Right, in NES Metroid, Zebes blew up, or, that's what we were to believe because when you killed Mother Brain, it says Time Bomb set. Yet, you return to Zebes in Super Metroid, and there are no signs of an explosion ever occuring on the planet...
Well IIRC the remaining space pirates split into two groups, one started to do what they are doing in prime and the other rebuild zebes and revived Motherbrain Kraid and Ridley. Also I don't think that zebes actually was completely obliterated in the explosion, in fact if zero mission supposedly shows what actually hapened only tourian exploded...
I should mention that I'm not really a 100% sure about everything I said is correct...
the only thing i could find in the game that had evidence of explosion was when you are heading to missiles, and you walk through the old Mother Brain room...
Well, i suppose that makes sense... but in Super Metroid you saw it get obliterated, so i'm using this question if i see another Metroid game on Zebes.
The SM manual made it clear that only Zebes' interior was (mostly) destroyed in the first game. Presumably all that was left after the first game was what you see of Old Tourian and the three or so blue rooms of Brinstar. That would've been a pretty large bomb, though. It's more likely that a lot of the old areas were simply blocked off rather than being completely crushed/obliterated. Of course, Zero Mission pretty much makes the whole dicussion moot since clearly the bomb that goes off in Tourian doesn't even destroy Tourian itself, let alone the rest of the planet's caverns. I suppose Nintendo'll try to argue that the destruction of the Pirate Mothership lead to Zebes' new appearance in SM instead.
IN HER LAST RAID ON ZEBES, SAMUS DESTROYED THE OLD TOURIAN COMMAND CENTER. NOW IT HAS BEEN BUILT AGAIN, IN A DIFFERENT LOCATION. SAMUS' NEW GOAL IS TO INFILTRATE THIS AREA AND TAKE ON THE NEW LEADERS OF ZEBES.