I love the atmosphere of the Metroid games and a huge part of that is the music and sound design. The first game has one of my favorite NES soundtracks, and establishes the franchiseâs musical identity as sounding very âalienâ; thereâs a lot of chromatic notes, compound meters, and eerie silences.
The Game Boy sequel is much weirder, with frequently changing time signatures, no apparent keys, and intentionally discordant intervals. The Metroid battle theme cuts off the phrase halfway through at seemingly random, so it makes it seem like game glitched and skipped 2 beats, but the fights demand so much attention you canât figure out the pattern to it. The Chozo Ruins theme alone drove me nuts, because despite not being catchy at all it became stuck in my head, especially with that echo across 3 octaves.
Super Metroidâs soundtrack is perhaps the highlight of the entire series. Samus Aranâs theme, which would appear across many titles, is so darkly triumphant, a perfect motif. The ambience of many of the âsafeâ rooms sounds like nothing you would ever hear on earth. Ridleyâs theme is in 5|4, with the mission impossible style â2 long beats, 2 fast beatsâ that makes it seem like the track is speeding up halfway through each measure then laying off the gas again, which makes for a frantic fight. The âitem obtainedâ jingle is as memorable as Zeldaâs, but darker.
Metroid Dread, the most recent Metroid game, has some great themes as well, like Fereniaâs theme, where the bass and left hand piano eventually become deliciously out of sync, and it carries the tradition of ominous ambience and tense battle music, but I truly think the prime trilogy nailed the sound design in particular. Everything - from your footsteps, to the creature noises, to the charging of your power beam, to the scanning noise or static, sounds exactly the way it should. And the music itself is so damn good. Honestly, I think Magmoor Caverns is perfection. Itâs a revamp of Norfair from Super Metroid, using the Phrygian scale (yum!), dramatic chanting, and it just keeps building up, and upâŚ
Man, I love Metroidâs soundtrack.













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