One of my favorite Metroid moments is from Other M.The young and naive cutscene. Why? Well to see a character the I grew up with to finally show a soft side was truly remarkable. It just shows that even the baddest badasses have emotions as well.

If Soild Snake can cry why can't Samus have her moment?

I haven't played many Metroid games, but the few I have played, I really enjoyed.


The last one I played was Metroid Prime 3, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I completed it four complete times, and unlocked everything I could in the game.
Hopefully NOA will do something special next year when it's Metroid's "official" 25th North American birthday.

I remember when everyone hated Metroid: Other M...I, on the other hand, couldn't put it down...loved it

Same here, why do people hate Other M?! It's filled with thrilling action and it' awsome. Yeah the story sucks and it's not that hard, but who cares it's just so... so... action-y!

Up until I played Super Smash Brothers on the Nintendo 64, I had never heard of Metroid, so I had no idea who Samus was in that game. The trophies in Super Smash Brothers Melee made Metroid games sound interesting, so 2002 is when I first played a Metroid game, starting with the original on the NES. I don't know how I ever got through that game without any guides; I remember being stuck at the beginning of it for a while before I figured out that the red doors required five missiles to open. I don't think the door flashes when hit or gives any indicator that you should keep shooting it with missiles. That's kind of the problem with the whole game, there isn't really any indicator where you should go or where you've been. This problem was made worse in Metroid II, since the colourless environments had even less to distinguish them. I don't know why they would even bother with creating a game on lessor hardware that clearly required better technology before it could realize its potential.

That happened on the Super NES with Super Metroid. After two bad games, I was about ready to give up on Metroid. Fortunately, I gave it one more chance with Super Metroid, because in the past Super NES games had vastly improved many series over their NES counterparts. And what a game it was. It didn't just fix all the issues with Metroid, it's also one of the most expertly and intricately crafted games of the 2D era. Each area of the game has some sense of purpose to it, each pathway has a reason to exist, whether it's to provide the way forward, a quicker way to a previous area, or just to get an item. There are even multiple ways through the game if you can master the wall jump and learn how to use items in creative ways, though it's hard to say how many of them are intentional.

Then Metroid Fusion improved the map system even more by marking items you've obtained and highlighting secret paths. I also liked the story elements, which were taken to a negative extreme in Metroid Other M. I appreciated Zero Mission too, making an old game playable. Metroid II needs that treatment.

Like many, I was also skeptical of Metroid Prime and if moving to first-person was really the best option. So much so that I didn't even buy the game until at least two years later, though the nice thing about that was that it was a really cheap game. By the time I was done with that, I could get Metroid Prime 2 for fairly cheap as well. I didn't get the third game for a while since I didn't have a Wii when it was released, and I feel it's the weakest of the three. I think the Trilogy was announced a month or two after I bought MP3... curses.

My favorite experience? It was probably facing that Rock Monster from Prime. Actually as Scott mention, that entire place (Phendrana Drifts) was amazing. I still listen to the theme song ever once in a while when I read.

Anyway, that rock monster was the first real boss to be absolutely huge and incredibly challenging. The way you had to switch visors from regular to thermal and morph ball around was great.

When I got the ice beam in the original Metroid.  Suddenly I could freeze the rippers that just moved  around and jump on them to get to a higher area.  I loved when the the enemeies would swoop down and get ice beamed at the last moment, freezing directly above your head.

As a kid I knew Super Metroid was critically acclaimed game.  I had the Gamepro issue that reviewed it.  But I either didn't read the review fully or the magazine just was not able to articulate fully how the game played so I figured it was just your standard linear platformer.

At this point in my life I had never even played Zelda.  I figured EVERY game was just sequential levels since that was all I had played at the time.  In screenshots Super Metroid looked like a sci-fi Castlevania, back when Castlevania wasn't a rip-off of Metroid.  I played Super Metroid once in a store demo.  I walked from one end of a corrider to another killing enemies along the way but then I reached a dead end.  So I walked back to see if I missed a turn somewhere.  Nope.  I was stumped so I just gave up.  You only get so much store demo time before your Mom drags you away anyway.

Years later around 2001, I had a job and now had money for the first time in my life.  At this point, after work, I took a bus from my office to my Mom's office, where she would drive us home.  Usually I had to wait around about ten minutes for her to be finished work and there was a used videogame store nearby so I starting going there pretty much every day after work and started my SNES collection.  Super Metroid showed up with box and manual so I bought it on a whim just because I had heard great things about it.

There is a real thrill in playing a game where you have no idea how it will even play.  It didn't take long for me to figure out that Metroid games had one large continuous world like Zelda.  I loved that!  I got the bombs and defeated the Chozo Statue and had completed everything in the initial area.  Now I was stuck.  I had bombed a few things hear and there but they were obvious rocks.  It was clear as day that I should bomb them.  There was a corridor that went to a dead end and I thought that was weird so I figured there must be something I missed.  I ended up bombing randomly and the wall was destroyed!  THAT was a key moment and remains my favourite Metroid memory!  This game was so cool that I was REQUIRED to find secrets to go forward!  That was just such an out-there concept and it still is.  Hell Nintendo themselves seem to shy away from it with each successive Metroid game.  Super Metroid gave no indication whatsoever that you had to bomb that wall that looked exactly the same as any other wall and no other videogame from the time period required that from the player.  It took what would have been a major secret in any other game and made it mandatory for progress.  When we talk about innovation in games, that's what we want.  We want something unconventional, original and unexpected.

I agree with that premise, but the example you gave is most certainly not the sort of thing I want in my games. Ironically, one of the design principals that I've always thought the Metroid series pioneered, from Super Metroid onwards, was the idea that the key to progression was hinted at in the little details. Quite the opposite from having the player wonder aimlessly hoping to arbitrarily chance upon the solution, which sounds like the scenario you described. Metroid is the master of creating worlds in which careful observation is the key.

Like in Super Metroid - "That platform is too far for me to jump to. But the only thing between me and it are those enemies. Wait... I have an Ice Beam. What if I freeze them and use the frozen bodies as platforms?"

Or in Metroid Prime - "Hold on. I can hear that phasing sound, the one you get whenever you're near an upgrade. Ooh, it's louder over here. Where could it be? Well, this block looks different to the rest. Hey, the X-Ray Visor shows there's something behind it. Wait... there's some stalactites up there. What if I shot one with a missile so it falls and breaks the block?"

It's those 'Eureka!' moments that I cherish about this series, because I start to notice anomalies and stuff that gets my mind whirring. I never get that satisfaction from being lucky that I bombed a spot on the wall that looks identical to the rest of the wall. That's the kind of BS that grinds my gears in the original Metroid and Metroid II.

My first Metroid memory is of watching a couple of classmates as one drew the other a map of the later parts of the original game.  I remember him labeling some of the corridors with the dire sounding warning, "Metroids!"  Seeing a map of a video game world with cryptic "Here be dragons" type stuff was a mind-altering experience.  I suppose I was used to a regular sequence of levels like Ian up there.

However, Metroid II was my first real exposure to the series.  I bought it in a mall in Virginia during an 8th grade class trip Washington, D.C.  I don't know why we had to spend hours in a stupid shopping mall one day, but it had no arcade and I can't remember ever being so bored before or since.  I eventually sat down and watched the demo reel at Babbage's over and over again until I finally was driven insane enough to buy a game even though my Game Boy was back home.

Even though Metroid II is more linear, I didn't know that, and it was certainly impressive to me at the time.  I spent a lot of time exploring, but eventually got stuck somehow I don't remember (knowing my younger self, I was probably too scared of something to go on) until Nintendo Power finally printed maps.  I think my completion time was over ten hours, but I immediately started over and beat it fast enough to see some 8-bit cleavage.

I was spoiled on that whole "Samus is a girl" thing from the beginning, not that I recall how I learned it, but I'm surprised that hasn't been mentioned yet.  Obviously, most of the staff are little kids, but even so.  :P