I found this quote in one of the articles already posted, and I thought it'd be very relevant to all the people arguing that Metroid is a "gameplay series":
It’s no secret that the video game industry tends to have very low writing standards, so unless a game’s plot or characters particularly stand out, gamers (and reviewers) have been conditioned to tune out the storytelling and focus on shooting stuff. Many players can tune out a game’s story completely and enjoy the gameplay on its own. This raises an obvious question: if it’s so bad, why can’t we just ignore Other M’s story and move on?
I don’t think we have that luxury, for three reasons:
The first reason is that Yoshio Sakamoto, Other M’s producer, director, and writer, clearly wants us to pay attention to it. Not only does the game have the usual unskippable cutscenes, it actually devotes an entire section of its in-game menu to keeping track of plot points and the characters you encounter over the course of the game. Every time you load a save game you’re greeted with a plot recap. Your reward for beating the game is even “Theater Mode”, all the game’s lovingly-rendered cutscenes strung together with pre-recorded adventure footage to make a feature-length movie without the distraction of gameplay. He meant for the story to be appreciated on its own terms, and went through great lengths to ensure that players would get the whole thing.
He didn’t intend for his story to be ignored.
Second, because Other M is Yoshio Sakamoto’s definitive statement on the character of Samus Aran, one of the oldest and most iconic video game heroines (Metroid is arguably the second-oldest surviving franchise with a female protagonist). Until the release of Other M, Samus had received very little canon characterization. We knew very little about her, except that she was a woman, evidently powerful and brave enough to enter enemy strongholds and confront alien horrors alone. As a result, over the course of two and a half decades she became an empty vessel for the dreams and aspirations of at least two generations of gamers (many among them women). The characterization of Samus Aran is both personally and historically significant to many.
[...]
Third, because the relationship Other M depicts in such an idealized light is seriously screwed up in its own right. It also represents something which has been uncommon in video games until now; offhand, I can’t think of any other mainstream video game which has idealized this kind of relationship in this way. This deserves to be openly challenged, particularly given the rising popularity of similar relationships in other media.
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Forever LOLphins
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