Man, that feeling when you get your suit back at the end and you can finally get revenge on those space pirates is equal to none!

This game was made with speed-running in mind. There are so many shortcuts to be found! Looking forward to your review/analysis of AM2R!

This game was so engaging and the map took away a lot of the frustration and backtracking I did on the original. This shows how remakes can be done by staying faithful to the game it is based on yet adding new areas, items, and even controls making for more of a smooth experience. I liked how angling to hit enemies with the ice beam made it so you didn't have to time a jump-shot or jump and and onto them. BTW, did you ever do a review of the Ghouls 'N Ghosts series? They SNES and Genesis games are great to play this time of year and very rewarding to learn. Congrats on the growth of this channel. People are noticing good work.

Great review again Kris! The Metroid marathon continues. If I may offer some opinions, this review felt more like a walkthrough than most of your previous ones, including the Metroid lineup. Particularly, the end of the video felt quicker than it should've, with no comments on the Mecha Ridley fight and much less time spent on game fundamentals than usual. Otherwise, as is usually the case, your words speak volumes when discussing how the game presents good (or bad) design to the player, communicating with them how to tackle the challenges up ahead. I also thought it was a nice touch not outright stating which game you think is exclusively better, as that's not the easiest question to answer for a series like Metroid. Can't wait for the next review! I'm calling either Prime or AM2R next, assuming you aren't totally burned out on Metroid now, haha. Rock on Kris, love your voice by the way. :) EDIT: Alright, I'm actually done editing this comment now. I had a lot more to say than I thought, apparently.

I do so love your delving into the Metroid series, man. Appreciate it!

you didn't cover one interesting aspect about the endgame: that tube that connects the ruins to the mothership? you can blow it up with the power bombs, allowing access to the rest of the map. and, if you decide to go all the way back to tourian, youll find mother brains chamber and the escape shaft in ruins, with a strange green acid filling where the lava was (which damages you even in the gravity suit, and it's unique to this specific room.) and, if you power bomb where mother brain was, youll uncover a secret room, much like in super metroid. this pretty much helps bridge the gap nicely between metroid 1 and super.

This is such a great game, although it came out pretty late here in Europe. Still, I totally prefer it over the original Metroid. The NES game might be an immortal classic and stuff, but there are so many flaws I gave up on playing it.

I'm glad "Friday release" meant 12:01

The are plenty of sequence breaks. I just played through this game last weekend, and beat Ridley well before Kraid without even trying to sequence break.

Samus' Power Suit is like Thor's Hammer.

I still remember when I got this amazing game. I had to do a long train travel (around 8h) and was lucky enough to find it for super cheap the day earlier, the ds was already out and a shop I used to visit from time to time had huge deals on gba games. The travel felt so short, and I pretty much beated it in one sitting. Nice review as always!!

I thought the original Metroid was damn cool. My heart can't handle all this bashing.

I love this game. I can't think of a single thing I'd change about it. When you get the Gravity Suit after the Space Pirate Mothership and the Brinstar theme from the original Metroid kicks in...DUDE.

Fantastic video on Zero Mission. I pretty much agree on all points. Zero Mission is a crazy fun time overall, though personally I think it might be a tad lacking in some of the atmosphere I enjoyed in Super and Fusion. Quick question: are you going to be covering Samus Returns as well?

Hey man, love your work. Actually looked forward to this video. Added to my watch later to make sure I watch the whole thing. Keep up the great work!

Glad it was the first game I ever played, such an amazing game, environments, and (controversial opinion with fans of the original) a great soundtrack. This game is a great example of what a game remake should be. Still haven't got bored with it even after almost 16 years!

My favorite metroid game, love this review!

Glad more people are talking about this series lately... It used to feel highly underrated but now it's kinda feeling like it's being sung it's well-deserved praises thanks to the KZfaq gaming community being suggested these classics and with reviews from fellow reviewers like yourself... It's now finally gaining more eyes than ever!

My first Metroid game. I absolutely loved it when I played it in 2016. Great review!

Yeah Metroid Zero Mission using Map waypoints may annoy some metroid fans, but I think it was a good decision that pleased the majority of metroid fans overall, as zero mission is a lot more fast paced as a metroid game in terms of controls and game speed, and it would've felt jarring to be stumbling around for hours trying to find the next needed item to progress like in the other, slower metroid games. Also some people hate guided exploration like this but I disagree with that, I think guided exploration is necessary if your game's level design isn't super metroid tier levels of quality in terms of leading the player naturally to one place to the next, and even super metroid has some cryptic moments like the fake wall in ridley's lair needed to get to ridley (that even the xray scope doesn't work on). In hollow knight, the reason why getting lost is so fun is because the game is challenging in general and the game goes out of its way to make you feel like an adventurer/explorer, charting the map on your own and stuff. But even hollow knight can be annoying to some metroid fans who got into the series from games like fusion and zero mission, not super metroid. However, it can also go to the other extreme, metroid other m. That game is too linear for a metroid game in my opinion as it doesn't let the player explore in their own time, but forces them to do each mission objective one after the other, no time to backtrack optionally.

As someone who just played/finished Zero Mission a few days ago as my first Metroid game, Kraid’s arms aren’t short at all lol. He was the hardest part of the game for me, as even Mother Brain had access to the super missiles (which cuts down on how many shots you need to beat her to 7), but Kraid didn’t seem to have a pattern to learn and avoid. I died a lot due to his arms knocking me down and into his spikes, which take a lot of health when you only have two extra energy tanks. And while I did manage to beat him, I don’t feel like I learned how, I just got lucky enough not to die before landing the last hit. This also made the Ridley fight, though easy, a huge relief as I wasn’t forced into another half hour of retries to move on. Fantastic game though, I was hooked the second I got the long beam. Seeing things open up so much after getting it and the morph ball within minutes felt great.

A lot of the parts I consider "hand holding" compared to the original can also be attributed to a major difference between the two: this is a handheld game. Aimlessly wandering if more acceptable in a console game, but when you're playing on the go you dont have the time to waste. I still enjoy Metroid 1, but for completely different reasons. Great review by the way. Will you be doing Samus Returns 3ds next?

Stuff like bombing all the walls and floors sure seems tedious now, but back then it was all brand new coming from Atari/Intellivision/Collecovision so myself and neighborhood kids did it and liked it 😂 Same with bombing all the walls and burning all the bushes in the original Zelda. We didn’t know any better and just thought that was all part of the game and since the NES blew our minds in 1987 we thought it was amazing game play. The mazes and dead areas weren’t really a bother either because we had never gotten to explore a video game world like that before, if the game wasn’t in Nintendo power we just drew maps. It really was quite the experience growing up with a bunch of kids within 3 years of each other all having Nintendo and swapping games, notes, experiences on the bus and running back and forth between everyone’s houses. Playing neighborhood capture the flag games too for our outside activities, what an amazing time to be alive with no responsibilities but going to school and after school sports/clubs. We have gotten to grow up with the video game industry 🙂 But yeah in retrospect, I know I have extreme nostalgia for those 80s-90s console games having gotten a lot of them at or around release. A lot of them have flawed game design but since it was all brand new we gave it a pass. I’m hoping a remake of the original Zelda eventually gets remade like Links Awakening. Great reviews, I’ve watched the simons quest and this one and will be watching more.

Great review. I do wish there was a harder mode that turned off the Chozo navigation though

Fun and great game. But I love Super Metroid more and wish the GBA games' gameplay felt closer to Super. Still great though, and that fan game, AM2R, is phenomenal.

Did a play through of this one a while back and loved it!!! Being my first Metroid game, it was an great introduction to the series. And as always, amazing review!

Another very solid and well-crafted review! Congrats man, your job is much appreciated! Now Metroid Prime seems a natural step... Then I'd be 100% sure you'll change your mind on vs Ridley fights being disappointing ;)))))

For whatever reason I found shooting while jumping to be really hard, so Kraid and the captured larva were really difficult for me. Ridley was still disappointingly easy thought. In fact, since I found Kraid hard, even more so.

A great review! But I wonder if you had or hadn't thought to use a power bomb on the glass hallway in the final act of the game. It allows players to explore all of Zebes with every single power up. I don't think the game teaches this as well as other things, though. It's like the Super Metroid glass-breaking moment.

How dare you call the Neo-Ridley fight a missile spam fest! That is an insult to the boss fight! It's OBVIOUSLY a charge shot spam fest!

The Zero Suit section was my favorite part of Zero Mission. It was the cherry on top of a delicious cake! But I found the Fully Powered Suit section to be an unexpected and unwelcome pit in the cherry. It's easy to stumble onto the final boss in a blind run, and the only thing hinting to the player that they can revisit the rest of the game is a glass tube reminiscent of the Meridia entrance from Super Metroid. The final boss is so easy that it doesn't incentivise hunting for any additional missile or energy expansions, and the most common item rewarded to players by discovering Power Bomb blocks and doors is more Power Bombs, which is not that useful useful of a weapon compared to the Screw Attack and Plasma Beam. Still a fantastic game overall and a worthy modernization of the classic, but the fun ended for me once Samus got her suit back.

I knew there was a reason I couldn't sleep.

I'm surprised you didn't mention how you can bomb the glass tube and explore the entire map with all the powerups.

I'm planning on buying one of the gba metroid games so thx for this.

Man you are killing it lately!! Metroid Fever!

The power suit is a suit that adapts to whatever scenario and environment it is thrown at it. Though it needs to absorb and process materials for functions to be developed. Also, the suit transforms into a ball that samus can pilot. It shinks Samus ala ant man. It's an actual exploration vehicle.

Zero Mission is a game that was clearly designed to both appeal to series fans, while also being accessible to new players. If you know how to work it, you can find all sorts of alternate paths that exist PURELY to skip things or do things backwards. Hell, the LONG BEAM can be skipped, the initial tunnel that needs it, has some breakable blocks just above the door that can be shot out without it.

Funny how this is a better channel than all the big ones.

Excellent video, as always. Thanks for making it!

Zero mission might actually be my favourite game.

Metroid Zero Mission is my favorite 2D Metroid, very accurate review i really liked your video c:

I'm not a big fan of way point markers in most games, but Zero Mission did it well and eased the slog of exploring randomly. I'm excited to see which game comes next!

Gaaaawd I love this game so much. Besides Golden Sun 1+2 and Minish Cap my favorit GBA Game

Ridley's damage scheme is why he's such a great boss, I hate Zelda style bosses that require revealing a weakpoint. Finding how to best DPS him to death is great. Kraid is the border of the style, the fact that you control the revealing of the weakpoint is what makes it bearable in a Metroid game. The fact you can spam attacks into a boss feeds into the speedrunning possibilities that I think are core to Metroid. A good example of the opposite is the only new boss in Samus Returns, the Drilling Robot can only be damaged when he want you to, and you can only deal a set amount of damage in that time, meaning the fight has a fixed time and possibly longer if RNG hates you

This is definitely my favorite. I actually like it more than Super Matroid which was my favorite Metroid before I discovered this game and really got to fully understand what all you can do in Zero Mission and fully realize it's brilliant game design. Zero Mission is without a doubt the best 2D Metroid Nintendo has ever made.

The fact that it is so short gives it a lot of replayability, in my opinion. Another great Metroid review!

This is my favourite 2D Metroid game, I was really impressed with it.

This was well thought out review. Great work!

This game is up there with the dragon's trap remake as one of the best video game remakes ever made. Also while the nes original is heavily flawed I still think it's pretty cool that they included it as a bonus for completing the game.

I played ZM in a Hospital, recovering from an injury. It kept me keen and saved my life. I could recommend playing this for those who want to enter this franchise (which has my age).

22:08 I was ready to chuck my controller at the Mother Brain bossfight.

It's cool to see how much you like the game with just two playthroughs. The designers implemented intended sequence breaks, that makes the game even more replayable. If you ever replay Zero Mission, hopefully you will be able to find some of these sequence breaks.

I haven't played this game awhile, but if I recall, Ridley is less of a "missile spam fest" on the hard difficulty, which I found very challenging back then

I think it’s also worth mentioning Zero Mission has tons of hidden short cuts that allow the player to skip items or get items early. This may or may not be a plus depending on the player since it means sequence breaking was intentionally designed into the game, however for me it adds to the re-playability trying different routes. And knowing a lot of these shortcuts are mandatory if you try to beat the game with 15 items or less to see the best endings.

Do you plan on doing samus returns and/or am2r?

The "real" genius of this game only reveals it self in the 15% challenge. I still remember planning the route out, the struggle against Ridley, the Metroids and thoese two last Space Pirates. I did make the mistake of picking up the Power Bomb and only learned later about the small secret passage to the final boss room.

The original Metroid was my first game ever. Zero mission was my second game. It blew my mind!

Good content. Good review. Good presentation. Good commentary.

Great video. I love your assessment and overall presentation. If I had any criticism it would be the following: @ 5:40 "my intent here is not to give a beat by beat replay of Zero Mission" But... then you do exactly that for over 18 minutes. The replay isn't a problem. Because I get that you were offering observations and comparisons chronologically as they occurred within the game. .... But if there was any other way to do it, one should have done so. Or at least just remove the bit you said @ 5:40.

it also doesnt need the exact upgrades for certain items for example misiles+morphball+bombs=varia suit, all you need to do is spam the bombs and youll get to the varia suit

I wonder what’s next in your review: AM2R and/or M2:SA

This was a treat to come home to

I think I'd like to revisit playing this game. Honestly when I first played it I saw the game as being too short considering how I felt like it took me longer to complete Super Metroid which came out a decade earlier. but maybe the fact that the game isn't long is actually a good thing. Honestly Super Metroid isn't very long game but I do think it's longer than this game.

this game is in my top 10 favorites ever

it'd be awesome if you did look at AM2R before, or after Samus Returns. I know it's not an official game but in my opinion (and I think many others share in it) it took the lessons this game taught and brings them up to a new level. at times it's difficult, maybe even unfairly so asking the player for alot of mastery in a short amount of time. but it's also pretty much a Metroid Fans Metroid Game in more ways than the obvious.

In terms of quality remake, this is like The Thing from 1982. My favorite Metroid game and my choice if I'd had to pick just one.

Did you Record this on the original GBA? (Just curious) also will you do the Metroid Prime series?

20:03 Oooooh These controls are TIGHT! - Metroid Zero Mission Pitch meeting

Zero Mission? Are you skipping Prime or just doing them out of release order?

Tarnishing this nice piece of Gaming History is only the fact that they stood so true to the original that they added gameplay elements after the final boss and before the real Final Boss... It's too much. You have to do this victory lap right before the final boss for no other reason than to get 100% and some of those are cryptic as all hell. Even getting out of the pirate spaceship... Fusion almost had the same problem but there where fast travel sections between the sectors that made this ordeal a lot easier. And in similar fashion Metroid 2 for the 3DS, the Remake if you will did this same mistake. An entirely arbitrary lap you had to go through to get all the items. And while Zero Mission had a lot of Sequence breaks from the start, which Fusion and Samus Returns lack completely Fusion was the one that has like 9 different endings based on your time and number of items acquired. This whole thing feels just frustrating to me. Basically demanding the player to solve a puzzle that they can't until they basically beat the game anyways. Zero Mission at least rewards a more worthy Final Boss in the occasion you find all these and in Fusion some of these upgrades are cryptic as all hell... (Similar to Super Metroid, which was probably to boost sales of Nintendo Power, at least from what I can tell) Like you just gave me my first E Tank... How on earth would I figure out I need to Missle a ceiling before a drop to the first boss to get another one...? It's sad you can't play AM2R because in a way Milton remedied these almost post game but not quite yet shenanigans.

Yeah, it probably didn't need the Chozo statues setting waypoints like that. The game is good at conveying "You can't be here yet.", but a lack of a map and everything looking the same is what made the NES Metroid so hard to navigate. A map and just more graphical diversity is enough to take care of that. That's basically what Super Metroid was, and that was immensely easier to navigate than the first two games.

aye we didn’t get jesus is king tonight but we got another metroid review jahmen

First Metroid game I ever played... I can say its my favorite game of all time...

Zero Mission was one where I just couldn't play anything else until I finished it. so good

4:11 That right here flies into the face of conventional game design. Why would the developer expect players to use 5 missiles on a door? It goes against everything a "gamer" would do: "It didn't work when I shot it once or twice. Why should it work after I shoot it 5 times? Its a door, not a Boss." and Missiles are LIMITED. We all meme'd how we finish a RPG with 99x "Mega-elixirs" because "we might need them later on". And now they expected us players to "waste" all of our precious missiles? I am so glad they remake'd Metroid into Metroid: Zero Mission. It makes the original defacto obsolete aside from mild curiosity.

While I feel this is the easiest game in the 2D series, it's still a damn good game. This was the last Metroid game made in house at Nintendo and is a true love letter to Super Metroid fans. It's so damn close to being the best in the series but it's hard to top what Super Metroid accomplished in 1994. If you were to remove the nostalgia from Super or were playing it fresh, then yeah this game is by far the best. I to was blown away by the plot twist at the end. The game is long enough to where fighting Mother Brain feels like the end of the game. In the previous Metroid games when Samus gets in her ship that means it's over so getting attacked and having the game go on took me for surprise. But yeah, easily the 2nd best Metroid game ever made.

Samus’s backstory is she was raised by the chozo after ridley helped kill her parents

This games progression is on point

Yes it's the best 2d installment at least

Zero Mission, the game that made me get into Metroid and take it seriously enough to get back into the series after trying and beating MP3 as my first Metroid game. I had fun with MP4, but ZM made me a Metroid fan

Dude idk how I was able to hand pick this 11 years old when I got my GBA SP. turns out it was one of the best games ever . I had no clue. I did know I LOVED playing it

Great review! Zero Mission is such a great game

This make want to download an emulator and get some roms matter of fact I will right now

ImplantGaming will you please try Hyper Metroid? It's an excellent rom hack of Super Metroid I highly recommend! Do a video on it if you want but moreso I just hope you enjoy it!

I remember I had a save file where I would purposely not save in the stealth segment so I could play it over and over again.

It's a fine game. Definitely an improvement, but I think it lacks a bit of the eerie isolation of the original (e.g. hallways are more condensed and lively and the map/waypoint system holds your hand a bit), which is another thing that Metroid 2 nailed but its official remake failed to recreate.

Zero Mission is a favorite and one my fonder memories on the GBA. Too damn short though, not difficult at all to get 100% in under 3 hours

I kind of wish they didn’t add the last section for some reason. Also, both my zero mission and fusion cartridges freeze soon after turning them on. Unrelated, but I find it curious that those are the only 2 gba games that have ever happened to that I own

Great video!

Please please please do castlevania symphony of the night through all the handheld Metroidvania castlevania, there’s hardly any new era review type retrospective content for the games, and it’d follow Metroid series nicely, would prefer over the 30th 3D Mario Analysis on KZfaq for example.

Backtracking is part of Metroid, it's about exploration so personally I don't ever view that as a negative. Samus controls very well in this game too

2:00 It's a safe move.

I'm disappointed they didn't call it the Long Shot.

Oh, please play the 3 prime games as well!

Metroid on NES is just playable with a guide. I love to play through it.. but with a guide. Nevertheless, Zero Mission is the best way to Start with Metroid now.

Now Samus Returns, please. I’m waiting patiently

Samus returns 3ds remake next? (and, Possibly AM2R too, pretty please?)

I thought mother brain was cool! it's like the level was the boss.

Great review, now AM2R

I didn't think anyone would praise the mini-bosses.