Metroids – the most dangerous creatures in the galaxy – have fallen into the hands of Space Pirates!

At over 20 years old now the Metroid franchise is still going strong. Assuming you know nothing about Metroid the basic premise is you have to collect all your scattered weapons and take out the mother brain at the end of the game. The game is long, difficult and there is no map to help you (unless you find one on the Internet!). The first power up allows you to morph into a ball which enables you to access areas you would not be able to otherwise.

There is a huge underground world to explore. Different sections are coloured differently and there are rocky, industrial and lava themes also to break up the repetitive nature of the exploring. That is the real challenge of Metroid, the element of exploring. The baddies along the way serve little more than obstacles to avoid; the real challenge here is conquering your environment.

The controls are fairly basic, Samus can only fire up and sideways which can be annoying when you need to be able to shoot diagonally. You gain the ability to fire missles quite early on in the game which are needed for destroying certain enemies and opening special doors.

The Virtual Console's inbuilt save point will take care of maintaining your games progress, however the original password system which Metroid used to maintain a gamers progress can still be useful.

Considering how dated the game mechanics and level design for Metroid feel these days it is recommended for most people to check out Metroid: Zero Mission on the GBA or wait for Super Metroid on the SNES to be released on the Virtual Console if you want a Metroid fix. This is far from being a bad game, but you will most likely need to be a huge retro enthusiast to persist with this long enough to discover the diamond in the rough.