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Super Metroid

Samus Aran's 24-megabit return to Zebes

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Nintendo R&D1 and Intelligent Systems made Super Metroid for the Super Nintendo, directed by Yoshio Sakamoto and released in Japan on 19 March 1994. One large map opened up by Samus Aran's new equipment, a story told almost without words and an ending that made players cry won over the press, and its open structure made it a favourite of speed-runners and sequence-breakers. Later games that borrowed its design gave the Metroidvania genre half its name.

Edge could not quite decide what to make of Super Metroid. Reviewing a Japanese import in June 1994, it noted that at 24 megabits the cartridge “may be one of the biggest ever on the SNES”, then complained that a determined player would finish it in about twelve hours, which “makes you wonder where all those megabits went to”. It gave the game eight out of ten. Super Play’s reviewer that month had no doubts at all. “I didn’t think they made games like Metroid any more,” he wrote, and the magazine’s verdict was that “Super Metroid is absolutely marvellous and you should own it.” Over the following decade the second opinion won. By 2005 Retro Gamer could say that Super Metroid was “still hailed as one of the greatest games of all time”, and the design it refined had become the model for a whole genre.

Fast facts

Making it

The idea came from the producer. Makoto Kanoh told Sakamoto that Metroid was very popular in North America and encouraged him to make a new one with the kind of graphics the Super Famicom could now produce. Sakamoto told Retro Gamer in 2011 that the game design and concept had been settled before Metroid II was made for the Game Boy. What the team wanted from the new machine was “greater power of expression”, a world that felt “closer to a reality”. Metroid II also gave them a starting point for the story: it ended with a baby Metroid hatching in front of Samus, and Super Metroid picks up from there.

The work was shared between two companies. The Intelligent Systems staff on the project were all programmers, and Sakamoto remembered no rivalry between them and the Nintendo team. The new hardware brought its own lessons. Sakamoto said that the Super Famicom was thought difficult to develop for, and that how the team divided up its video memory changed “wildly” what the game could show. Tomomi Yamane, whom Sakamoto regarded as the main designer, took a particular interest in the hardware and worked with the Intelligent Systems programmers on what images could be displayed. The Yoshio Sakamoto entry tells the rest of the story, from the overrunning schedule to the nap room.

Planet Zebes

The game opens on the Ceres space station, where Samus Aran has left the last Metroid for scientists to study. Retro Gamer’s John Szczepaniak described the title screen as the first scene of the game: a dark room panned across in close-up, then revealed to be full of dead bodies. Samus answers a distress call, finds the baby Metroid gone and fights Ridley, one of her old enemies, in a battle she cannot win. Ridley escapes with the Metroid, and Samus has 60 seconds to leave before the station explodes, while, as Edge put it, the screen “starts swaying in a Mode 7 kinda way”. She follows him to the planet Zebes.

Zebes is one large, connected map. Samus starts with a basic beam weapon, and most of the planet is out of reach until she finds the equipment to get there. Edge first thought the play “very pedestrian”, then found that the paths “channel you towards weapons and other helpful items which then allow you access to other parts of the game”. Its reviewer liked the Morphing Ball, which curls Samus up to roll through small gaps; the grappling beam, called the “Electric Rope” in the Japanese version, for swinging “Spider-Man-style” across a lagoon; and the speed boots, which leave a smear of colour behind Samus as she runs. A map on the pause screen shows the rooms already visited, and computer terminals download plans of the areas not yet explored. Super Play found that each new ability sent the player’s mind back to places they had passed: a room seen early on, now worth exploring again.

The game rarely explains itself. Sakamoto told Retro Gamer that the team “really didn’t want to explain things to the player using too many words”. Szczepaniak pointed to one example. Two of the planet’s creatures, the small Etecoons and the bird-like Dachora, show Samus how to wall-jump and how to use the Speed Booster, just by doing it in front of her. He also noticed that Samus is drawn correctly whichever way she faces, with her gun on the same arm, something he said few other 2D games bothered with.

Reviews

Super Play’s June 1994 import review compared the game with the film Aliens, praised a “Carmina Burana-esque” soundtrack in the penultimate area, and suggested readers not read the manual so as to get the most from a first play. The reviewer admitted being on a second play-through already, determined this time to find more than 72 per cent of the hidden missiles and rockets. Nintendo Power rated it 4.7 out of 5 for graphics and sound, 3.8 for play control, 4.6 for challenge and 4.6 for theme and fun. Edge was the cool voice: the graphics “couldn’t be described as mindblowing”, some levels looked “downright dreary”, and the orchestral tunes had “a tendency to drone after a while”. But it still thought Super Metroid offered what the Super NES had lacked lately, “an engrossing environment in which the player can lose himself”.

How many copies it sold depends on the source. Retro Gamer gave an estimate of 2 million worldwide in 2010. Figures from the Japanese industry body CESA, as reported secondhand, put shipments at 1.42 million by late 2003.

The ending

Mother Brain, the villain of the first game, returns as the final enemy, and so does the baby Metroid, now grown huge. It does not survive the fight. Sakamoto later singled out the moment in a talk at the Game Developers Conference in 2010. He had taken control away from the player to show a dramatic scene, which he believed was unusual for an action game at the time. The scene worked. In October 1994 a Nintendo Power reader wrote in to ask why the hatchling had to die, when players could save the Etecoons and the Dachora: “I was crying as soon as the Metroid died. Were you guys trying to play a drama? If so, you did a good job.”

Speed and sequence breaking

The game keeps a record of how long each saved game has been played and what share of the items Samus has collected. Super Play noticed straight away that the times gave friends something to compete over. Szczepaniak wrote in 2005 that the design had “a degree of non-linearity that begs to be manipulated”: players practised “sequence breaking”, reaching areas before the game expected, and took on the bosses with as little equipment as possible, with 20 per cent of the items or fewer counted as good. The scorekeeper Twin Galaxies was by then recording speed runs on consoles. The table Retro Gamer published in 2004 listed Brad Jackson’s 51 minutes as the fastest completion of Super Metroid, on a real console, “regardless of items acquisition percentage”.

Later releases

Nintendo has released the game again many times: on the Wii’s Virtual Console from 2007, then the Wii U and New Nintendo 3DS, on the Super NES Classic Mini in 2017, and on its Nintendo Switch Online service from 2019. The Metroid series itself went on to Metroid Fusion (2002), Metroid: Zero Mission (2004) and Metroid Dread (2021) in 2D, and to Metroid Prime (2002) in 3D.

The Metroidvania template

When Konami’s Castlevania: Symphony of the Night arrived in Europe in 1997, Edge found its closest relative in Super Metroid, “to which this latest saga pays almost religious homage”, citing “the gradual opening out of the map” and “the uncompromising puzzles”. Fans later joined the two names into “Metroidvania”, the name now used for action games set on one connected map opened up by new abilities. The Metroidvania entry follows the genre and the word.

Sources

  • Edge issue 9, June 1994, pp. 76–77: import review (Nintendo, £75 import, 24 Mbits, out in Japan; the 60-second escape; the Morphing Ball, “Electric Rope” and speed boots; the map and information posts; about 12 hours to finish; three save slots; graphics and music; eight out of ten).
  • Super Play issue 20, June 1994: Japanese import review by Zy Nicholson and the team (24 Mbit cartridge; “I didn’t think they made games like Metroid any more”; Aliens; the Carmina Burana-style music; the manual; 72 per cent of the items; times shown on the save screen; the verdict); feature naming R&D 1 under Gunpei Yokoi as the game’s designers.
  • Nintendo Magazine System (UK) issue 20, May 1994: Japanese release on 19 March 1994, with a choice of English or Japanese text; 24 Meg cartridge.
  • Nintendo Power issue 60, May 1994: “24-megabit adventure”; the Ceres Space Station; ratings in the Now Playing chart. Issue 65, October 1994: reader’s letter on the death of the hatchling.
  • Retro Gamer Collection volume 5, 2011, pp. 28–33, “The making of Super Metroid”, interview with Yoshio Sakamoto by Jonti Davies: Kanoh’s proposal, the aims, Metroid II‘s ending, Intelligent Systems’ programmers, video memory, Yamane, few words.
  • Retro Gamer issue 19, 2005, pp. 48–51, John Szczepaniak, “The Classic Game: Super Metroid”: the opening scenes, Samus’s sprite, the Etecoons and Dachora, the music, sequence breaking and low-percentage play, “one of the greatest games of all time”.
  • Retro Gamer issue 11, 2004, pp. 47–49, Alicia Ashby, speed-run feature: Twin Galaxies record table, Super Metroid in 51 minutes by Brad Jackson.
  • Retro Gamer Collection volume 4, 2010, “The complete history of Metroid”: Ridley and the stolen Metroid; the return of Mother Brain; an estimated 2 million copies sold; Metroid Prime in 2002.
  • Edge issue 51, November 1997: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night review and its comparison with Super Metroid.
  • Nintendo, “Yoshio Sakamoto: GDC lecture” (Japanese transcript of his Game Developers Conference 2010 talk): taking control away for a scene near the end. https://www.nintendo.co.jp/wii/interview/slsjr3oj/vol1/index_gdc1.html
  • Wikipedia, “Super Metroid” (web, secondary): release in North America on 18 April 1994 and Europe on 28 July 1994; CESA’s 2004 white paper figure of 1.42 million; the re-releases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Metroid

See also

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