[reads the metroid wiki] Oh wait, yeah there's only the varia suit. Well I guess I only skipped the ball jump then... It's not like I needed it at all but, being able to jump as a ball is better than waiting for the bomb to explode...

I'll try to find it next time.

I could do neat tricks with it combined with the Spiderball.

I loved this game as a child, but I was never able to complete it. I always reached a dead end, and couldn't figure out how to progress any further. I believe I'd always get stuck near that first large room where you could wall climb up to ceiling which had those hidden walkways. This will definitely be one of my very first GB VC downloads, as soon as my 3DS arrives. Anybody remember which area I'm referring to?

There are several large areas with hidden walkways

Metroid II is the only 2D Metroid game I've ever owned and I loved it. If you haven't done so already, download it. I know the old black and white graphics are pretty dull but the game is an absolute classic. There are three endings depending on how fast you beat it, so there is incentive to play through it a second time.

@Morpheel, I was referring to the very first large cavern, after you've discovered the morph ball, bombs and the spider ball.

I couldn't 100% under 3 hours...

It's fairly large for a Gameboy game, huh?

The first time I beat the game I got the worst ending. I don't remember how long it took me. After a few more playthroughs, I finished the game in 1:28 and I thought that was good, but I've seen some crazy speed runs that are WAY faster. For whatever reason, if you jump while in ball form, then turn on the spider ball and press left on the D-pad, you move insanely fast toward the left. I exploited that glitch like crazy, but it only works when moving left. So strange.

I found out that you can reach "secret worlds" (actually random worlds generated by being in some place not known by the game) by using a harmless gitch in this game, look it up it's quite interesting.

Turns out this thing I did could be considered a "secret world", too. _{Not an interesting one, though...}

@Morpheel, you can do almost the same thing in Metroid (NES). It's called the wall climb glitch. The original Metroid was never actually completely mapped. The programmers knew about it too, but they never decided to release this information.

Oh here it is weirder, it has nothing to do with jumping through walls.
It seems that pressing select fast while moving or falling large distances messes up how the game renders the world, leaving platforms where there should be nothing and even holes where there used to be solid wall, sometimes these holes go all the way to the end of the screen, which leads to a secret world.

There's even a site dedicated exclusively to this

I've spent over 3 hours fiddling away at Metroid II and so far i'm digging it, but not quite as much as the original.

On the flip side, the save points, the more linear-ish gameplay(Thank god because once again Nintendo thought it was a brilliant idea to not include a map.), Next to no health grinding which was absolutely brutal in the first are a few advantages over the original, plus the Metroid Hunting can be quite addicting and confronting the more powerful varations can be pretty INtense. However the sound track is extremely dissapointing compared to the moody & memorable originals, the black & white graphics are a pain in the mega tooshy as it makes it tough to defferentiate many of the areas, and having to deal without a map once again can be downright frustrating half the time. But as is, it's still nowhere near as confusing as the first. Seriously, drawing your own map as you go along or snaging one off the net is required for NES Metroid, otherwise you'll never get off Zebes.

I've got 27/39 Metroids left to hunt, I've aquired the Morph Ball Bomb, Ice Beam, Spider Ball, Viera Suit, and at this point I have absolutely no idea where to go, where the hell I am half the time and no motivation to continue....Until tomorrow night that is.

I downloaded this from Club Nintendo and played it over Christmas. I did not have too much trouble without the map; only got stuck one time for an extended period. The game really gives you a sense of isolation on this planet world, sort of a proto-survival horror type game. However, the black and white graphics do not help navigation and the music is a disappointment. It took me about 8-10 hours to beat the game. I hope you enjoy it!

@rosebud

If anything, the Black & White graphics gives it more of a horror vibe that's for sure and the build up when coming close to an undiscovered Metroid will make you panic if you haven't saved in quite some time and are low on health. Going to jump into it once again in a couple of hours. I just hope it's not going to be a 2-3 hour session of mindless wandering/where the funk am I? And i refuse to use an online map, as it would spoil many of the suprises!

Oh well, at least this will be the last Mapless Metroid I'll ever have to play. Super Metroid is going to be an enormous NextGen upgrade after this confusing B&W experience!

This is quite true, the first time I saw an Alpha Metroid evolve into a Beta Metroid and start chasing me, I fully freaked out and then laughed at myself for getting spooked by a black and white, 8-bit game

There's a section where you see half a dozen Metroid shells lying around, which clues you into the fact that there's going to be a serious fight again. For an old game, I always found myself admiring how effectively it created tone and atmosphere.

Taking down the Alpha and even Beta Metroids is a piece of 8-bit cake, especially during the end of the game if you've aquired 5 of the E-tanks which sadly completely cripples the fear of actually dieing, unless you're going up against the Zeta alien rat looking Metroids which are in a completely different league of Bad Dudes-nasty! Still, Metroid II is a puppy compared to the original....

The slew of save stations, unchallenging Metroids(Aside from the 'few' Zeta's that you will encounter), How you start out with all of your health when you die(No health grinding this time around. Earning your health has vanished) is a bit of a bummer. I mean Kraid in Metroid was a BEAST, none of the Metroids in II can even come close to delivering that kind of brutal difficulty..Maybe if i had zero E-tanks and went up against a Zeta Metroid, than ok fine. But as is, It's a walk in McDonalds park.

Anyways! I played over 3 hours of MII tonight, and only have 8 more Metroids left to hunt!

You could, you know, skip the extra E-Tanks if you think the game is too easy for you.

I'm not saying the game is too easy - but even if it were then its bad design couldn't be resolved by the logic of 'You just don't get the powerups', because that's what the exploration aspect of the game is about, and it shouldn't need to be sacrificed just to get the desired difficulty.

I'm not saying you should stop exploring, I said you could "skip" the the power ups, as in, not touching them, I never said anything about not trying to find them.

It's like skipping heart containers in Zelda or using only sucky pokemon in any pokemon game, it makes the game harder for people who want the challange. It's being creative with your games.