The History of Metroid

We apologise for the interruption...

Admittedly, the fact that - Samus's cameo in Super Smash Bros aside - the series skipped the N64 completely could be down to the fact that legendary Metroid producer Gunpei Yokoi left Nintendo under a cloud in 1996. Having started on the production line in 1965, back when Nintendo was churning out playing cards, Yokoi earned his reputation by designing the Game & Watch handheld LCD games and the world-conquering Game Boy, but then promptly pissed on his own chips following the debacle that was the disastrous 3D headache machine, Virtual Boy. Only a few years after leaving Nintendo, while developing the WonderSwan handheld for rival Bandai, Yokoi was killed in a car accident.

Of course, it's doubtful that this sad turn of events directly resulted in Metroid's hiatus during the rest of the 1990s - "We were thinking of ways to produce a new Metroid title," Shigeru Miyamoto has said of those wilderness years. "We couldn't come up with any concrete ideas at that time," - but it certainly didn't help that the rest of the Nintendo stable had successfully made the leap into the bright new 3D N64 world. Samus was left looking a little bit like a relic to the new generation of polygon-loving joykids. A revered and respected relic, sure, but a relic all the same.

Fans would have to wait until 2000 for Nintendo to announce the return of Metroid, with two new games planned - Metroid IV, a direct sequel to Super Metroid for the Game Boy Advance, and Metroid Prime, a new first-person adventure for the GameCube. The two games, it was declared, would also use the GameCube GBA cable to offer unlockable content across the two games, with success in the handheld version opening up an emulated version of the original Metroid and completion of Prime opening up the Fusion costume for repeat play. In the end it took two years for Metroid IV to arrive, by which time it had been redubbed Metroid Fusion.

2002 - Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion

After such a long wait it's hard to blame fans for being a little sniffy about the game's deviation from formula - Samus now took orders from an AI computer containing the brain patterns of her former commanding officer, Adam, and is thus less free to explore at will - but in retrospect it's still a fine game, one of the best on the GBA, and a worthy continuation of the saga. Indeed, with its 2D side-scrolling format the jump from Super Metroid to Metroid Fusion is virtually seamless, despite twelve years between them.

Fusion was also unusual in that it was the first Metroid to be released in the US before Japan, and this continental shift was also evident in Metroid Prime, the first Metroid game to be developed by an American team - in this case, the Texas-based Retro Studios. Shigeru Miyamoto personally oversaw the project from Japan, while Super Metroid composer Kenji Yamamoto provided the soundtrack - the only game element not created entirely in America. Both games were released on the same day in the US but, in a situation that was already becoming sadly predictable, we poor slobs in the PAL territory had to wait another five months to get our hands on it. Indeed, many commentators still maintain that having Prime miss the Christmas period was the final nail in the GameCube's coffin as far as Europe was concerned.

Thankfully, once we finally got our misshapen claws on the damn thing in March 2003, the hype proved worthwhile. Just as the original Metroid had taken the prevailing 2D platform template of its time and bent it into something new, so Prime took the first-person shooter framework and transformed it into something unmistakably Metroid. As before, the game was open and free-roaming but progress was dependent on acquiring the right beams to open doors or suit upgrades to survive hazardous environments. And, again, shrewd players could take advantage of the game's design - and the new addition of realistic physics - to nab items ahead of time, or to bypass certain chunks of game entirely. The story, meanwhile, closed the book on the classic Metroid trilogy and started a fresh storyline which would squeeze into the chronological narrative gap between the original Metroid and Metroid II, revolving around those pesky space pirates and the all-new monster entity known as Metroid Prime. Hence the name, you see.

Despite initial misgivings about the FPS approach, Prime was greeted with great whoops of joy by critics and gamers alike, with our very own Tom serenading it, with the words "a game so mesmerising that it has stirred emotion in even the curmudgeonliest of games writers" and a cake in the shape of a giant 10/10. Kristan was slightly less tumescent with his praise, in a rare double-team review, declaring that the "true mark of its genius is that even when it annoys the hell out of you, the compulsion to keep on playing never wanes". His cake was therefore only shaped like a nine, but it did have those crunchy silver sugary ball things sprinkled on top.

After being lost in limbo for more than a decade, Samus Aran was once again a hot property and this time Nintendo wasn't about to let her gather dust. Metroid: Zero Mission, an enhanced GBA remake of the original game, was swiftly on the shelves, taking the classic gameplay and throwing some new cut-scenes, areas and enemies into the mix. "One of the finest titles in the GBA's already impressive pantheon of platformers" quoth the silky tones of Rob Fahey. Not content to give the old dear a makeover, the untampered 1986 version was also released as a standalone GBA cartridge as part of the notoriously overpriced NES Classics range. Given that the exact same game could be unlocked for free in both Zero Mission and Fusion, this wasn't a particularly great deal. "Truly dire stuff" scowled Kristan, although the review says it was by Tom [bugs in the system - bugs Ed], which made me very confused. Now, of course, we have the Virtual Console where NES games are only moderately overpriced...

Ahem.