Another well established Nintendo character with a long history is Samus Aran, star of the Metroid series. Despite the appearance of the character, which looks fairly masculine, Samus is in fact female. The first game, entitled simply Metroid, appeared in 1986 on the NES, and was a platform shoot ‘em up with a huge single world, the Planet Zebes, to explore.

Starting the game with just a body suit and laser gun, Samus soon learns lots of new techniques to progress around the world. Several weapon power ups and the addition of missiles are available, as well as the most unique improvement, the morph ball. This allows Samus to become a ball, funnily enough, which allows her access to small tunnels and so onto otherwise unreachable sections of the game. The suit also gained a gravity jump, allowing tall vertical sections of levels to be easily scaled.

The first game involved tracking down the Mother Brain, a huge brain in a jar (game developers just love the old brain in a jar, and this was one of the first games to feature such an enemy). The Mother Brain has been busy though, creating the fearsome Metroids. These are horrible floating brain creatures, who home in and lock on the player unless they are quickly dispatched, and killing them was not simple, involving freezing with an ice ray, then pumping missiles into them!

It was 6 years before Metroid 2: Return of Samus followed on the Gameboy, with the gameplay moved to the Metroid’s homeworld, the snappily named planet SR388. This planet was a dangerous, lava filled place, but the basic game play was the same. The body suit and morph ball received further upgrades, allowing the lava to be safely negotiated, in the quest to find the Queen Metroid and eradicate the species entirely. Unfortunately for Samus, she let one Metroid hatchling get away.

The SNES game Super Metroid arrived in 1994, and again further upgrades were available, though as with most of the Metroid games you had to relearn all the moves again, starting off with just the basic gun. This is kind of infuriating, since the games tend to follow on from each other. It also means there’s a lot of backtracking around levels where you’ll find a section that you can’t reach yet because you don’t have the required ability.

Another long wait ensued for the next game, with Metroid Fusion appearing on the Gameboy Advance in 2002. Again the gameplay was pretty much identical to the earlier games, and this game is well known for having some incredibly difficult bosses at various stages in the game. Also on the GBA was Metroid Zero Mission, which was a kind of retelling of the first game, remade with nicer graphics and also extended with some new areas and enemies which didn’t appear in the original.

Metroid Prime was the first step into the third dimension for the series, appearing on the Gamecube, also in late 2002. The game had a first person perspective when running around, seamlessly switching to third person when entering the morph ball state. The game was huge, and despite rather too much backtracking and getting lost, a great success. Only the incredibly tough end part of the game, when the Metroid’s get released, spoiled the enjoyment of this great game.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes also appeared on the Gamecube, which added multiplayer gaming to the mix, and the 3D engine has also been successfully shrunk down for the DS with Metroid Prime: Hunters, which allows the touch screen to be used as a really simple and effective way of aiming at the various enemies in the game.

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