Game Review: Super Metroid

Super Metroid is an SNES action-adventure platformer in which the player plays as Samus Aran, a bounty hunter exploring the planet Zebes to find and rescue an alien creature called a Metroid from pirates who have taken it. The game’s rich worldbuilding, atmosphere, and gameplay process of acquiring abilities to progress through new areas made it widely popular on release, and contributed to the establishment of the Metroidvania genre – however, this classic adventure has more serious implications when considered in the context of colonialism, xenophobia, and cycles of human destruction under the guise of progress and heroism. The relationship between the hostile environment and conquering player reflects, and even seems to glorify, historical narratives of conquest and environmental destruction; however, by portraying the beauty and diversity of the alien environment, the game gives hope for an alternative route of coexistence and growth.

Super Metroid presents the environment of Zebes as alien and hostile. When the player lands on Zebes, they are greeted by darkness, rain, and a map that is blank except for a small square of the known starting screen area amidst an expanse of unknown surrounding darkness. The player proceeds into exclusively subterranean environments, accompanied by dissonant themes of occasional notes disturbing the general silence, and their unease is justified by the hostility of the world. Not only is the planet itself dangerous, with spikes, lava, and various other environmental hazards and obstacles, but the creatures of Zebes are also hostile: most native species attack or damage the player, and the main antagonists – the pirates – are also highly integrated into the environment visually and mechanically, making the player the only foreign element in an antagonistic and unfamiliar world. 

This story of a technologically advanced, humanoid hero attacked by a dangerous and savage environment is very similar to historic narratives of colonialism written to favor the colonial power. In these narratives, groups who colonized other cultures would present the oppressed as “uncivilized” and violent. For instance, European colonization of the Americas was frequently justified by the argument that indigenous people in the Americas were lesser because they did not follow Christianity, and European portrayals of them made them appear violent and savage. These narratives justified violence against native groups as defense against hostility or even as a service of spreading Western “gifts” such as Christianity or steel and guns through the regrettably necessary vehicle of violence. Super Metroid presents a similar narrative, in which the alien planet Zebes is a hostile world that the virtuous hero has no choice but to greet with violence. It encourages destruction through a variety of advanced weapons, even rewarding the killing of passive creatures by giving the player health and ammunition. Even though Samus has come to a world that is not her own, in pursuit of similarly non-Zebean pirates, the wanton destruction that she brings is regarded as heroism accompanied by triumphant themes, while the environment is presented as a violent enemy that must be conquered rather than a diverse world that Samus is intruding upon.

The game even features the trope of the conqueror as a savior: the reason that Samus travels to Zebes is to rescue the Metroid creature that the pirates kidnapped. The Metroid is a small infant with a round, non-threatening appearance, and in one of the first scenes of the game it is taken by a draconic, spiky purple creature with glowing orange eyes that fills up a large portion of the screen with its immense size. Samus is immediately presented as a hero by virtue of her opposition to the terrifying, evidently evil pirate creature; thus, every obstacle or creature that stands in Samus’s way of her righteous goal is villainous, and Samus’s actions are justified. This rhetoric appears often in historic narratives of conquest, in which the oppressor claims to be working for the greater good in order to justify their actions. These arguments imply that the group in power knows better than the oppressed how to improve their situation and has a responsibility to enact this themselves, portraying the subjugated group as powerless and in need of the superior group’s rescue.

While Super Metroid presents a narrative that is reflective of historic arguments which have been used to justify colonization, oppression, and destruction, it does not do so entirely without nuance or criticism. For instance, while the world that the game portrays is dangerous, it is also beautiful – diverse animals and plants, exciting musical themes, and unique regions with their own ecosystems encourage an experience of exploration of a rich and diverse world. This sense of exploration is bolstered by the central loop of gaining abilities which the player then uses to reach new areas. While this sense of exploration emphasizes the alienness of the landscape, it also celebrates the vividness and beauty of the alien world rather than solely presenting it as dangerous. There are also several creatures which are not hostile on Zebes, and some of them even help the player – the Metroid which Samus is attempting to rescue saves her at the end of the game, at the cost of its own life. One family of friendly creatures can be saved in the self-destruct sequence of Zebes at the end of the game if the player takes a secret path. While this deviation from the entirely hostile representation of the environment is an exception rather than the rule, it lends some complexity to an otherwise one-sided portrayal, and the example of the Metroid’s sacrifice begins to suggest that the otherwise helpless alien creatures might have some agency and power. Furthermore, the choice of saving or abandoning the friendly species in the escape sequence hints at a notion of responsibility for the player’s actions, although only in a very limited sense and in the context of the savior trope.

The game also somewhat conveys through symbolism that the origin of the destruction on Zebes is from Samus and the pirates invading it. The centrality of violence in the player’s actions is acknowledged by the importance of the blaster itself – the attachment stands out on Samus’s character sprite, a large green attachment on the right arm of her otherwise warm-tone suit that she points far in front of her when firing. It is central to every mechanic in the game, from shooting enemies and blasting open doors to grappling across rooms and even accessing the save-file interfaces. Thus, the game recognizes that the player is a vehicle of destruction in the world. In addition, while many of the pirate bosses are integrated into the environment, the final boss is presented as a perversion of the environment. Mother Brain, leader of the space pirates, is kept alive by metal structures in contrast to the otherwise organic planet, and its final form is a gruesome and unnatural brain with a robotic body. This enemy is the most human-reminiscent of all the creatures, and can be seen to serve as a reminder that great destruction comes from human overambition and lust for power.

However, overall, Super Metroid heavily reflects historic narratives of oppression, destruction, and xenophobic misrepresentations of the unfamiliar in order to justify this. The player, through Samus, is encouraged to wreak destruction across an alien planet and to view it as hostile to provide a justification for this invasion. However, the game also constructs Zebes as a diverse and beautiful world that the player is encouraged to explore, thus creating a hope of a new perspective and new narratives in the future. As a game designer, I am excited about the potential of Metroidvania games to contradict this traditional tale, all too common in video games, of the powerful savior who comes to save and destroy a savage and inferior world. I think there is a great potential for new games to convey messages of exploration and wonder, of beauty and diversity, and to broaden the worldviews of players.