Ernest Hemingway once said that, “the first draft of anything is shit.” But Ernest Hemingway was a homophobe who loved big game hunting almost as much as he loved infidelity, so maybe we don’t have to take his word on everything. Also, I’m pretty sure he never played Metroid, so I’m not sure why I brought him up in the first place. Anyway, video games!

I know a lot of people say to skip over this one when getting into Metroid, but I think that’s silly. If I’m immersing myself in a franchise, I’m invested in seeing how its mechanics evolve over time. Sure it might be jank, but I want to see how that jank informs the rest of the series. And hey, I get it—I’ve played Zero Mission, that’s a great game! But I feel like you’re missing the point if you think these two games are offering interchangeable experiences.

While Zero Mission is great at making you feel like the toughest bounty hunter in the galaxy, Metroid NES excels at making you feel truly out of your depth on a hostile alien world. The first hour or so of my playthrough felt almost comically unforgiving, constantly barraged by enemies I couldn’t reach, lava pits I couldn’t avoid and long, monotonous hallways I couldn’t wait to be done with. I honestly really respect it as a tone-setter: Samus is NOT welcome here, and you as the player feel that too.

I think the plain black backgrounds also do wonders for that unforgiving atmosphere. I adore Zero Mission’s vibrant backdrops, but something about the cold void of Metroid NES makes this Zebes feel so much more unknowable, like you don’t even get to see what lurks in the distance. These environments feel truly alien, and you only get a glimpse of them.

Of course, the game REALLY begins once you start exploring and unlocking upgrades and familiarizing yourself with that environment, and by then it’s… I mean, I guess it’s alright? While that first hour is brutally compelling, and the mid-game item hunt legitimately satisfying, once you start to get the hang of Metroid it becomes clear that there’s just not a ton of depth here. Rooms are pretty basic and repetitive without a lot to distinguish one from the other, and while the upgrades are a lot of fun to use, they do seriously trivialize combat. It feels unfair to fault a game for a lack of complexity when it’s the first of its kind, but it’s hard not to dwell on as you make your way through Zebes’ seemingly endless supply of identical vertical shafts.

While the first half of my playthrough was filled with frustration and intrigue and overcoming hardship, the second was mostly a lot of meandering zigzagging as I searched for new hordes of creepy crawlies to effortlessly dispatch. Not an altogether bad way to spend a Saturday, but not a remarkably engaging one either. For what it’s worth, the challenge does ramp up by the final boss, but that fight is so atrociously designed that I’m not going to dignify it with another sentence.

The bones of a great series and a great genre are here, and that IS worth seeing for yourself. Like I said, I’m glad I didn’t skip it. But truthfully, Metroid is more interesting in its atmosphere and ambition than as a cohesive, finished whole. As it stands, Metroid is too singular an experience to be outright dismissed, but too genuinely flawed to be truly great.

(Special thanks to Phil Summers and his excellent Hand-Drawn Game Guides, which I consulted throughout my playthrough. Yeah that’s right, I used a guide! Bite me! You can check out Phil’s beautiful Metroid guide for yourself here: https://sites.google.com/view/handdrawngameguides/free-guides/metroid-presented-by-hand-drawn-game-guides?authuser=0)