History YMMV / Metroid1

* QuicksandBox: The game has no map and gives you no hints and not much of a sense of direction. It's very easy to get lost in this game without a player's guide.

** The in-game environments all look very similar to each other due to the NES's limitations, and there is no in-game map, making it very easy to get lost and forget where you've already been.

* {{Narm}}: Some of the sound effects in the Famicom Disk System version can be this - most prominently the Screw Attack sounding like an electronic fart, along with Kraid/Ridley sounding like they say "OW!", and Mother Brain making a noise resembling an angry chicken, whenever they get hit.

* SelfImposedChallenge: Beating the entire game with only the bare minimum of power-ups; the morph ball, the morph ball bombs, no energy tanks and only collecting 1 missile expansion (not counting the extra missiles you get from beating Kraid and Ridley). It's possible, but it makes an already challenging game downright nightmarish to get through, since Samus can only take a couple of hits before keeling over. It also makes Tourian an absolute nightmare to get through, since you need absolutely perfect timing and reflexes to evade the Metroids. One can take this challenge even further by choosing ice beam instead of bombs, but it makes Tourian even more horrific since it leaves the player with no way to free themselves from a Metroid if it latches on.

* ThatOneBoss: If Ridley and Mother Brain are too easy for you, then Kraid will more than make up for it. His attack pattern is ''merciless''--he is constantly shooting spikes from both the front of his body and spikes above his body, with only a brief pause every three volleys of attacks--unless you have superhuman reflexes or patience, you ''will'' take a lot of damage during the fight. It only takes 25 missiles to kill him, but his stomach spikes can easily block your shots and missiles (and while you can freeze the belly spikes, doing it before he launches them can actually make him harder to fight), and he can quickly turn around if you get behind him, leaving little room for you to attack him. And if you die while fighting him, he can switch to a second attack pattern the next round, which can catch a new player off guard.

* ThatOneLevel: Lower Norfair / Ridley's Lair. It has some of the nastiest enemies in the game and is guaranteed to rip any newbie who dares set foot in it without the Varia Suit or Screw Attack into wet pulp. Thankfully, [[BreatherBoss Ridley himself is ridiculously easy compared to his level.]]

* OnceOriginalNowCommon: While ''Metroid'' kickstarted the {{Metroidvania}} genre and gave players in 1986 a massive world to explore (while subverting [[WhenAllElseFailsGoRight platformer conventions]]) compared to other games of the era, many of its groundbreaking aspects are harder to appreciate today as later sequels and non-''Metroid'' games refined and iterated on them. The game itself hasn't aged gracefully either, with its floaty physics, [[CutAndPasteEnvironments samey level design]], and [[DenialOfDiagonalAttack clunky controls]] being common complaints, to the point that new players are often recommended to start with ''VideoGame/MetroidZeroMission'' instead.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: Playing the original game decades later can be rife with frustration, as Samus's jumping is floaty, you take lots of knockback from damage, you can't crouch or shoot diagonally, many of the rooms look the same, there's no map you can reference, and you can only save when you die, after which you must write down a complicated password and then grind back all the health you've lost. However, this was the first ever platformer of such a scale, back when [[WhenAllElseFailsGoRight going any other direction than right in a Platformer was unthinkable]]. While the environments don't change up much over the game, this allowed for a very expansive overworld for an NES cart, by far being one of the biggest games for the NES, and helped set the {{Metroidvania}} genre into motion. And while Samus may come across as controlling stiffly compared to more recent games, compared to her NES peers, she's surprisingly capable. Most characters from back in those days could only shoot/attack directly in front of them, couldn't change their direction mid-jump, and were either a OneHitPointWonder or had a very small amount of health. Samus being able to transform into the Morph Ball (which makes Samus into a significantly smaller target) and attack with bombs helped make up for DenialOfDiagonalAttack with grounded enemies, and the Varia Suit when combined with a small handful of Energy Tanks made Samus into an [[StoneWall absolute tank of a character]]. And of course, once she gets some power ups like the Wave Beam and Screw Attack, Samus becomes what was considered at the time a [[LightningBruiser nigh unstoppable death machine]]. Of course, that isn't to say that ''[[VideoGame/MetroidZeroMission Zero Mission]]'' didn't need to exist in order to make the map less repetitive and bring in the mechanics standardized by ''Super'', though some fans argue that it overcorrected these issues and lost the challenge and mysterious air the original had. Though many others recommend just playing ''Zero Mission'' over the NES game anyway if you're just getting into the series and want to know the whole story.