Super Metroid

I never found the art styling in this game all that special. I would say that the this is the games weakest area. Some of the rooms or environments seem just near-enough-is-good-enough. Samus looks fine (although she is pretty brightly coloured), but the creatures seem to be very flat and sometimes blocky looking.

The specific sprites aren't earth-shattering, even taking into account the time in which the game was made. There -is- a relative lack of environmental set-pieces, wherein the environment you interact with can seem blocky whereas the backdrops are more visually detailed. I think what I value about the graphic art of the game is probably its consistency and general focus on interactivity rather than just its worth as a stand-alone collection of static images. The best sprite (in terms of animation and detail) is Samus, as you say, and that's definitely a key element to get right. There detail -and- fluid animation has been handled fairly well.

With the bosses (ostensibly the show-piece sprites), I think you have an interesting.mix that recalls the tradeoffs in other graphically decent games. Kraid is superbly detailed, huge, yet for the most part immobile (also ridiculously weak. :-P)--I see this as a slightly mobile analogue to the beautifully designed enemies in Final Fantasy VI that didn't animate at all. Note too that the work-a-day environments where you do actual walking around in FF VI are for the most part blocky and rather obviously geometric and tile-based, though there is a greater focus on spectacular set-piece exceptions in that game than in Super Metroid (note you interact less thoroughly with those environments). Then you have something like Ridley, the martial artist golden Space Pirates or the revived Chozo statues, which are somewhat less awesomely detailed (the ol' "chain of sprites" approach to tail and neck for Ridley) but have a good degree of movement. To keep the comparisons with the same developer, that recalls for me the huge scaleback in detail the bosses in Secret of Mana represented when contrasted with the static bosses in FF games--is it because they had to be fully animated? Mapped for interaction? Given also the Zelda-style higher interactivity you have with the -environment- in that game, is it a coincidence the environments are far more blocky and tile-dictated than in FFVI?

So yeah, judged in isolation no particular sprite or environment for Super Metroid would make any best-of list for the SNES, but when combined with animation and robust interactivity, I think they become more appreciable. My favor for them is mostly based on their appropriateness in terms of the game, and their relative depth of interactivity and animation. I'd make the same allowances for Secret of Mana. Chrono Trigger struck yet another interesting balance, with bosses on the whole slightly less detailed and more mobile than in FF, yet less mobile and/or interactive than in Secret of Mana. Incidentally I think Crocomire's death scene beats, in terms of graphics, any boss death scene in any Final Fantasy game for the SNES. In "planet blows up" graphics, I think FFVI probably has Metroid beat. :-D

Does that make any sense? :-P