19/40

By Charles - May 3rd, 2026

I decided that I would give the Metroid series a try. I had heard that this game was pretty rough and you needed a map to beat it. I decided against this since I typically have more fun with retro games figuring things out by myself. I feel like you get to understand these games better when playing them as you would when they originally released. While I think it's better than most people give it credit, Metroid still isn't great.

Metroid

NES, 1986

~$2100 Sealed

~$26 Used

Other Releases:

Virtual Console

GBA Classic NES Series

Nintendo Switch Online

Presentation

5

I couldn't tell you this game looks good for a million dollars. Although there is a good variety, level tiles all use weird colors and look over-detailed. The enemy sprites are very bad and it's hard to tell what most of them are supposed to be. Samus looks okay but her running animation is awful. Worst of all are Kraid and Ridley. I think they were intended to be boss fights but it's more like a clown show. These are some of the worst sprites I've ever seen on NES. The music and sound effects are pretty weak, but I don't feel like I need to turn the game sound off, so it could be worse. I did notice one issue, where, if you fall too fast, the color palettes glitch and some tiles are the wrong color. This doesn't happen often but it feels low-quality.

The enemies all look terrible.

Controls

7

Samus controls fine and feels very responsive. Samus' jump is really awkward, but once you get used to it, I actually think that the physics here are better than Super Mario Bros. Samus feels a lot lighter and has better mobility. The tradeoff is that you're a lot slower. There are no weird button combinations that you have to find out. All your abilities are very intuitive and this game never feels restricted by the NES controller. The main issue I have is with missiles. You're given a limited amount and expected to shoot down enemies that are flying around the screen. It's way too easy to run out, and when you run out, the regular gun is automatically equipped. This can be really annoying if you run out but immediately collect another missile drop without realizing you hit zero.

There are collectibles hidden throughout.

Content

3

Metroid is composed of one big level in which you have to find different collectibles and power ups to make your way through the maze. The problem is that you can spend 20 minutes exploring an area and it's the same 3 segments over and over. This ruins exploration, especially since there are insane difficulty spikes. If you miss collecting a certain item, you will die almost instantly going into a new area. Even worse is that every time you die, you get reset to 30 health, which is one or two hits in later areas. Every time you die, you have to spend 10 minutes farming health drops. The boss fights are very easy which makes things very anti-climatic. This game took me about a week to beat, but most of that was just frustration. If you know what you're doing, this game takes an hour or two. It's not actually very long.

The same boring sections keep repeating.

Fun Factor

4

Metroid is not fun. I couldn't stop playing just because I felt like the game was mocking me if I put it down. It was more like trying to finish homework than enjoying myself. The first few minutes of the game is a lot of fun, but once you discover a second area, the game falls flat on its face. It's too difficult but doesn't feel like a good challenge. The only fun I had from this game was trying to run through it in an hour to get the best ending. Actually using an online map and trying to find the best route was pretty interesting, especially since you keep some items if you restart after beating the game. Unfortunately, the main experience of the game is simply annoying.

Beating the game quick is pretty fun.

Worth the Time?

Worth the Money?

If you're a big fan of retro platformers, I think you can survive the original Metroid. If you just want to play through the Metroid series, try Zero Mission only.

It's cheap enough that you could get it for your NES collection but this is not worth the money to play.

Screenshots from [Nintendo Entertainment System: Nintendo Switch Online (Metroid)] © [Nintendo], used for review purposes.