Metroid: Ranking All Main Games From Worst To Best
1. Metroid (1986)
After Nintendo enjoyed success entering the video game market with the popular Super Mario Bros, Nintendo wanted to make an action-adventure game. Influenced by the popular film Alien (1979), they decided to set the game in space and have you fight against multiple alien threats to stand out from the other Nintendo titles released prior.
As well as the settings being influenced by Alien, the creators decided to make Samus Aran female, yet only be revealed if you beat the game within a specific timeframe. In a time when video games were marketed strongly towards boys, Samus' reveal would be both shocking and revolutionary at a time where a majority of characters were male.
With an emphasis on space exploration, the developers decided to make large locations to compensate with the slower movements the character was programmed with. While they did experiment with faster motions too, the team felt that the game was too hard to control and stuck with larger locations that have been a staple for the series ever since.
Even as early as the eighties, the game has been one of the most influential with the creation of Metroidvania. This sub-genre, that combined large scale locations and exploration, would influence the industry ever since with Super Metroid helping to improve it with faster controls and diverse locations.
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