Metroid might not be one of Nintendo’s top-selling franchises, but it's easily regarded as one of the most influential. Super Metroid helped create an entire genre while influencing everything from Dark Souls to Hollow Knight, and then Metroid Prime did the exact same thing years later with shooters. But amidst that hallowed ground, there are a couple of bizarre outliers, games where Nintendo tried to get extremely experimental with Metroid, and fell flat on its face. Nowhere is that more clear than with Metroid: Other M, a mostly fine action game with an utterly abysmal story. It’s one of the rare Nintendo duds, and haunted the franchise for years. Luckily, Metroid clearly overcame Other M, but fifteen years later, it’s still a reminder of how far Nintendo has come, especially in how it lets third-party developers tackle its cherished series.
Other M falls in an interesting place in the series. It’s the first attempt at a new mainline Metroid game after the finish of the Prime Trilogy. Unfortunately, it would also remain the only Metroid game for a good six years, in large part due to the lackluster reception.
