Metroid Lightspeed is a top down shmup where you control Samus' ship in the time between the events of Metroid II and Super Metroid. It features many of the classic weapons at the ship level, like the (now stackable) ice and wave beams. Weapons that don't appear until Super Metroid take the form of "cannons", which allow you to use the Spazer, Charge, and Plasma upgrades with Wave and Ice. The Varia shield reduces your ship's hitbox by half, and the Gravity engine allows faster movement through space.

The game was written in C# using the XNA Framework. All graphics except for the Metroid logo and title screen were hand-made in Photoshop. All sound effects are either freeware or self-recorded.

The fast movement of the various backgrounds doesn't go well with video compression, and my sound card can't produce and record at the same time.

The purpose of this project was to see how much I could accomplish in a semester's worth of work. Several items were planned for inclusion that didn't make it, such as area damage missiles and screen-clearing power bombs. I'm satisfied with how far I got with the project, even if there is no "ending" to the game. I might revisit it in the future.