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As much as I loved and continue to love the Gamecube, it's true that Nintendo's little machine wasn't very popular on the market. With the huge success of Wii, I bet Nintendo look back at the little cube with a humoured chuckle. As great as it was it simply didn't offer the market majority that the Playstation 2 and Xbox were offering. How things have changed. The Wii is currently the best selling console, with last-gen leaders Sony currently at the bottom of the console pile. Nintendo's sensor controlled machine is just what the market wanted, so much so that the casual gaming trend now plays a big role in video games.
Sadly, the lack of Gamecube's popularity means several great exclusive titles weren't getting the sales figures that they deserved, even though critics recognised them as outstanding games - Eternal Darkness, REmake, Pikmin, but above all the excellent Metroid Prime and its sequel Echoes. Thankfully, Nintendo didn't give up on their third most popular franchise, after Mario and Zelda. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the third and final part of the Prime saga, came to the Wii complete with motion sensor controls. Nintendo have shown that they haven't forgotten about the faithful, as well as announcing the upcoming Metroid: Other M, they have also released the Prime trilogy onto the Wii, on one disc, with the first two games updated to include the control style of the third.
If you're a Metroid nerd like myself then I don't need to tell you that the Prime saga takes place between the original NES Metroid and the Game Boy's Metroid II: Return of Samus. Newcomers may like to know that, even if they never plan on going back to play the Metroid roots. The Prime trilogy focuses on Samus Aran's isolated battle against Space Pirates, the mysterious Phazon, the evil Dark Samus and, of course, Metroids.
In Metroid Prime, Samus travels to Tallon IV to take on the Space Pirates. These rogues are experimenting with Metroids and Phazon, producing deadly results. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes sees Samus take on the dark version of herself in both the normal and alternate Phazon dark world. In Prime 3, Phazon is spreading throughout the Galaxy. Samus is also infected with the mysterious substance, giving her a new power which will likely be the death of her. Her job is to stop the spread and end the evil Dark Samus once and for all.
In a nutshell, each game starts you off fully equipped, then strips you of your powers. By defeating bosses you can win back these powers, which in turn open new areas for your exploration pleasure. Many times you'll stumble across inaccessible places, which you promise yourself you'll remember to come back to later when you have a new power, only to forget completely until the game prompts you that this is the place to go. There is a huge amount of back tracking, but this is never really a problem, due to the promise of new areas and hidden items. It's an age-old Nintendo formula that gives you that incentive to progress to see what the game has in store for you and what new toys you can get.
Throughout the series you'll be transforming into a Morph Ball to squeeze through tight spots, using the Grapple Beam to swing across large gaps, defeating countless foes with a variety of different beams, switching visors for different viewpoints (and switching to the Scan Visor frequently for help), as well as taking on an array of challenging boss fights that cause you to grip hold of the controller, giving you hand strain and a heart that feels like it wants to burst from your chest. There's much more to it than this, but to go into too much detail would mean writing a novel (call me, publishers). All three are epic adventures that introduce new features and new challenges.