Throwback Thursday: Metroid II

In a series as loved and revered as Metroid, its weird that this game gets so little love. Metroid II: Return Of Samus was released on the orignal Game Boy in 1992. While it was obviously shackled by the smaller screen limited to 4 colors, this sequel was better than the original Metroid in every single way I can think of. It offered a much larger map, many new weapons, more abilities, and a save feature to replace the old password system. Controls follow the same pattern metroid did on the NES. A jumps, B fires a weapon, and select toggles between missles and beam. Tap down once and Samus will crouch, tap a second time and she'll roll into a ball. The space jump appears for the first time here, allowing Samus to jump infinitely. You'll also find the spiderball upgrade, which will let samus roll along any wall or ceiling in the game. While its time consuming, I used those 2 abilities to search every single room for upgrades many many times. Bombs return for morphball mode, as does the screw attack. In addition to the Ice beam and Wave beam so popular in the original metroid, you'll find the Spazer Laser (which fires 3 beams at once for a wide shot) and the Plasma beam, which is the strongest shot in the game. Due to the introduction of Metroid Prime into the mythos, it can get kinda fuzzy when this takes place. Safe to say its before Super Metroid. Samus Aran lands on the Metroid homeworld of SR388 on a mission to exterminate them once and for all, and she gets more than she bargained for. The metroids mutate and evolve far past what she saw on Zebes, and a series of earthquakes in the game constantly open up new areas to seek them out. Metroid encounters are frequent, and while you'll fight some of the same mutations several times, it can still be pretty tough. With the lovingly remade Metroid:Zero Mission on GBA last year, I can only hope that Metroid II finds its way to a wider audience in some form. The Revolution download service will hopefully offer it. If you're a recent metroid fan, and didn't play this one back in the day, its a great game. Well worth the time looking in game boy bargain bins.