I just got my copy of the 1989 variant of Metroid, CIB, semi-rough shape. Skimming through the manual I notice that they repeatedly refer to Samus as "he." I had figured they wouldve avoided pronouns altogether rather than deceive the reader. Maybe this was to good effect though for a kid playing the game for the first time in the 80s because itd have been more of a shock at the ending.

Well anyways I threw it in my unmodded NES with original 72 pin that was last cleaned maybe a week ago with the original "pull out cleaner" thing that Nintendo made. For having not cleaned the cartridge contacts and my 72 pin being looser than Miley Cyrus on a Friday night, I was shocked to see that it started instantly. No blinking or garbled graphics. I consider myself very lucky at this point. I dont know how much longer this NES will last me given it likely was produced between 1988 and 1990. Gotta love that there are so few moving parts on the console, zero noise.

When I heard that title music start up it instantly brought me back to the 90s and early 2000s. Of course we had the newer consoles but we still played the NES on occasion. Metroid was a game I never got very far on but I enjoyed it. I had always preferred Super Metroid because it was easier, more colorful, less repetitive, no annoying password. But I always wanted to give the original a shot.

Well anyways this was a simpler time. There were no strategy guides for the game that I was aware of. There was GameFAQs in some capacity or another as well as Game Genie but the internet was slow and entering the cheat codes every time I wanted to play was tedious. So essentially I would just play it til I was too frustrated to continue.

This leads me to what I feel was special about this period in gaming when there was still some mystery to these games. I never know what the hell Metroid meant (still dont actually) or any of the history behind the game. Hell I didnt even know where my mom bought the game in fact. For as long as I could remember we always had about 10-15 NES games and I sucked at most of them. Now there are speedruns of these games I had always considered impossible, full maps, strategy guides, videos, you can see the endings of all the games, etc.

I embrace the present and what gaming is now because of the internet but every time I go back to these games I remind myself that information used to be very scant and you were damn lucky if you knew anyone else who had played these games (at least that were my age.) Most my friends were playing N64 or PS1 and many had played Genesis before moving onto said systems. But yeah no one my age was playing NES games in the mid to late 90s