the box, to make it a "toy", to sneak under the North American retail radar.  But they hedged their bets in another way: they created, as first-party/internal projects, at least one game for each major arcade genre they could think of (including inventing some new ones).  So Nintendo's internal development groups made racing games, adventure games, puzzle games, sports games, and so on.  All small teams, single digits I believe.  The creation of Metroid stemmed from the success of late 70s/early 80s sci-fi films like Alien and Blade Runner (prophetic, since most sci-fi games still desperately emulate these films).  Ever wonder why the hero of Metroid is a woman?  Ever wonder why there is a bad guy named Ridley?  Anyways, a manager at Nintendo walked down the hallway to R&D1 and said "we should do a game about space," and then walked back to his office. Fresh off of now-cult-hit Kid Icarus, the team came up with a new scenario, modified the technology a little bit, adopting some ideas from Miyamoto's ground-breaking Legend of Zelda, and began work on Metroid.  A little known but ultimately influential and famous composer Hip Tanaka (Earthbound) added the soundtrack, which was strongly criticized within Nintendo for being "too dark."  However, it's gone on to be not just my favorite but some of the most memorable, adventurous, and interesting music in video games. I also loved that to progress in the game, you frequently had to employ tactics that felt game-breaking.  For example, to reach