Just played this game after Super Metroid it's a bit different from it's predecessor, mainly the fast-paced gameplay (due to the limit of space in the different zones of the game) which offers a more fluid feeling of movement, and thus the backtracking wasn't really a problem for me this time.
One thing that you should probably not due if you're not playing on emulator, is to 100% this game, after a certain point some of those platforming sections are infuriating and almost impossible to do without save states (fuck the persons who designed some of those speed booster blocks)