Super Metroid recently celebrated its 30-year anniversary.
Below, we look back at how it used and helped to create horror game tropes.
It begins with a benign pulse over black.
An otherworldly synth shriek interrupting.
Random shots of dead scientists in a pitch black laboratory.
The only thing alive is an unknowable entity under a class capsule.
The game was Super Metroid.
The Alex Garland Annihilation vibes of the Spore Spawn boss.
The deep, bone-chilling mood of Brinstar Red’s soundtrack, and its alien chants as a driving beat.
An entire level in a sunken, haunted spaceship, ruled over by the ghost of a kraken.
Maridia making Zebes' oceans feel utterly cursed.
The same magic trick of narrative happens when Samus lands on Zebes.
Except there’s nothing to fire on.
No one has cleaned.
No one has tried to reopen the place.
Whatever is happening on Zebes, she’s absolutely not alone.
What should be a place of safety is suddenly a fight to the death with a deadly bird-like goliath.
There are a few titles that have attempted to deftly instill that peril upon the player.
The thing to remember is that at the time, Super Metroid represented a series unshackled from the NES.
This is what series director Yoshio Sakamoto did with the freedom afforded by the Super Nintendo.
The series has always done more with less.
It’s a difference between a game that’s trying to scare you rather than just being scary.
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Samus comes to a room full of her most powerful enemies turned into lifeless piles of sand.
This, ultimately, is not the final boss.
Samus legitimately almost loses to Mother Brain, only saved by the famous deus ex metroid.
Surviving that terror is what makes Samus Aran’s triumphs all the more gratifying.
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