Ahh yes, good ol' Metroid. Released for the NES before I was even born, I never got a chance to play this
game when it was still new. Fortunately, there are many ways to revive dead legends in this day and age. This particular one is regarded with great love by many of the older gamers, seen as one of the great
milestones of gaming, up there with the first Zelda and Mario.

As always, a scale of 1 to 10 is used, 1 being bad, 10 being excellent.

Story: 3

I don't know, this was probably a great story back then, but to me, it's pretty bad. You do have to take into consideration the fact that you can't do much with the NES, so at least there's a good excuse. You take control of Samus Aran, a bounty hunter sent to Planet Zebes on a mission to eradicate the Metroid living there and the mechanical lifeform Mother Brain. That's it. One of the key story elements used, some say, is the fact that nobody knew Samus was a she until they beat the game and she took off her helmet.

Graphics: 3.5

This is the NES after all. Still, the graphics are pretty colorful and to a certain extent, cute. Probably state of the art back then.

Sound: 5.5

The quality of the sound itself is mediocre, but that's an NES issue and not a fault of the game. The tunes, however, are actually very nice. Hummable, even. If I like them now, they were probably incredible in its time.

Characters: 8

This is the introduction of Samus, and also the introduction of great Metroid bosses Kraid and Ridley. The bosses are nice, but they're nothing spectacular. Kraid, for example, is only as tall as Samus.

Controls: 6.5

The controls are ok, jumps are a bit hard to control, and you'll be falling into lava and quicksand a bit
too much. There can be only three shots on the screen at once, so rapid-fire is a bit hard. It's annoying, but nothing serious. Mostly, hovever, the controls will be at least cooperative and shouldn't give you too much trouble.

Difficulty: 10+++

Difficulty, the part I wanted to get to. I don't know, maybe I'm spoiled by games nowadays, but to me, this
game is insane and even unfair. It's not even just incredibly difficult, it goes well into being frustrating. First of all, my major qualm is this: there are no savepoints. Yes, I know savepoints didn't exist back then, and I know it's not the game's fault. But let me continue. The game uses a password system to keep track of your progress. When you die, you have to write it down and then enter it to continue with all the power-ups you have collected. The Metroid Zero Mission version even saves this password for you. But that's not the problem. When you die, you have to start from the very beginning of the whole area, but that's not all. You start with the least amount of energy possible and have to waste a good 15 minutes just killing enemies over and over again in the same room hoping they drop energy to get yourself back to top fighting form. And THEN you have to move all the way over to the boss room to fight him again. And if you die, guess what? You have to get that energy ALL OVER AGAIN. That's just retarded, there is a fine line between being very hard and just being plain unfair. Nobody wants to do something as boring as that for 15 minutes every time. At least, I hope not. Maybe the hardware doesn't have enough memory to be able to include max energy in the password? Maybe the hardware isn't powerful enough to include some kind of place that restores your energy? I don't know. But the fact remains, that's just not fun.

Even though that's the major problem, there are many other problems with the difficulty. There are so many enemies in a single room, moving so fast in so many different patterns, that it's practically impossible not to get hit. Sometimes there are so many enemies that there is massive slowdown, which kind of helps you, but not by much. And then there's the unfair positioning of enemies. Oftentimes, enemies are placed in such a way that they hit you as soon as you enter a room, during that short span of time that you have no control over Samus because she's going through the door. Meaning, it's impossible not to get hit. That right there is shameful.

But the difficulty extends even farther beyond just enemies. You have no map, and the NES's limited capacity means that they reused many of the same areas. Sometimes you're walking and you wonder if you're just scrolling through the same place over and over again. Too many places are identical, and with no map, you'll be lost the majority of the time. Then throw the way power-ups were hidden into the mix. Some of the hidden places are unbelievable. Bombable walls, floors, and ceilings are no different from their regular counterparts. You're walking through a perfectly normal room, and you have no way of knowing that three feet away from the corner opposite the door,  there is a bombable segment of the floorthat leads you to a necessary item. And sometimes they even take it farther... but I think you've heard enough. Basically, the difficulty ruins an otherwise good game. I'm thinking that people back in 1986 didn't mind doing the same thing over and over again and shooting at walls non-stop for weeks. Now, however, there are too many games and things that would be a better use of my time.

Secrets: 8

There are many. And with the way they hide these things, you have weeks of playing ahead of you to find them all. All these secrets were probably a big thing back then.

Length: 2.5

Don't ask how, but I've beaten this game, and it's actually incredibly short. The only thing that saves it is the difficulty, but at this point, I'd take a really short game over all that frustration. They probably made it this hard so it would last a while and people wouldn't feel cheated out of their money, but I don't like it.

Replayability: 3.5

After you beat it, it will probably be easier, making it a little more fun. Although I don't imagine myself
wanting to go through it again anytime soon.

Fun Factor!: 4

Difficulty kills this game, raises it as undead, and then burns the undead flesh at a stake. Sometimes I did feel I was having fun, only to find a really hard spot and wanting to quit. As a result, I think something as simple as a statue that restores your energy like in Zero Mission would have made this game a lot more fun for me.

Overall: 4

Metroid has many good things going for it, and I definitely see how it could have been the bomb back in 1986. People didn't expect so much in that time, and hardware was very limiting. Now, however, I think it
doesn't stand the test of time quite as well as other oldies like Mario 3, mainly because of difficulty. I
wouldn't recommend buying a NES just to play this game. It comes free with Zero Mission though, and it's
worth a spin or two just to experience one of the great games of legend that has spawned such excellent sequels.

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