We celebrate 40 years of Metroid

On 6 August, forty years ago, we were first introduced to a certain intergalactic bounty hunter. Wearing a red helmet and driven by an unwavering determination to stop space pirates at any cost, this character stepped straight into gaming history.

It was the legendary hardware pioneer Gunpei Yokoi (the creator of the Game Boy) who produced the very first adventure, whilst a young Yoshio Sakamoto stepped in and shaped its unique atmosphere. It was also Sakamoto who went on to become the series' true guardian. As director and producer, he has, for four decades, been the creative compass that has kept Samus alive, defended the series' dark tone and refused to let Nintendo's foremost bounty hunter fade away like a shooting star in the video game sky.

The fact that the warrior was actually a female fighter named Samus Aran came as a complete surprise to gamers of the 1980s. Samus became a pioneer of what would much later be called girl power. When Mother Brain was finally defeated and her helmet fell to the ground, many players are said to have stared in sheer amazement at their CRT screens. The tough-as-nails space warrior was a woman. This was ten years before Lara Croft made her sharp-as-a-knife debut on the PlayStation.

The Metroid series has always been bigger than its most famous face.

Even the very first game, released in 1986, did something few others dared to do: it set the player completely free on the planet Zebes, with absolutely no instructions. There were no flashing map markers, no lengthy cutscenes and no helpful voice dictating the next step. Curiosity was the only compass. Each new ability opened up paths to places that had previously been impossible to reach, and suddenly the act of exploration itself became the game's greatest reward.

That philosophy has guided the series for four decades

When Metroid II: Return of Samus was released on the Game Boy, the perspective changed. The adventure became darker, lonelier and considerably more melancholic. The mission was no longer simply to stop space pirates, but to eradicate the Metroids as a species. It was a bold narrative decision that laid the foundations for the story that still defines the series.

Then came Super Metroid.

It is difficult to overstate the significance of that game. For many, it remains the crowning glory of the series' history and one of the best games ever created. It told an emotional story with surprisingly few words and demonstrated how environments, music and game design could evoke powerful emotions entirely without dialogue. Even today, Super Metroid is studied by game designers around the world, not out of mere nostalgia, but because it remains a textbook example of masterful level design.

The series' influence is also felt far beyond Nintendo's own walls. Today, the term 'Metroidvania' is used daily, and the first half of the word is no coincidence. Metroid defined an entire game genre in which exploration, upgrades and cleverly interconnected worlds form the very core. Hundreds of games have since been inspired by the same formula.

When Nintendo then unveiled Metroid Prime, there was a great deal of scepticism. How would a game built around solitude and exploration work in a first-person perspective? Many of us had hoped for a traditional 3D game featuring Samus on the Nintendo 64. We never got to see that. Nintendo simply hadn't found the answer to how Samus could join her cousins Link and Mario in the third dimension.

Retro Studios gave us the answer

Instead of a pure action game, the studio created a first-person adventure in which the scan visor became at least as important as the arm cannon. The planet Tallon IV felt alive; the story was told through the environments, and the player was encouraged to observe as much as to shoot. Metroid Prime achieved what very few game series manage to do: changing perspective without losing its identity. It has aged remarkably well, and the remastered version for the Nintendo Switch is clear proof of the game's timeless quality.

Since then, the series has continued to experiment. At the same time as Prime was released, Fusion came out for the Game Boy Advance. Metroid Fusion dared to tell a more linear story and introduced the terrifying SA-X, an enemy that constantly created a creeping sense of vulnerability. Metroid: Zero Mission demonstrated how a remake can improve upon an original without erasing its soul. Metroid Dread finally became the long-awaited sequel that fans had been waiting for for almost two decades, and it proved that the series' core concept feels just as modern today.

The journey hasn't been entirely smooth, of course. Other M divided fans with its design choices, and the series has at times taken a back seat to Nintendo's bigger franchises. Mario has always been the face of the company, and Link's adventures have often attracted the lion's share of media attention. Metroid, on the other hand, has led a somewhat more peculiar existence, at times almost forgotten, but never abandoned.

Perhaps that is precisely why the series still feels special

Metroid has never tried to follow trends. The series has never chased open worlds just for the sake of it, or filled its maps with unnecessary side activities. Instead, it has continued to refine the same unique core: the feeling of landing alone on an unknown planet, slowly unravelling its mysteries and, step by step, growing strong enough to venture deeper into the unknown. Although the latest instalment in the Prime series could at times feel somewhat generic, it still had its unique traits - some good, others less so. The soul of the series was still there.

Few game series dare to place such unreserved trust in the player's own curiosity. Few games let the silence speak as loudly as the music. And few game worlds remain as enticing to get lost in.

Forty years have passed since the gates of Zebes first opened. During that time, the world of gaming has changed fundamentally, but Metroid has never lost its way. When we look around the world of video games today, we can see traces of Metroid here and there. You only need to take a glance at the indie scene to understand the extent of Samus's influence. Masterpieces such as Hollow Knight have taken that oppressive, underground isolation to entirely new heights.

Titles such as Dead Cells have fused the genre's joy of exploration with an intense pace of action. In games such as the beautiful Ori adventures or the raw Axiom Verge - which feels like a direct love letter to the 1986 original - Nintendo's old philosophy resonates more strongly than ever.

These subtle traces may well be the series' greatest achievement of all.

Not that it's turning 40.

But that, four decades later, it still feels like an adventure where the next door could lead to absolutely anything.