If I had to pick a single favorite video game, it would be Super Metroid. Many of the reasons I love this game can be explained by examining the game’s first minute.

The prologue

Super Metroid begins with the protagonist, Samus Aran, exposing the backstory via text monologue interspersed with cutscenes.

Check it out for yourself.

Show, don’t tell

I love this prologue because so much aesthetic style and characterization are established quickly while relentlessly developing the plot. Within a minute, Samus’s summary of the previous two Metroid games shows us that she’s an efficient, ruthless hunter who took down a galactic threat, but also that she’s not beyond mercy. The efficiency and ruthlessness come out in the first cutscene wherein Samus kills Mother Brain, and in her narratation of the genocide she enacted on SR388. The aesthetics of that narration, the green text clicked out onto the screen at a robotically even tempo on top of a shadowed portrait of Samus, her face half shrouded behind her helmet, fit the message perfectly. Then, in the second cutscene, Samus finds the larva; she points her cannon at it, hesitates, and ultimatly allows the larva to follow her. The moment of hesitation is a perfectly executed narrative turning point. Prior to that moment, Samus has nearly erradicated an entire species. She stands before its last child, poised to remove the Metroids from the universe forever. But then the larva comes to Samus as a child to its mother, and Samus lowers her weapon and does… nothing. She just stands there for a moment, not knowing what to do. It’s a simple bit of character development executed entirely through the charater’s actions.

Samus stands ready to destroy the last of the Metroid species

Retroactive meaning

These cutscenes have additional depth for those who played either or both of the prequels to Super Metroid: Metroid and Metroid II. Using in-game footage leverages the player’s own experience and emotions: if you’ve played the games, then the look and feel of the footage makes you feel that you’re in the Metroid universe again.

If you played Metroid II, then you remember erradicating the Metroids and you remember the surprise of finding the larva in the birthing chamber behind the metroid queen. As a player, you probably didn’t know what to do, and eventually just walked out with the larva following you as in the final moments of the cutscene. Now, with Samus’s narration, actions you already made in the past are given a voice and direction which lead naturally into the plot of Super Metroid.

Close your eyes

Replay the prologue with your eyes closed, and listen through that first minute. You may not have even noticed the music the first time, and that’s what makes Super Metroid’s sound so great: it is inseparable from the rest of the game. Notice how visceral is the sound of the larva hatching, and how far reaching seem the synthesized choral voices. You’re only a minute into this game and you can hear that you’re in the midst of a space opera.

Go play the game

At this point, since you’ve watched the prologue, I recommend you to just play the game. When you’re done maybe come back here and check out the rest of my comments. If, like so many other people, you fall in love with the game, it might feel good to read someone else’s articulation of some of the reasons the game is so wonderful. If you choose to read on without playing, you’ll find some light spoilers.

In a future post (possibly the next one), I’ll get into how the rest of Super Metroid carries on the excellent qualities found in prologue, focusing on aesthetics.