Part 4: The Plot to Metroid Part 1

Let's Read Up On Metroid's Story!

Part 1: The instruction manuals explain everything

So there's a lot of naysaying about how Other M's story is complete horsecrap, and while that's perfectly true, it's also a good idea to pause for a second and wonder, "How good was Metroid's story to begin with?" With that in mind I'm gonna start looking back at the story in the previous Metroid games and piece together the narrative as it was before Other M came along and ruined everything, and what better place to start than with the Original Metroid!

... only the Original Metroid didn't have a story, at least, not in the game itself.


Really all we needed in the NES days

If you wanted to know the story of Metroid, you'd have to look in the instructions booklet... which I've helpfully cut up and put down below, for your reading pleasure.


What, it's just space pirates that we need to worry about? No wars or petty crime or nothing?


Ah, so that's what Nintendo considers a bounty hunter; freelance police!



Well, this doesn't sound like the situation is going well at all...



Well, they were trying to keep the whole "Samus is a lady" thing a secret, and what better way to do that then by outright lying to your customers!


The GBA port of the NES game had some small changes, namely calling Samus a she and noting Zebes as her homeplanet.



A nip and tuck and suddenly those 6 pages in the NES manual are slimed down to a reasonable two. I also like how the updates to the mythos are either barely noticeable or fit in quite naturally; this is how you do a retcon, people.

Next up is Metroid 2 on the old yellow screened GameBoy. (with a pink tinted manual?)


Ah, now it's not just Space Pirates, it's "unknown planets". A welcome change, really, gives a better feeling of mystery when you don't know what you're fighting, and whether they're really good or evil...


Summary of the first game, guess I could've removed this shot but then the next page wouldn't make sense.


I like how, if you pay attention, the idea that there's only 40~ Metroid's to kill before you've successfully genocided their entire population isn't all that implausible; the first game had only a single Metroid that was stolen from a ship leaving this planet, which the pirates used radiation on to cause it to split; here, however, there is no radiation, so the Metorid's only means of population growth is via natural reproduction, ie laying eggs, which takes a lot longer, so there aren't that many to deal with. It's a nice detail, and one of my favourite parallels with Aliens, back when Metroid was ripping off good sci-fi for ideas instead of Metal Gear Solid.


Wait, wasn't everything on SR388 killed off by the Metroids? This is stated in both the '86 manual and the '04 GBA release. Meh, guess life on the planet isn't as extinct as claimed.

And then came Super Metroid, but you don't need to read the manual for that game since the game itself did a better job explaining everything, anyway.


A few seconds of Beta rays? Used to be a full 24 hours.


Can't help but notice the Galactic Federation Police aren't being brought up anymore, now Samus is taking orders directly from the Supreme Council.


Yep, first thing she does with that Baby Metroid is sell it off for SCIENCE! Just one more thing to make all that monologuing about the Baby that much more ridiculous when you remember stuff like this was how their relationship played out.


Couple of things worth noting; for the benefit of "humankind" is somewhat sinister considering the Federation is supposed to be made up of thousands of different alien species working in harmony, and this is the first time someone has suggested that Metroid's were "created", rather than naturally evolved. They don't say who created them yet, but later games will.

Yes, I'm well aware that I could have shortened these all and just posted summaries, and yes, I'm aware that some of this information isn't exactly true anymore, but I wanted to at least show the kind of effort that went into the Metroid universe back during the first generation of games. After this, Metroid games went away for nearly ten years, and when they came back, the mythology and universe exploded with detail, so I thought it would be nice to get the early picture before diving into the deep end. This is the whole picture, up to this point.

Next time, I'll be covering Fusion and Zero Mission, and how their expanding narratives changed the Metroid universe.