughout this encounter, but the game proves it doesn’t need to be concise and emotionally impactful. The masterful presentation that piqued the interest of every player at the beginning comes in full form again, providing one of the best endings of the 16-bit era.

Explaining how Super Metroid is an improvement to the first Metroid is a rather trivial affair. This isn’t because the game has no merit as a soft reboot or a sequel. It’s QUITE the contrary. It’s simply because Super Metroid eclipses the first Metroid (and Metroid II) in every single fathomable regard that listing each improvement would be a waste of time. This is what I realized while writing this review. I could’ve simplified every example I gave for the sake of brevity and done something else with my life. It would’ve proved as effective as stating my points. What did Nintendo do to craft what is a prime example of a perfect sequel? In essence, not much. It’s the same space-age, horror-inspired game with a claustrophobic setting meant to convey feelings of isolation. Secrets can be found by meticulously searching, Zebes is still crawling with hostile creatures, and Samus is still utterly alone. I suppose all the first Metroid needed was another breath of life on a superior console to fully realize its potential. Super Metroid was the game Nintendo wanted to make but was bogged down by 8-bit hardware. They also had the gift of hindsight for Metroid’s second wind on a console. They used it effectively by buffing out the scratches and expanding on the first game as an exceptional sequel should. If not for the overarching plots between the first three Metroid games, I’d declare the first two games obsolete and champion Super Metroid as the first proper entry in the franchise. Metroid took the gold over Mario and Zelda this time.

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