To me, the Gamecube is my favourite Nintendo home console up to date. I love everything about the little black box, from the controller to the orange lighting and the startup sound. But most I love the amount of great titles it produced. Super Smash Bros. Melee, Resident Evil 4, Baten Kaitos, Pikmin, and the list goes on. And high on the number one spot is Metroid Prime.

When I started playing Metroid Prime I wasn’t too familiar with the franchise. I played Metroid on a friend’s NES, I knew the lead character was not named Metroid but Samus and that she was in fact a woman, but that’s about it. Only when I later played through the old games I found out just how incredible Samus’s leap to 3D really was. When playing Metroid Prime “fresh” I thought all those things like Ice Beams and Spider Balls were new aspects of the game and that in the old games you could just run, roll and shoot. It shows just how well ahead of its time Metroid was with incorporating such play aspects in Nintendo and Game Boy games. But I am drifting away from the main story here, so back to Prime.

The game starts off with you looking through Samus’s helmet on a Space Pirate vessel, which acts sort of as a tutorial for the controls and the use of the scan visor. Scanning is a big part in all of the 3D Metroid games, including the semi-3D Other M (although to a lesser extent). While some may dislike the constant switching between visors and the need to read so many text from the scanning, I personally loved it. Not only did it drive my need to complete the game with 100%, but it also gives you so many content, lore, background and information. It greatly adds to the sense of exploring, and when the game progresses it makes you aware of unreachable areas which hint that you may need to revisit later. If only I already had a weapon which could break through this cordite block!

This also makes the backtracking much more bearable, since if you paid attention (I even made notes…) you knew where to head next when you got another upgrade to your suit. Because after the tutorial where you run into a rather unpleasant encounter with Meta Ridley, you wind up stripped of all your upgrades on the planet Tallon IV. Luckily for you this planet is filled with Chozo artifacts and more, so you get a chance to regain your equipment. This brings you through dozens of different environments, from rainforests to fiery caverns, and from icy plains to a meteor crater which carried the omnipresent Phazon. This radioactive, mutating essence is what brought destruction to the mighty Chozo race in the first place, as you find out throughout the game.

It still does not really sound like the best game out there, so what made Metroid Prime stand out? To me, it is the complete package. This game has it all, and it is all brought together so perfectly. The story is gripping, the environments are beautiful, and the game looked stunning at that time. Small things like the water dripping off your visor, or the condense on it in hot environments were great at that time (and are still!). Also, the first time I saw Samus’s eyes reflected in your visor when there is a flash of light gave me shivers. You truly feel you are Samus, and you are alone on the bloody planet in a hostile environment, which you can only progress through if you pay attention to the hints and clues you find.

And then there is that soundtrack! Every area is accompanied with a fitting soundtrack, such as the ambient tracks when roaming large plains such as the icy Phendrana Drifts. Other times the music is minimalistic in the background, then exploding again when you get into a dangerous area or epic when you enter Chozo holy ground. It just fits the game like your most cozy pair of slippers.

Tip: Jump to 1:14:30 for my favourite tune, Phendrana Drifts Overworld Theme

Not unimportantly, the game played well. Although it looks like a first person shooter, you are helped by a lock-on feature which takes away most of the aiming. If you played Metroid Prime: Blast Ball (now free on your 3DS eShop), you know how it works. Still the game is challenging enough, since you have to scan enemies for weak spots, dodge, jump, shoot with the correct weapon and so on. And if you don’t like the shooting, you can always roll up in your Morph Ball and bomb away your enemies.

Speaking of the Morph Ball, this also added greatly to the gameplay. Not only do you move nice and fast while rolling, it also lets you explore environments from a different perspective. Not even speaking of all the other aspects the Morph Ball adds. How about bomb jumps, 2D rolling sequences, scaling halfpipes, or getting eaten and then blowing up an enemy from within. Last time I saw that happening was when I was watching Men In Black!

All in all Metroid Prime is the prime example of how to make a 3D game out of a 2D franchise (yes Mario, Samus did it even better than you did!). The third dimension can be explored in a multitude of ways, and adds extra depth to old Metroid play aspects such as the Morph ball and Spider ball. The isolation is even more tangible here, throwing you face first into one of the best gaming experiences ever.

Metroid Prime of course is the first part in a trilogy, which Nintendo later even released as a one disk bundle for Wii including motion controls (which you can pick up fair priced on the WiiU eShop, or secondhand for the Wii. If you don’t have it, do it! Do it now!). The trilogy continued with Metroid Prime: Echoes on the Gamecube, and with Metroid Prime: Corruption on the Wii. The second game was also excellent, with more original environments and weapons, although it introduced the nasty poisonous dimension of Dark Aether. Metroid Prime: Corruption was the epic conclusion, although I find it the least of the series, mostly due to the action-driven story which takes away the isolation aspect of a true Metroid game.

A spin-off was found in Metroid Prime Hunters for the Nintendo DS, and a demo even came with the first Nintendo DS units. Metroid: Other M combined 2D action with sequences of a 3D first-person play style, and focussed heavily on the cutscenes and the background but still is a very enjoyable game. In a couple of weeks we will get the newest game in the series: Metroid Prime Federation Force. Although it is not the game we were all hoping for, we’ll see if it can give us some of the Metroid magic of the excellent Prime series. And let’s hope that when we go to the NXt generation, Nintendo gives Samus the love she deserves with a proper title. Because boy does she deserve it, after the great games she brought us in the last 30 years.