Nintendo Life's Box Art Brawl feature marked Metroid's 40th anniversary by pitting the box art of all five mainline games against each other in a fan vote. Rather than comparing regional variants as usual, the special edition asked readers to pick their favourite design across the entire main series, using the previously-crowned regional winner for each game where one had already been decided.

Super Metroid's Japanese cover, which had earlier won its own regional contest with 89% of the vote, ran away with the overall poll, taking 58% of the 217 votes cast. Metroid Dread came second with 17%, while Metroid II: Return of Samus and Metroid Fusion tied on 11% each, and the original Metroid trailed with just 4%. The article also recapped the previous week's contest, in which the North American box art for Donkey Kong Jungle Beat won with 60% of the vote ahead of Europe (21%) and Japan (19%).