This Week In Retro: Metroid II: Return of Samus (Patreon)

November 1991: Nintendo's mightiest hero gets her second shot at stardom

by Diamond Feit

Sequels are never a given, regardless of the medium. True, as costs rise and the expansion of entertainment necessitates bigger audiences to justify backing expensive productions, these days it is more common than ever to see a hit get a sequel in a flash. Yet even a blockbuster release cannot guarantee that the property owners and creative forces behind said success can come together again to revisit a work and make more of it.

Look at Nintendo, a video game company with a very long history and a fair share of hits to their name. When the NES and SNES were red-hot commodities, lots of software found a fanbase and saw solid sales numbers, but not every Nintendo game became a Nintendo franchise. There never was a Duck Hunt 2 or an Ice Climber 2 despite both those original games moving millions of cartridges.

Other hits had sequels that departed from the first game significantly, leaving fans of the original who sought more of the same out of luck. Donkey Kong had sequels, but none of them really played the same as the 1981 arcade smash. Mario Bros begat Super Mario Bros, but outside of bonus modes snuck into later games (and one Virtual Boy title), Nintendo never truly gave us Mario Bros 2.

Metroid rewrote the rules when it debuted in 1986 and players responded by buying well over two million copies of the exploratory-action sci-fi adventure. The character of Samus Aran struck a chord with fans, and she would appear in various spin-off media. However, Samus Aran would never return to the NES, at least not as a playable character in her own game.

Five years after her debut, Samus got her well-deserved comeback in the appropriately titled Metroid II: Return of Samus. Decked out in her full power suit, Samus adorns the box cover of this game in every territory, with the eponymous Metroids nowhere to be seen. It took her longer than Mario or Link to make a second outing, but her first sequel showed that she was every bit the hero that those two already-iconic characters were.

There was just one wrinkle: Metroid II launched exclusively on the Game Boy, the necessarily lower-tech handheld cousin to the NES. In fact, by the time Metroid II hit store shelves in November 1991, the Super Nintendo (along with Super Mario World) had already come out in the United States, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past would arrive in Japan that same month. As a Metroid fan, I felt getting a new game to play had no downsides, but it still left me wondering why Samus had to wait so long for her second adventure.

Metroid II is very much "Metroid, Too" at a glance, with Samus Aran jumping and blasting her way through underground caverns, grabbing power ups to enhance her firepower and mobility. Mercifully, the game begins with Samus already equipped with a modest supply of missiles and the ability to roll into a ball. In a first, Samus' personal spacecraft is shown on screen, and players may revisit it for a full energy and missile refill.

Metroid II features a lot of firsts which would later return in the series. When airborne, Samus can shoot straight down, a crucial move for clearing away damaged blocks beneath her feet. The new Spring Ball allows her to "jump" in ball form, and the Spider Ball empowers her to defy gravity to roll on any flat surface. The biggest find, almost as important as her iconic Screw Attack, is the Space Jump which allows unlimited mid-air leaps with the proper timing. When these two powers are paired together, Samus can remain in somersault form indefinitely, becoming a perpetual rolling force that tears through enemies.

In addition to the returning Ice beam, new weapon power ups now include the Spazer beam (three shots at once) and the Plasma beam (a single, large shot). Notably these upgrades do not stack; Samus can only possess one at a time and must re-acquire a beam if she wishes to change guns. Missiles and bombs remain her backup arms, unchanged from her first mission.

Samus' objective in Metroid II is a repeat of her first assignment, as she must destroy the invasive Metroid species once again. This time, however, she is the one doing the invading as she visits their homeworld with explicit instructions to wipe them out. Yet home-grown Metroids aren't the same as the ones she fought on the planet Zebes; those were larval creatures being used by space pirates. In their native habitat Metroids can evolve into four different forms, each larger and sturdier than the last, now impervious to anything but missiles.

Regardless of their new metamorphic abilities, the fight against the Metroids is the single largest change between this sequel and the first game. Samus' progress is tied directly to the number of remaining Metroids (visible on screen at all times), and she cannot advance deeper underground until she clears out each area of her designated targets. Unlike the first Metroid, there are no distinct "zones" in Metroid II, and no elevators to signify travel to a new section; only periodic seismic activity, triggered by the destruction of the Metroids, will open the path to her next destination.

Metroid II is still a game that requires exploration and collecting power ups to bestow the protagonist with new abilities, but its gated layout means that once an area has no Metroids in it, there is little reason to come back later. In fact, the game does not require any such return trips, and many of the power ups are optional. This makes me wonder if Metroid II actually qualifies as a Metroidvania at all, as the experience feels like a never-ending spelunking expedition rather than a journey through a cohesive space.

Not helping matters is the fact that Metroid II's map is impossible. I don't mean that it cannot be traversed, I mean it cannot be laid out in two-dimensions without warp points connecting otherwise distant sections together. This geographic incongruity, coupled with the monochrome Game Boy screen and lack of distinguishing landmarks or features, makes planet SR388 absolute hell to navigate. Even looking at fan-drawn maps (the game provides you with nothing) I struggle with finding my way. I suppose if getting lost during gameplay is a defining Metroidvania trait, then Metroid II is overqualified.

I can't deny that Metroid II, despite being a sequel to a game I loved, has a lot of rough edges to it. The shift from the NES to the Game Boy greatly diminishes the players' capacity to see much beyond Samus herself, as her sprite now takes up a larger portion of the tiny handheld screen. Fortunately there are few enemies capable of attacking long-range, so in general if Samus can't see a monster, it can't hurt her. However, this is yet another obstacle when it comes to underground orientation.

As much as I loved the soundtrack to the first Metroid, Metroid II goes even harder towards dissonance and abstraction, almost to the point that it becomes unpleasant to the ears. There are precious few melodies for players to enjoy, with most areas having little to no background music outside of beeps and chirps. The music in the game's final stretch does deliver tension, however, with a harsh electronic pulse and a steady beat that communicates something is very wrong.

None of these shortcomings prevented me from obsessing over Metroid II just as much as its predecessor, as I played through it multiple times over the years. When it appeared on the 3DS Virtual Console I bought it again without question and completed it as quickly as possible (making good use of online maps). As second chapters go, it's nowhere near the fun of the first game, and its subsequent sequel is rightly lauded as one of the best games ever made, so ultimately Metroid II sits in an unloved corner of the series.

30 years after its original release, there's even less reason to revisit Metroid II as multiple fan remakes and remasters have sought to smooth the experience with better graphics and a user-friendly mapping system. Nintendo even hired Spanish developer MercurySteam to recreate the game for the 3DS, retitling it Metroid: Samus Returns. This new version received high scores and several "best handheld" awards, and many of the same staff would later develop the franchise's recent revitalizing release Metroid Dread.

This leaves Metroid II in an unusual place in Nintendo history: A sequel to a hit game, one with crucial story elements that impact Samus' subsequent adventures, but one where the passage of time and an assortment of revisions (both official and unofficial) cast a spotlight on its weakest elements. Without Metroid II, there would be no Super Metroid, and the original game might very well have fallen into a filing cabinet in Kyoto, never to be seen again. As a fan of Samus Aran, I'm grateful Metroid II kept her in the spotlight, even if I can admit today it's not showing her at her best.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts on Twitter and playing games on Twitch.