is an action-adventure game franchise created by Nintendo. The player controls the bounty hunter Samus Aran, who protects the galaxy from Space Pirates and their attempts to harness the power of the parasitic Metroid creatures. Metroid combines the platforming of Super Mario Bros. and the exploration of The Legend of Zelda with a science fiction setting and an emphasis on nonlinear gameplay. Metroid games are mostly presented as either side-scrolling or from a first-person perspective. Players battle hostile alien enemies and obtain power-ups as they progress through the game world, with few non-player characters.
The first Metroid was developed by Nintendo R&D1 and released on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986. Metroid II: Return of Samus was released for the handheld Game Boy in 1991. Super Metroid (1994), released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, drastically expanded the Metroid formula, with numerous new power-ups, an automap and a richer story. After a hiatus, the first 3D Metroid game, Metroid Prime, developed by Retro Studios, was released for the GameCube in 2002 alongside the Game Boy Advance game Metroid Fusion. They were followed by Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (2004) and the Wii game Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (2007).
Metroid: Other M (2010), developed by Team Ninja for the Wii, received weaker reviews. After another hiatus, MercurySteam developed a remake of Metroid II: Return of Samus, Metroid: Samus Returns (2017) for the handheld Nintendo 3DS. It was followed by Metroid Dread (2021) for the Nintendo Switch, the highest-selling Metroid game. Following a protracted development, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was released for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 in 2025. Metroid Ravenous, developed by MercurySteam, is scheduled for Switch 2 in 2027.
As of 2012, the Metroid series had sold more than over 17.44 million copies. It has been named among the best game franchises by several publications, and several Metroid games are named among the greatest games. The series has been represented in other Nintendo media, including the Super Smash Bros. series. Additional media includes soundtracks, comic books, and manga. Along with the 1997 Konami game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the early Metroid games defined the Metroidvania subgenre, inspiring other games with continuous explorable side-scrolling levels. Samus was one of the first prominent female video game characters.
Gameplay The Metroid series contains elements from shooter, platformer, adventure, survival and first-person games. The series is notable for its non-linear progression and solitary exploration format where the player only controls Samus Aran, with few or no other characters to interact with. The player gains items and power-ups for Samus's suit through exploration and by defeating enemies. Many upgrades enable further exploration. The Morph Ball upgrade allows Samus to curl into a ball, roll into tight places and plant bombs. The Shinespark ability lets Samus charge her Power Suit with energy and dash at tremendous speeds to break through certain walls. This ability allows access to secret areas and enables sequence breaking, making it important to the Metroid speedrunning community.
The classic series consists of 2D side-scrollers, while the Metroid Prime series uses a first-person perspective, and first-person shooter mechanics. The 2010 game Other M uses the third-person shooter format.
The original Metroid was influenced by two other major Nintendo franchises: Mario, from which it borrowed extensive areas of platform jumping, and The Legend of Zelda, from which it borrowed non-linear exploration. Metroid differed in its atmosphere of solitude and foreboding. Metroid was also one of the first video games to feature an exploration to the left as well as the right, and backtracking to already explored areas to search for secret items and paths. Since the late 1990s, the term "Metroidvania" has been applied to this format. According to Edge, Metroid is "the thinking man's shooter", in which weapons are "more a means of progression than weapon", with the environments posing larger obstacles than enemies.
Audio The Metroid series has been noted and praised for its unique style of video game music. Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka, composer of the original Metroid, has said he wanted to make a score that made players feel like they were encountering a "living creature" and had no distinction between music and sound effects. The only time the main Metroid theme was heard was after Mother Brain is defeated; this is intended to give the player a catharsis. The composer of Super Metroid, Kenji Yamamoto, came up with some themes by humming to himself while riding his motorcycle to work. He was asked to compose the music for Metroid Prime to reinforce the series continuity. Metroid Primes Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound was mixed by a member of Dolby.
Developers from Retro Studios noted how the 6 MB memory budget for all sound effects of a level in Metroid Prime was crucial in producing a quality soundtrack, as each sound had to be of high quality to be included. Yamamoto used heavy drums, piano, voiced chants, clangs of pipes, and electric guitar. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption took advantage of the increased RAM in the Wii, allowing for higher-quality audio samples. Kenji Yamamoto, who composed the music for Super Metroid and the Prime trilogy, copied the musical design of the original Metroid in Metroid Prime 3, by keeping the music and themes dark and scary until the very end, when uplifting music is played during the credits.
Story and characters
In the first Metroid, Samus explores the planet Zebes to defeat Mother Brain, the leader of the villainous Space Pirates, who plans to harness the power of the Metroids. In Metroid II: The Return of Samus, Samus flies to the Metroids' home planet, SR-388, and exterminates them. After she destroys the Metroid Queen, a baby Metroid hatches and imprints upon her. Samus turns it over to the Galactic Federation for research.
In Super Metroid, Samus chases the Space Pirates to Zebes after the Metroid hatchling is stolen by Ridley. She defeats Space Pirates including Ridley, Kraid, Crocomire and Draygon, but is defeated by Mother Brain. She is saved by the Metroid hatchling, which dies after transferring Mother Brain's power to her. Samus flees Zebes before it explodes.
In Metroid Fusion, Samus is infected by the parasitic virus X, which has multiplied without its natural predator, the Metroids. On board a space station, Samus undergoes surgery to fuse her DNA with the Metroid hatchling, saving her life. After the X virus takes over the space station, Samus confronts the SA-X, a parasite doppelganger.
The first three Metroid Prime games take place between Metroid and Metroid II. In the first, Samus travels to the planet Tallon IV to stop the Space Pirates from exploiting the mutagen Phazon. In Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Samus battles Space Pirates and mutated Metroids on Aether, a planet split into light and dark dimensions. She also confronts the Ing, half-liquid creatures that can possess the dead, and Dark Samus.
Development and history
1986: Origins
The central figures in the production and development of the Metroid series are Satoru Okada, who directed Metroid (1986) and created the series; Yoshio Sakamoto, who was a character designer for Metroid and has directed or supervised most of the sequels; Gunpei Yokoi, who headed Nintendo Research & Development 1 (R&D1) and produced Metroid and Metroid II: Return of Samus (1991); Makoto Kano, who wrote the story for Metroid, co-designed Metroid II, and produced Super Metroid (1994); and Hiroji Kiyotake, who designed characters for Metroid.
The original Metroid, an action game for the Family Computer Disk System, was developed by R&D1 and released in Japan on August 6, 1986. It was published for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in August 1987 in North America and on January 15, 1988, in Europe. It was designed to be a shooting game that combined the platform jumping of Super Mario Bros. with the non-linear exploration of The Legend of Zelda and a darker aesthetic. The title is a portmanteau of the words "metro" (as in rapid transit) and android, and was meant to allude to the mainly underground setting of the first game as well as its robot-like protagonist. Halfway through development, a member of staff suggested making Samus a woman as a twist. Ridley Scott's 1979 science-fiction horror film Alien was described by Sakamoto as a "huge influence" after the world of the first Metroid had been created. In recognition of this, an antagonist was given the name Ridley.. The staff were also influenced by the work of the film's creature designer H. R. Giger, finding his style fit the Metroid universe.
1991–2002: Sequels and first hiatus Metroid II: Return of Samus was released for the handheld Game Boy console in 1991 in North America and in 1992 in Japan and Europe. It further established Samus Aran's visual design, with the bulky Varia Suit upgrade and different arm cannons.
As R&D1 were committed to making another game, Nintendo brought in Intelligent Systems to develop Super Metroid for the 16-bit Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Development began in late 1991. Released in 1994, Super Metroid drastically expanded the Metroid formula, with numerous new power-ups and a richer story. It received acclaim and is considered one of the best SNES games. It was directed by Yoshio Sakamoto, the character designer for the first Metroid; Sakamoto has directed or produced most of the 2D Metroid games since.
After Super Metroid, no new Metroid games were released for eight years. Nintendo could not generate firm ideas for a Metroid for their new console, the Nintendo 64. Sakamoto said he could not imagine how the Nintendo 64 controller could be used to move Samus. An unidentified company declined an offer from Nintendo to develop a Metroid game for the Nintendo 64, as they were not confident they could create a successor to Super Metroid. The Virtual Boy game Galactic Pinball (1995) featured a segment in which the player controls Samus' gunship, and Samus was a playable character in the Nintendo 64 fighting game Super Smash Bros. (1999).
2002–2009: Fusion and Prime
In 2000, the Nintendo producer Shigeru Miyamoto visited the new Nintendo subsidiary Retro Studios in Austin, Texas. He did not like any of the projects they had in development, but spent time playing Action Adventure, a third-person science-fiction action game with a female protagonist. Miyamoto tasked Retro with developing a Metroid game for the new Nintendo console, the GameCube. The team terminated Action Adventure and moved to Metroid.
Metroid Prime (2002), the first 3D Metroid game, moved the nonlinear structure of Super Metroid to a first-person perspective. Nintendo stressed that it was not a first-person shooter but a "first-person adventure". Metroid Prime received acclaim. It sold 2.84 million copies worldwide and was the best-selling Metroid game until Metroid Dread (2021).
Nintendo released Metroid Fusion, a 2D game for the Game Boy Advance (GBA), released on the same day as Prime in North America. It was developed by R&D1 and written and directed by Sakamoto. Its gameplay is similar to Super Metroid, but with a more mission-based structure that gives more guidance to the player. The team's next GBA project was Zero Mission (2004), a remake of the original Metroid. Both GBA games received acclaim. A Nintendo restructure merged R&D1 with R&D2 in 2003, shortly ahead of the release of Zero Mission.