What was the first Metroid game that people played?
I remember there used to be Nintendo arcade games where you would get a set amount of time to play for each quarter, and could choose from a handful of different titles. Super Mario, Metroid, Punch-Out, etc... It was probably one of these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayChoice-10Anyway, when I was a kid we didn't have enough money to buy the NES console, but I had tried some games when visiting friends. But seeing Nintendo games in an arcade was really intriguing - after begging for a quarter of course I'd give it a try!
Picking Metroid probably wasn't a good choice... not knowing you had to start out going left, or how to get into morph ball form meant that most of my 4 minutes was spent just jumping around. Not the best first impression, especially when stacked up to a more straight-forward Mario game!
Still, I was intrigued. Years later - just after the SNES was released - we did end up getting a Nintendo, and I had a chance to borrow and play through Metroid. Without a timing counting down while playing, I was absolutely thrilled to explore the caverns and search out hidden power ups. Finding secrets all over the game world, and even some weird and cool bugs. It took a lot of time and effort, but eventually I beat Mother Brain and escaped before the planet self-destructed.
Oddly, I never had the chance to play Super Metroid until getting it on Wii virtual console, but I was hooked on the series and eagerly played through all of the portable entries on GB/GBA. The series lost me a bit when going to 3D though; I didn't own a GameCube, and have never really gone back to it. What can I say? 2D is my life.