The Super NES still had a couple of years of life in it, but the arrival of Donkey Kong Country would make it de rigueur for 2D games to try to disguise their nature by adopting pre-rendered computer-generated graphics. Super Metroid arrived right at the absolute tail end of the age of hand-drawn bitmap sprites a few months later, the PlayStation would launch in Japan. Metroid's absence most likely reflected the reality of an additional factor: Polygons. Yet Metroid remained missing in action for a whopping eight years, the only hint that it hadn't been forgotten altogether by its creators coming in the form of heroine Samus Aran's presence in all-star brawler Super Smash Bros. Nintendo revolutionized their core franchises during the Nintendo 64's lifetime, and with those franchises, the medium as a whole: Super Mario, Zelda, Mario Kart, and even Pilotwings and F-Zero. ![]() Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the Metroid franchise sat out a generation. By the end of Super Metroid, Mother Brain had been thoroughly annihilated, and the metroid species itself had become extinct thanks to the player's own efforts. There also wasn't much of anywhere left to take the narrative. There simply wasn't much that could be done to improve on the game's design without radically overhauling it, or else disrupting its careful balance of elements. Super Metroid had nearly flawless structure and flow: A lean adventure that embellished its mechanical efficiency with immersive atmosphere. ![]() The series' 16-bit entry had essentially closed a circle of creative inspiration, revisiting its 1986 NES predecessor while amplifying everything good about it. How do you top perfection? That question loomed over the creators of Super Metroid. This review of Metroid Prime originally ran in September, but we are re-promoting it in celebration of the game's 15th Anniversary.
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