I only ever beat it back in the day by using the game guide lol! That was long enough ago that the game guide was an actual paper book I had to find at a store and pay real money for! Well, my mom paid for it anyway lol
My mom liked playing Nintendo games as much as I did so if there was a game she wanted to see the end of we would end up getting a Nintendo Power or a standalone game guide that was supposedly purchased for me lol
I didn't have a guide, but got stuck for days at the part where you have to super bomb the glass tube. I just did it out of desperation and couldn't believe it worked! A similar thing happened 5 years earlier in Simon's Quest when you have to hold crouch while holding the blue crystal. Come to think of it, Super Metroid might just be the last game in which I got stuck like that before I had access to the internet to look these things up.