!King_Amazon!'s Top 10 SNES Games of All Time!

Space jump and screw attack were in Metroid II.

My bad.

Speed boost is just a lame new way to block access to areas, as are super missiles and power bombs.

Are you kidding me? If you look at it that way, every powerup in a Metroid game is a lame way to block access. Almost all of Samus' abilities are used to access new territory. Morph Ball, Spider Ball, Grapple Beam, Space Jump. All of it.

Charge beam is useless unless you run out of missles (and how do you run out of missles in Super Metroid?).

I prefer to use the Charge against regular enemies, rather than unnecessarily spending missiles with abandon. Different strokes.

an overly rigid map structure.

Yeah, because Metroid II's "just keep going deeper" structure was a totally open-ended sandbox design, right?

Hardly series defining.

I'd be willing to bet you're one of three people in the world who would agree with that sentiment.