However, older tech and design sensibilities do not merely limit, they also facilitate.

While there is a clear lineage between them, Super Metroid has distinctly different sensibilities than its predecessors.

Super Metroid is not a refinement.

Rather, it emphasizes certain elements of a potentially wide genre space.

Revisiting Metroid with an open mind and clear eyes shows a world of possibility that Super confines.

There’s no getting around the fact that Metroid can be difficult to revisit.

It was treading new ground in a time that had foundationally different sensibilities than now.

That bareness, though, is a strength, making its hostile alien world more difficult to comprehend.

While Metroid is without plot except in the barest gestures, it does have an arc.

A metal heart beats at the center of a wild world, a steel poison creeps through plant-covered capillaries.

It’s legitimately poetic, but relies entirely on imagery to make its point.

Even the notoriously silent Super Metroid is more explicit.

It loses the interconnected ecology of Metroid, but gains a razor-sharp horror.

So little can be seen outside of Samus that anything could be lurking around the corner.

The movement is heavy, rather than the effortless-looking speed of future games.

Samus’s objective too–simply to murder every remaining metroid–is explicitly destructive.

Likely the biggest addition in Super Metroid is a map.

Of course, this affords many conveniences.

They can find unopened doors, look over explored areas for potential missed items.

All this, though, makes the space more knowable, more able to be contained and understood.

Super Metroid also introduces less floaty, more aerobatic movement.

Super Metroid casts a far larger shadow than the two games which preceded it.

Even within the franchise itself, Super is clearly the largest influence.

Zero Mission remakes the original Metroid to have a more Super-like structure.

However, the movement, abilities, and even tone are largely lifted from Super Metroid.

Even Prime, which is a big change, broadly moved the Super formula to 3D.

The influence feels more visible outside of Nintendo’s hallowed halls.

This is not to say that these follow-ups have no innovations or particular character.

Castlevania’s RPG systems have become cornerstones of the genre.

There’s also nothing wrong with straightforward revizitation.

However, the fixation on Super can be limiting as much as it is inspiring.

Overwhelm reverses Metroid’s basic structure.

With every boss its protagonist defeats, enemies gain abilities.

Power-ups do not exist for this invader with a gun.

One death resets everything, though the game has robust accessibility and difficulty options.

It’s a game that turns up and heightens Metroid II’s open hostility.

Rain World places the player as one part of an interconnected and dangerous ecosystem.

As these small critters, you will hibernate, hide, and eat.

Metroid, and Metroid II, embody that curious contradiction.

They are paradoxically highly influential and celebrated games that feel a little forgotten.

That sounds simple, but it can be a big leap.

Its a shame that more games havent taken it.

Image of Metroid Famicom box art viaWikitroid.

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