

#Gamecube metroid prime series#
A good experience all things considered, but Metroid Prime was the daring one, bringing the series back after eight years and plunging into the third dimension not only with the same approach to an explorable area expanding as you gain new abilities but also taking the even more bold direction of having it be a first-person shooter. Sure, there was also Metroid Fusion releasing the same year over on the Game Boy Advance, but in some ways that game stepped back some of Super Metroid’s advances for something tighter and more focused on forward progression. By the time of writing this I’ve played most every Metroid game but there was a brief window where Samus and Metroid weren’t able to capitalize on the spotlight Super Metroid or even Super Smash Bros. When I first encountered her I thought she was some sort of robot, a misunderstanding made more amusing by the fact her destruction of the space pirate base on Zebes was perhaps the first catastrophic gender reveal party, the bounty hunter’s removal of her helmet to reveal herself as a woman at the end of Metroid one of gaming’s first memorable twists. where Samus earned herself a spot as one of the eight playable characters in the base roster. So, Metroid sat out for a bit, to the point my introduction to the Metroid series was not one of its games but the N64 crossover fighter Super Smash Bros.
#Gamecube metroid prime free#
Making an exploration-focused platformer in 2D requires an interconnected world where traversal is a bit richer than just going from left to right, but adding in free movement in all directions would certainly complicate efforts to transfer this game design into a new dimension. It propelled the series to incredible acclaim and the series sits solidly on the goodwill it created with this better realization of what would become called the Metroidvania genre primarily because of its influence…ģD gaming loomed on the horizon and while there was nothing saying you couldn’t make more 2D games, especially on handheld systems, the industry and the audience were hungry for seeing the new direction the video game medium was heading.


With the 1994 release of Super Metroid, the Metroid series finally not only refined the exploration-focused platformer into a cleaner and more enjoyable shape than the first game’s flawed execution but provided a truly excellent game experience that has held up over time better than its two predecessors despite the small rough edges.
