Nothing but Dread in the 35th year for this franchise! (Metroid 35th anniversary)

     Back in 1986, Nintendo put out a game that took people to space. The company that put the platforming plumber on the map was tackling the final frontier with Metroid. While the series hasn't been super active in the past 20 years, August 6th, 2021 marks the 35th anniversary of that original game, so to celebrate that, I would like to recap a little bit of that history. Even though I haven't finished all of them, I have a loose understanding of the Metroid franchise as a whole, and it's a pretty wild story that is finally being continued this year with Metroid Dread. Dread is a game that was first teased years and years ago in an interview that Reggie Fils-Aime, and wasn't seen for about 15 years. It's a wonderful time to have this discussion, and so today, I'm going to discuss some of the Metroid storyline. I'm honestly not sure how long this post will go, but we'll just have to see! Hop in your starship and get your Power Suit, we're heading for Zebes!

An Unexpected Heroine

    In Metroid, you play as galactic bounty hunter, Samus Aran, who has been tasked by the Galactic Federation to defeat the space pirates. They're all posted up in their home planet of Zebes and it's up to Samus to take out this menace to the galaxy, especially the main generals of this organization, Ridley, Kraid, and Mother Brain. Samus goes through this game with her power suit and training from the ancient Chozo race which raised her, collecting power-ups and abilities from Chozo statues, as well as just laying around as you traverse more and more of this treacherous planet. While on this quest, Samus discovers a new species of aliens known as the Metroids, which are parasitic creatures that fly around and suck the life from their victim. If you think something like a space jellyfish, you're not far off. These creatures have been captured by the Space Pirates and the pirates seem bent on using them to lead to success in their plans of galactic conquest, as they are quite contentious foes. Samus goes through the quest, defeating Ridley, Kraid, and Mother Brain, and escapes from the self-destruction of the base following the defeat of Mother Brain just in time, and flies off to safety. If you beat this game in a certain amount of time, less than five hours or so, Samus removes her power suit at the end, revealing that she was a woman the whole time. This isn't a big deal nowadays, but back in 1986 when this game came out, people were extremely surprised at this reveal. I'm glad that Twitter wasn't around back then, or else I'm afraid that there would have been some very bad takes from sweaty guys. This was the beginning of a new franchise, and I'm happy to say that it continued on for quite a while. It should be said that this game was remade for the Game Boy Advance in the form of Metroid: Zero Mission, and while it mostly kept to the source material, it added a whole ending section where you played as Samus without her power suit and had to rely on stealth to escape from the space pirates. Samus encountered a Chozo shrine which granted her a new power suit after the old one was destroyed upon crash landing in this added sequence, and also added some new context to the relationship between our protagonist and this ancient species.

Time to go hunting!

    The series continued in 1991 on the Game Boy with Metroid 2: Return of Samus. The Galactic Federation has discovered the homeworld of the Metroids, SR388, and they send Samus to essentially wipe them all out. This was a very basic game with little story other than, "kill all the Metroids and call it a day," as the original Game Boy was super limited in terms of scope or capabilities. The long term impact of this game, however, is that once Samus got to the last Metroid, it was only a baby, which bonded to her as if she was its mother. As such, it didn't harm her and she delivered the last Metroid in existence to the Galactic federation. This game was remade for the 3DS back in 2017 as Metroid: Samus Returns, and following the footsteps of Zero Mission, added some new stuff to the basic package that was delivered back in 1991. First, we learn that the Metroids were actually developed by the Chozo people to fend off a virus known as the "X Parasite" which is a shapeshifting organism indigenous to the Metroid homeworld. it apparently rears its ugly head again in a post credits scene in Samus Returns, though we'll talk about its impact later on.

This Game is Super!

    Super Metroid came out for the Super Nintendo in 1994 and to this day is still included in the conversation for "Best Game of all time." Picking up right where Metroid 2 left off, the baby Metroid is safe in the protection of the Galactic Federation, which is studying it to make sure they can understand what Metroids are capable of, just in case they were to ever come back somehow. Unfortunately, the Space Pirates find out where the baby is being kept and attack the science station where it's being kept, which brings Samus in to stop the kidnapping from happening. Great stakes right off the bat in the beginning, for sure. Samus fights off the Space Pirate menace and gets to the baby, only to see it picked up by Ridley, space pirate general still at large, which carries it away and destroys the space station. Samus has to escape the station before it explodes, and she follows Ridley and the baby back to planet Zebes, the same setting from the original game. This sets up a really interesting story that plays out really well even today. The pace is pretty quick, though with all Metroid games, the exploration and backtracking nature is definitely the highlight here, but the story is really phenomenal. Throughout the game, you discover that the space pirates wanted the baby so that they could clone it to make a new batch of Metroids, which Samus takes out throughout the game. Ridley and Kraid are joined by several new bosses this time that I won't spoil, though at least one is a bit ghost-like, which is pretty cool. Samus traverses the Space Pirate world to find the baby and again must face Mother Brain again in the end, who has become this insane dinosaur looking monster and nearly kills Samus this time around. At the last minute, however, the baby Metroid protects Samus and gives her the power of a super beam of sorts which allows the bounty hunter to take out her foe, though at the cost of the baby's life. The baby Metroid dies, and with it, the last of the Metroid species. It's a bittersweet moment in the series. The Metroid threat is gone, but in the final moments, the last member of the species chose to protect the ultimate cause for the extinction.

Here comes a tone shift!

    Metroid Fusion has probably the most interesting story in the base Metroid series (not counting any of the Metroid Prime games). This is actually the most recent new release in the 2D series, which came out in 2002 for the Game Boy Advance. Metroid Fusion sees the bounty hunter in her new Metroid-free galaxy for the first time, and as all the Metroids are gone, the X-Parasite (which I mentioned while talking about Metroid 2), is allowed to roam free on Planet SR388. Samus is infected with the parasite while on a mission there, and she crashes her ship as she loses consciousness because of it. Samus awakens from a coma to find her body fused with parts of her power suit, as well as Metroid DNA to create a new suit of sorts. It turned out that the Galactic Federation created a vaccine from the baby Metroid's DNA, allowing her to absorb the virus instead of it killing her. How's that for irony? Samus is once again protected by the baby Metroid, and the number one Metroid hunter in the galaxy is now part Metroid herself. Samus gets a new ship following the destruction of the old one that can interface with Samus's new biology, and is hence called the "Bioship." She receives word that the ship she was recieving medical attention on had an explosion on board and was told to investigate it. Once on the ship, she's met with many X-infected creatures and realizes she's really the only one who can take them out due to the Metroid DNA, which allows her to absorb the X-parasites as if they were health pick-ups or missiles, and also act as her upgrades, which she gets this time around by defeating different enemies who have been infected. On top of these enemies, Samus encounters perhaps the scariest foe so far, the SA-X. This is an X-Parasite that has copied her exact biology in the power suit and is stalking around the ship looking for our favorite bounty hunter. There are moments where you have to avoid her, which are easily some of my favorite as well as the most terrifying moments in the game. Samus is weak to the cold since adopting Metroid DNA, so of course the SA-X has her ice beam, making it impossible to beat this parasite without some serious firepower. Throughout the course of the game, Samus learns that the Galactic federation has been using this ship to clone Metroids, which eventually show up, causing Samus to make a big decision. She fights off the X-infected creatures, including the SA-X eventually, and sets the ship on a collision course to SR388 as she flies away. The Federation is not happy about this for sure, but Samus did what needed to be done in order to hopefully keep the galaxy free of the threat of both Metroids and the X.

    Metroid is a complicated series, in fact it's probably Nintendo's most complicated franchise, and this post has really only scratched the surface of that. I didn't talk about Metroid: Other M, which came out on the Wii, or any of the Metroid Prime series, but I think I've touched on just about everything that I know which could be important to the future of the series, namely Metroid: Dread. I don't really know much about the upcoming release, other than it's supposed to continue the story along from where Fusion ended, and there are some areas where Samus is being chased by killer robots that were developed by the Galactic Federation. I'm not sure what deal with those are, but they certainly seem to be dangerous villains. It's clearly been quite a journey for Samus Aran in her 35 years of adventuring, and let's hope we'll get many more adventures with her for years to come.

    Thanks so much for reading this post, friends! I don't know how familiar you are with Metroid, as I'm not super familiar with the series myself, but I think it's a pretty phenomenal series and it certainly makes sense why there's a whole sub-genre partially titled after this spectacular series (Metroidvania, named after Metroid and Castlevania). I know this post was a bit hard to understand, but there is a lot of story and complex theming around this franchise, and I hope I explained it in a thorough manner. If you have a favorite game in the series, let me know down in the comments, as I'm genuinely curious to see what you think! I've been your Self-Proclaimed Galactic Bounty Hunter, and I'll talk to you again next week.