When I was a kid, Super Metroid was everything. Weaned on Nintendo ’s haunting, Alien -inspired side-scroller, I spent countless hours watching my father trudge through the depths of the planet Zebes as bounty hunter Samus Aran, doodling maps and rudimentary sketches of the armored heroine in a composition book. The game’s atmosphere and ambiance were so potent , it could goad into silence a loquacious and energetic six-year-old without even putting a controller in their hands.

Those formative memories mean that I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I think Metroid should be — as do many others. It’s a foundational text in gaming , one of those golden age touchstones for action-adventure and exploration systems that built a formula that could be followed for generations.

Pl

See Full Page