Honorable Mention: Metroid Prime/Fusion
Aside from being a great Metroid experience, an awesome first person shooter on the GameCube, and just an all-around great game, I have quite a few memories with Metroid Prime.
Unfortunately, I never got to play Super Metroid as a kid. “Oh no!” you might say, “That was the best game!” Well, I played it - it was just more recently and on Virtual Console. It was, as many said, a fantastic game. Even so, that doesn’t qualify it for this series. So, what games do I have fond memories of? Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion. Let’s start with Prime.
Metroid Prime was the first Metroid game I ever played. Yes, I know, so kill me. Anyway, I acquired the game about the time it was released, in 2002. I received it as a birthday present, actually, from a friend who didn’t even own a GameCube at the time. When I first held the box in my hands, I just looked at it. Looked at it, looked at it, and looked at it some more.
It. Looked. Awesome.
As I played the game from a completely unbiased perspective, it seemed Prime was a masterpiece. No complaining about the first-person perspective or the 3D graphics, just sheer awe. As soon as I popped the game in, I got another massive burst of awesome. The graphics were the best I had seen (Best on the GameCube at the time), and they still hold up well even today. The worlds, from mountains of snow to caves of lava, were extremely diverse. The lock-on shooting removed the need for precise aiming, and the controls were perfectly optimized for the system. It was just great.
Of course, with good graphics comes the scare factor. I don’t know if anyone else considers the Prime games scary, but back then, I was freaked out. The monsters (even with their predictable movement patterns) were hella scary, but that just made me want to kill them even more. With the awesome upgrades. Oh, the upgrades. All of the different beams, bombs, missiles, and the beam combos.Hell. Yes. Every time I got a new beam combo, I used it, wasted my missiles, sat there with my mouth agape, then reloaded my most recent save. They were awesome.
If you haven’t played Metroid Prime, (and I know this is cliche) you owe it to yourself to check it out. Honestly. It holds up even today.
Now for Metroid Fusion. I think I got the game as a gift from my best friend at the time. Fusion went in my GBA, and never, ever came out. I must’ve beaten it at least twenty times. Since this was a portable game, I had much more time to play it. It had a great story for a portable game. Huge worlds and great upgrades.
But there is one part in particular that I wish to touch on. The one reason that I put this game alongside Metroid Prime.
The SA-X.
Freaking. Scary.
I mean, really. Scarier than Prime. If you don’t know what the SA-X is, then you’ll have to be educated a bit on the plot of Fusion. Baisically, it’s a parasite that’s infected Samus’ original Power Suit (Which is why you have the fusion suit in this game). It runs around, trying to find you and kill you, while looking exactly like you. It has all your upgrades, and is way more powerful than you. There’s one scene in which you’re in morph ball mode beneath a room. In the room above, you see the freaky parasite walking around, looking for you. It’s just... creepy. The way it acts is all... detached yet confident. *shivers* Alright, that’s enough of that.
Anyway, I have great memories of these two games, but none surpassing the original 5 on this list. That’s why they’re honorable mentions. These two probably would have been six and seven on my list if I had put them in.
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Previously:
Number TwoNumber Three
Number Four
Intro, Number Five
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