History VideoGame / SuperMetroid

* EleventhHourSuperpower: [[spoiler:The Hyper Beam, absorbed from Mother Brain's own WaveMotionGun by the baby Metroid, is granted to Samus during the final boss fight so she can finish off Mother Brain]].

* AndroclesLion: At the end of the game, the baby Metroid (which Samus spared at the end of ''VideoGame/MetroidIIReturnOfSamus'') sacrifices itself to rescue Samus from Mother Brain, after having imprinted on Samus beforehand, seeing her as its mother.

** A giant Metroid appears. You can't kill it with any of your weapons. It latches onto you, and drains your health faster than you being submerged in the acid in Ridley's lair with the Power Suit and nothing more. No weapons can repel that monster. When you're in your very last HP point, [[spoiler:it stops, gets off and starts vocalizing. Do you recognize those squeaks? It's Baby! It then flies off, leaving a clear way to a recharge station.]]
** Another comes in the battle against Mother Brain. It uses a beam that not only presses Samus to the wall, it disintegrates her ammo as well. No matter how much you fight, it'll keep doing it until you can't stand anymore, then it batters you up with a few more shots and charges the death beam again. [[spoiler:And then Baby latches onto its face.]]

** Samus's narration at the very beginning hints that the Metroid's ability to drain energy can also be used for beneficial purposes, implying that the devoured energy can be used afterward. [[spoiler:The baby Metroid demonstrates this by transferring life energy and a powered-up beam from Mother Brain to Samus during the final battle.]]

* FriendToAllChildren: This seems to be a confirmation of elements from the time ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'' was released, where Samus is typically portrayed as being quite passionate about the infant Metroid, treating it like her own offspring, unleashing the bowels of MamaBear after it was destroyed, and entering a state of deep sorrow after she'd cooled down. This hovered around various fiction, including ''Magazine/NintendoPower'' comics and Manga.

* HarmlessFreezing: Some targets resist some or even all beam damage but can still be frozen. Previously this would mean the player had a limited amount of time to take advantage of their frozen state, but in ''Super Metroid'' this means the player can simply keep shooting them to keep them frozen longer. Otherwise freezing is the target also damages, but the frozen state itself still has no lasting impact on anything's health.

** The FinalBoss (Mother Brain) resorts to her Laser Brain Attack when dealt enough damage, draining three Energy Tanks (or six, if the player is not wearing the Varia Suit), about sixty-five Missiles, and Samus's entire supply of Super Missiles and Power Bombs. What qualifies it for this trope (given that the player can have up to nineteen Energy Tanks' worth of health by the end of the game) is that not only is it impossible to dodge the attack, but she'll keep doing it until the player's health becomes low enough that one more Laser Brain Attack would be lethal. Furthermore, if the player has more than one Energy Tank remaining, she'll rub in her imminent victory by launching weaker attacks at Samus (who at this point is too exhausted to move) until this is no longer the case. [[spoiler:Finally, she'll attempt to finish Samus off with one final Laser Brain Attack - at which point [[BigDamnHeroes the infant "Super Metroid" will rush in and save Samus's life]].]] If Samus can't survive the first of the Laser Brain attacks, however, she will die.

* ItsPersonal: Samus becomes a ParentalSubstitute to an adorable baby Metroid and gradually comes to care for the child as her own. [[spoiler: When [[BigBad Mother Brain]] nearly defeats Samus, the Metroid intervenes to save her, and Mother Brain retaliates by killing the baby. Cue [[MamaBear Samus going on a]] RoaringRampageOfRevenge and utterly ''kicking Mother Brain's ass.'']]

* MamaBear: The game's story boils down to Samus being on the warpath because the Space Pirates attacked and destroyed an innocent colony, and kidnapped what amounted to her surrogate child, leaving her to pursue them on Zebes once again. At the end of the game, [[spoiler:Mother Brain kills the baby Metroid right in front of Samus, and subsequently gets blown to bits thanks to her new Hyper Beam]].

* SecondaryCharacterTitle: Averting the AntagonistTitle from the original game, [[spoiler:''Super Metroid'' is often speculated to not only refer to [[SuperTitle64Advance the usual "Super X" snowclone]] common to UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem games, but also the super-powered version of the Metroid hatchling that saves Samus at the end of the game]].

* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: [[BrainInAJar Mother Brain]] tries to kills Samus with her Laser Brain Attack when [[HPToOne the Hunter's HP is nearly zero]]. But then she ends up on the wrong end of another such smackdown when she murders the infant Metroid from ''VideoGame/MetroidIIReturnOfSamus''/''VideoGame/MetroidSamusReturns'' and earns herself a Hyper Beam-fueled RoaringRampageOfRevenge from the creature's [[MamaBear human adoptive "mother."]] The final shot decapitates Mother Brain, exploding her cybernetic combat body; her severed head turns to gray powder as it hits the floor.

* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: If you save at the final save point in Tourian (which is a PointOfNoReturn) without the Charge Beam and with anything less than 150 missiles or so, you will not be able to beat [[spoiler:Mother Brain's second form and must restart the game. Likewise, if you reach Mother Brain with less than three Energy Tanks, her unavoidable eye-beam attack will kill you every time before the game can trigger the Metroid hatchling's rescue]].

* TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon: Tourian, home of the Mother Brain like in the original ''Metroid''. Now there's the added bonus of also being the place where you finally see the Metroid infant.

''Super Metroid'', also known alternatively as ''Metroid 3'' from the intro, is the third game in the ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'' series, both in terms of release order and within the series' chronology (discounting the ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeTrilogy''). It was released for the UsefulNotes/SuperNintendoEntertainmentSystem in 1994, and was the largest game released on the SNES at the time, using a 24-Megabit cartridge (that's 3MB). It was the last ''Metroid'' game that Creator/GunpeiYokoi worked on before his departure from Creator/{{Nintendo}} and death, the first where Creator/YoshioSakamoto was the main director, and the first with music from Kenji Yamamoto.

* LaserGuidedKarma: At the end of ''VideoGame/MetroidIIReturnOfSamus'', Samus spares a baby Metroid that imprinted upon her as its mother. In ''Super Metroid'', the Metroid returns the favor by not draining Samus to death, and then sacrificing itself to save her life in the fight against Mother Brain, triggering the mother of all MamaBear moments from Samus, who, by the way, now has the [[EleventhHourSuperpower Hyper Beam]].

* HarmlessFreezing: Some targets resist some or even all beam damage but can still be frozen. In previously this would mean the player had a limited amount of time to take advantage of their frozen state but in ''Super Metroid'' this means the player can simply keep shooting them to keep them frozen longer. Otherwise freezing is the target also damages, but the frozen state itself still has no lasting impact on anything's health.

'''''[[TropeCodifier The]]''''' {{Metroidvania}} Game.

Where the first ''VideoGame/Metroid1'' [[TropeMaker birthed the genre]] that's an [[{{Metroidvania}} eclectic mix of action, exploration, and platforming]], ''Super Metroid'' [[TropeCodifier codified]] the tenets of its gameplay style to become one of the most acclaimed games of the 16-bit era. To this day, ''Super Metroid'' is still cited as a master class in level design -- teaching its players game mechanics with subtle use of {{antepiece}}s -- and environmental storytelling -- apart from the brief introductory exposition recapping most of the events of the previous two games, almost all the storytelling is done through world-building and on-screen events, many described below.