Metroid

Name: Metroid
System: Nintendo Entertainment System
Designed By: Nintendo
Release Date: 1986
Type: Shooter
Players: 1

One of the true Nintendo classics, Metroid is one of my favorite games to this day. You play surgically enhanced cyborg bounty hunter, Samus Aran, who is sent to the planet Zebes after a capsule containing the unknown life-form known as the Metroid. In your typically Hollywood type luck, that particular capsule is seized by space pirates. Yes, space pirates. The Metroid is currently in a state of suspended animation, but when re-activated and exposed to beta rays will multiply. If used as a weapon, it could potentially destroy the whole galactic civilization, and you are the only person who can stop the Mother Brain (giant-sized-brain-in-a-jar space pirate leader) from succeeding in doing so.

Although essentially a 2D scrolling platformer, it was one of the first games to introduce a system of backtracking to areas previously visited. It had many elements that were characteristic to Role Playing Games. You had to find and locate certain items that were necessary to gain access to areas later on in the game. In Metroid, upgrading your character was essential for survival.

The game itself could be completed without discovering all the areas. Percentage wise, you could finish the game even though you had only discovered 40% of the entire map. There were also alternate endings depending on the time taken to make your way through Metroid. Although these properties of the game are not astounding by today’s standards, this was quite an achievement at the time. And perhaps the biggest kicker of them all:

Samus Aran is a chick. A space pirate booty kickin’ chick. And you had to get the alternate ending to figure that out.

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