Metroid NES sold under 3 million copies

For game developers back in the 80's this would be considered a relative success but in my mind, considering how epic this game is and how it became half of the made up word that encapsulates my favorite game type (Metroidvania games,) I am surprised that it didn't sell dramatically more copies than this.

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It was late 1987 and the NES had been out (in the USA) for just over a year when this game hit the shelves. The internet didn't exist yet and we all relied on magazines and word of mouth in order to figure out what we were going to get next.

Metroid was clearly something very different from the arcade-style games that the industry was slowly and surely moving away from but prior to this point we hadn't really experienced anything like Metroid and didn't really know what to expect. I can tell you because I was there when it happened that this game was unlike anything you had ever played before.

These days when you have a game where you gradually acquire better equipment that allows you to proceed is nothing new, but there was a time when literally every game was totally linear. Also, the notion that you would backtrack to earlier parts of the game in order to access areas that you were previously unable to reach (or perhaps even knew if they were there or not) was something that no one had really done before.

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They get you accustomed to the fact that certain dead ends are actually supposed to be that way right from the very start of the game. When you appear here (this is the actual start point of the game) people naturally feel inclined to go to the right because almost every adventure game up to that point had you going to the right and you will encounter a tunnel that you can not fit through. You have no choice but to backtrack to the left and you will find a powerup that allows you to turn into the famous Metroid rolling ball.

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I owned a lot of NES games and since prior to the NES gaming was kind of boring and something that people didn't really talk about this was one of the first titles that us kids would sit around the lunch room table talking about. Those who didn't own Metroid immediately wanted a copy and while my circle of friends wasn't exactly massive in elementary school, everyone I knew that owned an NES (which was just about everyone) had this game. This is why I find it so alarming that it didn't sell better than this.

Before I get too worked up about this "lackluster" sales number we need to look at an important chart

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While I don't think many people in the game-producing world are going to complain about selling a million copies of something, Metroid games have never actually sold in a capacity that would enable them to claim that they are one of the most beloved franchises of all time. In my world, Metroid is on of my top 3 favorites of all time.

I realize that gaming has come a long way since the 80's but let's look at Red Dead Redemption 2 for example. RDR2 sold 37 million copies of just that one game: More than double the amount of copies that every single Metroid release has sold combined. Grand Theft Auto 5, which is of course available on multiple platforms sold nearly 10 times as many as all Metroid games combined.

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The above final battle was infuriating but ultimately very rewarding if you had the patience to figure out hot to freeze one of those circles at just the right spot and then missile the crap out of the glassed brain. I remember defeating the game for the first time and how amazed I was with the overall story despite the fact that we weren't spoon-fed a bunch of dialogue, mostly you just enjoyed the ambiance and made up your own story. I suppose it didn't matter because you are a space guy (later revealed surprisingly to be a woman: Take that feminists!) and you were fighting bad guys. Simple!

The only downside of this game was that for some reason they decided to not go with an internal battery for saves (Zelda had already done so 6 months earlier) and instead you had to write down very long passwords. One mistake in your penmanship and your progress was GONE!

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Considering how huge this game was, a failed save game code could mean backtracking quite a bit. I think most people had a fail as far as that is concerned and for that reason I actually kept a notebook of all my passwords and was VERY CAREFUL to write them down as clearly as possible. Perhaps it is funny to think about keeping a notebook on a video game but hey! I took my gaming seriously back in the 80's.

Metroid is one of the most famous and groundbreaking titles of all time. To this day I look forward to Metroidvania games and if I had to choose one game from the past year that I consider my favorite it would be Hollow Knight (I realize it wasn't released last year but that is when I bought it.) When I first started writing this I was unaware that the rest of the Metroid family has similarly poor numbers also. I think we can attribute this to the fact that Nintendo does not allow this and most of their other titles to port to any other system but I think we can agree that if they did allow Metroid on say, the Playstation or Xbox the GAME would sell much better, but then the allure of their exclusive titles would vanish. Titles like Zelda, Mario, and Metroid are the only real reason for a lot of gamers like me to even consider purchasing Nintendo consoles, so I suppose it would be a bad more for them to license these games.

The point of all this is that I feel as though a game that has been as influential as Metroid is in the gaming world these sales figures were a bit shocking to me. We all know Metroid, but it seems as though a vast majority of people never bothered to actually buy one of the games. Maybe that will change if Prime 4 ever gets released on the Switch. But then again, we are going to see a new generation of systems in 2022 and Nintendo hasn't really made any announcement of their intention (if any) of getting involved in that.

Did you play original Metroid when it was released or am I just old?