Metroid II isnt less of a game. It's vastly superior - and that says a lot since its NES vs GB.

Oh i've bet Metroid quite a lot, but more the remake than the original. Who of you have memorised the entire layout of Zebes in the original Metroid? I definitely have! I don't even need to resort to a walkthrough for either version and i've never needed to either! Metroid II however, I didn't ever get to play until up to the VC release this year, so that's a hard one, but not really as @RR529 put it. Metroid II is fairly linear, and i'm a bit of a completionist, I think it took me 15 hours to find every single upgrade and defeat the final boss, but that's no record time by the way.
I find the GBA version, Zero Mission, is easier for speed runs, mostyl because I can beat it in uner 1hr 20mins or less! I haven't tried speed running the original, but that would be a whole new challenge for me if I were to try.
Also whenever I do play the remake, I always set it to Hard mode, because easy isn't the same as the originals difficulty and the original only had one, Hard, but Hard always feels easy to me LOL

I have a ton of games but haven't beaten much only kirby's dream land (It was easy and short), Super Mario Land 2 (also easy but had good length), Sonic: Triple Trouble (Fun sonic game and i love playing as Tails), and 3D Classics Kirby's Adventure (Easy game and i had it for GBA). That's all I've beaten out of my about 40 3DS VC games but i'm gonna start getting down to beat more games. the ones on my list are Lock n' Chase, 3D Classics: Kid Icarus, Avenging Spirit, Donkey Kong '94, Metroid, and Bionic Comando. These i will try to beat this weekend.

I just beat The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX. I had never played it before, as I was into Zelda as a kid and also kind of skipped out on the GBC in general. It is a great game, and I highly recommend it. I also beat DK '94 a couple months ago. That game was really good too.