Man, I can still remember the exact moment Metroid clicked for me, and it wasn’t even on a Sega system – yeah, I know, sacrilege for a lifelong Sega defender to admit. But hear me out, this was 1987, I was ten years old, and my neighbor Danny had just gotten this weird Nintendo game that nobody seemed to understand. I mean, we’d all figured out Mario pretty quick – go right, jump on things, save the princess. Simple. But Metroid? This thing was like nothing any of us had seen before.
Danny’s older brother Mike was the one who first showed it to us. We’re sitting in their finished basement, probably eating way too much cereal and arguing about whether Transformers or G.I. Joe was cooler, when Mike fires up this game with the most haunting title music I’d ever heard. No cheerful Mario tune, no epic Zelda fanfare – just this eerie, alien sound that made you feel like you were about to enter someplace you weren’t supposed to be. And then the game starts, and there’s this armored figure standing in a cave, and… that’s it. No instructions, no “hey, go save this person,” nothing. Just you, alone, on what’s obviously an alien planet.
“So what do you do?” Danny asked, and Mike just shrugged. “Figure it out. That’s the whole point.”
I was fascinated. Here was a game that didn’t want to hold your hand, didn’t want to tell you where to go or what to do. You had to explore, had to experiment, had to actually pay attention to your surroundings. Within the first ten minutes, I watched Mike discover that you could turn into a ball – which blew our minds – and then use that ability to access areas you’d already passed but couldn’t reach before. Wait, you mean you have to go backward? In a video game? Revolutionary.
I begged my parents for weeks to get me a copy. This was back when getting a new game was like a major family investment, you know? Sixty bucks was real money, and my dad would stand there in the Toys R Us aisle reading the back of game boxes like he was buying a car. But eventually they caved, probably just to stop my constant pestering about it, and I walked out of that store clutching my own copy of Metroid like it was made of gold.
That first night playing it at home, alone in my room with my little 13-inch TV, was when I really understood what this game was about. It wasn’t just the exploration – though that was incredible – it was the feeling of being completely isolated in this alien world. No friendly NPCs, no villages to rest in, no companions following you around. Just hostile creatures, ancient technology, and the constant sense that you were somewhere you didn’t belong.
I started keeping a notebook. Had to, really, because the game didn’t have a map, which seems absolutely insane by today’s standards. I’d sketch out rooms on graph paper, numbering each one, drawing little symbols for doors and noting which ones I couldn’t open yet. “Need missiles?” I’d write next to some doors. “Ice beam maybe?” next to others. That notebook became my most prized gaming possession – I guarded it more carefully than my actual cartridges.
The password system was both a blessing and a curse. Finally, a game where you could save your progress! Sort of. If you could manage to write down those ridiculous 24-character codes without making a mistake. I can’t tell you how many times I’d carefully copy down a password, come back the next day, and get the dreaded “invalid password” message because I’d confused a zero with an O or mixed up the number of dashes. I developed this whole system of double-checking every character, saying it out loud as I wrote it down. My mom thought I was going crazy, muttering “dash dash dash N A R password” to myself.
But when you got a good password that worked? Man, that was pure joy. I had specific codes memorized for major milestones – after getting the Ice Beam, after finding the Varia suit, after clearing Kraid’s lair. These weren’t just random letter combinations; they were keys to different chapters of my adventure.
What really got me was how the game made you work for every discovery. Modern games, they practically put giant neon signs pointing to secret areas. “Hey player, there’s definitely something hidden behind this slightly different colored wall!” Metroid made you figure it out yourself. You’d notice that one section of wall looked a little different, so you’d try shooting it. Nothing. Try bombing it. Bam! Secret passage. The game rewarded observation and experimentation in ways that felt genuinely earned.
I remember the first time I sequence-broke without even knowing that was a thing. I kept trying this seemingly impossible jump in Norfair, just because it looked like maybe, possibly, if I timed it perfectly… and eventually I made it to a ledge that I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to reach yet. Found an energy tank up there, and felt like I’d outsmarted the entire Nintendo development team. Years later I learned that speedrunners had turned sequence breaking into an art form, but back then it just felt like I’d discovered something secret, something special.
The music in each area told its own story. Brinstar had this adventurous, almost hopeful sound that made exploring feel exciting rather than scary. But then you’d drop down into Norfair, and suddenly the music got all dissonant and alien, perfectly matching the bubbling lava and weird organic-looking walls. And don’t even get me started on Tourian – that frantic, high-pitched music when you’re surrounded by actual Metroids was designed to make you panic, and it worked perfectly.
The atmosphere was unlike anything else I’d played. Mario games were bright and cheerful, Zelda had all those helpful old men in caves giving you advice. Metroid was just… lonely. You’re the only intelligent life on this entire planet, surrounded by creatures that want to kill you, exploring the ruins of some ancient civilization. As a ten-year-old, it was both thrilling and genuinely unsettling. I’d find myself holding my breath during the quiet moments, waiting for some new horror to appear on screen.
And then there was the ending. Oh man, the ending. After spending months with this mysterious armored bounty hunter, after all those hours of exploration and discovery, you finish the game and… wait, Samus is a woman? In 1987, this was genuinely shocking. Video game protagonists just weren’t female characters, especially not in action games. The instruction manual used “he” throughout, the game never gave you any hints. My mind was completely blown. I immediately called Danny to see if he’d gotten to the end yet, and we spent like an hour on the phone discussing this revelation like it was the most important discovery in human history.
That twist ending wasn’t just clever; it was a perfect capstone to a game that had been challenging assumptions from the very beginning. You thought you knew how platformers worked? Nope, sometimes you go left. You thought games would tell you what to do? Nope, figure it out yourself. You thought you knew who you were playing as? Think again.
I’ve replayed Metroid dozens of times over the years, and it never gets old. Well, okay, the controls feel a bit stiff now, and not being able to shoot diagonally can be frustrating after playing Super Metroid. But that core exploration loop, that sense of gradually uncovering the secrets of an alien world, that never stops being compelling. I can navigate Zebes from memory now, but I still get that little thrill when I find a hidden missile expansion or discover a shortcut I’d forgotten about.
The influence Metroid had on my gaming preferences can’t be overstated. Even as I became a hardcore Sega fanboy, I always appreciated games that trusted the player to figure things out. When Phantasy Star came out for the Master System, part of what I loved about it was how it dropped you into this world and expected you to explore, to talk to NPCs, to piece together the story yourself. Same with Wonder Boy III – that game had Metroid-style exploration mixed with RPG elements, and it felt like coming home.
These days, I find myself constantly frustrated with modern game design. Everything’s got waypoints, objective markers, little breadcrumb trails leading you exactly where you’re supposed to go. My students play games where the screen is cluttered with icons and notifications, where the game practically plays itself. When I try to explain what made games like Metroid special, I can see them glazing over. “But how do you know what to do?” they ask, and I give them the same answer Mike gave us all those years ago: “You figure it out. That’s the point.”
I recently played through Metroid again on the Switch Online service, and my teenage daughter watched for a while. She was baffled by the lack of direction, confused by the password system, frustrated that the game didn’t explain its mechanics. But she also got drawn into the atmosphere, started asking questions about the world and the story. “Why is everything trying to kill you?” “What happened to the people who built this place?” “How did those creatures get here?” Same questions I’d asked thirty-five years earlier.
That’s what made Metroid special, and what makes it worth remembering and replaying today. It created a mystery and trusted you to solve it. It built a world and let you explore it at your own pace, in your own way. In an era where games constantly tell you exactly what to do and where to go, that kind of respect for player intelligence feels almost radical.
I still have that original notebook somewhere, with all my hand-drawn maps and carefully recorded passwords. The pages are yellow now, the pencil marks faded, but looking at it brings back all those memories of discovery and exploration. Every time I hear that item acquisition sound – you know the one, that little triumphant jingle when you find a new power-up – I’m ten years old again, sitting in my bedroom, mapping out an alien world one room at a time.
Metroid taught me that getting lost could be fun, that confusion could be exciting, that the best discoveries come from wandering off the beaten path. It’s a lesson that applies to more than just video games, though I didn’t realize that at the time. All I knew was that this weird Nintendo game had given me something I’d never experienced before: a world that felt truly alien, truly mysterious, and completely mine to explore.
Joe’s a history teacher who treats the console wars like actual history. A lifelong Sega devotee from Phoenix, he writes with passion, humor, and lingering heartbreak over the Dreamcast. Expect strong opinions, bad puns, and plenty of “blast processing.”
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