I could say that Metroid Prime is my favorite game. I could say it’s my very favorite game without hesitation. I could use phrases like “desert island” or “last game on Earth” to show my preference. I could use any of the words above to describe my love for this game, and it still wouldn’t be enough.
Metroid Prime took a chainsaw to everything I thought I knew about games. It broke every single rule that existed in my head and redefined “video game” in my vocabulary. As far as formative experiences go, this game might have been the most formative.
The beauty of Metroid Prime is that it wasn’t the first game I ever played. It probably didn’t even crack the first twenty-five. My early gaming days were filled with Pac-Man, Frogger, Mario, Sonic, and punishingly difficult Disney releases. I had been playing video games for roughly 5 years before Prime’s release, and in that time I built up an understanding of what they were all about. The game starts, you move right, clear a level, sit through a cutscene, and repeat. Those were the rules.
Even a jump from 2D to 3D, though important, wasn’t necessarily transcendent. Sure, Link looked a lot better, but at the end of the day, you still cleared a temple, walked across the overworld, and then entered the next dungeon on the list. Ocarina of Time was an amazing step forward for gaming, but it still followed the rules in my head.
In 2003, one year after its release, I finally rented Metroid Prime. I had to beg my mom to let me rent it, as it would have been my first T-rated game…and I was not yet a teen. What a scandal! She agreed, and it was a mere half hour before I was home, in a dark room, playing the game. The eerie title screen started and I was prepared for a spooky space adventure. And as “Level 1” began, that was exactly what I got. It took me an hour or so of learning the controls and mastering the combat to finally defeat the Parasite Queen, but I did it! I evacuated the Frigate Orpheon and landed on Tallon IV. Level 1 complete! What I didn’t realize at the time was that that was merely the tutorial.
Next, Samus landed her ship in a lush, rainy field and exited out of the top hatch. She looked around, as did I, and one hard-cut to her HUD later, I was back in control. But there was a dilemma…there were two doors: one directly ahead, atop a ledge, and one at ground level. I opted to take the lower-level door and continued on my path. It was only a few rooms later that I found the elevator that took me up to the sandy, barren Chozo Ruins.
But…there was…no boss? Am I done with the forest level already? I guess so!
It took me a better part of the day, but I finally beat the Flaahgra, guardian boss of the desert level. Things were going well! The next day I worked my way through Magmoor Caverns to Phendrana Drifts. Again, no boss in the lava level? Weird! So I worked my way through the ice level and discovered the Morph Ball Boost. This was the first item in the game that I didn’t have back on the Frigate Orpheon, before losing my powers. How exciting! I followed the path ahead of me and realized…I was at a dead end. I couldn’t reach anything new in the ice level and I started to get frustrated. What did I miss? Was there a path I wasn’t seeing?
After a half hour of fruitless toiling, the merciful hint system took pity on me. My next objective was…back in the forest level. Not just in the forest level, but at the landing site where my ship was waiting. I had to go back.
And it was right then and there that the walls came crashing down. I had to go backwards? I had retrace old levels? What kind of madness was this?
In that moment, I looked at the map entirely differently. These were no longer Zelda-style dungeons that were connected end to end with elevators. This was a planet. I wasn’t playing levels, I was traveling through a world, and there was far more world left to discover.
What followed was a weeks-long plunge into something I never could have imagined before. The exploration, the crisscrossing of the map, the seemingly endless ruthless battles…it became an obsession. When I finally vanquished the final boss, I saw that I had finished the game at a mere 70-something percent. What?!?
I had to go back.
It seems almost silly to write in 2019. Obviously I have just described a genre of game that’s so commonplace now. After all, Metroid is literally half of the phrase Metroidvania. But I grew up in a family that suffered through dial-up internet and, having switched schools somewhat recently, my small friend group’s understanding of the video game market was largely limited to the few games we had shared and the box art at the rental store. We knew who Samus was, but only because she was the robot lady from Super Smash Bros.
It took me quite some time to even explain to my friends how the game worked. “Open world” wasn’t a term we had thrown around before, and while Hyrule Field and Toad Town technically let us walk around wherever we wanted, we all saw it for what it was—a hub; connective tissue that held together individual levels that were one and done.
It was even harder to explain to my friends that there wasn’t a story. We weren’t saving a princess from a castle or tracking down Dr. Robotnik. The story had already happened. In Metroid Prime, I walked into the ruins of a civilization. The Chozo society had long been extinct. It’s only through my exploration do I uncover how and why it happened. And it’s through an understanding of the Chozo’s past that can really inform what I choose to do in the present.
It’s absolutely brilliant.
The earth-shattering experience of Metroid Prime would certainly have been tempered had I had the opportunity to play Super Metroid first. Metroid Prime is a natural evolution of its SNES predecessor, but, in all honesty, I’m glad it turned out the way it did. Metroid Prime hit me perfectly at the perfect age, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world.
So why do I still love it this much, all these years later? Is it just the nostalgia speaking? Is my yearly replay just a way to recapture that first-time experience of discovery? Surely newer games, with their smoother controls and better performances, can outmatch this relic from 2002.
The reality is that no game has done more to blow my mind than Metroid Prime has (though one or two games have come close). Every time I replay this game, I notice something new. My first replay was when I tracked down all the lore and read up on the history of the planet. My second replay was when I noticed that, with an X-Ray visor on, I can see that the symbols of the beams are representative of the hand motion Samus does to switch out weapons. Even now, I’m still impressed by the attention to detail found in the game. That the developers felt the need to justify their floating platforms with a scannable explanation is just so goddamn laudable.
To this day, I will still put the graphics and gameplay of Metroid Prime on a pedestal. From the fog on Samus’s visor to using every last button on the controller, Metroid Prime is a feat of art and engineering the likes of which I still can’t solidly wrap my head around. The intricate map still begs to be explored and I, despite nearly 15 complete plays through, still take incredible joy in doing just that. After all, I haven’t committed every missile expansion to memory.
There is a downside to having a perfect game shatter your expectations and rewrite the rules. Now every game has to play by those rules, or it’s a letdown.
Certainly I’m not obtuse enough to suggest that Mario Kart needs to play like Metroid Prime. I can compartmentalize genres in my head and I know that a Zelda game isn’t beholden to Samus’s rules. But there is always that part of my brain that thinks “Why are you giving me all this story up front? Make me work for it!” I’m constantly taunted by the idea that there is something important behind me that I’m missing. There’s always that gut instinct to zag when every component of the game is instructing me to zig.
So, here we are. I've recounted my experience with the game, praised its gameplay and graphics, and discussed how this game has spoiled me as a gamer. Surely, we must have reached the end, right?
Oh God, no. I'm not done yet.
Yes, the game is dripping with atmosphere. Yes, the game has an astounding attention to detail. Yes, the game is chock full of love for the franchise. And while all of that is a clear showcase for the magnificent craft that Retro Studios demonstrated while assembling this goddamn work of art, it doesn't quite do justice the degree of ingenuity on display.
Inventing a genre is goddamn hard. Metroid invented a genre and Super Metroid built upon it...that's no small feat. But Metroid Prime successfully reinvented a genre. How do you take those tall 2D towers and long corridors of Zebes and translate that to a 3D medium?
You don't, frankly.
Instead, you reinvent. You strip the game down to its most basic, core elements and study. What is it about these 2D mechanics that makes a player feel a certain way, and how do you recreate that feel in 3D? That's the brilliance of Metroid Prime...it doesn't recreate the gameplay, it recreates the feeling.
Isolation, exploration, branching paths, and interlocking worlds…Retro understood the feeling that these elements stir in the player and reconstructed them. Not on the surface, mind you, but buried deep in the heart of the gameplay. That core understanding of “feeling" is part of Nintendo's magic and is fundamental to Metroid Prime's goddamn genius.
*Phew*
Okay…now you’ve reached the end of my rant. I say “you” because I’m still not quite done. I’ve written and deleted dozens of different paragraphs because I, somehow, still have more to say. But I should stop now…after all, I don’t want to spoil the magic for you, dear reader, if you haven’t played this game before. In fact, I envy you. You have so much to discover! You have so much to learn!
You just have to go out there and get it.
Post Script:
Metroid Prime also has one of my favorite soundtracks of all time. I don’t know enough about music to say whether or not the score is a game-changer in any way, so instead I’ll just leave you with links to some of my favorite tracks.
The Title Screen: It’s eerie. It’s ominous. It’s the first hint at what’s to come.
Tallon IV: You’ve landed on the planet! It’s a rich blend of wonder and intrigue, and it’s got a little bit of Samus’s theme song in there too!
Chozo Ruins: A perfect mix of “Solve the puzzle!” and “You’re walking through hallowed ground.” The percussion keeps you moving forward, but the tune reminds you that there is history in these halls, and it’s not all good.
Flaahgra: The first “real” boss of the game. He’s a giant plant monster that you kill by cutting him off from the sun. He gets tougher to fight with every phase and the music sure reflects that.
Phendrana Drifts: The ice area. My favorite location and my favorite music to go with it.
Tallon Overworld: You’re back in the forest area, where you first landed. The music is no longer mysterious, but contains the “Solve the puzzle!” momentum, this time just more…uh…wet?
Phazon Mines: The nefarious pirates have set up shop here and are mining the planet of Phazon, a recurring element (literally!) from the Prime games. You’re not wanted in their operation, and the music feels subtly hostile and industrial.
End Credits: Yeah, I skipped A LOT of great tracks. I can’t spoil them all, can I? So I’ll leave you with this one. A fitting conclusion to an excellent adventure.
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