After seven long years, Nintendo's most famous bounty hunter finally returned in Metroid Prime. This game took the traditional 2D side-on view of previous Metroid games and dragged it kicking and screaming into the 3D world. Sporting amazing graphics, a musical score to kill for and some of the most intense and involving gameplay on the GameCube, Metroid Prime was an instant classic and is still loved by gamers everywhere. Overall, it's considered to be one of the best games of all time.
Following from Wikipedia article: Metroid Prime[1]
Development
At first, Prime was supposed to be for the N64, but progress was delayed due to the fact that there "weren't any concrete ideas" for it. It ended up being held over to GCN, which, in turn, was made into a collaboration project between Nintendo and Retro Studios. Their main focus was set on Prime, but this made 4 other games (one being Raven Blade) cancelled so that Prime was the main focus.
Kenji Yamamoto and Kouichi Kyuma composed music for Prime, using remixes of Metroid games to "satisfy old Metroid fans". For example, Lower Norfair was used for Magmoor Caverns and the Brinstar theme was used for Tallon Overworld.
Reception
Metroid has hit many milestones: sold close to 1.49 million games, has an average score of 96.264% rating on Game Rankings, and the best reviewed game of all sixth generation games. Even Filter put Prime at Best Graphics of All Time.
EGM gave a 10/10, saying Prime has "detailed graphics, with special effects and varied environments, moody soundtrack and sound effects, level design, immersive atmosphere, and innovative gameplay centered on exploring as opposed to the action of games such as Halo while staying faithful to the Metroid formula." EGM also gave it a Platinum Award and a 2002 Game of the Year award.
Major reviewers, such as Famitsu, IGN, and Gamespot, gave it high scores and lots of praise. The only downside that reviewers alike hated was the constant backtracking, being, as Gamepro stated, that players "might find it exhausting to keep revisiting the same old places over and over and over."
Table of Contents
- Space Pirate Frigate
- Missile Launcher
- Morph Ball
- Charge Beam
- Morph Ball Bomb
- Varia Suit
- Boost Ball
- Space Jump Boots
- Wave Beam
- Super Missile
- Thermal Visor
- Spider Ball
- Wavebuster
- Ice Beam
- Gravity Suit
- Sunken Frigate
- Power Bomb
- Ice Spreader
- Grapple Beam
- X-Ray Visor
- Plasma Beam
- Flamethrower
- Phazon Suit
- Chozo Artifacts
- Meta Ridley
- Impact Crater