I remember the first time I played Metroid with startling clarity. It wasn’t even my game. My cousin Mark had gotten it for his birthday, and I was sleeping over at his house on a Friday night in the summer of ’87. After his parents went to bed, we stayed up way too late, the glow of his 19-inch Zenith TV the only light in the basement rec room. “You gotta check this out,” he whispered, sliding the gray cartridge into his NES with ceremonial reverence. The title screen appeared with that haunting, alien melody that still gives me goosebumps when I hear it today. Three simple menu options: Start, Password, and… a cursor blinking expectantly. Unlike Super Mario Bros. or Legend of Zelda, the game didn’t explain itself. It just waited, challenging you to venture into its world.
When the game began, there was no princess to save, no backstory scrolling up the screen, no tutorial level teaching you the controls. Just a solitary armored figure standing in a strange cavern. No direction, no objective markers, no hint system. Just you, alone, on an alien world. I watched as Mark guided his character to the right, found a ball power-up that let him roll into small spaces, and continued deeper into the planet. “Where are you supposed to go?” I asked. He shrugged. “Anywhere. Everywhere. That’s the point.”
I got my own copy the next weekend, begging my mom to drive me to Toys ‘R’ Us where I anxiously carried the little paper slip to the register, trading my accumulated allowance for what would become one of the most influential gaming experiences of my life. That night, I discovered what Mark meant. Metroid wasn’t about following a predetermined path—it was about forging your own, remembering where you’d been, and noting places you couldn’t yet access but might return to later. The game didn’t hold your hand; it shoved you into the deep end and said “figure it out.”
Brinstar, the starting area, tricked you with its straightforward horizontal layout. Go right, like any good NES platformer, and you’d soon find the Morph Ball. But then the game pulled its first mind-bending trick on unsuspecting players: you had to go left from the start, using your new ability to access areas you’d already seen but couldn’t reach. This simple design decision shattered the conventional wisdom of games at that time. Suddenly, the entire game space became interconnected, meaningful, worth memorizing.
The lack of an in-game map seems almost sadistically cruel by today’s standards, but it forced me to engage with the world in a way few games had before. I started drawing my own maps on graph paper, creating a personal atlas of Zebes that became increasingly dog-eared and coffee-stained as the weeks went on. Each room got a code number, each door a destination reference. I noted enemy types, power-up locations, and those tantalizing areas I couldn’t yet reach. “Ice beam needed?” I’d scrawl next to a sketch of a high ledge with flying enemies. “Can missiles open this?” beside a curious discoloration in a wall.
That graph paper became my most prized gaming possession—more valuable than the cartridge itself. When my buddy Tyler came over and boasted he could find the Varia suit faster than me, it became a race, with my hand-drawn maps giving me the home-field advantage. I still have those maps, believe it or not, tucked away in a folder in my office. The paper has yellowed, the pencil marks faded, but looking at them immediately transports me back to those summer evenings, the fan blowing directly on the NES to keep it from overheating during marathon sessions.
The password system was simultaneously brilliant and maddening. Those cryptic 24-character codes were my first experience with the concept of “saving” progress in a home console game, but writing down JUSTIN BAILEY —— —— as a kid was an exercise in frustration. One misplaced dash or letter, and you’d load up a completely different game state or, worse, get the dreaded “invalid password” message. I kept a dedicated Metroid notebook with passwords that marked significant milestones. “After Ice Beam” or “All Energy Tanks in Norfair” I’d write next to particularly valuable codes. When my younger brother accidentally spilled orange soda on that notebook, I nearly had a meltdown. Some of those passwords represented dozens of hours of exploration and progress.
The atmosphere of isolation in Metroid was unlike anything else I’d played. Mario had cheerful music and bright colors; Zelda had villages full of helpful NPCs and familiar fantasy tropes. Metroid had alien chittering sounds, dissonant music that changed with each area, and not a single friendly face. You were completely alone on planet Zebes, surrounded by hostile life forms and ancient technology. That feeling of isolation wasn’t a bug—it was a deliberate design choice that pulled you deeper into the experience. I’d find myself holding my breath as I navigated the volcanic chambers of Norfair or the frozen corridors of Kraid’s Lair, totally immersed in this alien environment.
The music deserves special mention here. Those simple NES chiptunes somehow created distinct personalities for each area. Brinstar’s theme had an adventurous, pulsing quality that urged you forward. Kraid’s Lair felt tense, dangerous. Norfair’s music had an otherworldly, dissonant tone that perfectly matched its bubbling lava and alien architecture. Tourian, with its Metroid-infested corridors, ramped up the anxiety with frantic, high-tempo patterns. Hip-hop artists have sampled Metroid’s soundtrack for good reason—those compositions weren’t just background noise; they were storytelling elements that created emotional responses with extremely limited technology.
Discovering secrets in Metroid provided a dopamine hit that modern games with their obvious “secret area ahead!” signposting can’t match. Nothing beat the feeling of bombing a random section of floor on a hunch and discovering a hidden pathway to an energy tank. The game never explicitly taught you that bombing every suspicious brick was a viable strategy—you figured it out through experimentation and observation. When I discovered you could shoot upward by pressing up on the d-pad while firing, it completely changed how I approached each room. These weren’t secrets handed to you on a silver platter; they were mysteries you solved through engagement with the game’s systems.
The original Metroid also pioneered what we now call “sequence breaking”—the ability to collect items out of the intended order through clever use of mechanics. Though the term wouldn’t be coined until much later, I stumbled upon my first sequence break accidentally. Through a pixel-perfect jump I kept trying to nail, I managed to reach a ledge that seemed inaccessible without the High Jump Boots. The sense of accomplishment was incredible—I’d outsmarted the designers! Only years later did I learn this was likely an intentional design choice, allowing skilled players to forge their own paths through Zebes. Today’s speedrunners have taken this to extraordinary levels, completing the game in minutes through wall clips and bomb jumps, but even my modest teenage sequence breaking felt like gaming rebellion.
And then there was THE twist. In 1987, the idea that the armored space bounty hunter we’d been controlling was actually a woman was genuinely shocking. Video game protagonists were almost universally male, and nothing in the game (or the instruction manual, which used male pronouns) hinted at Samus’s true identity. Finishing the game under five hours to see Samus remove her helmet and reveal long hair was a genuine cultural moment. My friend Jason called me the day after he first saw it, his voice cracking with excitement: “Dude, Samus is a GIRL!” It seems quaint now, but it was revolutionary then, and it made Metroid even more special in the landscape of NES games.
Later Metroid games built upon this foundation in fascinating ways. Super Metroid refined the formula to near perfection, adding a map system while preserving the sense of discovery. Metroid Prime translated the exploration-based gameplay into a first-person perspective with stunning results. But there’s something pure about the original that these polished descendants can’t quite capture—that uncompromising commitment to player-driven exploration without safety nets. The later games might be objectively “better” in terms of design and accessibility, but the original has a special place in my gaming heart precisely because of its beautiful brutality.
I’ve replayed Metroid dozens of times over the decades, and each playthrough feels like visiting an old neighborhood. I no longer need my graph paper maps; the layout of Zebes is permanently etched in my brain’s gaming center. I can close my eyes and visualize the exact path from the starting point to Kraid’s Lair, remembering which walls conceal missile expansions and which seemingly solid floors can be bombed to reveal shortcuts. It’s a cognitive map more detailed than I have of some places I’ve actually lived.
The influence of Metroid on my gaming tastes has been profound and lasting. Whenever a game gives me a waypoint, an objective marker, or a trail of breadcrumbs to follow, I feel a twinge of disappointment. I find myself drawn to games that trust the player to figure things out, that reward curiosity and observation. The Dark Souls series, with its interconnected world design and oblique storytelling, scratches the same itch that Metroid first identified. Hollow Knight, with its expansive underground kingdom waiting to be mapped, feels spiritually connected to Samus’s first adventure. The “Metroidvania” genre name acknowledges the debt modern game design owes to that unassuming gray cartridge.
Sometimes I fire up Metroid on the Switch Online NES app, and it’s remarkable how quickly I fall back into its rhythms. The controls feel slightly stiff by modern standards, and the inability to aim diagonally can be frustrating after playing later entries, but the core exploration loop remains compelling. My teenage son watched me play recently, baffled by the lack of direction. “But what are you supposed to do?” he asked, echoing my question to my cousin all those years ago. I gave him the same answer: “Explore. Figure it out. That’s the point.”
What makes the original Metroid special isn’t the twist ending, the alien setting, or even the revolutionary gameplay mechanics—though all those elements contribute. What makes it special is the respect it showed for players’ intelligence and persistence. It created a mysterious world and trusted you to unravel its secrets at your own pace, in your own way. In an era of tutorials, hint systems, and constant player guidance, that design philosophy feels both refreshingly bold and increasingly rare.
I still get a little thrill when I hear the item acquisition sound effect—that triumphant little jingle that plays when you find a new beam or missile expansion. It’s the sound of earned progress, of curiosity rewarded, of a game acknowledging your exploratory spirit. Whenever a modern game uses a similar audio cue (and many do, consciously or not), I’m instantly transported back to those first ventures into Brinstar, graph paper in hand, mapping out the unknown, one screen at a time.
