Line #6 YMMV/Metroid1


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2	* AntiClimaxBoss:
3	** Those familiar with future entries will likely disappointed by Ridley, who is pathetically weak and static compared to his more dynamic and aggressive boss fights from ''Super'' onwards.
4	** Mother Brain is a stationary target whose only methods of attack are her turret cannons and rinkas. It's a tricky fight, but if you have enough missiles after you destroy the Zebetites, it's far from insurmountable.
5	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: For an NES game, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UGKCvIrF_o Kraid's Lair]] is quite possibly one of the most eerily haunting 8-bit themes of any video game track in history.
6	* BreatherBoss: Compared to how hard the rest of the game is, [[ThatOneLevel especially the level where he resides]], Ridley is a ridiculously easy boss fight. He just hops up and down in place while spitting a bunch of fireballs at you. You can just freeze his fireballs in place or just stick right next to the ledge he's on. He can't attack while his fireballs are frozen, so he's a sitting duck for your Ice Beam, Missiles and Screw Attack. This is in [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness stark contrast]] to [[ThatOneBoss virtually every appearance he makes after this game]].
7	* CommonKnowledge: It is often claimed that the SamusIsAGirl twist was more elegantly executed in the Japanese version by referring to Samus with gender-neutral pronouns in the manual. Supposedly, the English manual's use of male pronouns is an example of clumsy localization. In reality, however, the Japanese manual [[https://legendsoflocalization.com/qa-was-samus-called-a-he-in-japanese-too/ goes out of its way]] to refer to Samus with male pronouns several times -- even though, unlike in English, it ''would'' have been very easy to avoid using pronouns at all.
8	* DemonicSpiders
9	** Metroids. They frequently appear in swarms, and can move fast and can grab you from any direction, which makes them very tricky to dodge. And if they latch onto you, they can quickly drain all your health in mere seconds, and the only way to break free is to spam morph ball bombs (and even then, it can leave you open to be grabbed by another swarming Metroid nearby--no MookChivalry here--or even worse, it can [[CycleOfHurting accidentally knock you right back into the Metroid's maw]]). Oh, and they're immune to all of your weapons except for freezing them with the Ice Beam and pummeling them with missiles--even the Wave Beam and Screw Attack just knocks them back for a second. And if you ''don't'' have the Ice Beam? [[ThisIsGonnaSuck Well...]] [[note]] RUN FOR IT!! [[/note]]
10	** Reos (the bird-like bugs in Brinstar) and Gerutas (their crab-like counterparts in Norfair) are ruthless enemies to deal with, and they're quite common. Until you get the Long Beam, you're a sitting duck for their fast aerial attacks, and they swoop in an arc (and in a game where you [[DenialOfDiagonalAttack can't shoot at an angle]]), so it's very hard to get a good shot at them without putting yourself in their line of attack. And even when they do descend, they tend to hover just barely above or below your line of fire, and they take four shots to take down combined with a small hitbox. Jumping over them isn't recommended either, because they have a nasty habit of ascending just when you try to go past them. Sometimes they even descend too low for you to dodge them by using the Morph Ball. What makes them even more irritating is that in some tunnels, they pop up in groups, or alongside lots of other local enemies, just to make your life miserable.
11	** Just forget about Mother Brain, because Rinkas are the true final boss of ''Metroid''. You know what you're in for as soon as you enter the second room of Tourian and [[FakeDifficulty immediately take unavoidable damage]] from Rinkas that spawn near the doorway, and they only get worse when you reach Mother Brain's chamber. There's always more than one Rinka on screen at a time, they respawn endlessly, and they aim directly at Samus's current position when they spawn, preventing her from standing still. Even with the Varia Suit equipped, they shave off a considerable amount of damage with each hit. Worse, they cause {{knockback}}, which is all that it takes to knock Samus off the tiny platform that would let her shoot Mother Brain; if Samus gets knocked into the pit of lava in front of Mother Brain, she is trapped there until she can freeze a Rinka and use it as a platform, but she's just as likely to have another Rinka immediately knock her back into the lava as soon as she's out.
12	* FairForItsDay: The way Samus reveals herself to be a woman, by wearing either a leotard or a bikini, depending how quickly you complete the game, may come off as crude today. But when the game was first released in 1986, learning that you actually played as a woman who had to fend off Space Pirates and parasitic aliens all by herself was pretty huge. One also has to make allowances for the need to clearly depict Samus as being female, instead of her just looking like a man with long hair, given the game was already struggling with some graphical and storage limitations.
13	* FanNickname: Since most of the enemy names were AllThereInTheManual, lots of nicknames sprung up.
14	** The most famous of which are "spagetti-os" for the Rinkas in Mother Brain's chamber.
15	** Energy Cheerios has also become popular, thanks to [[WebVideo/GameGrumps the Grumps]].
16	** The game itself is often called "[=NEStroid=]" to distinguish it from the series itself.
17	* GoddamnedBats: The Geegas in Kraid's lair are a pain in the neck to deal with. They are very fast, they spawn indefinitely in the rooms where they appear in, and they either knock you into pits of acid or constantly harass you by flying at you two or three at a time. It doesn't help much that they can also hurt you while you are going through a door.
18	* GoodBadBugs:
19	** Inputting the password "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3UyVylP7AI ENGAGE RIDLEY MOTHER FUCKER]]". The results are hilarious, if suicidal. (Among other things killing Ridley) That said, this is purely a GameBreakingBug when playing on the UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS, going so far as to '''completely brick the console''' on certain firmware versions should you attempt to do so. '''So don't.''' The code can also crash NES emulators if you use it on the re-release version of the game, though it simply exits out of the game with little more than an error message in the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch Online NES library.
20	** The password system is designed to handle a lot more data than necessary. Typically, only the bosses beaten, power-ups collected, number of missiles, play time, and starting location are needed. However, other memory addresses can be manipulated as long as the password checksum adds up. That's how passwords like the one above alter the functionality of the game.
21	** The Door Glitch that allows Samus to phase through walls and execute many a DungeonBypass.
22	** Bomb Boost Jumping, a movement bug where Samus lays a bomb, unmorphs, then jumps at the peak of the bomb's boost, allows her to gain an extra square of height on her jump, which enables things like early Ice Beam acquisition or other sequence breaks.
23	** Enemies could be baited through doors into other rooms. When combined with the Bomb Boost Jump, this allows Samus to skip Ridley and Kraid altogether by luring a Reo into the bridge room and using it as a platform to boost Samus to the door to Tourian.
24	* HilariousInHindsight: Because of the way in which the international version's password system is coded, it's possible to enter '''[[Anime/DragonBallZ DRAGON BALL Z Dragon Ball z]]''' and '''[[Franchise/{{Pokemon}} ODDISH TAUROS MEWTWO VULPIX]]''' as valid passwords-- despite the fact that neither ''Dragon Ball Z'' nor ''Pokémon'' actually existed at the time of the game's release (the ''Manga/DragonBall'' manga had already been running for two years and the anime had just started, but the ''Dragon Ball Z'' anime itself wouldn't begin until 1989).
25	** The manual states that Samus's space suit "can absorb any enemy's power." Unless this is referring to energy and missile refills rather than upgrades, it isn't as accurate as it would be for, say, ''Franchise/MegaMan''. But many years later, in ''VideoGame/MetroidFusion'' and ''[[VideoGame/MetroidDread Dread]]'', Samus actually absorbs abilities from the bosses she defeats.
26	* ItWasHisSled: Suffice to say, there's a reason Samus is the {{Trope Namer\|s}} for [[SamusIsAGirl a certain trope]].
27	* MemeticMutation: [[Memes/{{Metroid}} See here.]]
28	* {{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.
29	* NightmareRetardant: In contrast to his fearsome redesign from VideoGame/SuperMetroid and on, Ridley's cartoon alien design looks downright goofy in this game, which isn't helped by his [[BreatherBoss rather easy fight]]. Same with Kraid's impish stature compared to his [[AttackOfThe50FootWhatever titanic redesign]] and, to a lesser extent, Mother Brain's less detailed appearance (if thanks to GraphicsInducedSuperDeformed) compared to later games.
30	* OnceOriginalNowCommon:
31	** 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 Metroidvanias refined and iterated on them. Today, the game shows its age next to its successors with its floaty physics, sluggish pace, CutAndPasteEnvironments, [[DenialOfDiagonalAttack clunky controls]], and lack of features like an in-game map or fast travel. Newcomers to the ''Metroid'' series are often recommended to start with ''VideoGame/MetroidZeroMission'' instead.
32	** Female video game protagonists (and characters who weren't just [[SaveThePrincess a goal to be won]]) were rare in the 1980s, making the reveal of Samus's gender a shocker for the time. In the decades since ''Metroid'''s release, many games have had women as lead protagonists or major supporting players, thus most people today likely won't see what all the fuss was about. And of course, [[ItWasHisSled by now everyone knows the twist]].
33	* QuicksandBox: The game has no map and gives you no hints and not much of a sense of direction. Without a player's guide, it's frustratingly easy to get lost or simply end up with no idea where to go next.
34	* RemadeAndImproved: ''VideoGame/Metroid1'' is a complete and total groundbreaker in the history of video games. With its emphasis on exploration, and its [[SamusIsAGirl famous revelation]], it helped [[TropeMakers create]] and [[TropeNamers name]] the {{Metroidvania}} genre of gaming. However, its remake ''VideoGame/MetroidZeroMission'' is seen as superior in every way, fixing dated level design, including a map, and generally bringing a game made in the early days of gaming up to more modern standards. Many fans now recommend skipping the original entirely and playing ''Zero Mission'' instead.
35	* ScrappyMechanic:
36	** No matter how many energy tanks you collect, Samus will always start with exactly 30 health when loading a password. To avoid FakeDifficulty and getting killed within seconds of walking in a room with tougher enemies, players must give in to FakeLongevity by farming weaker enemies for health (which takes even longer after getting your first missile expansion, since enemies will often drop missiles instead of health regardless of how many missiles you're currently carrying).
37	** 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 disoriented and forget where you've already been.
38	** The fact that [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness unlike in later games]], the Ice and Wave Beams don't stack; forcing you to choose one of them only and go to their respective Chozo Statues -- which, for reference, are very far apart -- if you ever want to change them. On the one hand, the Wave Beam goes through walls and alleviates the issue of enemies that are too high or precarious to reliably hit with the Ice Beam, but [[NoSell does diddly squat to Metroids]]. However, despite being much more cumbersome to use due to its DenialOfDiagonalAttack, the Ice Beam is required not only for making platforms to get to new places and items, but are also required to kill the aforementioned [[DemonicSpiders Metroids]]. Later games -- and indeed, [[VideoGame/MetroidZeroMission this game's own GBA remake]] -- would let you have the advantages of both beam types simultaneously, but here? No such luck.
39	* 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 one Missile Expansion; not counting the extra Missiles you automatically get from beating Kraid and Ridley. It's possible, but [[HarderThanHard it makes an already-challenging game downright nightmarish to get through]], since Samus can only take a couple of hits before being reduced to atoms. It also makes Tourian absolutely ''murderous'' to deal with, 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; this makes Tourian even worse, since it [[ControllableHelplessness leaves the player with no way to free themselves from a Metroid if it latches on]].
40	* SuspiciouslySimilarSong:
41	** The music playing in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbI_zB-VWDg Ridley's Lair]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBE68gXDW0k Tourian]] sounds like the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GovuVf-GR7s Castle music]] from ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros1''.
42	** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBE68gXDW0k Tourian/miniboss theme]] is lifted straight from [[https://youtu.be/jGZD6tJ2Lw4?t=100 "The Gnome" movement]] of [[Music/ModestMussorgsky Modest Mussorgsky's]] "Pictures at an Exhibition".
43	* 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 his back, with only a brief pause every three volleys of attacks. Unless you have superhuman reflexes and/or patience, you ''will'' take a lot of damage during the fight. It only takes 25 Missiles to kill him, but Kraid's horns and stomach spikes can easily block your shots and Missiles[[note]]While you can freeze the horns and belly spikes with the Ice Beam, doing so before he launches them can actually make him harder to fight, since they'll also unintentionally stop your shots.[[/note]] and he can quickly turn around if you get behind him; leaving precious little room for you to attack him between his own volleys. Oh, and if you die while fighting him? Kraid can switch to a second attack pattern the next round, which can catch a new player off-guard.
44	* ThatOneLevel: Lower Norfair / Ridley's Lair. It has some of the nastiest enemies in the game and is guaranteed to grind any newbie who dares set foot in it without the Varia Suit and/or Screw Attack into dust. Thankfully, [[BreatherBoss Ridley himself is ridiculously easy compared to his level]], but just ''getting'' to him is another matter entirely.

Context YMMV / Metroid1