Metroid (video game)

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Metroid
Composer(s)
Hirokazu Tanaka
SeriesMetroid
Platform(s)

PlayChoice-10

Metroid

beta rays
and then use them as biological weapons to destroy Samus and all who oppose them.

The game was developed by

speedrunning
. It was also lauded for being one of the first video games to showcase a female protagonist.

Metroid was both a critical and commercial success. Reviewers praised its graphics, soundtrack, and tight controls.

3DS via the Virtual Console service, and the Nintendo Switch via its online service. An enhanced remake of Metroid featuring updated visuals and gameplay, Metroid: Zero Mission
, was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2004.

Gameplay

health meter
(energy) is in the upper-left corner, marked by "EN".

Metroid is an

open-ended world with areas connected by doors and elevators. The player controls Samus as she travels through the planet's caverns and hunts Space Pirates. She begins with a weak power beam as her only weapon, and with only the ability to jump. The player explores more areas and collects power-ups that grant Samus special abilities and enhance her armor and weaponry, allowing her to enter areas that were previously inaccessible. Among the power-ups that are included in the game are the Morph Ball, which allows Samus to curl into a ball to roll into tunnels; the Bomb, which can only be used while in ball form and can open hidden floor/wall paths; and the Screw Attack, a somersaulting move that destroys enemies in its path.[2][3]

In addition to common enemies, Samus encounters two bosses, Kraid and Ridley, whom she must defeat in order to progress. Ordinary enemies typically yield additional energy or ammunition when destroyed, and the player can increase Samus's carrying capacities by finding storage tanks and defeating bosses. Once Kraid and Ridley have both been defeated, the player can shoot their statues to open the path to the final area and confront the Mother Brain.[2][3]

Plot

Metroid
Story chronology
Main series in bold, remakes in parentheses
)
[4][5]

In the year 20X5, the

beta rays and then using them as biological weapons to destroy all living beings that oppose them. While searching for the stolen Metroids, the Galactic Federation locates the Space Pirates' base of operations on the planet Zebes. The Federation assaults the planet, but the Pirates resist, forcing the Federation to retreat.[2][3]

As a last resort, the Federation decides to send a lone bounty hunter to penetrate the Pirates' base and destroy

Kraid, an ally of the Space Pirates, and Ridley, the Space Pirates' commander, and defeats them both. Eventually, Samus kills the Metroids, and finds and destroys Mother Brain.[3] A timed bomb goes off to destroy the lair and Samus is able to escape before it explodes.[6]

Development

Portrait of Yoshio Sakamoto, making a public speech.
Yoshio Sakamoto, a character designer for Metroid, speaking at the 2010 Game Developers Conference

After

portmanteau of the words "metro" and "android".[8][9] It was co-developed by Nintendo's Research and Development 1 division and Intelligent Systems, and produced by Gunpei Yokoi.[10][11][9] Metroid was directed by Satoru Okada and Masao Yamamoto (credited as "Yamamoto"), and featured music written by Hirokazu Tanaka (credited as "Hip Tanaka").[9][12] The scenario was created by Makoto Kano (credited with his last name), and character design was done by Hiroji Kiyotake (credited with his last name), Hirofumi Matsuoka (credited as "New Matsuoka"), and Yoshio Sakamoto (credited as "Shikamoto").[9] The character design for Samus Aran was created by Kiyotake.[13][14]

The production was described as a "very free working environment" by Tanaka, who stated that, though being the composer, he also gave input for the graphics and helped name areas. Partway through development, one of the developers asked the others, "Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned out that this person inside the suit was a woman?" This idea was incorporated into the game, though the English-language instruction manual for the game uses only the pronoun "he" in reference to Samus.[15] Ridley Scott's 1979 horror film Alien was described by Sakamoto as a "huge influence" after the game's world had been created. The development staff was affected by the work of the film's creature designer H. R. Giger, and found his creations to be fitting for the theme.[16] Still, there were problems that threatened timely progress and eventually led Sakamoto to be "forcefully asked to participate" by his superiors, hoping his previous experience could help the team. Sakamoto stated he figured out a way to bypass the limited resources and time to leverage existing game media assets "to create variation and an exciting experience".[17]

Nintendo attempted to distinguish Metroid from other games by making it a

Starman in Super Mario Bros. offer only temporary boosts to characters, and they are not required to complete the game. In Metroid, however, items are permanent fixtures that lasted until the end. In particular, missiles and the ice beam are required to finish the game.[7]

After defeating Mother Brain, the game presents one of five ending screens based on the time to completion. Metroid is one of the first games to contain multiple endings. In the third, fourth, and fifth endings, Samus Aran appears without her suit, and for the first time, reveals herself to be a woman. In Japan, the

cheats, such as "NARPAS SWORD"[7] and "JUSTIN BAILEY".[citation needed
]

Music

Tanaka said he wanted to make a score that made players feel like they were encountering a "living organism" and had no distinction between music and sound effects. The only time a melodic theme is heard is when Mother Brain is defeated in order to give the victorious player catharsis. During the rest of the game, the melodies are more minimalistic, because Tanaka wanted the soundtrack to be the opposite of the "hummable" pop tunes found in other games at that time.[18]

Release

Officially defined as a

PlayChoice-10 system.[20] It was released on the Nintendo Entertainment System a year later on August 15, 1987, in North America, and on January 15, 1988, in Europe.[19][21]

Emulation

The game was re-released several times via

Classic NES Series collection, was released in Japan on August 10, 2004, in North America on October 25, and in Europe on January 7, 2005.[24] The game arrived on the Wii's Virtual Console in Europe and North America in 2007, and in Japan on March 4, 2008.[25] Metroid was one of the ten NES games released as part of the Nintendo 3DS Ambassador Program for people who purchased the Nintendo 3DS prior to its first price drop. It was released in North America on August 31 and in Europe on September 1, 2011.[26][27] Metroid was released for all 3DS owners on March 1, 2012.[28] It was also one of the 30 games included on the NES Classic Edition, released in 2016.[citation needed
]

At E3 2010, Nintendo featured Metroid among NES and SNES games in a tech demo called Classic Games, to be released for the Nintendo 3DS. Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé said "not to think of them as remakes". Miyamoto said that these classics might be using "new features in the games that would take advantage of the 3DS's capabilities".[29] This was released as part of 3D Classics series which does not include Metroid.[citation needed]

Remake

The game was reimagined as Metroid: Zero Mission with a more developed backstory, enhanced graphics, and the same general game layout.[citation needed]

Reception

Metroid was a commercial success, reported to be "famous" and "very popular" by 1989.[30][31] As of 2004, 2.73 million units of Metroid have been sold worldwide.[32]

Critics

Metroid received positive reviews from critics upon release.

Famicom Tsūshin (Famitsu) magazine rated it five out of five stars in 1989.[36] Computer and Video Games said it was a "tough" platform arcade adventure with a "very handy" password system and recommended it to "avid" arcade adventurers.[30] Game Players praised its "fast-paced" gameplay.[31] In Nintendo Power's From contemporary reviews, Computer Entertainer praised the graphics as "outstanding" highlighting varied enemies. and the gameplay as being "full of surprises around every corner."[39] Both Computer and Video Games and Computer Entertainer complimented the ability to restart the game where they had last left off through Nintendo's new password system.[30][39]

In 2006, Nintendo Power ranked Metroid as the 11th-best game on its list of the Top 200 Games on a

speedrunning.[7] Entertainment Weekly called it the #18 greatest game available in 1991, saying: "The visuals are simplistic, but few games make you think as much as the five-year-old Metroid. Try not to consult Nintendo's hint book, which provides detailed maps of the terrain your hero has to navigate in order to complete his mission".[49]

In a retrospective focusing on the entire

Gamasutra praised Metroid for being perhaps the first video game to "take these different elements and rigorously mold them into a game-ruling structure".[50]

Reviewing the original NES game,

AllGame awarded Metroid with the highest rating of five stars.[35] The review praised the game above Metroid II: Return of Samus and Super Metroid, stating that "Metroid's not just a classic because of its astounding graphics, cinematic sound effects, accurate control, and fresh gameplay, but also because of its staying power".[35] Reviewing the Classic NES Series version of the game, GameSpot noted that eighteen years after its initial release, Metroid "just doesn't measure up to today's action adventure standards", giving the game a rating of 5.2 out of 10, for "mediocre".[1] For the Wii Virtual Console version, IGN commented that the game's presentation, graphics, and sound were basic, but they were still pleased with Metroid's "impressive" gameplay, rating the game 8.0 out of 10, for "great", and giving it an Editor's Choice award. The review stated that the game was "still impressive in scope" and that the price was "a deal for this adventure" while criticizing the number of times it has been re-released and noting that it takes "patience" to get past the high initial difficulty curve.[51] In GameSpot's review of the Virtual Console version, they criticized its "frustrating room layouts" and "constantly flickering graphics". In particular, the website was disappointed that Nintendo did not make any changes to the game, specifically criticizing the lack of a save feature.[52]

Metroid's gameplay, focusing on exploration and searching for power-ups to reach new areas, influenced other series, mostly the

Tomb Raider series]".[7]

Music

In his book Maestro Mario: How Nintendo Transformed Videogame Music into an Art, videogame scholar Andrew Schartmann notes the possible influence of Jerry Goldsmith's Alien score on Tanaka's music—a hypothesis supported by Sakamoto's acknowledgement of Alien's influence on the game's development. He also noted that the game emphasises on the silence to create a claustrophobic atmosphere.[54] Schartmann further argues that Tanaka's emphasis on silence was revolutionary to videogame composition:

Tanaka's greatest contribution to game music comes, paradoxically, in the form of silence. He was arguably the first videogame composer to emphasize the absence of sound in his music. Tanaka's score is an embodiment of isolation and atmospheric effect—one that penetrates deeply into the emotions.

— Andrew Schartmann, Maestro Mario: How Nintendo Transformed Videogame Music into an Art, Thought Catalog (2013)[55]

This view is echoed by GameSpot's History of Metroid, which notes how the "[game's music] superbly evoked the proper feelings of solitude and loneliness one would expect while infiltrating a hostile alien planet alone".[3]

Notes

  1. ^ Japanese: メトロイド, Hepburn: Metoroido

References

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Further reading

External links

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