Every 2D Metroid game, ranked from worst to best by an unqualified chump

This Fall, the legendary Metroid saga finally receives its long-awaited fifth installment. One of Nintendo’s oldest and most beloved series, Metroid is a big deal, and amid all the excitement when Metroid Dread, the thought-canceled next entry nineteen years in the making, was announced at Nintendo’s 2021 E3 presentation, I only had one thought: I wish I had played these games.

So, out of a sense of curiosity and FOMO, I began a quest to play every 2D Metroid title to completion, and I am proud to announce that I kinda succeeded. There are two titles in the franchise that I simply couldn’t bring myself to trudge through, and we’ll get to those very shortly, because I am, after two months of indoctrination, about to rank every 2D Metroid game. Despite not having played any of them until June.

Metroid II: Return of Samus

Metroid II: Return of Samus is full of great ideas. The small counter ever-present in the bottom corner of the screen provides a sense of foreboding, and every time Samus hunts down one of the titular Metroids and the counter ticks down, I was simultaneously satisfied at having accomplished something and threatened by what could be next. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be bothered to finish the game, because it was a colossal waste of time.

Return of Samus is unquestionably held back by its hardware. The original GameBoy is not the most powerful handheld around, and it shows thanks to some truly frustrating exclusions, perhaps the most egregious of which is color. I know it’s unfair (and impossible) to expect a monochromatic console to somehow output color, but the fact that it can’t is exactly why a Metroid game isn’t a good fit for the platform. It’s extraordinarily difficult to differentiate between “exploring” and “retreading” when everything in the game is identical and there’s no map system to help you keep track of anything.

Putting a Metroid game on a handheld console surely seemed like a good idea at the time, and, as later entries would prove, the series really is a perfect fit, but the GameBoy just wasn’t ready for Samus. As a result, this second outing for the bounty hunter is frustrating and artificially elongated by time the player wastes on running back and forth, wondering if they’ve seen this specific rock formation before.

Metroid

And here’s the other game I didn’t finish. Listen, Metroid was groundbreaking. The art and music are still beautiful to this day, and the moment-to-moment gameplay has aged surprisingly well. I think it has an extraordinarily clean opening, in which the player almost instantly finds the Morph Ball, setting the tone for a game where, around any corner, there could be another game-changing power-up. Then… what? Where are you supposed to go? What are you supposed to do? The game gives the player absolutely no context for what their next step ought to be.

On the one hand, this open-ended nature allows curious players to explore to their heart’s content, to discover the game as they go and experience an adventure that feels like their own. On the other hand, for the slightly less adventurous, this isn’t exciting, it’s just directionless. Exploring is all well and good, but without a map, the same retreading issues present in Return of Samus are nearly as grating here, only slightly alleviated by the different designs in different areas.

Metroid introduced a lot of great ideas, not just to its own franchise, but to gaming as a whole. Unfortunately, in retrospect, it’s more of an impressive prototype than a sincerely great game, thanks to limitations of both hardware and design philosophy.

Metroid Fusion

Metroid Fusion is, in many ways, the opposite of Metroid — if that original title was too directionless, Fusion is far too guided; likewise, if Metroid is hindered by its hardware, Fusion takes full advantage of its more powerful platform. Certainly a huge step in a new direction for the franchise, Fusion is driven by a much more plainly obvious narrative, with objective markers and dialogue exchanges being present for the first time in the series.

This forward-pressing narrative is exciting, and it feels like Nintendo took a page out of their original inspiration, the Alien film franchise. The story is full of engaging turns, and it builds off the hints left in previous titles in very satisfying ways. In addition, new gameplay elements like Samus’s creepy lookalike stalker “SA-X,” the limitations of resources like the iconic Ice Beam, and the delightfully creative X-Parasites are all welcome additions to the series. Unfortunately, there’s one major problem with Fusion: it doesn’t really feel like Metroid.

On its own, Fusion is a great game bordering on masterpiece territory, but as a part of a series that’s normally so driven by freedom of exploration, having every major unlockable placed along a linear path and being forced to follow explicit instructions feels remarkably limiting. Where the series at large felt like it was daring you to venture into unknown territory, Fusion feels more like a straightforward roller-coaster ride, which isn’t a problem on its own, but it does bump it down this list for me, personally.

Super Metroid

Frankly, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t consider Super Metroid a masterclass in game design. Every upgrade and element in the game is genuinely fun, not just to experience, but to discover. Super Metroid is all about making good on the promises of the original Metroid. Samus returns to the setting of that original game for the first time, and the structure is remarkably similar.

What sets Super Metroid apart from the first title is its outstanding visual clarity. With the addition of a map, as well as well-placed visual cues throughout, it’s almost always obvious what you haven’t seen yet in this game, which makes exploration much less frustrating and much more rewarding. The player is never left scratching their head as to whether or not they’ve accomplished everything they can, and the design of the world feels extraordinarily deliberate. For the first time, Zebes, the setting of the very first game in the series feels fully realized.

Meandering through Super Metroid’s massive interconnected map feels exciting and engaging, with new upgrades and unlockables everywhere. This game marked a very clear point where Metroid went from a good idea to a great series.

Metroid: Zero Mission

If Super Metroid saved the original Metroid’s setting and general premise, Zero Mission saved its story. The original Metroid is plot-light, and, frankly, too difficult for most players to push through and discover what little plot there was. Zero Mission is more condensed, prettier, and simply the best way to experience the original story of Samus Aran’s first visit to Zebes.

While Zero Mission is made in the same engine as Fusion, the only similarity it shares is in the art style. In terms of gameplay, it’s much more like its predecessors, encouraging exploration of every frame as thoroughly as possible and giving the player narrative progression primarily without dialogue. There are still guide markers, as there were in Fusion, but rather than that game’s urgency to get you from place to place, Zero Mission’s attitude towards guiding the player through the game feels much more laid back. When a marker appears on the screen, it’s rarely the only place to go, it’s just a place that hasn’t been explored yet. These small suggestions are slightly inelegant nudges that encourage players who prefer to know what they’re doing, and, as a result, the adventure is more exciting for everyone.

Blending Fusion’s sense of direction with Metroid’s sense of exploration, without allowing either to overtake the other, allows the player to enjoy Zero Mission however they choose to. There’s no pushy computer or lengthy dialogue scenes, and there’s no random bombing of walls in the hopes that one of them will turn out to be a secret. Zero Mission is the perfect onboarding point for anyone new to the series.

Metroid: Samus Returns

It seems somehow fitting that my least favorite Metroid game, Return of Samus, would also be my favorite Metroid game when remade into Metroid: Samus Returns, a reimagined adventure through the Metroid homeworld of SR388. Samus Returns is a genius piece of game design, thoughtfully assembling the pieces of its predecessors into a game that could be called the definitive 2D Metroid experience, spinning the smartest concepts from Return of Samus into genuinely compelling modern gameplay elements.

It’s worth remembering that Samus Aran is a bounty hunter, and Samus Returns seems to be the only game interested in that element of her character. The original Metroid II may have dabbled in the idea of the iron-clad space warrior picking off her prey one by one, but with little to no guidance, it felt less like hunting down enemies and more like stumbling around until the player happened to find something to shoot. Here, Samus tracks the Metroids by their DNA, effectively recreating Zero Mission’s location markers. As a result, crawling into a Metroid’s lair really does feel like successfully completing a hunt, rather than coincidentally finding something to kill. Coupled with the best set of upgrades in the series to date, Samus Returns is a constant delight to play from beginning to end.

I truly don’t have a bad thing to say about this one. The simultaneously triumphant and anxiety-inducing Metroid counter is put to use in a much more compelling way in this game, the world is designed carefully to constantly encourage the player to smartly use their entire toolkit, and it’s easily the most badass Samus Aran has ever felt. Samus Returns is a modern masterpiece, and my favorite 2D Metroid game.

As the headline of this post says, I’m an unqualified chump. I have certainly become a fan of Metroid over the last couple months, and I’m eager to get my hands on the next title, but my awareness of this series is staggeringly low, and my rankings are by no means definitive. Hell, I haven’t even finished Metroid Prime or any of the other 3D entries. So, I’m interested to hear from more invested fans — what do you think? What’s your favorite Metroid game? Was I way off-base? Is Samus Returns the worst one yet? Sincerely, please let me know in the comments, and I wish you all a happy two months till Dread!