So my friend and I decided to play through the first Metroid game for the NES the 100% legit way (no cheats or looking up anything about the game. All information straight from the game or the manual).

It was a lot of fun! We have this whole big pen & paper map and meticulously wrote down every room and where every powerup was. Then we made it to Kraid's Lair and after collecting everything in there attempted to defeat him. He absolutely destroyed us.

We finally looked up videos of other people doing it and see they all have tons of powerups we don't have! But we had gotten every powerup there possibly was and we had the completed map to prove it? We assumed access to all the rest of the powerups would reveal themselves after we beat Kraid. To avoid making this story too much more long-winded than it already is, after a lot of headache and searching we finally gave up and looked up an online map to see what we missed and what didn't match up with our own map.

HOW THE HECK are you supposed to find those hidden powerup entrances? I'm specifically talking about the one to the Varia Suit, the Ice Beam, and to the hidden entrance to the hallway on the right in Norfair. These are hidden in completely random locations with no indication to where they would be whatsoever!

I am legitimately curious as to how people were expected to find these when originally playing through the game before the Internet. Are there some sort of hints I'm missing? How did Nintendo ever expect people to beat the game if they couldn't find the powerups or even Ridley for that matter? And for those of you who did beat this as a kid or this was your favorite NES game, how did you find those entrances??

For those who haven't played the game: * Stupid Varia Suit entrance * Dumb Norfair entrance * Absolutely ridiculous Ice Beam location