WiiNintendo

Man, who could forget?  It was one of the first NES games I’ve evr played, and it took me SO long to beat it.  When I did, I was ecstatic!  Then I put in the “JUSTIN BAILEY” code.  A classic.

Metroid’s celebrated exploration-oriented gameplay debuted twenty years ago, and the legend of Samus herself debuted when she took off her clothes.

 

ÂÂ	ÂÂ	ÂÂ
ÂÂ	“Get ready for a big surprise…”	ÂÂ
ÂÂ	ÂÂ	ÂÂ

 

Metroid for the Nintendo Entertainment System was a strange departure from standard adventures offered on the console at the time. Instead of scrolling the screen to the right as the hero hopped and bopped, Metroid’s gameplay had the space warrior Samus scaling and descending huge vertical shafts, searching endlessly for hidden passages, and even rolling up like a potato bug to get through tight squeezes. Also unlike many early NES games, players could backtrack. In fact, retracing steps and using acquired power-ups to reach previously inaccessible areas was essential to finishing the game successfully and witnessing one of video gaming’s most famous endings: Samus’ garish space armor falls away and thousands of pre-teen boys had to come to grips with the fact Mother Brain had just been wasted by a cootie-infested girl. 

Twenty years later, most of those boys have since come to realize girls aren’t so bad after all, and Samus could probably beat up their mothers if provoked, to say nothing of their fathers. Oh, and her games still rock really hard. 

Very few game series have aged as well as Metroid. Super Metroid for the Super Nintendo is consistently cited by fans as one of the greatest 2D games ever developed, and not only did the series just translate well into 3D, it thrived with Metroid Prime. Metroid’s unique exploration tactics are still implemented in games as recent as Megaman ZX and the upcoming Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin for the Nintendo DS. 

Metroid’s gameplay isn’t beloved exclusively. Fans love the series’ heroine, Samus Aran. Samus is hard to define as a character, which adds to her appeal. In the scrolls of the Chozo, the avian race that raised her after she was orphaned, she’s recorded as The Newborn, and the hope of their depleted race. To the Galactic Federation, she’s the protector of the galaxy. To Space Pirates, she’s the Huntress, or a handful of vulgar alien words. To gamers, Samus is mostly an enigma. Unlike other game heroines, she hasn’t spread herself and her secrets everywhere like a high school senior of ill repute. Samus’ motivations still command respect and a certain degree of awe. 

“She likes to show off her boobs,” jokes one fan identifying himself as M on an IRC chatroom. 

There’s no denying Samus has sex appeal. Nintendo’s statistics measure her at an Amazonish 6′3″ and 198 pounds. One of the Metroid series’ defining characteristics is the challenge to finish the game in an allotted amount of time to achieve a glimpse of Samus out of her armor. Still, her quietly confident demeanor speaks of a girl who can easily break the lesser beings who underestimate her. Fans are just as eager to use the bonus ending scenes to piece together her private life as they are to gawk at her physique, and Samus’ games, especially her older adventures, leave a lot to guess at.

More at: http://wii.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3152658

Discuss this and more in our forums.
Follow WiiNintendo on Twitter.
Subscribe to our RSS Feed.