I have done this twice before, once in July '09 before the massive influx of users, and then once again in March '10, after we gained a whole bunch of new people. As you probably should know, if you are a member (and if you are not, why not join up?) we host a games database where all users can add and rate games on Nintendo consoles. And we also average out all of the ratings, to get a (semi-)official list of the top rated games based on the tastes of the Negative World users.

First, a couple of rules. For the sake of this list, I am only counting games that have at least 10 ratings, and I have a new rule as well: I am only counting games that were unique upon release, no collections of previously released games. Of course Metroid Prime Trilogy is going to be very highly rated, it is 3 of the best games ever in one place! But I am more interested in seeing how the individual games fare, and not clogging up the top 10 with collections.

Another small point... although we round to the nearest hundredth for the scores we display, in the calculations no rounding has taken place. So when it appears that games have "tied" in reality one has slightly edged out the other, and I am displaying them in the order they have placed before being rounded.

Alright, let's do this!

Once again, only the smallest margin separated our top games, with only a .04 difference between #1 and #6. You know what this means, right? It means that if you haven't rated these games yet, you have the power to make a difference! So get rating! And while you're at it, drop some scores on the games that didn't make our top 10 as well. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is only .01 from making it into the top 10... wouldn't that be interesting if it made the list next time?

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@GameDadGrant
Someone's irked that no portable games made the top 10

Wow, Super Metroid with the epic comeback!

I want to vote higher than 10 for A Link to the Past. I guess I'll just vote lower on Super Metroid!

@anon_mastermind

So..... angry....! *shakes fist*

Hey now! You're supposed to rate games based on what you truly think of them, not try to change the ranks!

@Pandareus
So naive... Don't you know anything about politics??

As far as mechanics go I found Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission much more enjoyable than Super Metroid.

stephen08 said:

As far as mechanics go I found Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission much more enjoyable than Super Metroid.

I agree, they refined the experience (and really, years later, this was to be expected). The atmosphere, bosses and pacing in Super Metroid are still ace, though.
@Simbabbad
I somewhat agree. The combat was definitely a backseat component of the game, but I didn't find it tedious as you describe. Bosses are where the true challenging combat lies.

@anandxxx

Pfft, I know, right? Super Metroid "dropping" in the rankings was probably due to me giving it a normal rating instead of "absolute videogame perfection." I did it.

@TriforceBun

What the heck is mockballing?!

@Simbabbad Lots of the platforming required skill, but it was mostly to acquire secrets. You had to utilize all of your powers within the platforming. Especially if you wanted to get the secrets earlier on instead of waiting until you had the "right" power-up to do it. Which is one of the cool things about the game, the ability to break it and play it your own way. I didn't even realize I was breaking some parts until I did multiple playthroughs and realized that some of the secrets I had gotten in my first playthrough could be gotten easier if you pass them by and wait until you get the "right" power-up. But who wants to wait when you can break the game?

Also the action/exploration progression was pretty unparalleled. It took the blue key / blue door mechanics and blew them to pieces, and there is a reason why so many games since (1st and 3rd party) have copied the formula. Copied, but I don't think anyone has really matched it since, outside of maybe the first Prime game.

Also the immersion, but we all agree on that.

Also the soundtrack, which is probably one of the best ever. Graphics were pretty hot at the time too.

Combat was kind of minimal to the overall experience, but I think you write it off too much, it's not like it didn't exist. Of course next to classic Metroid games it's very easy but then, so are most games.

It's really a total package. Best game ever, officially, due to the Negative World and when have we ever been wrong about anything?! (Ok Link to the Past is back on top now but I can't really argue against that.)

Actually, my two all-time favorite games are also the two at the top of the Negative World list. You guys have great taste!

@Simbabbad
I'm not sure what's more fulfilling about Metroid 1/RoS's combat as opposed to Super Metroid. The only differences I can think of are that Samus's arsenal is/becomes stronger in Super Metroid. Otherwise, SM literally has every enemy from the original Metroid that all behave as they used to, plus a ton more. I won't deny that it's slightly easier (at least, prior to Norfair), but it's by such a minuscule amount that the thought never crossed my mind in the past. It's true that you need to kill enemies in a couple of locked rooms, but there're a tiny amount of these--maybe 5 in the entire game.

More puzzling to me is the claim that RoS has significantly more variety in its settings and stage design. I replayed Metroid II a couple of months ago, so it's still fresh in my mind, but the environments generally didn't leave much of an impression on me. Part of the problem, as I've mentioned before, is in the repeated rooms. It's not as prevalent as in Metroid 1, but several areas share the same structure as many other rooms; off the top of my head:

-Vertical corridors with identical platform placement
-The vertical corridors with poisonous fungus at the bottom and a Metroid egg in the middle, and a door to the right and left
-Those large open areas with the Choob Leech and the tall stone walls on the side
-The inner sanctum rooms with the wall lasers and the shoot-able blocks, complete with Missile Expansion
-The hallways full of breakable sand that you shoot through

Beyond that, though, are some frustrating gameplay elements. The Spider Ball is slow and the game invites you to crawl along the walls of the numerous "large, Choob Leech rooms" using its sticky feature, only to either lead to a dead-end, or a set of spikes way on the ceiling meant to stop you from progressing. It's just sort of a slow and tedious process and it's unrewarding when you reach a barrier after about a minute of slurming along. I feel that you get the Space Jump too early and it nullifies a lot of the platforming past that point. There's far less environmental interaction using Samus's arsenal as there is in Super Metroid--you're mainly shooting through walls, Spider Balling, or using bombs. Most of the upgrades are beam-type upgrades that you don't really need to find secrets or anything, so there's a less rewarding sense of progression to me. Plus, less all-out exploration and backtracking due to the more linear nature of the game progression.

So tying that into Super Metroid; it's far from vertical shafts and horizontal hallways. I mean yeah, there's plenty of that like in every Metroid, but I think you're selling the game very short by paring it down to that. By gazing at a map screen, there'll be a bunch of squares and rectangles, but the actual shape of the rooms is always much more interesting. There's a great mix of large, open areas with the claustrophobic tight spots, such as the wide area where Samus's ship lands, the diagonal runway leading to the Brinstar elevator, that multitiered room before Spore Spawn, the large, descending area with the pipes and enemies in Brinstar, the big area in Norfair right before the Grapple Beam, the "bubble" room in Norfair close to the Speed Booster, the room with the platforms right before the Wave Beam, the huge area right outside the wrecked ship, several massive rooms in Maridia that involve the Grapple and/or Wall Jump/Grapple, that big area in Lower Norfair where the lava rises up and you have to Space Jump to the top, etc. And most importantly, none of these rooms are a big boring box, they're full secrets, convoluted pathways, diagonal slopes, multitudes of platforms, etc.

And the platforming itself is enhanced with Samus's goodies. As I mentioned, there're rooms where you're outrunning lava, using the Grapple to climb up a wall while Mochtroids suck on your face, timing jumps across rising/falling platforms, swinging across a pit of lava or spikes while claw monsters grab you from below, trying not to kill the light bugs in a dark room, jumping over rolling boulders, navigating a cramped, man-eating-plant-and-thorn-filled area across tiny platforms, freezing numerous Rippers to ascend a deep shaft, timing power-bombs to break through a bunch of walls while the lava ebbs and flows, running across quicksand, and finding the best ways to Shinespark. Nearly all of these are completely new to Super Metroid, and as a result, it has more variety in gameplay than the first two titles.

@Mr_Mustache
Mockballing is an exploit where if you ball up at the right time as Samus lands on the ground, she won't "bounce". This is most useful for bypassing the closing gates in Brinstar prior to getting the Speed Booster. This lets you get the Super Missiles early (and some other goodies) so that you can skip Spore Spawn entirely. Good for speedruns!

Well, I don't really know if Nintendo specifically plans the sequence breaking and such, but whether they do or not, it's a great part of the series, no? But I think Nintendo often thinks on various levels, and a lot of the power-ups aren't really sequence breaking so much as just a lot tougher to get if you don't wait until you have grapple or screw attack.

I don't know what else to say other than everything starts to feel dull after 20 runs. I mean, I just can't buy that someone would play through a game 20 times and not think it is spectacular overall. Or that someone could do 20 runs of any game and not start to feel like everything is a bit too familiar. Sort of losing out on what originally made it fresh.

I just remembered that my friends and I discovered that you could roll off a ledge, turn human, and then get a free mid-air jump in the first Metroid, and we sent the tip into Nintendo Power. Is there a name for that?

Hubris?

Oh my gosh, I literally almost fell asleep while watching that "6B" Metroid II video.

What was even going on? It reminded me of parts of every game that I hate with all of the backtracking....like Metroid Prime. Going back over stuff you've already done is the worst part of that game, and 7:30 of this video appeared to be backtracking. Sometimes the player was just going back and forth between rooms. So yeah, what was the scoop? What was with all that rumbling? What was..

Simbabbad said:

Well, I didn't finish all of them, it was in a span of 10 years, and maybe I'm exaggerating a bit. The thing is, in my first playthrough, I was astonished, marvelled. But since the very first replay I did, I never got that feeling again, and every time I replay it, I try to get that lost feeling back, but I get it less and less, and my opinion on the game take hits every time.

I guess this brings up an interesting question which is, should a game be judged based on your initial experience, subsequent experiences, or some combination of the above and if so which combination? Honestly, I rarely ever replay games because in my experience that original magic can never come back. And when I do replay games I try not to judge them harshly if they don't hold the same magic they used to.

... mind you, I have replayed Super Metroid a couple of times and it is still pretty enjoyable. But I consider my first experience, which was me sitting in front of the screen completely floored and unwilling to stop because it was just so much better than anything I had ever played... that's the experience I judge the game on. (Even though it ended up kind of disjointed because I had rented it and didn't finish then got it later but after my cousin had played further than I had gotten so I missed some stuff first time through, yada yada...)

Pandareus said:

Hey now! You're supposed to rate games based on what you truly think of them, not try to change the ranks!

This is exactly what will happen. And people will go in and change thier scores. There needs to be a program implemented that once you score a game, you are not able to go in and change the score. Hopefully not too many people do this, or purposely score a game lower, so thier favorite makes the top. It will be a never ending battle of score changing

**runs off to score Super Metroid a 0(if possible)**

Ha,ha, ha...Only kidding. Though I don't believe I have scored any games or taken advantage of different features that Negative World offers. When I do I will score the games accordingly to how I feel. With that being said, even though I like Metroid games, they are on the bottom of my list after Mario/Zelda games. And something has to be done about RE4 not being in the top 10, since it is up there amongst my favorite games ever!

Zero said:

Looks like the Ocarina of Time took a hit as well.

Alright, who was responsible for this heresy? I want names. Now.

Zero said:

Well, I don't really know if Nintendo specifically plans the sequence breaking and such, but whether they do or not, it's a great part of the series, no? But I think Nintendo often thinks on various levels, and a lot of the power-ups aren't really sequence breaking so much as just a lot tougher to get if you don't wait until you have grapple or screw attack.

They did in Zero Mission at least. I don't know if you ever played that, or at least attempted the 15% run where the deliberate sequence breaking design becomes apparent.

After finally finishing Super Metroid a few months back, I feel confident in saying that I consider Zero Mission to be the best of the 2D metroid games. The level design is easily the best out of all of them.

I have voted for some newer games on the database and added one as well... I had a decent list up there already but I need to update it - .must vote..

Anways...would it be possible to have the list able to be sorted by system as well? I...

*****EDIT**** NEVERMIND... figured it out!

S

@Smerd

You can't sort by system but you can limit your search to a system (with the "On" drop-down menu).