Metroid, one of the first releases for the NES, defined the exploration adventure genre. It’s atmospheric and haunting environment draws the player into the planet Zebes, despite the simplistic graphics (by today’s standards). One thing I truly believe in this culture of gaming is that “back in the day”, when the hardware was extremely limited, programmers and developers had to work to get the results they wanted; they had to be more creative with level and character design, music sequencing, and sprite creation. These limitations required true creativity in order to draw the player into the experience, rather than today’s standard of simply slapping together a CG FMV sequence and splicing it between levels.

It is documents such as this explanation of Metroid’s level data format that further solidify my belief in this theory. Read it, and you will see how the programmers managed to cram such a huge, detailed world into a tiny NES ROM. When you’re done with that, do check out the rest of the Metroid Database for further information on one of my favorite game franchises.