On the subject of platforming, all I could find from the article was this quote:
"The game would be a shooter that combined the platforming of Super Mario Bros. with Zelda's non-linear exploration, plus a unique element all its own: atmosphere. Yokoi was a big believer in applied technology. He wasn't interested in reinventing wheels... he just made better wheels."
Note the key phrase here: "the platforming of Super Mario Bros," which has always been much more focused on the horizontal than the vertical. I'm certainly not going to claim that you can just leave platforming out of Metroid and have it be the same thing, but strictly vertical platforming is not so integral to the series that its an entirely different beast when you toss it out, especially considering that the series that Metroid's platforming was modeled after didn't even have vertical platforming segments at the time the original Metroid was being created.
The Screw Attack does not grant you the ability to jump infinitely; you're thinking of the Space Jump, which is a powerup I already mentioned towards platforming. The Speed Booster is extremely limited in its uses, as you actually need a room long enough to get a charge before it can be used. The Morph Ball is not a platforming power up as there is absolutely no platforming you can do with it without the use of bombs (something else I included in my list), the wall jump isn't a power up, shine spark isn't an independent power up, and, as mentioned before, I already included the Space Jump. Ice Beam and Grapple Beam I'll grant you, but then again, I already put those on my list too.
Using Super Metroid as an example, you could remove quite a few of those powerups without having to change the levels up drastically for people to beat the game. Heck, people have already beaten the game as it stands without the Speed Booster, High Jump, Gravity Suit, Grapple Beam, and Space Jump.
I'll certainly grant that Samus feels more tank-like in Prime, but I also don't believe that in and of itself undermines the game being a Metroid-esque game. The platforming is there, at least in part. The exploration, atmosphere, isolation, and method of progression are all there. Not having the main character control at the same level of agility doesn't seperate it from being part of the same genre.
