When bounty hunter Samus Aran first stepped onto the alien world of Zebes in 1986, players encountered something different – not just in what they saw, but in what they heard. Or rather, what they didn’t hear. In an era when video game music meant catchy melodies and upbeat tunes, Metroid‘s soundtrack dared to whisper, to unsettle, and often to fall silent entirely. This bold approach would establish a musical framework that has defined the series for nearly four decades.

The Living Planet

“I wanted to make a score that made players feel like they were encountering a living organism,” recalls Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka, composer of the original Metroid. His revolutionary approach rejected the conventional wisdom of the time – that video game music should be melodic and hummable. Instead, Tanaka created a soundscape where music and sound effects blurred together, forming an organic audio environment that breathed with alien life.

This philosophy manifested most notably in Brinstar, the game’s opening area. Rather than a traditional theme, players hear what sounds like the planet’s heartbeat, punctuated by abstract electronic pulses and mysterious tones. It’s not so much music as it is the sound of Zebes itself, creating an immediate sense that this world is alive – and possibly hostile.

The Power of Silence

Perhaps Tanaka’s most daring choice was knowing when not to write music at all. In an era when technological limitations often meant constant musical accompaniment, Metroid embraced silence as a tool for creating tension. Players would find themselves in cavernous spaces with only their footsteps and the occasional distant screech for company. This use of negative space accomplished two things: it amplified the feeling of isolation, and it made the moments when music did swell to life all the more impactful.

This principle reached its apex in the game’s finale. After hours of atmospheric minimalism, defeating Mother Brain triggers the first and only traditional melody in the game – a triumphant theme that serves as both reward and release. As Tanaka explained, this was designed specifically to give players a sense of catharsis after their long, lonely journey.

Motorcycles and Melodies

When Super Metroid arrived in 1994, composer Kenji Yamamoto faced the challenge of building upon Tanaka’s groundbreaking work. His approach came from an unlikely source – his daily motorcycle commute. “Many of the themes came to me while riding my motorcycle to work,” Yamamoto has revealed. This mobile composition process led to some of the most memorable themes in the series, including the haunting melody of Crateria’s rain-soaked surface and the primal percussion of Lower Norfair.

Yamamoto understood the importance of maintaining Metroid‘s signature atmosphere while taking advantage of the SNES’s superior sound capabilities. The result was a score that expanded the series’ musical vocabulary while staying true to its atmospheric roots. Lower Norfair’s oppressive theme, for instance, combines tribal drums with discordant harmonies to create a sense of both ancient danger and alien hostility.

Into the Third Dimension

When Metroid Prime transported the series into 3D in 2002, the audio landscape faced its own dimensional shift. Yamamoto returned to score the Prime trilogy, bringing with him both the series’ traditional atmospheric approach and new dynamic elements that the GameCube’s hardware made possible.

Phendrana Drifts stands as perhaps the finest example of Prime‘s musical evolution. Its ethereal synthesizers and crystalline tones capture both the beauty and desolation of its frozen landscape. The music shifts subtly as players move between open spaces and enclosed caves, creating a seamless audio environment that responds to the player’s exploration.

The team’s attention to technical detail was extraordinary. As developers from Retro Studios noted, they worked within a strict 6MB memory budget for all sound effects in each level. This limitation meant every sound had to earn its place, leading to carefully crafted audio landscapes where every note and effect served a purpose.

Modern Echoes

Recent entries like Metroid Dread have continued this tradition of atmospheric audio design. The game’s score, while more orchestrated than its predecessors, still employs strategic silence and ambient sound to maintain tension. The EMMI zones, where Samus must evade nearly invincible robots, are particularly effective in their use of minimal audio cues to heighten anxiety.

What’s remarkable is how consistent the series’ audio philosophy has remained across decades and platforms. Whether it’s the bleeping minimalism of the NES original, the rich ambience of Super Metroid, the dynamic soundscapes of Prime, or the orchestrated tension of Dread, Metroid‘s music has always served the same core purpose – to make players feel alone in a living, breathing, and often hostile alien world.

The Legacy of Loneliness

What Tanaka and his successors understood was that atmosphere in games isn’t just about what players see – it’s about what they feel. By rejecting conventional video game music tropes in favor of something more experimental, more environmental, and sometimes more silent, they created a sonic template that didn’t just accompany the games but actively shaped how players experienced them.

This approach has influenced countless games since, particularly in how developers think about environmental storytelling through audio. The DNA of Metroid‘s sound design can be heard in everything from Dead Space to Hollow Knight, games that understand that sometimes the most powerful musical choice is choosing not to play music at all.

As the series continues to evolve, its commitment to atmospheric audio remains unwavering. Each new entry finds fresh ways to make players feel like they’re alone on an alien world, armed with nothing but their suit, their skills, and a soundscape that reminds them that in space, sometimes the scariest sound is barely any sound at all.

The next time you play a Metroid game, take a moment to listen – really listen – to not just the music, but the silence between the notes. That’s where you’ll find the true artistry of the series’ audio design, in those spaces where the boundary between music and atmosphere disappears entirely, leaving you alone with the sound of a living, breathing alien world.