The Metroid series is over 30 years old now, and unlike most of Nintendo’s famous franchises, absolutely nothing special was done on its anniversary. The only thing involving the franchise to happen in 2016 was the release of Metroid Prime: Federation Force, which while fun in parts, is hardly anything to celebrate. Sure, we also got an announcement that Metroid Prime 4 was going to come to the Switch, but since then, silence. No screenshot, no video, nothing to even indicate that the game was still being worked on. A remake of Metroid II was the lone gli🌳mmer of hope that has kept gamers involved in the meantime.

Despite Nintendo’s general nonchalance towards the world’s foremost space bounty hunter, long-time fans of the series remain some of the most loyal in the industry. The Metroid community is passionate about the series’ backstory, but also about speedrunning. The games’ non-linearity means that the franchise lends itself particularly well to sequence breaking and the exploitation of bugs. The first Metroid was in𓃲deed an early favorite of the nascent speedrunning community in the 80s.

The fanbase’s passion means that articles about the games and interviews with the development teams are widely available, making it a fascinating franchise to read about. The history of Metroid is one of hardships and bad timing, but also of survival and success. 🤪It is so interesting that we thought we would take thirty of those lesser-known facts to illustrate everything that went into designing this series and keeping it alive by all means necessary.

30 ✤ The Ori𓆉gin Of The Name

The series’ name is obviously a made-up word, but it doesn’t mean it’s meaningless. o☂n a Japanese TV show in the early 2000s. “Metroid” comes from the words “metro” and “android”. The first one is because the game was taking place mostly underground, like a subway or metro. The♒ second one was because Samus’ suit kinda made her look like a robot. The two words just gelled so well together that the whole franchise was named after it.

29 The Japanese Version Has No Cheat Codes ✱

The Japanese version of Metroid was released on the 🍬Famicom Disk System, which means that the game’s disk was rewritable, unlike the cartridge used in the west, which had to disks and no batteries to back up the game files. Therefore, Japanese gamers could save their games without 🦹the pesky passwords that Western gamers had to write down and inevitably lose. The downside of this is that the password screen was also the only way to access the game’s cheat codes, making them a Western-exclusive feature.

28 📖 🎶 The Inspiration Behind The Gameplay

Even though the first game was not designed by Nintendo’s superstar Shigeru Miyamoto, Metroid was hugely inspired by both Mario and Zelda. Gunpei Yokoi, head of the development team, wanted to make something completely different, . Combining Mario’s platforming with Zelda’s sense of adventure, Metroid tried to impose its own style;

The game world is much darker than the brightly-colored worlds of Miyamoto’s projects.

The r﷽esult was something unlike anything else seen at the time, but with gameplay that still felt familiar enough to be easily picked up.

27 The Inspiration Behind The World 🔥 🍌

Once they had their concept, Nintendo needed a world for the game to inhabit. and the work of the film’s creatures’ designer, H.R. Giger. They tried to give the game a similar atmosphere, ജand to make the monsters as intimidating as those of the movie. They even named one of the bosses “Ridley”, after director Ridley♏ Scott. The fact that the main character is a woman, something that was still unusual at the time, came about in a completely different manner.

26 Samus Is A Trailblazer ﷽🐎

Samus Aran was only the second playable human female character in gaming, by a single year. All other female characters before that were cartoons or caricatures like Ms. Pac-Man. Interestingly, Nintendo hadn’t thought about the character in the suit; it’s only halfway through development that if the game’s ending revealed that the character had been a woman all along. It was a throwaway revelation, but every revolution has got to sಌtart somewhere.

25 🉐 The Truth About Justin Bailey

“Justin Bailey” became famous when the world learned that inputting the name at Metroid’s password screen would make Samus lose her armor but gain 255 missiles. Teenage boys in the 80s were really imဣpressed and excited to learn about it, so the name became famous around schoolyards everywhere.

But who is Justin Bailey, and why is his name in the game?

Turns out, it’s just a random sequence generated b𒁏y the password system which gives ever🧸ything in the game a certain state. .

24 Metroid’s Miss🦄ing Battery

Metroid for NES uses passwords as a save system but opening up the cartridge shows that . The board is similar to that of The Legend of Zelda, one of the first Nintendo games to have that feature in the West. It shows that Metroid could have benefitted from the same system as it does in the Japanese version, but the feature was never implemented. It’s unclear why it was left out, but at least the passwords a♌llowed gamers to tinker wit🍒h the game beyond what Nintendo originally intended.

23 𝄹 🔴 The Reason For The Morph Ball’s Existence

The iconic Morph Ball has been a Metroid trademark since the start. In fact, it is generally the first item acquired by the player. However, the ability was created not because it looks cool, but : the team could not figure out how to create a good crawling animation for Samus, and they had all these labyrinths with tiny passages already in place. The ಞsimplest solution was to just turn her into a ball, and the rest ꧂is history.

22 Metr🎶oid’s Return ⭕

The first Metroid was a Famicom Disk System-exclusive in Japan, . This attach rate means the game bombed in sales, especially since it was one of the last games released for the peripheral. It thankfully did better in the West. With Metroid being a 😼creation of Game Boy’s father Gunpei Yokoi, the man took it upon himself to give his franchise a second chance on his new device. It fared better than the first🌠 one, but sales were still lackluster.

21 𝕴 Those Shoulder 🐻Pads Are There For A Reason

The big shoulder pads look of the Varia Suit started with Metroid 2, even though the suit was present in the first game. The NES title used colors to make a distinction between Samus’ regular suit and the powered-u൲p version, .

To make the difference visually striking, the sprites would have to be different from one suit to the other.

The shoulder pads were added to the Varia Suit, and the look was so i♔conic that it stayed into the sequels.