Nintendo
Metroid II - Return Of Samus

As a rule, my brother and I would fight to decide which would be the next Game Boy game to buy or be given as a gift. We were kids, there wasn't much to splurge on, so we had to optimize our choice. However, I remember well that we both immediately agreed on this Metroid II – Return Of Samus. I don't recall why; the name meant nothing to me, we didn't know who this Samus was or where they were returning from. Maybe it was the cover with that kind of very threatening robot, or perhaps the little plot we read in some catalog-bible we used to pick the most badass games, but we instantly fell in love with it. It arrived at Christmas '92 and it was a kind of revelation.

Shades of gray, graphics that seemed amazing for the time, minimal and eerie music, disgusting monsters to face in solitude as you delve into the depths of an unknown planet; few ingredients, but mixed brilliantly. The plot was spilled out in a corner of the paper that roughly translated the instruction booklet, entirely in English and therefore incomprehensible to us (I’ve lost it now, damn it...): this Samus, a bounty hunter, after kicking Space Pirates' butts, had to reach the planet SR-388 to clean out the evil Metroids using his arm-cannon and a series of (awesome...) upgrades that made him increasingly massive. He was a tough guy, shooting in all directions, jumping like crazy, transforming into a sphere, leaving bombs and rockets... But the Metroids were tough too, they almost scared me: when you realized one of them was around, and when you knew it was a Zeta or Omega class, the idea of having to tear it apart was anything but reassuring. And then it was hard to find your way in that maze of corridors; the game was quite linear, a single gigantic level, but full of dead ends, traps, huge structures to climb and explore, very deep wells brimming with enemies. Moreover, to move forward, you had to drain the lava occupying the underground corridors, and the only way to do it was to annihilate all the Metroids present in that section. In short, you had to leave behind a desert, and so the sense of claustrophobic isolation skyrocketed. Sometimes it was very frustrating, especially since I've always been a pretty poor gamer with little patience. So, it happened that I’d leave everything for weeks because I couldn’t move forward; I thought I'd never manage to finish it, my brother had already given up. I managed to finish Super Mario Land 2 first, which compared to this seemed like a breeze (and in reality, it was...).

But Samus was my hero, the atmosphere of that planet was enchanting, so sooner or later the game would fall back into my hands, until there was the much-awaited turning point. I will never forget the anxiety and excitement that accompanied the last section of Metroid II, with increasingly thrilling and unsettling music, and the anticipation of the encounter with the final boss, the Queen. An arduous fight but not actually that difficult (I had more trouble with the colossal Omega Metroids...), and an unexpected and liberating ending. After what seemed like endless gameplay, there we were back at the starting point, the spaceship with which Samus arrived on earth. The circle was closed, the epic adventure ended and the armored hero was ready to return home... with an unexpected travel companion. It felt like I had completed a crazy feat; I wrote a story about the game that was a hit on the school newsletter and filled my notebooks with Metroid drawings everywhere. Unsatisfied, I decided to play the game from scratch, because the black-and-white charm of SR-388 was something I'd never seen before, which attracted me incredibly.

The third time I reached the end in less time than usual, and then came the surprise: after the exhilarating ending credit music, the lone hero jumps up and appears in a bikini. That's when I realized Samus Aran is actually a girl, one of the first video game heroines, who apparently has gone through worse than Lara Croft. An unexpected and bold revelation, which took nothing away from the dark and disturbing allure of the game, a sensation I rarely encountered in other titles.

The girl knew what she was doing and in fact, as far as I know, her adventures continue even today; now she’s a curvaceous blonde who, closed in her Varia Suit, roams the universe facing various aliens, as well as the dear old Metroids. Unfortunately, having never owned any console other than the Game Boy, I quickly lost sight of her.

Because I then discovered Doom and Hell, Dune 2 and futuristic wars on remote planets, and then yet again the Three and the Horadrim, Black Mesa... and my imagination was imbued with other suggestions, other dreams, and other nightmares. But this Metroid, with its dark and visionary world, with the lively techno-organic imagination of its creatures, with the inexplicable magnetism of an enigmatic protagonist, will always represent one of the most glorious pieces of my childhood.