My favourite Metroid game has got to be Zero Mission on the GBA.
A weird choice maybe but it was my first metroid when I played the GBA, I thought the music and atmosphere was kick ass and enjoyed the simple enough controls.
For a 3D Metroid it would be the trilogy on Wii at the time.
What about you?
Gonna be controversial and say Metroid Prime Hunters… mainly because that’s the one I’ve spent the most time with.
Zero Mission takes a close second, though.
Super
Fusion has always been my favorite. I “want” to not like how linear it is compared to the rest of the series, but when I get started playing it again that never seems to matter to me anymore. And because of that game structure, the game is very well broken up into chunks of 20-30 minutes of gameplay at a time which makes it excellent for playing on a portable console. I played it on a borrowed GBA-SP for the first time back in the day, a few more times after that emulated, and most recently I’ve been playing it again on my Steam Deck within the past week, I’m like 2/3 of the way back through it again, just took down Yakuza for the Space Jump last night before bed.
Fusion is also a huge story point for the series as a whole. It introduces the X and by doing so gives context to the existence of the metroids. And seeing that referenced again later in Dread was maybe one of the coolest moments I’ve experienced in the Metroid series.
Speaking of Dread, that one is a very close follow up though. I was super hype for Dread when it released and it is one of few games in recent memory that completely lived up to that hype. I was a big fan.
Agree with Zero Mission. Second would be Dread and then Super. Haven’t played Fusion tho, long overdue…
Dread. The movement feels incredible and I feel like its map naturally leads players to the next relevant area the best without as much backtracking and getting lost. Brilliant game.
The EMI segments with unfair BS kinda take it down for me a slight notch
I would agree with Dread. It is such a a nice clean game and that last boss was an actual challenge. Many games are awesome but fumble the last boss.
Before Dread, I would say the Super Metroid on SNES, that game introduced (at least me) the wall jumps and the sprint to down boost jump thing. I always tired to saved the animals when leaving the planet, but it’s not like they were able to get off the planet, so I’m not sure if it really helped.
Absolutely Super.
Right now I’m playing through a new run of Super Metroid+A Link to the Past. The game is so perfectly made that it’s just as good with a randomizer.The super + alttp rando is so fun
I love going through most of the game and then finally realizing i don’t have a shield lol
It’s super cool that SMZ3 is a thing that even exists, but beyond the novelty of it I felt it was dragged down by the fact that ALttP is so much bigger than SM, to the point where it kinda drowns SM out.
Going to use this thread to recommend AM2R which is so high quality Nintendo could have made it themselves. It also has a great Prime-style OST in a 2d game which none of the other games have done
legitimately believe am2r is better than Samus Returns on 3ds
It is. There’s a few neat things about the official version, but am2r is better over all.
The Super Nintendo Metroid game was/is my favorite, but I’ll admit I haven’t play most of the Metroid games, so I’m not a good judge.
The NES game was a ton of fun, but I felt and feel like the SNES game was just all of that and then some, if that makes sense to others.
I played one of the 3D Metroid games (the one on the Wii). It was fun, I enjoyed what I played. But it did not scratch the same itch, if that makes sense. In fact, I don’t think I even played that game to completion.
If we’re allowing Trilogy as one game then I’m going to step out a bit and go with AM2R. It’s extremely good and not “for a fan remake”, just straight up good.
If we’re talking single games made/published by Nintendo I’d go with Dread for 2D. I played through that 3-4 times back to back when it came out which was a totally new behavior for me. For 3D it’s Prime 1, still the best 3D example of the genre.
For me, it’d be Prime. The game just oozes atmosphere from start to finish, and has one of my favorite game soundtracks of all time. I still sometimes listen to the Phendrana Drifts tracks because they’re just so damn chill.
I started with Fusion and I love it, but Super is a tiny tiny bit over it in my personal list.
Super Metroid is my favorite game period, so definitely that one. Dread was really good too though, I played through that one a bunch.
My favorite Metroid is a knockoff. Environmental Station Alpha. I can’t help but recommend it in any thread that’s even remotely on topic. It’s not “better” than the official titles but I end up replaying ESA way more. The astmosphere and music just really hit me, and the gameplay is tight with lots of secrets.
My favorite official title is Fusion though. It was so awesome being able to play that on the train to school and lunch breaks.
ESA is a great game
Ori and the Blind Forest! The story, the gameplay, the progression, the level design. Everything just fits together perfectly and then there’s the soundtrack. God, I love that game!
I think they were asking for the franchise not the Metroidvania style of game.
That said, Hollow Knight has finally gotten its hooks into me and will not let go.
Dread. I wasn’t sure if it could live up to the high expectations set for it, but they hit it out of the park. Hits all the highs of Super and Zero Mission, then goes on to outdo those games in terms of combat and boss fights. Had a blast going back to speedrun it again and again.
I know a lot of people, myself included, got frustrated with the EMMI sections. Unless we all missed something about how they work, that the game could stand to explain better, you could end up walking into the room with bad RNG and the thing could be right on top of you. If you’re speedrunning the game, presumably you have a trick to avoid that scenario, but it was quite common and brought down my opinion on the game, for sure.
Been a while and I don’t remember the routing details at all, but I was surprised to find that they weren’t much of an obstacle at all for the speedrun. They’re designed to scare you on a first playthrough, but on subsequent replays you just go fast and they won’t catch you.
Well, what I meant was that you could enter the door and immediately be stuck in that quick time event that you usually fail because the window is so small, and you couldn’t see where the EMMI would be before you crossed the door’s threshold.
If you ever get into a EMMI QTE you’ve done something wrong. The QTE is a glorified game over screen, the 1% chance of escaping is only there to make it scarier with false hope
But that’s what I’m saying. It’s so unlikely you’ll make it out of it that when you walk into the room and the EMMI is already occupying the space you walked into blindly, it’s a frustrating unavoidable fail state.
I could be wrong, but I think that only happens if you repeatedly enter and exit the EMMI Zone, allowing it to wander around too much. Which is something you might get scared into doing on a first playthrough!
