Metroid II: Return of Samus Walkthrough: A Few Things To Know Before Starting

Walkthrough

Mission Debriefing

“Even one living Metroid could easily wipe out an entire planetary civilization. The Galactic Federation quickly came to one conclusion, which was unanimous and simple: give Samus Aran the order to exterminate the Metroids!”

Welcome all to the complete, 100% walkthrough for the first direct sequel in the franchise – Metroid II: Return of Samus! The Galactic Federation has tasked Samus, and by extension, you, to wipe out all Metroids, but buckle up, because these aren’t the same type of Metroids you’re probably used to. Scattered across their home planet of SR388, the Metroids have evolved and are not going to stare down annihilation without putting up a fight!

Just like with NEStroid, before we actually get going, I wanted to dedicate a page of the walkthrough to going over a couple of quick things that will make your life on this hostile planet easier. Return of Samus is over 30 years old, and was one of the first big adventures released on the Game Boy as a qay to legitimate that platform, so there are definitely some things that don’t hold up as well today as they did back then, particularly if you are playing this game after playing Metroid: Samus Returns or AM2R. The Game Boy provided some limitations to players, but the cool part is those limitations can actually be used to our advantage if you know what to do!

That being said, just like with NEStroid, this game is more about your ability to perform versus needing any specific battle or puzzle strategies, so while I may write something that sounds simple enough – “head left three screens and down two!” – the amount of hostiles you’ll need to avoid or get rid of could make that way harder. That preface aside, let’s get into some things you should know before playing!

Use the map!

Maybe more so than any other Metroid game, Return of Samus’s world can be confusing, full of twists and turns, which is exacerbated by the fact that the technology of the Game Boy makes most every hallway look the same. Use our Omega Metroid custom built Metroid II map to help you get around! You’ll probably find our maps and routes walkthrough section more helpful than the actual written work! The map is key, especially because…

SR388’s map is paradoxical

What I mean by that is – every other Metroid game has a map that was built on a square grid, and generally speaking, that grid makes sure that no parts of the map overlap each other. No Return of Samus’s. There are multiple sections of the map that should be impossible to connect to each other, as they would just have Areas stacked on top of each other. Again, use the map to help get around, but just keep in mind that, knowing there are these paradoxical connection points, you might need to think of some parts as “warp points”, even if they’re not.

The map is named in Phases rather than Areas

Because the game is so old and the technology so limiting, Metroid II doesn’t have “areas” in the traditional sense. There are certainly some distinct parts of SR388, but for the most part, the aesthetic and music are the same. Because of that, Metroid II’s map has traditionally been known to call its areas “Phase One”, “Phase Two”, etc. Once you eliminate a certain amount of Metroids and an earthquake happens (thus lowering the lava so you can proceed further), this begins a new Phase. To make matters even more complicated, Phase Eight has also been traditionally broken down into part A and over B – don’t ask me why, but I decided to stick with it for the sake of consistency!

You’re mostly on your own fighting Metroids

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll have some information and a few tricks to make your fight easier – particularly with the Queen Metroid – but by and large, 95% of every Metroid fight is: A) don’t get hit by the moving Metroid, and B) fire missiles at it! There’s not really any special attacks you need to know about, nor is there like a surefire strategy to defeat any of these menaces. It’ll once again be up to you and your ability to perform.

Beams (still) don’t stack

Metroid II introduces a couple of new beams to fight with – the Plasma and Spazer Beam – but, unfortunately, you can only have one beam equipped at a time. Choose whatever one you want, but just know that you’ll need the Ice Beam going into the final Phase of the game (and don’t worry, you can pick it up in Phase 9!)

Enemies off-screen don’t move

Because the Game Boy screen is so small and there’s only so much space, the second an enemy goes off screen, it basically freezes. This sounds like a bad thing, but this will actually work in your favor! If you are engaging a Metroid (Gamma Metroids in particular I found this useful for), you can cheat the battle in a few ways! Firstly, you can “retreat” and get your bearings by running until the Metroid is off screen, and only when you get close will it start moving again. Secondly, this will allow you to kind of creep up and find a sweet spot where you can see where your enemy is, but they’re not quite in frame yet, so you can creep forward, blast them with a missile, and retreat backwards! This isn’t always 100% effective, but it’s a good way to take a limitation of the hardware and turn it to your advantage!

Space Jumping is tricky

You’ll definitely find this out for yourself, but you’ll really need to work on your timing, rhythm, and directional inputs to Space Jump properly in this game; it’s not as easy as just pressing jump again.

Some general pieces of advice from NEStroid are still true

I made a similar list of things new players should expect before playing NEStroid, and a lot of those same things are still true, so really quickly

Keep moving!
Enemies don’t respawn until you grab whatever pickup they left behind
Metroids aside, avoid enemies if you can. You get nothing for beating them.
Know how to control your jumps. Long button press equals long jump and vice versa.
Most pickups are optional, though there’s a few abilities you’ll need to beat the game.

Take advantage of the Switch’s features

Now that Metroid II is available on NSO, I would imagine a good chunk of players playing this game are doing so on their Switch. Good! Make sure to take advantage of the rewind feature, save states, the Game Boy Color pallet (that’s what I played using!) to make your life easier!

All that being said… let’s play Metroid II: Return of Samus!

Next Chapter: The Ruins – Alpha Metroids

Omega Metroid's Metroid II: Return of Samus Walkthrough