Metroid
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48 free Metroid trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Metroid is the Nintendo series that taught games to feel lonely. Since 1986, bounty hunter Samus Aran has explored hostile planets with no companions, few words and a map that only opens up as she earns new powers, and the formula became so influential that an entire genre, the Metroidvania, carries its name. These 48 questions span the whole saga: the NES original and its female-protagonist twist, the Game Boy sequel whose planet was named after a motorcycle, Super Metroid's humming composer, Retro Studios' first-person Prime trilogy, the controversial Other M, MercurySteam's Samus Returns and Dread, and 2025's long-delayed Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. Expect questions on planets, bosses, studios, composers, cancelled projects and the stray facts only fans know, like the electronic duo Nintendo nearly hired and the pinball game where Samus's gunship first appeared. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a game night.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which villain is the final boss of the original Metroid?
Mother Brain
Mother Brain is destroyed at the end of the first game but returns in Super Metroid, where she has Samus beaten until the Metroid hatchling gives its life to save her.
Q 02The title Metroid is a portmanteau of 'metro' and which other word?
Android
Android was attached to 'metro', as in a subway, by designer Hiroji Kiyotake and a colleague, to suggest a robot-like hero in a mostly underground world.
Q 03On which console did the first Metroid reach North America in August 1987?
NES
NES Metroid shipped without the save slots of the Japanese disk version, so the Western release had players write down a 24-letter password instead.
Q 04Which Texas-based developer made Metroid Prime for the GameCube?
Retro Studios
Retro Studios had four other games in the works when Shigeru Miyamoto visited in 2000 and suggested putting its first-person shooter engine to work on Metroid instead.
Q 05Which Spanish studio developed Samus Returns and Metroid Dread?
MercurySteam
MercurySteam had asked to remake Metroid Fusion; producer Yoshio Sakamoto turned the idea down but offered the studio a remake of Metroid II instead.
Q 06Which 1979 film has Metroid co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto called a "huge influence" on the first game?
Alien
Alien left its mark on the villains too: the dragon Ridley is widely believed to be named after the film's director, Ridley Scott.
Q 07Which of Samus's signature abilities was called the Maru Mari in the first Metroid's manual?
Morph Ball
The Morph Ball's entry in that manual says Samus grows small and round "when he gets" the item: the booklet called her "he" throughout to protect the ending's surprise.
Q 08Samus Aran's surname was taken from the birth name of which footballer?
Pelé
Pelé was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento. The bigger surprise came halfway through development, when a staff member suggested making Samus a woman.
Q 09Who headed Nintendo R&D1 and produced both Metroid and Metroid II?
Gunpei Yokoi
Gunpei Yokoi was hired to maintain the machines that made Nintendo's playing cards; an extending toy arm he built in his spare time became a hit and made him a designer.
Q 10Which composer of Dr. Mario and EarthBound also wrote the eerie score of the original Metroid?
Hirokazu Tanaka
Hirokazu Tanaka wanted no line between music and sound effects, and held back any real melody until the final boss falls, as a release for the player.
Q 11Samus has been a playable fighter in which series since its first game in 1999?
Super Smash Bros.
Super Smash Bros. was Samus's only outing on the Nintendo 64: the console never got a Metroid game, yet she was one of the eight fighters available from the start.
Q 12Which studio handled Super Metroid's programming alongside Nintendo R&D1?
Intelligent Systems
Intelligent Systems grew out of a team of programmers who had coded Nintendo's early hits, became a company of its own in 1986, and went on to create Fire Emblem and Paper Mario.
Q 13On which planet are the original Metroid and Super Metroid set?
Zebes
Zebes does not survive Super Metroid: a countdown begins when the final boss dies, and Samus escapes moments before the whole planet explodes.
Q 21Under what title was Metroid Prime 2 released in Japan in 2005?
Dark Echoes
Dark Echoes reached Japan in May 2005, six months after the West, and its bosses proved so punishing that they were toned down when the game was reissued in Metroid Prime: Trilogy.
Q 22What does Hypermode cost Samus in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption?
An Energy Tank
An Energy Tank of health buys a burst of invincibility that the suit vents after 25 seconds; let the gauge overfill and the game can end with Samus fully corrupted.
Q 23What is the classic weakness of the Metroid creatures, used against them since the first game?
Cold
Cold is so much a part of them that in Metroid Fusion, when a vaccine made from Metroid cells saves Samus's life, she inherits their weakness to it.
Q 14Which planet is the Metroids' homeworld, visited in Metroid II?
SR388
SR388 is where Samus hunts the species to extinction, until a newly hatched Metroid takes her for its mother and she cannot bring herself to kill it.
Q 15Which famous password starts the original Metroid with Samus out of her armoured suit?
JUSTIN BAILEY
JUSTIN BAILEY drops her into Norfair with 255 missiles, wearing the leotard that players otherwise saw only as a reward for finishing the game quickly.
Q 16In Metroid II, clearing an area's Metroids triggers what?
Earthquake
An earthquake follows each cull and drains the hazardous liquid blocking the tunnels below, so the hunt for the Metroids leads steadily deeper underground.
Q 17On which planet does Metroid Prime take place?
Tallon IV
Tallon IV was a Chozo refuge until a meteor poisoned it, and Samus must gather twelve artifacts they left behind to open the way to the crater.
Q 18What is the mutagen the Space Pirates exploit in Metroid Prime?
Phazon
Phazon is the Space Pirates' own name for the poison a meteor brought to the planet, and they mine it to mutate living creatures into weapons.
Q 19Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is set on which planet split into light and dark worlds?
Aether
Aether's dark twin has a caustic atmosphere that eats away at Samus's suit, so she has to cross it by hopping between pockets of light called safe zones.
Q 20In Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, which peaceful race is at war with the Ing?
Luminoth
The Luminoth were close to extinction when Samus arrived: a meteor strike decades earlier had split their world's energy in two and spawned the Ing in a dark twin dimension.
Q 24Metroid Prime was first planned in which perspective before Miyamoto intervened?
Third-person
Third-person was dropped after Shigeru Miyamoto, mindful of the camera trouble Rare had with Jet Force Gemini, judged that shooting from behind the hero was not intuitive.
Q 25Nintendo billed Metroid Prime not as a first-person shooter but as a first-person what?
Adventure
Adventure was Nintendo's word for it because exploring matters more than shooting in the game, a label the company was already using nearly two years before release.
Q 26Which developer first worked on Metroid Prime 4 before Nintendo restarted the project?
Bandai Namco Studios
Bandai Namco Studios' version was scrapped in 2019, when Nintendo said it fell short of its standards and began again from scratch; the finished game arrived in December 2025.
Q 27Which rogue hunter with a grudge against Samus is the rival in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond?
Sylux
Sylux, first seen in Metroid Prime Hunters, damages an artifact while fighting Samus, and the blast teleports everyone nearby to the unknown planet Viewros.
Q 28What is the name of Samus's motorcycle in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond?
Vi-O-La
Vi-O-La exists because fans asked for an open-world Metroid after Breath of the Wild: the developers built one freely explorable hub, Sol Valley, and gave Samus a bike to cross it.
Q 29In Metroid Fusion, Samus nicknames her ship's computer after whom?
Adam
Adam was her former commanding officer, Adam Malkovich, and in the ending she realizes the computer really is his mind, uploaded after his death.
Q 30What is the name of the parasite copy of Samus at full power in Metroid Fusion?
SA-X
The SA-X stalks her through the station with her own best weapons, and it turns out to reproduce: by the end there are no fewer than ten of them aboard.