Metroid: Zero Mission was a game released on February 9, 2004, for the Gameboy Advanced. It is a remake of the first game in the long running Metroid series.

The game follows Samus Aran, a bounty hunter on her first mission for the Galactic Federation, as she is tasked with locating the Metroid on Planet Zebes stolen by the Space Pirates as well as eliminating the Space Pirates themselves. The game is an action-platformer where the player is tasked with collecting power-ups hidden throughout the massive planet. The player uses the power-ups they obtained from exploration to get past barriers they could previously not pass. This offers players a sense of progress after getting past that one obstacle they previously couldn’t.

The game offers a wide variety of enemies to fight with some excellent boss fights scattered about. The game is very different from its NES counterpart with this game being much easier as well as adding entire sections and completely reworking the story to focus on Samus’s backstory. The original game can also be unlocked by completing Zero Mission.

The new sections added are excellent, as you get to play as Samus without her power suit making the player a lot weaker and more vulnerable. This leaves the player with two options: using stealth to sneak through the space pirate base or going in guns blazing, requiring the player to constantly dodge space pirates.

The reason this section of the game is so fulfilling is because it takes place after the player has already developed their skills, so a skilled player can choose to save time by outrunning the space pirates, even though that may be harder. Overall, I absolutely recommend this game to anyone who has a Gameboy Advanced and wants to play it