Samus is back for a bigger, badder and better adventure...
The game starts with Samus answering a distress call from a space station where she just dropped off the last known Metroid in existence to a group of scientists. Samus arrives to find the station empty and the scientist slaughtered. When she finds the last Metroid, her age-old nemesis Ridley pops up, grabs the metroid and flies away. Samus then follows Ridley down unto the surface of Zebes where the Space Pirates seem to have a new base in construction.
Since your suit gets damaged in the station's escape sequence, you start the game with no equipment and need to find it back. The game starts you off on Zebes' surface but quickly gets you to explore other areas of the map from the eerie Norfair to a ghost alien ship and even the water-filled Maridia. Along the way you will collect classic metroid items such a the morph ball and bombs, energy tanks, the charge beam and numerous missile and super-missile expansions. There are new items to collect as well such as the screw attack who allows you to attack while doing a sommersault and allows an inifinite jump, various armor upgrades, the grapple beam who allows you to swing bionic-commando style and more.
The game features a number of memorable boss fights. Some are returning villains such as Kraid, Ridley and the infamous Motherbrain. The new bosses are just as fun to fight though. Some of the newer bosses include an alien ghost named Phantoom, an underwater "dragon" (a vague ressemblance) named Draygon and tons of mini-bosses to make this the most boss-heavy Metroid thus far. (and boy is it a good thing!).
Music is just as eerie and ambient as you would expect from a game bearing the Metroid name. The music never gets repetitive and various parts of the game have a very distinct music.
As for it's graphics, Metroid is pretty much standard 16-Bit 2D fare. The graphics are pretty and sharp but didn't push the SNES to new limits either.
To finish, Super Metroid uses the tried-and-true Metroid formula but expands on it significantly and includes enough new content to make it on par with, if not better than the original.