Metroid

The Good
Metroid is truly one of the great classics of eight-bit gaming. The design efforts of Gunpei Yokoi and production values of Shigeru Miyamoto combined to make what was, at the time, a truly compelling shoot-'em-up that actually required a bit of thought to boot. The exploration aspects of this game were (and still are, in a sense) absolutely groundbreaking, which is little surprise, considering that Metroid was one of the first games to use bank-switching technology that allowed gamers to move in more than one direction.

The Bad
The first time I played this game, it was downright frustrating. Being able to move around in games in three dimensions is something we take for granted now, but Metroid still takes me a great deal of time and patience to complete, and I've completed it before.

The Bottom Line
If you haven't yet played the original bad-bounty hunter platformer, now is a great time to see where it all started.