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I remember very fondly the first time I played a Metroid game. It was in a Gamestop, where the newest Game Boy Advance SP model was showcased with Metroid Fusion as its title. While I was blown away with the back-lit screen and the responsiveness of the new button design, it was the game itself that really got me intrigued. It was a singular robot, in a clad-in-blue armor who received orders from a computer, and does missions all around some space station. Of course, I couldn’t play the whole game, but it did made me realize how badly I wanted a game like that. Since this was a time when old games were still sold, I bought the $15 NES Metroid cart for me to have a head start before delving into other territories. Yup, this was my first relationship with a completely-not-a-robot woman called Samus Aran.

Fast-forward to around May 2004, which was the time when my Mom bought me my GBA SP. I already knew what game I wanted. Nintendo Power was already hyping it with strategy guides and sneak previews. It was Metroid Zero Mission, a game just recently released about 3 months ago and that I was already salivating on the sight of playing through such a beautiful-looking journey. Did I make the right decision? From the day I first bought it and started playing it inside my parents car to today which I now play it occasionally on my DS Lite? Absolutely yes.

Many consider this a remake of the first Metroid, and in some ways they’re telling the truth. It has basically the same story (blast through Planet Zebes to defeat Mother Brain and the parasites called Metroids for the greater good of the galaxy), the same overall structure layout (that is, familiar corridors, maps, and item placement), and the same gameplay premise: Thrown inside a huge interconnected world, you must explore every inch of the planet in search of upgrades, tools and weapons that can aid you in your ultimate quest against the Space Pirates. Everything is the same as the original…yet it isn’t. The story is far more fleshed out than the original, now showing beautiful hand-drawn cut-scenes as bounty-hunter Samus Aran makes her way into the depths of Zebes. Many of the corridors and halls have been reworked to complement all the new features ZM brings to the table, from improved, fast-paced controls to subtle-yet-important details like crouching and diagonal shooting. Even if it’s based on a more-than-a-decade old game, it still looks a whole new game. It’s like revisiting an old town you moved far away, and then 17 years later you return to see what has changed. Instantly familiar, yet the buildings and streets have been reworked to look modern and accessible for the 21-century.

And that leads us to the game’s graphics. True, it’s a GBA game, but that doesn’t stop Nintendo from giving us one of the prettiest games ever in a portable. While this is pretty much a modified version of Metroid Fusion’s engine, Zero Mission has its own art direction that is simply gorgeous to look at. You’d think this game is actually a full-blown Metroid sequel if it weren't for the map design and locales. The backgrounds are beautiful from the moment you step foot in the rocky chambers of Brinstar, you enter a heated room inside Norfair, or when you finally traverse through the technological Tourain. Varied environments has been a staple in the Metroid series, and this entry is no different.  The animations look cool too – from the feeble Zoomers to the jumping Sidehoppers, all the monsters inside the hostile, natural Pirate HQ have unique and multi-framed movements. Everything looks like a piece of art, and it doesn’t require 3D graphics or anything flashy to push it forward.

Equally impressing is the game’s music. Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka may have composed the original tracks for the first Metroid, but the Super Metroid duo (Kenji Yamamoto and Minako Hamano) remixed and gave them that atmospheric, eerie flair of their SNES child that demonstrates the very best of the series. Hearing that orchestral-feeling Brinstar theme booming in that little speaker inside my backlit beauty gave me goosebumps, and it only gets better as you hear remixes of Norfair and the bosses’ lairs. A good amount of classic Super Metroid tunes are also in this game – you can expect Ridley’s iconic boss battle theme when you finally confront him inside his own chambers.

Now the game sure feels familiar until you beat down Mother Brain, but don’t you think for one second that it ends there. While hardly a spoiler nowadays, the aftermath of Samus’ first mission comes to a halt as she needs to return to Zebes in an effort to recover her Power Suit for unspecified reasons. While I do find it somewhat illogical, it’s a passable excuse to bring a whole new area into the game and new challenges. This added lair to an already awesome package lengths the game and gives more backstory to Samus’ intriguing biography. It also vaguely connects to the events leading to Retro Studios’ critically acclaimed Metroid Prime trilogy, although not to the point that you can call it a direct prequel.

Even with new areas to explore and, like in Super Metroid, 100 upgrades to collect (including power-ups), the whole package feels short from start to finish – you could easily manage to complete the whole game in less than 3-5 hours on the normal setting. However, Zero Mission takes a step further when it comes to replay value. Like in the Prime series, the game has a difficulty setting in which you can play in Easy, Normal or Hard modes. Easy nets you the same ending no matter how much time you waste around the planet, but Normal and Hard gets you a myriad of them depending on how many items you have and how much time it took you to accomplish the mission. What stands out here is an obscure, 15% Challenge – think of it as the 3-heart challenge from the Zelda series, only this time you can only use 15 out of 100 collectibles you find all around Zebes. Not only you must limit your Missile and Energy tanks, but also upgrades as well – the game is cleverly made to make items like the Speed Booster or the Screw Attack purely optional, thus giving you freedom to complete the quest as light as possible. This concept isn’t new, of course, but to turn a fan-made challenge into one that actually rewards you is simply genius, and it makes players take a different approach towards the game when playing it for the nth time. Especially since having fewer energy and ammunition means that bosses won’t be as easy as they were the first time around!

As if the extras weren’t enough, the game packs in a few candy bars for us to chew on once it’s all said and done. Once you beat the game, the original NES Metroid is unlocked; think of it as a compare-and-contrast tool to see the similarities and differences between the original and the 32-bit remake. A gallery shows all the endings you’ve gotten so far (8 in total), plus an unlockable Metroid Fusion gallery that brings the endings from that game for you to see (you do need to link between the two games to do so, however). Said gallery also includes endings not found in the American version of Fusion – the Japanese version actually included difficulty settings similar to the ones in Zero Mission. Why they didn’t include them in the USA release still boggles me, but in any case it’s worth unlocking it since it shows many images of Samus’ backstory, plus two more pics just for the fun of it. Beating the game on Hard also unlocks the Sound Test – which is absolutely clever, because the music in this game rocks hard.

I hardly have any complains with Zero Mission, but if there’s one that sticks into my head, it’s the fact that there is a sense of familiarity going on in the game. There was hardly any new items here (the Power Grip simply adds Samus’ ability to hang onto ledges like in Fusion), and the bosses were simply been-here-done-that ordeals. If you played Super Metroid and/or Metroid Fusion, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about when playing Zero Mission. It’s just a minor complain, in my opinion, as Metroid is hardly about beating the hell out of monsters and more about finding every secret the game might have, but it sure hurts when you are expecting more than a nostalgic-filled remake.

Overall, this game deserves a 9.5/10. It’s better than Fusion, and my second favorite 2D Metroid out there. Sakamoto-san clearly knew what he and his team were doing when pulling off this re-telling of Samus’ first adventure, and it has just enough juice to squeeze out as you complete all of its challenges. Simply one of the best GBA titles out there, period.