Platform GameBoy Advance Company Nintendo Game Time 2+ hours (Insane run-through) Completion Time N/A

Graphics
2D sprites, independently scrolling backgrounds, some slight environmental effects like dust kicked up underfoot, rain, or heat shimmering in the backgrounds. It’s all about as well done as the SNES game, which is to say rather well. Even the familiar simpler-looking areas from the original NES game still look good with more detail, and lighting and shading.

There are actually very few of those in the game though, Tourian being the biggest example. Brinstar, Norfair, and the boss hideouts are still there and somewhat resemble their original looks and themes, with a little extra theme added to them. The plant area of Kraid’s hideout is now covered with moss, and plants growing out of the stones in the cracks, and the lava area of Norfair is more of a melted stone theme, bubbling with magma in some areas and moving with heat shimmering backgrounds, just to name a few examples. Crateria makes its triumphant return as a barren alien planet’s surface. The environments all pretty much look better, while keeping their classic elements.

The enemies all look like their original versions, but with a little more depth and detail. Nothing big to wet yourself over. A few brief hand-drawn cutscenes are injected, and look pretty good. Animation is minimal, but get the job done. Scaling and rotation effects are kept to a bare minimum, all you really get there is an eyeball for one boss, missiles spinning off as they hit something that deflects them, and some parts of the cutscenes. Animation is all the same as the SNES version, which is to say average. Enough to get the job done. The best animation I’ve seen in the game is in a few areas, after clearing one and taking the elevator out, a wall at the top will collapse and crumble, and it looks very fluid. That doesn’t say a whole lot for the rest of the game, but it’s not bad. It’s just… enough. The characters all have a good amount of detail.

Overall, the game looks really good for a portable, and good for an old-school style Metroid game.

Sound
Very good things. There’s really nothing like hearing the midi-orchestral remixes of the original music. Fans of the classic game will find themselves humming along every time. The sound effects are all laser blasts and explosions, with the occasional screech and scream from the bad guys. It sounds good, except for a few boss battles, namely Kraid and Ridley. Their constant squawking is enough to make anyone turn the volume off. No speech clips or anything special overall, but it’s good enough.

Gameplay/Replay Value/Extras
The game plays like just about every other 2D title in the series. Walk, run, jump, roll into a ball, bomb stuff. Again, if you’ve ever played any of the others, you know what’s here. It has elements from nearly all the games, not just the original. Hanging off ledges, dashing, power bombs, spring ball, just a bit from each. That sort of works out, since the SNES game takes place on the planet this one does, and Fusion involved regaining power information as it became available. It doesn’t infringe on the previous timelines or content of the other games later in the series. It’s all really easy to pick up and get into, so control isn’t really an issue. Some of the puzzles are downright maddening, but most are simple enough. Doors stay open in this one instead of closing a few seconds later, which aids in a few speed boost puzzles. There are more destructible blocks in the environment, all from the SNES one, that can be taken out with standard or power bombs, regular or super missiles, screw attacks, speed boosting, or just walking over top of them.

A feature carried over from Fusion is little symbols on the map telling you if you’re in a screen with a hidden item, which really comes in handy but takes away a good deal of the challenge. Also a bummer is the “go here” indicators, added to the map after reaching or completing certain goals. It’s not as obvious as in Fusion, but it still adds a whole lineality to things that goes against the whole Metroid equation of exploration. Fortunately, the game doesn’t lock off all areas except the one you need to go to like Fusion did, so you can still explore as you go. If you get to a boss you just can’t beat, you can go around and find as many energy tanks and weapons as possible, then come back for another go at it.

The true final level, Chozodia and the Pirate mothership, introduces a whole new stealth element into the game. Stealth might be hard to imagine in a 2D game, but it works here. For a while in the ship you’re without your suit, and have a shitty stun gun in place of weapons, and also take a lot more damage(see also: 1 full energy tank per hit). Here you need to avoid contact with Pirates at all costs. So you have to move while they’re faced away, and duck into dark areas or out of sight up on ledges and platforms until they’re gone. If you’re spotted, the alarm goes off and the ship goes on high alert, which means all gates close, and Pirates come in through all the doors after you. Since all your stun gun can do is stun an enemy when fully charged, it’s always better to just run until you find somewhere to hide. Then after some brief searching they leave and the ship goes back to normal. It makes for some really tense moments, especially when a Pirate comes out of a hidden area, or when they start crawling through ducts after you. Of course when you get your suit back, it’s clobberin’ time.

Unless you’re anal about getting 100% of the unlockables, this one won’t amaze you or give you any real reason to. Playing through the first time unlocks the hard difficulty, and gives you both a little item checklist and a game timer on the pause screen, to aid in the collection of all the endings. It also opens up the original NES game, perfectly emulated on the GBA. That’s another 10 hours tacked onto the game right there for anyone who’s never played it, at least. Each ending is viewable depending on a combination of time to complete the game, and amount of items collected. Beating the game on hard opens up a half-assed sound test mode in the options screen, but it doesn’t even feature all of the BGM tracks, or any sound effects whatsoever. Connecting two GameBoy Advances together, one with Zero Mission and the other with Metroid Fusion, will open up another gallery of images.

You probably won’t want to play through 20 times to unlock each and every extra, but the game’s fun enough that you will at least want to play through on all 3 difficulties. Each difficulty is significantly different, so you will get a different experience each time. Easy is definitely easiest, with enemies taking and dealing very little damage. Normal is about the same but with damage levels at about an average level. Hard certainly earns its name. Some items are moved to different locations, and said items upgrade your maximum levels only a fraction of what the do on other difficulties (energy tanks only up your energy level by half a tank, super missiles and power bombs up the ammo levels by 1 instead of 2, and regular missiles up it by 2 instead of 5). The enemies also deal out a hell of a lot of damage, often half a tank per hit. Anyone who played through Fusion knows exactly what I’m talking about here. You’ll reach a few bosses or areas that will require you to go back and hunt down more ammo and energy tanks to even stand a chance. I couldn’t even finish the final boss and escape sequences without going back and getting all the energy tanks.

In the end, the game yields some answers, but even more questions:

*At the end of the game you discover that the Mother Brain turned out to be just a big brain that ran the Zebesian base defenses, so destroying it just lays waste to its core room and disables the defenses. Later on in Super Metroid when it makes a bigger badder return, it’s still just running the new and improved base.

*While the base was infiltrated by Samus, there were Pirates up in orbit, and also in other areas of space. So destroying this base was only the beginning, as you find out in great detail in Prime.

*Ridley seems to be either the mastermind of the Pirates, or just sort of a second-in-command to some bigger unknown leader. But what was the point of introducing the new mechanical Ridley/Kraid hybrid robot in the core of the Pirate mothership? Was that to hint that maybe Ridley and Kraid were both either robots or cyborgs? It would almost seem so, as you encounter a new Meta-Ridley machine in Prime, which takes place shortly after this one. In that case, Ridley may have just been a prototype, or one of many of a series of weapons created by the Pirates. The one you encounter may not have even been the one that assisted in destroying Samus’ colony when she was a child. I guess the whole robot thing would be an easy way to explain how most bad guys in early 2D games simply explode when killed.

*What’s the point of Kraid? It’s a big Godzilla thing that’s STILL trapped in a big room. In the original one he was a squat, ugly little dude, and he could like… GO places. I could see maybe that version being a crony, but not the huge one in this and the SNES versions. Is this one just sort of a pet, something they feed their victims to?

*Why can’t the game just be longer and have more content instead of having a bunch of difficulty settings that open up different extras?

*Why do the smaller Pirate fighter ships look like sperm?

So in conclusion, I have to recommend this game. There aren’t any individual parts of the game that stand out as revolutionary, but all the parts as a whole make it a superb title. The brief cutscenes and interjected story make it interesting. Short as it may be, it’s still a lot of fun and any Metroid fan will love it.

I’ll use a temporary rating system here until I can think up a good one.

Visual: 8/10:
Audio: 8/10: Nice midi updates of the original tunes, decent enough sound effects.
Gameplay: 8/10: Short, but fun.
Replay: 8/10: Stale extras, classic NES version more than makes up for it.

Overall: 8/10