Metroid
Metroid is a Nintendo science fiction series that owes one of its best-known twists to a casual question. Halfway through development of the first game, a staff member asked his colleagues, "Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned out that this person inside the suit was a woman?" The team agreed. That answer gave the series its hero, the armored bounty hunter Samus Aran. She travels alone across hostile planets, fighting Space Pirates and the parasitic creatures that give the series its name. The games arrive in bursts, separated by long silences. Why did a game assembled from borrowed ideas leave such a deep mark that an entire genre now carries its name? What makes its worlds feel so lonely and so tense? And why did Nintendo keep walking away from a series so many players loved?
Nintendo's Research and Development 1 division built the first Metroid by crossing two of the company's biggest hits. The plan was a shooting game. It would take the platform jumping of Super Mario Bros. and the non-linear exploration of The Legend of Zelda. A darker aesthetic would set it apart.
The game reached players first on the Family Computer Disk System in Japan, on the 6th of August 1986. North America received it for the Nintendo Entertainment System in August 1987. Europe followed on the 15th of January 1988.
Satoru Okada directed Metroid and created the series. Gunpei Yokoi, who headed the R&D1 division, produced the first two games. Yoshio Sakamoto designed characters on the first game and later directed or supervised most of the sequels. Makoto Kano wrote the scenario, and Hiroji Kiyotake also designed characters.
Ridley Scott's 1979 science-fiction horror film Alien shaped the game only after the world of Metroid already existed. Sakamoto called it a "huge influence". An antagonist was named Ridley in recognition of the director. The team also admired the style of the film's creature designer, H. R. Giger, and found it fitting for their universe.
The title itself is a portmanteau of "metro", as in rapid transit, and "android". It hinted at the mostly underground setting of the first game and at its robot-like protagonist.
Edge described Metroid as "the thinking man's shooter". In that magazine's view, weapons are "more a means of progression than weapon". The environments, not the enemies, pose the larger obstacles.
A recurring upgrade called the Morph Ball shows how that idea works. It lets Samus curl into a ball, roll into tight places and plant bombs. Upgrades like this come mostly from exploration, and only sometimes from defeating alien creatures with the arm cannon on her suit. Many of them open new routes through the map.
The Shinespark is a second well-known recurring ability. Samus charges her Power Suit with energy, then dashes at tremendous speed from a running start. The charged suit can break through certain walls. Players do not need it to finish the games, but it opens secret areas and allows sequence breaking. That makes it central to the Metroid speedrunning community.
Samus is the only character the player controls, and she rarely has company. The series is known for solitary exploration, with few or no other characters to talk to. Where Mario offered bright platforming, Metroid offered an atmosphere of solitude and foreboding.
The original game was also among the first to let players explore to the left as well as the right. It sent them back into areas they had already visited to hunt for secret items and paths.
Most entries scroll sideways. The Metroid Prime games switch to a first-person view with shooter mechanics, and Metroid: Other M, in 2010, used a third-person shooter format.
Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka composed the score for the original Metroid. He wanted players to feel they were meeting a "living creature". He also wanted no line between music and sound effects. The main Metroid theme was held back until Mother Brain is defeated, which gives the player a sense of catharsis.
Critics later described the original score as "eerie", adding a "sense of mystery and exploration" and making the game "moody and atmospheric". IGN praised the well-timed music for building suspense.
Kenji Yamamoto came up with some themes for Super Metroid by humming to himself on his motorcycle ride to work. He went on to compose the Prime trilogy. Nintendo asked him to score Metroid Prime to reinforce the series continuity. His palette there included heavy drums, piano, voiced chants, clangs of pipes and electric guitar.
Developers at Retro Studios pointed to a 6 MB memory budget as crucial to the sound of Metroid Prime. All the sound effects for a level had to fit in that space, so each sound needed high quality to earn a place. A member of Dolby mixed the game's Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound. Its soundtrack was later called the best sound design on the GameCube. Its sound effects were noted for accuracy and for blending with the music.
Other entries earned praise too. Metroid Fusion was noted for an "understated score" that suited the mood of the adventure. Its excellent stereo sound effects made it an uncommonly good Game Boy Advance sound experience. IGN called the audio of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes "mesmerizing". Music from the series has often been rereleased in "best of" video game music collections.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption used the extra RAM of the Wii for higher-quality audio samples. Yamamoto copied the design of the original Metroid there. The music and themes stay dark and scary until the very end, when uplifting music plays during the credits.
The Galactic Federation, a spacefaring government that includes humanity, anchors the setting of Metroid. Its allies include the Chozo, an avian species with advanced technology and skill in bioengineering. Opposing both are the Space Pirates, a cabal of alien races that refuse to accept Federation rule. The dragon-like warlord Ridley leads them. They plan to build weapons of mass destruction from hazardous life forms and materials, to destroy the Federation and win galactic dominance.
The jellyfish-like Metroids give the series its name. These predators feed on a life energy that cannot be detected in any living creature. The Chozo engineered them as a biological weapon against the "X", a parasitic, shapeshifting virus that threatened their civilization. The Metroids stopped the X. Then they developed the ability to evolve into far deadlier forms, and they became a danger to the Chozo themselves. Most games revolve around attempts by the Space Pirates, the Federation and rogue Chozo to weaponize them.
Samus Aran was raised by the Chozo after a Space Pirate raid led by Ridley killed her parents. She later served in the Galactic Federation military, left it, and began work as a bounty hunter. Ridley and Mother Brain became her great enemies.
On the planet Zebes in the original Metroid, Samus sets out to stop the Space Pirates from using Metroids to make biological weapons. She defeats the cybernetic lifeform Mother Brain, along with Ridley and the fellow Pirate leader Kraid. The remake Zero Mission retells the same story.
In Metroid II, the Galactic Federation calls for the extermination of the Metroids and contracts Samus to carry it out on their homeworld, SR388. She wipes out the Metroid population but spares one hatchling, which bonds to her. She delivers it to the Ceres research station for study. The remake Samus Returns follows the same events.
In Super Metroid, Ridley steals the hatchling and carries it to Zebes, where the Space Pirates are trying to clone Metroids. Samus kills Ridley, but the revived Mother Brain nearly kills her. The now grown Metroid rescues her and sacrifices itself. Samus destroys Mother Brain in retaliation and escapes as Zebes explodes, which ends her old enemies for good.
Metroid: Other M takes Samus to the Bottle Ship, a derelict research station, alongside a Federation platoon led by her former commanding officer, Adam Malkovich. They face bioweapons created by a Federation science group, including clones of Ridley and the Metroids. A revived Mother Brain, now in a humanoid body supplied by the Federation, takes control of the Metroids. Samus stops her at the cost of Adam's life. She then defeats the ethereal entity Phantoon and sets the Bottle Ship to self-destruct.
Metroid Fusion returns to SR388, where Samus meets the X parasites for the first time after the species reappears in the absence of the Metroids. The X overrun a research station in orbit, assimilating and imitating the creatures studied aboard. Samus is infected but is saved by a vaccine made from the baby Metroid's cells. She learns that the Federation has been secretly cloning Metroids. She sends the station crashing into SR388 to destroy the X.
Metroid Dread picks up where Fusion ended. The Federation sends advanced automatons called E.M.M.I. to the planet ZDR, where X parasites have been sighted. When contact is lost, Samus follows. She clashes with the X and with Raven Beak, a Chozo war criminal. He wants to use the Metroid DNA inside Samus to clone an army for himself.
The Metroid Prime sub-series, produced by Retro Studios, is described as a canon side story. Its first trilogy and the spin-offs Hunters and Federation Force take place between Metroid and Metroid II: Return of Samus. In Metroid Prime, Samus travels to Tallon IV to stop the Space Pirates from exploiting Phazon, a malignant substance. A meteor infused with it has poisoned the local ecosystem. She fights a cybernetically enhanced Ridley and clears out the Pirates. She then purges the Phazon by defeating the titular enemy, a Phazon-infected Metroid.
A distress call from the Alimbic Cluster drives Metroid Prime Hunters. Other bounty hunters answer it, including Sylux, who holds a personal grudge against the Federation and Samus. After fighting among themselves, they unite against an entity named Gorea.
In Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Phazon on the planet Aether splits the world into "light" and "dark" dimensions and brings the evil Ing race to power. While freeing Aether from the Ing, Samus meets Dark Samus, a revitalized Metroid Prime who has partly copied her physical appearance. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption recruits Samus and three other bounty hunters to stop Dark Samus from infecting the galaxy with Phazon. Samus resists the slow corruption of Phazon in her own body, and she eradicates both Phazon and her double.
Metroid Prime: Federation Force is the only game in the series so far where players do not control Samus. Space Pirates mind-control her. The Federation Force, an elite squadron of marines in powerful exosuits, fights to rescue her and destroy the Pirates.
The Lamorn, the extinct inhabitants of Viewors, prophesied a saviour who would plant a seed called Memory Fruit on another planet to preserve their legacy. After Samus rejoins the soldiers and finds a way home, she meets Sylux again, and he proves too powerful and stubborn to go down. Her comrades sacrifice themselves so she can leave the planet and fulfill the final wish of the Lamorn.
Metroid II: Return of Samus reached North America on the Game Boy in 1991, and Japan and Europe in 1992. It further established the visual design of Samus, with the bulky Varia Suit upgrade and different arm cannons.
R&D1 was committed to another project, so Nintendo brought in Intelligent Systems to make Super Metroid for the 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Development began in late 1991, and the game came out in 1994. Directed by Yoshio Sakamoto, it expanded the formula with many new power-ups and a richer story. It drew acclaim and is considered one of the best SNES games.
Eight years then passed with no new Metroid game. Nintendo could not form firm ideas for its new Nintendo 64 console. Sakamoto said he could not imagine how the Nintendo 64 controller could move Samus. An unidentified company declined an offer to develop a Metroid game for the console, because it doubted it could follow Super Metroid. In the meantime, the 1995 Virtual Boy game Galactic Pinball included a segment in which the player controls Samus' gunship.
In 2000, Shigeru Miyamoto visited Retro Studios, a new Nintendo subsidiary in Austin, Texas. He disliked every project the studio had in development. He spent time instead playing Action Adventure, a third-person science-fiction game with a female protagonist. Miyamoto asked Retro to make a Metroid game for the new GameCube console. The team ended Action Adventure to do it.
Metroid Prime arrived in 2002 as the first 3D Metroid, moving the non-linear structure of Super Metroid into a first-person view. Nintendo stressed that it was a "first-person adventure" and not a first-person shooter. It received acclaim and won multiple Game of the Year awards. It sold 2.84 million copies worldwide and was the best-selling Metroid game until Metroid Dread in 2021.
In that same year, R&D1 released Metroid Fusion for the Game Boy Advance, written and directed by Sakamoto. Its play resembles Super Metroid, but it has a more mission-based structure that guides the player more. Zero Mission, a remake of the original Metroid, followed in 2004. Both Game Boy Advance games were acclaimed. Nintendo merged R&D1 with R&D2 in 2003, shortly before Zero Mission came out.
By the late 2000s, Nintendo was courting casual gamers. Metroid, with its backtracking and complex play, did not fit that strategy, and Corruption received minimal marketing. Nintendo stopped producing discs of the compilation Metroid Prime: Trilogy in January 2010, only months after launch. It suggested that buyers look for second-hand copies. Next Level Games had pitched a Metroid prototype for the Nintendo 3DS, but Nintendo passed. The studio developed Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon instead.
Metroid: Other M reached the Wii in 2010, made with the Japanese studio Team Ninja and directed by Sakamoto. He wanted a control scheme as simple as a NES game. It placed a greater focus on story and action. Critics were less kind. They faulted its portrayal of Samus as timid and emotional, and its reduced emphasis on exploration. Polygon called it "such a massive misfire and a flop with fans that it practically killed the series". Joystiq noted that the game was "anathema" to the casual focus of Nintendo in that era.
Seven years then passed without a major Metroid game. In 2012, the Wii U title Nintendo Land included a minigame called "Metroid Blast", which had a mixed reception. One player flew Samus's gunship with the Wii U GamePad, while up to four others controlled Mii characters on foot in Varia Suits. Miyamoto said this reflected his ideas for future Metroid games.
In the mid-2010s, the Spanish studio MercurySteam proposed remaking Fusion. Sakamoto was impressed by their work on Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate in 2013. He asked for a remake of Metroid II instead. The result, Metroid: Samus Returns, came to the 3DS in 2017. It kept the sidescrolling play and added 3D graphics and a melee counterattack. MercurySteam suggested that mechanic after using a similar one in Castlevania. It was the first major Metroid game in seven years and the first sidescrolling one in 13 years, and it received positive reviews.
MercurySteam's next project, Metroid Dread, arrived on the Nintendo Switch in 2021. It was the realization of a cancelled Nintendo DS project. In February 2023, Retro Studios released Metroid Prime Remastered, a high-definition remaster of Metroid Prime for the Switch, with help from developers including Iron Galaxy Studios.
Nintendo announced Metroid Prime 4 for the Switch at E3 2017, with Bandai Namco Studios developing it. Unsatisfied with the progress, the company announced in January 2019 that it had restarted the work under Retro. In June 2024, it revealed a trailer and the title Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. The game was released on the 4th of December 2025 for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, and it received positive reviews.
By September 2012, the Metroid series had sold more than 17.44 million copies worldwide. Every main game, leaving out spin-offs and remakes, has passed one million copies. Metroid Dread had sold more than 2.9 million copies by May 2022, which made it the best-selling game in the series. Sales in Japan have typically trailed those in the United States. In its debut week there, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption sold 32,388 units. Metroid: Other M ranked third in the country in its first week with 45,398 copies, and it sold another 11,239 the following week.
Magazines have ranked the series highly. Next Generation placed Metroid 70th among top games in 1996 and 6th in 1999. IGN named it the eighth best game franchise in 2008. In 2001, Electronic Gaming Monthly named Super Metroid the best game ever.
Konami's 1997 game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night shares credit with the early Metroid games for defining the subgenre called Metroidvania. Tom Happ, who made the 2015 game Axiom Verge, defines such games as side-scrolling adventures with one continuous map rather than separate levels. Players must collect items and backtrack. Cave Story (2004), Shadow Complex (2009), Ori and the Blind Forest (2015), Hollow Knight (2017) and Chasm (2018) are other examples. Few game series have given their names to genres. Dark Souls, which gave Soulslike, and Rogue, which gave Roguelike, are the others in that small group.
In 2016, AM2R, a fan-made remake of Metroid II, was released. Nintendo issued takedown notices to halt its distribution, citing potential damage to its intellectual property. The game was nominated for the Game Awards 2016 but was removed because Nintendo had not cleared it.
Guinness World Records called Samus Aran "enduringly popular" and the "first playable human female character in a mainstream video game". Toby Masuyo, nicknamed "Kissy", from Namco's Alien Sector predates her by one year, though. IGN ranked Ridley as the second-most requested Nintendo character. Fans ranked him first for becoming a playable Super Smash Bros. fighter. Mother Brain is often named among the best video game bosses.
Samus is playable in all five Super Smash Bros. games. Zero Suit Samus, wearing the blue form-fitting suit from Zero Mission and the Prime games, appears from Super Smash Bros. Brawl onward. Ridley made cameos in the first Smash game, flying through the Zebes stage, and became a boss in Brawl. Because of fan demand, he became playable in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Dark Samus also debuted as a fighter in Ultimate, with a moveset similar to Samus.
Samus has also appeared in Super Mario RPG, the NES version of Tetris, Tetris DS, Kirby Super Star, Kirby's Dream Land 3 and WarioWare. The Kid Icarus enemy called the Komayto looks like a Metroid, and characters in Kid Icarus: Uprising allude to the resemblance. In Dead or Alive: Dimensions, one stage replicates the arena where Samus fights Ridley in Other M. Asked why Samus was not playable, Team Ninja's Yosuke Hayashi said that "it would be better to let her focus on her job rather than kicking everyone's butt in Dead or Alive: Dimensions".
In 2020, Nintendo and Epic Games began negotiating to bring Samus into Fortnite as a skin. The plan came to light in 2021 through internal Epic documents released in the Epic Games v. Apple case. Kratos and Master Chief, from the same batch of characters, arrived in late 2020, but Samus did not. In 2024, the former Epic creative director Donald Mustard revealed that Nintendo had asked for Nintendo Switch exclusivity. That clashed with Epic's policy of feature parity across all platforms, so the character was never included.
A Metroid animated series was once considered for the Super Mario Bros. Power Hour, a cancelled animation block that would have aired in the 1980s. Its concept art featured a male Samus. The block was replaced by The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, which aired in 1989. Mother Brain served as the main villain of the TV show Captain N: The Game Master. In Japan, a Metroid manga began in Kodansha's Monthly Magazine Z in November 2003. It ran for 16 chapters, collected in two volumes. It followed Samus' life up to the events of the original game and influenced the plots of later games.
In 2003, two producers optioned the rights to a live-action Metroid film, but the rights expired. The director John Woo then acquired them, and his studio Lion Rock Productions was to release the film before 2006. David Greenwalt, who worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Grimm, was among the writers. Producer Brad Froxhoven said the film would have explored Samus' origin story. He described her as "exceptionally talented" but "flawed", a character seeking redemption.
Nintendo was protective because of the failure of the 1993 Super Mario Bros. film. It had no answers to the team's questions about Samus' personal life and relationships. It was uncomfortable with the filmmakers proposing those answers. The talks ended with Nintendo understanding that it needed to develop the franchise further first. In 2013, Sakamoto said he could support a film directed by Ryuji Kitaura, the director of the CG scenes in Other M, if the concept and methods were good enough. In 2025, the filmmaker Chris Stuckmann said that directing a Metroid film was "his dream".
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Common questions
Who is the main character of the Metroid series?
The main character of Metroid is the bounty hunter Samus Aran. She was raised by the Chozo after Space Pirates killed her parents, served in the Galactic Federation military, and then became a bounty hunter.
When was the first Metroid game released?
The first Metroid was released in Japan on the 6th of August 1986 for the Family Computer Disk System. It reached North America for the Nintendo Entertainment System in August 1987 and Europe on the 15th of January 1988.
Where does the name Metroid come from?
The name Metroid is a portmanteau of "metro", as in rapid transit, and "android". It alluded to the mainly underground setting of the first game and its robot-like protagonist.
What does Metroidvania mean and how is it connected to Metroid?
Metroidvania names a subgenre of side-scrolling adventures with one continuous map that require players to collect items and backtrack. The early Metroid games and Konami's 1997 game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night defined it.
What is the best-selling Metroid game?
Metroid Dread is the best-selling Metroid game, with more than 2.9 million copies sold worldwide by May 2022. It passed Metroid Prime, which sold 2.84 million copies.
Why were there such long gaps between Metroid games?
After Super Metroid in 1994, eight years passed without a new game because Nintendo lacked firm ideas for the Nintendo 64. After Metroid: Other M in 2010, seven years passed as Nintendo focused on casual gamers.
When was Metroid Prime 4: Beyond released?
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was released on the 4th of December 2025 for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. It was developed by Retro Studios after Nintendo restarted the project in January 2019, and it received positive reviews.
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- 156After 26 years, Nintendo is bringing back a forgotten classic 'Metroid' game for a gorgeous remakeMatt Weinberger — Axel Springer SE — 13 June 2017
- 157Metroid: Samus Returns comes to Nintendo 3DS this year (update)Allegra Frank — Vox Media — 13 June 2017
- 158IGN presents the history of MetroidRus McLaughlin — 2007-08-24
- 159Nintendo debuts 'Metroid Blast' in Nintendo LandSteve Watts — Shacknews — 2012-09-13
- 160Metroid Other M Preview for the Wii2009-06-03
- 161Metroid Fusion — GBAGameRankings
- 163Dead or Alive Dimensions Interview with Team Ninja's Yosuke HayashiAudrey Drake — 2011-05-12
- 164Super Smash Bros. ReviewJeff Gerstmann — February 18, 1999
- 165Samus Returns is a confident throwback to Metroid's rootsAndrew Webster — Vox Media — 14 June 2017
- 166Whatever Happened to the Metroid Movie? Former producer talks about the ill-fated John Woo/Nintendo co-productionPeer Schneider — News Corporation — 2012-12-28