Metroid is Nintendo’s 1986 side-scrolling action-adventure, originally released in Japan on the Famicom Disk System (this is the Rev 3 Japanese release) before reaching the West on NES cartridge the same year. Directed by Yoshio Sakamoto and produced by Gunpei Yokoi, it drops you into the boots of bounty hunter Samus Aran on a mission to infiltrate the planet Zebes and stop the Space Pirates from weaponizing the parasitic Metroid organisms. Rather than a linear run to the exit, Metroid hands you a sprawling, interconnected map and lets you find your own way through it — an approach so influential it later gave the “Metroidvania” genre its name.
How to Play
The goal is to explore Zebes, defeat the Space Pirate leader Mother Brain, and destroy the Metroid breeding operation, backtracking through earlier areas as new items open up previously blocked paths. Default NES controls, mapped to the browser:
- Arrow keys — move Samus left/right, aim up, and crouch/enter Morph Ball down
- Z — jump
- X — fire weapon
- Enter — Start (pause)
- Shift — Select (swap between missiles and your beam weapon once missiles are found)
Tips
- Bomb-jump: laying a bomb while curled in the Morph Ball and timing a jump off the blast can reach ledges and secret passages long before the Hi-Jump Boots make it easy.
- Missiles refill health as well as ammo when picked up, so it’s often worth backtracking to farm a nearby drop before a tough fight rather than pushing in low.
- Finishing the game quickly changes Samus’s ending outfit — clearing it in under three hours removes her armor, a famous twist that revealed the hero was a woman for the first time in gaming.
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