Welcome to Phaaze.
From the graphic death of Crocomire to the game over screens of Prime, Echoes and Corruption, the Metroid series sometimes goes beyond the call of scary.Unmarked spoilers below!
The following examples have their own pages:
- Super Metroid
- Metroid Fusion
- Metroid Prime
- Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
- Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
- Metroid: Zero Mission
- Metroid: Samus Returns
- Metroid Dread
Metroid II: Return of Samus:
- A rather large portion of Metroid II: Return of Samus is nothing but Nightmare Fuel. After you leave the main tunnel with its heroic-sounding theme song, the side areas are completely silent other than a few random, tense, ambient sound effects...until the Jump Scare of an evolved Metroid heading straight for you, completely with a frightening Scare Chord. And, unlike most Metroid games, the Metroids themselves are everywhere...
- On that note, the environmental design was wonderfully creepy, especially since this was on Gameboy. The game starts on the surface, and the tension slowly rises as Samus uncovers an abandoned Chozo weapon factory deep beneath the earth, which itself is above the Nest. It's best symbolized by the Ice Beam pickup, found in the lair of the Metroids, with a partially destroyed Chozo statue showing that whatever happened here, it didn't end well for the Ancients. It certainly helps that the simple graphics coupled with the stark, isolated darkness of the caves of SR388 help to drive the 'hostile alien world' feel home. On top of that, as you explore deeper into the caves, there is less and less of the other non-metroid native life in the caves all the way until the final area, where there are nothing but Metroids.
- The Metroid Queen's area is pretty spooky, too, especially when you've worked your Metroid counter down to 1 and are rolling through a random tunnel...when suddenly it jumps back up to 9. Cue the classic Metroids attacking you en masse, and like the first game your beams don't stack, so if you didn't go back and get the Ice Beam, you're in trouble.
- The Metroid Queen is easily the most horrifying creature in the game, even though it has one of the simplest and easiest patterns to attack it and avoid damage. The scare factor is that it just won't go down! It gets even worse on the remake, where the Queen has a new explosive fire breath attack that it periodically fires and blows open entrances to deeper and deeper parts on the surroundings and then you have to run as it crawls toward you and keeps on attacking.
Metroid Other M:
- Metroid: Other M has some good scares, but the best one is retroactive. Throughout the game, you've been encountering distinctive Power Bomb doors; you've probably been looking forward to coming back and opening them all. Then the cinema before the final fight reveals that those aren't doors — they're dormant insectoid cyborgs strong enough to kick your ass. Next time you play, good luck passing one without shuddering...
- At one point, you're running through a big glass tube overlooking a lava lake in Sector 3, including the first sight of the Vorash, a lava-dwelling fish jumping in the far back. Suddenly midway through, the game goes all Matrix-y and the Vorash jumps out right under you, shattering the section of tube you're in and swallowing you whole if you don't use the Sense Move in time. And the fun doesn't end there. Right after, you have to run through the area right below the tube and the Vorash is still there. Not only do you have to worry about the heat, you have to worry about getting Swallowed Whole (which is again, an instant game over in this situation), and one badly-timed jump into the lava is a death sentence.
- What about Other M's reshowing of Mother Brain's One-Winged Angel form? She was scary enough in 2D!
- One word. Ridley. EVERY. SINGLE. SCENE. Especially when he's a child, and slowly unfolding mystery of his revival.
- And when it's revealed that this bloodthirsty chick you say in Sector 1 was just a larval stage and you see Ridley face to face, Samus is completely overwhelmed by shock at how her biggest enemy is somehow still alive after the destruction of Planet Zebes. He's supposed to be dead, and somehow, he was cloned and came back.
- Remember Nightmare in Fusion? Turns out, it's back as a boss. And it even shows off extra aggressive mannerisms while actively screaming like a baby when its face is revealed.....and that thing used to just float around with no other indications in Fusion, until its Other M appearance has it act all rabid.
Metroid Prime Federation Force:
- Remember the Metroid egg that the Project Golem squad retrieved? The Stinger reveals that someone broke into Federation HQ and has made off with the newly hatched infant Metroid, and that someone is most likely Sylux.
Other:
- As if Metroids weren't scary enough already, this picture
makes them look like halfway realistic animals... and the accompanying description of death by Metroid will make your skin crawl. - Samus' mental breakdown in the manga is pretty terrifying.
- Not to mention Ridley's cruel description of how he devoured the flesh of all of Samus's loved ones. Just merely saying that is horrifying enough, but Ridley goes further by taunting her of where her mother's cells could be. It's no wonder that Samus fears only him.
Ridley: You don't know. Maybe I even ate your "mama" so that my cells can live, hm? Is she here — or here?! AT LEAST PAY YOUR RESPECTS! - Hell, Ridley in general's pretty scary; he's a freakin' near-unkillable draconic space terrorist (hell, it takes an planet-scale bomb to actually kill him), and also murdered Samus' mother in front of her (and indirectly killed her father as well), making him an extremely frightening foe, and he's certainly one of Nintendo's most sadistic villains (he takes a cruel delight in describing the exact way he killed the parents of his archnemesis, after all). Ridley is so dark of a Nintendo villain that, when he made his playable debut in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, he singlehandedly darkened the game with his presence and surprisingly violent moveset. This is most notable in his initial reveal, which shows him killing Mega Man and Mario, firmly showing that someone just invited a monster into Smash.
- Worse is, now that he is in Smash Bros., compare him to other Nintendo villains. While most of them are gleefully evil like Bowser and Ganondorf, they usually have some sort of redeeming quality in that they may have loved ones, standards, goofiness or just simple tact to their evil...meanwhile, Ridley stands as one of Metroid's widest-reaching Complete Monsters. A space pirate terrorist, who is Nigh-Invulnerable, also bearing such a violently insane, sadistic and calculating personality...Ridley is truly a nightmare to behold.
- Sylux is one of the biggest mysteries in the series and what is known about him does not paint a pretty picture. His first onscreen appearance consists of slaughtering a Federation squad while giving a decidedly inhuman roar, his equipment consists of nothing but stolen experimental GF tech, and he holds such an unfathomable HATRED for the Federation to the point that this seething grudge even extends to Samus by mere association. He has successfully been shadowing her for quite some time as well, as shown by The Stinger to Corruption. Nobody, in-universe or out, knows just who or what he is or what his plans are, and if he truly was the culprit at the end of The Stinger for Federation Force, he now has an infant Metroid in his possession.
- From the Prime Trilogy: Dark Samus, the Metroid Prime's reincarnation. Just about everything about her is terrifying, but just to elaborate: imagine Samus if she went absolutely batshit on, or was made out of Phazon with goals of corrupting the universe with it. She is immensely powerful, able to attack then seize full control of the Space Pirates - yes, this includes Ridley - and corrupt Samus' fellow bounty hunters and force them to fight against her. She had also managed to survive long enough to get into four different encountersnote with Samus (the last being her final defeat), and in fact damn near achieve her goal of corrupting the universe due to how toxic Phaaze's atmosphere was in the first place - and just like Ridley, it takes a planet-scale bomb just to kill her, alongside having her link herself to the core of the planet itself as well. She is also one of Nintendo's absolute vilest of villains only possibly second only to Ridley himself, and that alone speaks volumes.
- TIME BOMB SET--GET OUT FAST!
