Mythinks #11

The Last Metroid #6 - Metroid: Zero Mission - A Better Game, but at What Cost

Published: February 25th, 2026

A still image will warp back and forth, until unrecognizable

You've done this before, havent you?

Ah, already reviewing our first remake for the blog? And so soon after reviewing the original? I feel like that's mostly gonna be loaded because. We like to just keep a real conversational flow to these. Whatever comes to mind goes onto text. Just because at least for a silly little blog about yapping our opinions on video games, it feels like the most natural way to write. And as such, I'm sure our thoughts on remakes are sure to seep in. Namely in that, in this dreadfully unholy year of 2026, we are VERY sick of that being like half of what comes out of any long-running franchise at this point. But we'll try to ignore that! Cause right now, it's 2004! Back when remaking a game that came out 15-20 years ago was a much more novel idea. And it's far from Zero Mission’s fault that its mission statement got old after another 20 years. Is there a word for when you become super aware of the passage of time like when I realized what a loaded sentence that is, just now?

Besides, it almost from word go makes it known that it's going to be our much preferred kind of remake anyways, one that remixes the old game so heavily that it can sometimes be barely recognizable. We could very well probably fill this whole article with screenshots of the game that could pass it off as an entirely new Metroid game, act as such, and. If somehow there's anyone out there that knows Metroid enough to recognize level layouts from the original, but also is not aware that Zero Mission is a remake of said first Metroid, well. We're just gonna operate under the assumption we're very smart and would have deceived this hypothetical person in this hypothetical scenario.

Ah the sick, twisted fate of being an eyeball monster in a Nintendo game

It doesn't even take long for Zero Mission to pull the rug a bit. You go left to get the morph ball like normal, then up the first shaft to get the Long Beam, then down another to get your first batch of missiles. It's here that the game surprises you with a giant worm boss that wasn't in the original Metroid at all, here to act as a more introductory boss fight within the initial area of Brinstar itself. In addition to this, you'll also be getting the Charge Beam from it, also seemingly basically acting as an obvious signal that this is adding abilities that aren't in the original.

It takes advantage of being a Metroid with the same basic mechanics in Fusion, albeit a lot of normal enemies go from feeling threatening in their own right, to being at least a bit of a joke. Zoomers, naturally, are now vulnerable to Samus kneeling to shoot them, Skrees can't keep up with Samus being able to shoot the ceiling from an angle. This at least feeling like a bit of an over-correction in terms of the first Metroid's difficulty. Whereas Fusion felt like it stepped up along with Samus’ movement finesse, Zero Mission feels like it's lagging behind a little.

It was foretold in Chozo prophecy: Go here, stupid

JINX:

this very much extends into the exploration of zebes as well. it's not like fusion where it gates your progress super hard, but it DOES still give you a waypoint on the map like it's a little too afraid you'll get lost. even if you're in a game that was once a little simplistic to make up for not having a map.

thankfully the game still relatively lets you loose, past all the usual funneling that happens at the start of these games anyway, it's just very much going to be the start of a trend where metroid games are going to get more and more scared of the possibility that you'll get lost, so they'll just be absolutely sure you'll know where to go next at all cost. which was fine for fusion where there was a narrative purpose for the heavy hand-holding, but here there's hardly such a purpose for it.

thankfully the game is still secretly a lot looser with allowing you to just break it than fusion is; infinite bomb-jumping has been re-enabled, and you can wall jump up the same wall again, which gives access to plenty of sequence breaks in the same sort of vein as super metroid. it's just notably a lot more obtuse about it. main thing you needed to know to pull off skips and tricks in super metroid is the intended wall jump and shine spark tricks, with other aspects of the game opening up when you learn the far less intended "mach ball" trick.

here in zero mission, among the pointing out what the exact map tiles to find the next major item is, you have a number of secret paths through seemingly random breakable tiles laid throughout the zebes caves, which serve no purpose other than specifically to offer shortcuts. the easiest one to find is the one that normally acts as a gate for the long beam, but you can find breakable blocks that allow you to actually skip the long beam and get a move-on, otherwise. there's a massive skip in a hidden, obscure missile-block in norfair that allows you to get into ridley's lair far earlier than intended, allowing you to actually beat ridley before kraid.

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Freedom. Boundless, terrifying freedom.

But, that's mayhaps getting a little ahead of ourselves, without yet getting into how the game is going to look on a very first playthrough. Just to say, we mostly wish the game was a little less scared of the idea of a first-time player getting lost and allowing them to find their own way around and be willing to explore past areas, though it would be disingenuous to call the game perfectly linear, given how many tricks and shortcuts it has to speed repeat playthroughs up. In that way, it is very much in the spirit of the original Metroid, which is a game that begged you to practice it and find the optimal route through it.

Zero Mission is a game that takes advantage of being a remix of an old game, namely in how it adds new areas, new bosses, and gives a greater context to older areas that had nothing going on in them. I remember a particular block of map in Metroid '87 that had no real reason to be there. It was just a shaft with three hallways in it with absolutely nothing in it. No Missile or Energy Tank pickups, no important items, nothing. Perhaps realistic given not everything in a big cave system is gonna be in direct service to some space bounty hunter, but Zero Mission more or less replaces this whole area with a spot where you activate the ziplines in Kraid's Lair. Even including a worm boss that uses said zip lines.

This is the one-way exit port of one of these shortcuts. I did not know this at the time of playing. I was here for five minutes trying to figure out what this was even hiding.

It's Metroid, but definitely far more structured in a "modern" Metroidvania way where there's very obvious locks and keys. Though outside of the speedrunner access ducts, there's no abilities you can ever really miss like in the original Metroid, or Super, for that matter. And I do feel like it's fair to omit said speedrunner ducts from the equation, given how obtuse it is to find those without either power bombing every single screen or looking them up. Unlike Super, where the only thing keeping you from not getting Spring Ball or Wave Beam is simply just not knowing where they are and not looking for them.

Zero Mission does echo back to Super in perhaps a few superficial ways. Though I could imagine it being a little shock to the system to enter the retroactively added Crateria in this game for the first time, the same surface and surface-adjacent area from Super Metroid. It's just Samus' favorite parking spot on this planet. Later on, you'll also end up finding, to the "East" of Crateria is a landed ship full of familiar enemies that were on the "wrecked ship" area of Super Metroid, very heavily implying this is very much the same ship that becomes haunted in a couple games from now.

VIXI:

This is also the first game to really sorta get into the mythos of the Chozo and their relationship to Samus. Which, there was obviously always tie-in media like the various manga, but this is the first time it's fully present in a game, almost following in the footsteps of the first Prime game. Here, Samus mentions in the extremely brief opening monologue that Zebes was once her home, and a flashback cutscene later on gets into how Samus was the adopted daughter of two Chozo dads.

She's the youngest person EVER

Which, now is probably as good a time as any to get into Samus' new, more solidified backstory. Well, "new". Again, manga tie-ins have established this by now, but it's the first time it's really coming up in a game, and this is a review series about the Metroid games. Samus' official backstory now is that, as a child, she was born on a Galactic Federation colony which got raided by Space Pirates, led by Ridley. Samus was left as the sole survivor of the attack, her biological parents being killed in the raid. Which is when two Chozo named Old Bird and Gray Voice found and took her under their wings.

In order to ensure her survival on Zebes, she was infused with Chozo DNA, and eventually was trained to be able to perform the crazy agility she's known for, and then later given her signature power armor. And it's a backstory I have a mixture of feelings about. Not bad, not great, nor even indifference? If that makes sense? It's the backstory I've always known Samus to have ever since I first got into Metroid, so it's just kind of matter-of-fact to me. Not much different from saying water boils if it gets hot enough. Yeah, that's just her backstory, alright. At the same time, I have grown to be a little apathetic to overarching lore in long-running franchises like this. Metroids 1-4 have an overarching story, which is one thing, but bah. This is another subject on Metroid I could probably write an individual article about, but that'd have to be saved for later.

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Hmm gee I wonder what the item that looks a lot like the icon for Plasma Beam could be

One strange little way they "spice things up" is that you will occasionally encounter "Unknown Items", which is to say, abilities that cannot be activated the moment you get them, due to them being incompatible with your normal Power Suit. Which is a neat idea on paper more than it is on execution. Because sure, it feels like the idea is that abilities that existed outside of the original Metroid need Samus to do something a little extra special to unlock them, but then you can still unlock stuff like Speed Booster or Super Missiles before this point, anyways. So it just seems oddly picky-choosy, I guess.

Metroid opinions that get you in this situation

Obviously this is to coincide with the fact that the game has an entire epilogue segment added to it, after where the original Metroid would have ended, where Samus is pursued by Space Pirates until being shot down, plummeting back down to Zebes. Something about this causes her to lose her power armor. Shut up.

This is actually the origin of what would become known as "Zero Suit Samus", the blue spandex Samus is always wearing now, when she's not wearing her Chozo armor. And they really turn this segment on its head by having it be a complete stealth segment, with Samus being fairly weak and vulnerable, and only equipped with a stun gun that briefly paralyzes any Space Pirates pursuing her. It's far from the worst stealth-and-chase segment out there. More involved than dealing with the SA-X, somehow. But it does feel like it drags for a smidge longer than it aught to.

He's mere inches in front of my face isn't he?

At the end of said stealth segment is the brief flashback cutscene mentioned earlier, and a fight against a Chozo statue holding a mirror that you have to shoot with good timing four times over in order to get your armor back, plus making those Unknown Items Known, now. Now back to being fully powered up and then-some, you can plow through the Space Pirates infesting Chozodia and the surrounding area, which is now just more or less your stomping ground.

VIXI:

This is definitely where the lore-jerking loses me a bit. Like, was an explanation for how Samus can possibly have the big shoulder pauldrons in the Primes when they were introduced in Metroid 2 really that necessary? Eh.

Speaking of getting all your items, it was thanks to this whole epilogue bit that I felt the need to put off talking about the abilities until after bringing it up.

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Samus' disappointment when Long Beam didn't mean she'd receive a means to whack people with a steel beam

Manual scans thanks to retropixel.net!

Long Beam:

Back for one small little re-appearance! Maybe not worth mentioning, but hey.

Whatever. Go, rocket pineapple.

Charge Beam:

Honestly, a few of these aren't noteworthy on their own beyond being new to Metroid '87. And this one is. It's the beam you charge! Waow!

As long as you have enough Rupees.

Bombs:

Gone and backtracked on Fusion de-enabling the infinite bomb jumping and re-enabled it, and thus you can use it to cheese a decent number of items. One thing I do know is that you can use this to get Varia Suit way earlier than intended; basically as soon as you get bombs. And they even reflect this fact by having Samus be orange in cutscenes that normally take place before she gets Varia Suit. Neat!

New..?

In fairness, that suit is probably heavy as hell

Power Grip:

Samus' ledge-grabbing ability from Fusion is an upgrade in this game. Not that you'll have to go long without it, since you get it fairly early on, just after your first visit to Norfair.

The ability that hit 88 miles per hour

Speed Booster:

Your new prize for defeating Kraid. They took the already souped up Speed Booster from Fusion and made it even soupier, allowing you to use a shine spark while in Morph Ball form, which has some slightly unique properties on top of being able to shoot through one-tile-high speed booster block holes. The best I can think to explain it is that you'll need to mind that you have to actively "roll" the Morph Ball, that is to say, keep pushing in the direction you're going, because hitting a slope will cause "Spark Ball" to lose its momentum. On top of that, you'll have to mind the Morph Ball lifts off the air by one block when it shine sparks. This is important for a handful of optional puzzles.

Move that ball up

Hi-Jump and Jump Ball:

Once again a package deal in this game. I might have acted like that was a Fusion-only thing, whoops.

AC Suit

Varia Suit:

Varia Suit's in a weird spot in this game in particular. The original Metroid didn't have any superheated rooms, so naturally this game had to add some. Thing is, almost all the superheated rooms are optional. So the benefit you'll almost end up noticing more is that Varia Suit is immune to acid damage in this one.

Additionally, thanks to there being almost no, if any at all, superheated rooms that are mandatory, Varia Suit is fully skippable. At least until you complete the "Ruins Test" boss, and in order to hand you the Gravity Suit, you just also get the Varia Suit for free.

Ice-Wave sounds like a gum flavor

Ice and Wave Beam:

Lumped together because, once again, they behave as they usually do. Other than Ice Beam being back from a brief break from Fusion, and unlike the original, the beam weapons are stackable in this one.

Trainer! I want to play Boom Boom Missiles today!

Super Missiles:

Unlike Fusion, Super Missiles are back to being a separate resource from normal Missiles. Thus also have their own expansion pickup again. The simple compromise being that it's a lot easier to switch between two options on a menu than a whole submenu you had to cycle through. Super Missiles already felt really powerful, but it feels like in this game they're devastating. Ridley's made a joke with them, Mother Brain can be made a joke with them, the true final boss is pathetic because of them. You can even sequence break to have these when you fight Kraid, in which case you can literally three-shot him.

Well that's not a very nice thing to say to Attack

Screw Attack:

Another rare instance of being able to get Screw Attack before you get Space Jump. That's kinda it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Unknown Items aren't in the manual anywhere.

Plasma Beam:

Then comes the three "Unknown Items", which turn out to be three of the best upgrades from Super Metroid. Plasma Beam is ridiculously powerful, as it always is.

No comment

Space Jump:

The second Unknown Item is Space Jump, which more or less behaves the same as it does in Fusion.

I mean you saw it in the last two screenshots but sure

Gravity Suit:

And finally, the Gravity Suit doesn't see a ton of use, given there's not exactly a lot of water throughout the game. Thus it's almost basically just an armor upgrade in this one.

But Power Bombs ARE in the manual? Okay

Power Bomb:

And the final ability you get, RIGHT before the final boss, is Power Bombs. But boy does this one hurt because it's the last "key" ability you need to run back and finish 100%'ing the game. But more on that in a second. Though this game does manage to have some restraint, because it knows that, unlike in Fusion, you don't need 74 Power Bombs under any circumstances. So the final Power Bomb count is a far more reasonable 18.

And, yeah! As a remake, understandable it doesn't have much in terms of new stuff, but it's not like there's nothing here. It's new to Metroid '87, and that's the important part.

IONO:

One problem with the way a bunch of items are dumped on you at the end is that it really sucks to have to use the Power Bombs to escape Chozodia, and only then will you be able to do item cleanup, which slows down the pace of the game so much. And with a true final boss as easy as it is, I really don't care to bother, personally. Which is a shame to say in a game about collecting things.

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CHIAKI:

I think it's one thing when it's Metroid Fusion, which had a point with finally taking the leash off at the end, and at last you're finally free to explore the station on your whim. But for this game, it really only makes sense the carry the triumphant momentum to the end and not stop to have to go on a scavenger hunt.

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This hole. It was meant for me.

...As such, this is sadly still the one mainline Metroid game we've never bothered clearing 100%. Because on top of having to detour so heavily to get the last cleanup run going, a lot of the optional challenges are extremely precise. Some of the roughest shine spark chains out there, some of the most exact "better get the diagonal shine spark angle just right" and "better be flawless with your space jumping" nonsense. This is definitely a game for the speedrun sickos that can pull off these kinda stunts with a crazy amount of consistency.

100%ing a game is usually its own reward for me. Not even for bragging rights, but just for the gratification that I've got the highest possible number on a scoreboard. But this is one Metroid game where I omit the backtrack and just go straight from getting your fully powered suit to the final boss.

Auto screenshotter didn't catch Mecha Ridley doing anything, so you get this instead

And getting fully kitted out definitely feels like an exercise in excess, given how much of a joke the epilogue's new final boss, Mecha Ridley, is. It maybe gave me trouble when I was still new to 2D Metroid games, and because of that I do end up forgetting just how easy it is. And thus get hit with whiplash when I unload my Super Missiles into it and it just keels over almost instantly. The dual elite pirates right before the end of the escape sequence almost feel like the true final boss with how much they can rack up damage on you.

If they ever remake this game again, they should add another epilogue where Samus gets shot down after this scene and has to escape Zebes a third time.

With that, Samus manages to escape, and her so-called "Zero Mission" is finally complete. And then we didn't see another 2D Metroid game for another 13 years. Yeah, as far as The Last Metroid is concerned, we're not gonna be seeing another 2D Metroid for quite a while, it's gonna be Primes and spinoffs for the time being. But hey, we're still in what I would easily consider Metroid's golden years, where the series had a rare moment of more than fairly consistent releases.

...But actually, we're not done with Zero Mission just yet. And I know there's been a number of poking at small flaws in this one, though do mind that is a bit because I do feel like this game's plus sides are either pretty self-evident; it's a fairly solid remix of an older game, and to my understanding, the personal best time chasers are really satisfied with this game, I'm just not the sorta person that speedruns Metroids, necessarily.

Yeah I'm at uhhhh purple spheres

Overall I would say this game is, cut and dry, a lot better, and far, far, far more approachable than the original Metroid. It's fun for a quick romp of a game that I'm sure I could beat in one sitting the same way I can beat the first Pikmin in one sitting if I really wanted to commit to it. But honestly, my most major hang-ups with this game come from what it did to the original Metroid's atmosphere.

Overall, Zero Mission definitely takes a tone from the original Metroid in terms of its art direction; the shadows are extremely harsh in the environmental sprite work, likely to reflect how the backgrounds of the first Metroid were just pitch black. Which is in itself a cool effect! But I still do very much feel like it sacrifices a lot by not being dark enough. I feel like Super Metroid easily struck the best balance of having detail to the environment while appearing really dreary and moody.

LUNA:

Personally, I don't think it's a bad thing that what is meant to be chronologically the first Metroid is also the most approachable, but in terms of gameplay and its tone. But it's hard to deny that this game is fairly lighthearted by Metroid standards. The music is triumphant in a lot of places, and the colors are awfully bright a lot of the time. Still a striking style in and of itself, though! I think it looks quite nice in its own right!

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I guess it's hard to feel threatened in this game when bozo here is about to die in seconds.

And sure, this was on the Gameboy Advance, not all of which had a backlit screen, which would make the game look significantly darker, but this game did also come out a full year after the GBA SP did, so it being played on a backlit screen was a far-from-unlikely circumstance. I know GBA emulators come with "true colors" filters to make the screen look more like what you'd see on an original GBA screen, so maybe I should play it like that, one day.

But even so, the game is pretty triumphant and grandiose in tone, rather than foreboding and heavy like in the first Metroid. Which is why I can far from call it the "definitive" Metroid 1 experience that "replaces" the original. I mean, no remake can ever really replace the original. Such a notion is a complete and utter myth. But these two games have completely different vibes going on, so it's hard to parrot everyone else's thoughts and say Zero Mission obsoletes the original Metroid. Cause it just doesn't. I'm more likely to pick it up to play it again! But it just doesn't.

CELESTE:

But hey, I do think that's a good thing, too! Two cakes, and all that. And for our money, I would definitely say the best kind of remake is one that is transformative, unlike a lot of remakes these days that feel more like they're just aimed at "correcting" old, "outdated" media. Gotta stick an over-shoulder camera on James Sunderland because fixed camera with tank controls is "objectively bad" or whatever. And again, Metroid is among the original speedrun games, so Zero Mission only doubling down on that is very much knowing its audience. Which is good, even if we'd rather watch that side of it than participate.

It just feels right to end on this image

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VIXI SCORE: 8.5/10

It's a fun romp of a Metroid, probably the easiest to just pick up on a whim and have another go just because you feel like it. Maybe I aughta get into the speedrun side of things to spice the game up a bit, especially since it's so easy, otherwise.

LUNA SCORE: 8.5/10

I'm with Vixi on this one. It feels like it's got everything for every kind of Metroid fan. Approachable for anyone new to Metroid, lots of secret shortcuts for people that like breaking the games in half, and some tough as nails optional challenges for the experienced Metroidheads that might find the main chunk of the game too easy.

JINX SCORE: 8/10

i got my gripes with it, but it's still a plenty solid game. plenty new, weird things to see, and the game definitely hits a little different when you play it with the original metroid fresher in mind.

IONO SCORE: 9/10

I might've been the one that threw up the proverbial group vote to surrender to trying to 100% this game this time. Other than that, I think this one is a blast and is fun to just plow through!

CELESTE SCORE: 8.5/10

...I suppose I kind of said my piece in the last paragraph, there, heh. It's great! And I miss when remakes of older media were more like this.

CHIAKI SCORE: 8.5/10

Wow we all kinda just more or less agree on this one, huh. In a way that almost feels like the tone of the game, in general. It truly is the most agreeable Metroid. It's got its problems, but it's still pretty good.