I was a Nintendo kid through and through. I grew up sitting on the floor exploring the world of Majora’s Mask on my GameCube, not having any clue what to do. I would literally play through the first 3 days over and over again, getting closer to finally opening the clock tower and starting the game in earnest. When I wasn’t doing that, I was playing Pokémon Fire Red on my Game Boy SP. Probably trying to figure out if tailwhip lowered my Pokémon’s defense permanently.

Whatever I was up to, Nintendo consoles were integral to my childhood. I have many a core memories of swapping cartridges on the playground and talking strategies. I even remember dropping my sibling’s Game Boy in the toilet while playing Donkey Kong Land 2.

That being said, I missed out on a lot of great games as a kid. I didn’t have an older brother to show me the deeper gaming knowledge. Games like Skies of Arcadia, Jet Set Radio, Rez, Golden Sun, and truly countless more passed me by because I simply didn’t know what was considered good at the time.

Now that I’m older, have internet access, and gaming podcasts have entered reality, I (and you) have more access to the games of the past than ever before.

In this series, I visit the things I missed, and today I want to talk about:

My first touchpoint with Metroid was Super Smash Bros. I assume most people my age first came in contact with the series this way, but when I asked my peers who Samus was, at least one kid knew. Maybe his older brother was into it or something.

For the longest time, I just knew Metroid was a sci-fi game that starred Samus.

Metroid feels like the black sheep of Nintendo properties.

Nintendo is known for making bright, fun, and often kid-friendly games. Mario isn’t scary or thematically challenging, and although there are spooky moments here and there in the first two 3D Zelda games, Ocarina of Time, and Majora’s Mask, they were never outright trying to scare people. Even Luigi’s Mansion, Nintendo’s answer to the Resident Evil games, is closer to a spooky romp than a Dead Space.

Metroid, on the other hand, really feels like it was intentionally made to be spooky, and I picked up on that as a kid. I don’t think I would have enjoyed these games back then. I was a baby so the scarier parts would have sent me into a month-long recurring nightmare of seeing creepy bugs on my walls as I tried to fall asleep.

Metroid feels like the black sheep of Nintendo games, not just because it’s the only series that feels more mature and scary, but also in how Nintendo has handled the property over the years.

The series saw a lot of activity in the early 2000s. From 2002-2010, nine Metroid games would be released. One of which is a remake, another one is pinball, and a third is a collected version of the THREE Metroid Prime games that had come out within the previous 7 years. This was a great time to be a Metroid fan, even if some people didn’t like all the releases.

However, between 2010 and 2020, two games came out. And one of them was a co-op game seemingly targeting kids. The other a 3DS game that came out right around the time the Switch came out.

Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for video games to take nearly a decade to finish, but Metroid is a huge franchise that all but disappeared in the 2010s.

It seemed like Metroid was just an old game on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Sure, there were some fans, but was it actually good?

It wasn’t until I went to college and met a good friend of mine that I learned more about the series.

This friend’s name is Dustin, and if there’s one thing you should know about him, is that he loves a good challenge. I meant him in 2017, and I’m pretty sure he was playing through Dark Souls III on NG+++++++++++++++. That means he had played through an already very challenging game 16 times as the difficulty increased each time.

So when I learned that Dustin loves Metroid, it was easy to assume that they were challenging games. At the time, I was interested in playing the game, but they weren’t very accessible. However, when Metroid Dread came out in 2021, I finally made the plunge.

And I bounced off so hard.

The game was challenging, and it’s the reason I went out and bought a Switch Pro Controller. I needed that extra fidelity and ergonomics to get through the challenging bosses. After about 8 hours of running away from killer robots and bashing my head into walls, I just lost interest. I didn’t know what the game was asking of me, and I was too distracted to try harder.

Jump forward to 2025, and I now have access to a lot of classic games. I love the Game Boy Advance library, and one title has been staring me down for a while now:

Before starting this game, I really only knew that a lot of people loved it and that it is in most people’s top 5 GBA games, but what convinced me to play it was its length. I know, kind of lame, but I can’t resist a highly regarded game that’s only around 7 hours. With my busy schedule, this felt like the game for me.

And boy howdy, it is.

Right off the bat, I notice just how gorgeous the game is. The sprite work looks amazing. Everything is legible, but it’s also immersive, and the game controls incredibly well.

I played on my Retroid Pocket 5 and used a shimerless filter as well as an overlay to bring the Gameboy Advance logo into the bottom of the screen. I played with integer scaling, and it looked gorgeous on the RP5s OLED screen.

Getting a little further into the game, I started to realize just how guided the game is. When I think of Metroid-Vania games, I often assume most of them emphasize exploration. That includes finding a section you can’t reach, finding a powerup later down the line, and then trying to remember where that area you found was.

This isn’t the case for Metroid: Fusion. The game guides the player to where they need to go by starting the player in a hub area and telling them which sector they need to go to. There are sections you can go back to, but for the most part the game tells you where to go.

Metroid Fusion is definitely not a story-heavy game, but it does feel cinematic. At the beginning of the game, you watch Samus get infected by what is called the X parasite. Due to the medical intervention needed to save Samus, her body suit had to be surgically removed from her body, and now she’s lost all of her powers.

After recovering, she’s sent to the space station BSL to investigate an explosion and contact the crew. She’s chosen because she’s now immune to the X parasite, which is also on the station.

Shortly after arriving at the space station, Samus discovers SA-X, a clone of her that the X-parasite made using her DNA. This clone is not nice, in fact, she’s very scary, and she wants to kill Samus and will stalk her around the station for the entire game.

This setup reminded me of Alien. Not the clone part, but being stuck on a space station while a very strong monster is looking for you.

In terms of the themes of the games, I didn’t pick up on much. I was primarily there for the vibes. While I missed it, one of my favorite creatives, Brenden Bigley, over at Wavelengths, has a great review that goes into detail about the game’s central theme:

What does it mean to be all-powerful and lose everything?

Metroid Fusion messes with the expectations of players.

You spend the first moments of the game following orders:

However, there are moments when you get to that location only to find something is wrong. Either the monster isn’t there, or something is blocking your way. This adds to the tension and horror of the game. Although you’re told what to do, you never know what’s coming.

The game also plays with expectations in the inverse. In one section of the game, you’re told that SA-X, the evil clone that’s following you around, is in the same sector as you. They stress that if you see it, you need to RUN.

This makes this segment tense, but SA-X never shows up. The player is expecting a jump scare and instead gets a 15-minute segment that feels like you’re slowly curling back into your chair.

Perspective is also not safe from this destruction of expectations. The entire thing is a sidescrolling game, but there’s one moment when SA-X breaks through a wall and the camera zooms into its face and reveals its cold, dead, empty eyes. It’s a genuine jump scare that works really well.

The way the game plays with expectations makes the game feel really scary. Sure, you’re told what to do for the most part, but you never know what’s waiting around the corner, and you never know who to trust.

I love a good boss fight. They need to navigate the space between making me scream in anger and making me want to keep trying. This means when I lose, it’s not my fault.

The bosses in Metroid Fusion fit this description to a T.

I experienced moments of needing to turn off my Retroid and step away for a breather, and I felt the tension of knowing what I had to do, but not being able to do it. After the first couple of bosses, every new boss felt like an impossible task. An uphill battle with hundreds of projectiles flying at lightspeed right to my face.

When I get stuck on a boss in any game, typically, I just need to watch a video of someone beating it, and that’s enough information for me to finish the game. That was not the case for Metroid Fusion.

On multiple occasions, I found myself using the strategies from a written guide or a video only to find that it was not working for me. Instead, I would eventually find my own way to finish the game. Not something that I expected, but very welcome.

Metroid-vania games are known for going back to get the things you missed.

Throughout Metroid Fusion, there are obvious areas and secrets that you can’t reach until you get an upgrade. So, when I got the final upgrade, I was stoked to clear the map and get all the buffs before the final fight.

That didn’t happen.

You see, Metroid Fusion has a huge story beat that happens right before the final fight. Such a big moment that the player becomes locked into the end of the game. All the doors in the station are locked except for the doors leading to the final boss.

This is where my only complaint with the game is. Unless you know that interacting with the final navigation room would lock you into the end of the game, there’s no way to sweep the map for more upgrades. Instead, you’re forced to lock in to the final fight with whatever upgrades you have.

For me, that meant only having 9 out of 20 energy tanks.

The final fight with SA-X is tremendously tough, and having less than possible health makes it even more difficult. My biggest issue with this moment isn’t that it was challenging, but that it was more challenging because I didn’t know the game was going to lock me in. It felt really bad.

But man…

… it felt so good to finally beat it.

The experience of trying out different ways to beat SA-X, using a guide to figure out the best way to do it, then figuring out my own way to beat it, was exhilarating. It felt like I had ownership over how I beat this fight, and that rocked.