honor some of the most amazing moments in gaming -- be it artistic, innovative, or just plain memorable.

Hit the jump for the first inductee into this honored club: one of the best sequences ever from one of my favorite games of all time, Super Metroid.

At the end of Metroid II: The Return of Samus, for the original Game Boy, our heroic bounty hunter discovers a small Metroid egg. From it, a baby Metroid is born, chirping and circling Samus as if she was its mother. Samus, showing that she has a heart under all that space armor, spares the poor baby Metroid and takes it back to her ship. This is where that games ends, with the two flying off to a distant galaxy, perfectly setting up thesequel (and arguably best Metroid game ever), Super Metroid.

After returning home with the baby in tow, Samus hands the last remaining Metroid over to researchers on the Ceres Space Colony. They claim that, by harnessing the power of the Metroids, the world will one day be a better place.

However, shortly after departing, Samus receives a distress call from Ceres and returns to see what is wrong.

Super Metroid’s prologue begins as Samus enters the facility, realizing that everything has been destroyed and all the researchers have been killed. Journeying through the entire colony, Samus finally discovers the baby Metroid she donated to the scientists sitting in a canister all alone at the center of an open laboratory.

As Samus approaches the crying baby Metroid, the infamous creature Ridley surprises her