Metroid Prime is a 2002 action-adventure game developed by Retro Studios and published by Nintendo for the GameCube. It is the fifth main installment in the Metroid franchise. It was the first Metroid game to use 3D computer graphics and a first-person perspective. It was released in North America in November 2002 and in Japan and Europe the following year. Along with the Game Boy Advance game Metroid Fusion, Prime marked the return of the Metroid series after an eight-year hiatus following Super Metroid (1994).
Metroid Prime takes place shortly after the events of the original Metroid.
Metroid Prime sold more than 2.8 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling Metroid game until Metroid Dread was released in 2021. It won a number of Game of the Year awards and is regarded by many as one of the greatest video games, remaining one of the highest-rated games on Metacritic.
Metroid Prime was followed by Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (2004), Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (2007), and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (2025). In 2009, an enhanced version of Metroid Prime was released for the Wii in Japan and as part of the Metroid Prime: Trilogy compilation internationally. A remastered version was released on the Nintendo Switch in 2023.
Gameplay
thumb|left|alt=View of volcanic caverns; an enemy with a jetpack shoots a green ray at the player, whose weapon (a large cannon) is visible in the corner of the screen. The image is a simulation of the heads-up display of a combat suit's helmet, with a crosshair drawn onto the enemy's location and two-dimensional icons relaying game information around the edge of the frame.|Samus in battle with a Flying Pirate. The player character is controlled from a first-person perspective.
Metroid Prime is an action-adventure game in which players control protagonist Samus Aran from a first-person perspective, unlike previous games in the Metroid series, with third-person elements used for Morph Ball mode. Players are incentivized to explore to find upgrades that increase Samus' maximum ammunition and health.
The heads-up display, which simulates the inside of Samus' helmet, features a radar display, a map, ammunition for missiles, a health meter, a danger meter for negotiating hazardous landscape or materials, and a health bar and name display for bosses. The display can be altered by exchanging visors; one uses thermal imaging, another has x-ray vision, and another features a scanner that searches for enemy weaknesses and interfaces with mechanisms such as force fields and elevators. By connecting Prime with Metroid Fusion using a GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable, players can unlock Samus's Fusion Suit and an emulated version of the original Metroid game.
Items
thumb|right|While Samus is in Morph Ball form, the view changes to a [[third-person view.|alt=A metallic ball stands in a futuristic corridor, with sparks of electricity in the background. Atop the image is a bar and a number indicating the health of the player, and three round icons indicating the remaining bombs.]]
Throughout the game, players must find and collect items that improve Samus' arsenal and suit, including weapons, armor upgrades for Samus' Power Suit and items that grant abilitiesincluding the Morph Ball, which allows Samus to compress herself into a ball in order to roll into narrow passages and drop energy bombs, and the Grapple Beam, which works by latching onto special hooks called grapple nodes, allowing Samus to swing across gaps. Unlike those in earlier games in the series, the beam weapons in Metroid Prime have no stacking ability, in which the traits of each beam merge. Instead, the player must cycle the four beam weapons; there are charge combos with radically different effects for each. Other upgrades include boots that allow Samus to double-jump and a Spider Ball upgrade that allows her to climb magnetic rails. The producers stated that starting with some power-ups was a way to give the player "different things to do" and to learn the functions of these items before settling into the core gameplay.
Plot
Setting
Retro Studios wrote an extensive storyline for Metroid Prime, a major difference from previous Metroid games. Short cutscenes appear before important battles, and a scanner in the heads-up display extracts backstory-related information from objects., while Metroid Prime 4: Beyond takes place between Metroid: Other M and Metroid Fusion.
The game takes place on the planet Tallon IV, formerly inhabited by the Chozo race. Five decades ago, the Chozo race fell after a meteor impacted on Tallon IV. The meteor contaminated the planet with a corruptive, mutagenic substance that the Space Pirates later named Phazon, and also brought with it a creature known to the Chozo as "The Worm". A large containment field emitter of the Artifact Temple in the Tallon Overworld area was built as a seal to the meteor's energies and influence within the crater where it landed, which the Space Pirates attempt to disable or bypass in order to gain better access to extract the Phazon. The containment field is controlled by twelve Chozo artifacts that are scattered around the planet.
Story
Not long after defeating Mother Brain and Space Pirate forces on the planet Zebes,
After landing in the Tallon Overworld, Samus explores nearby areas of Tallon IV and discovers ruins of an ancient Chozo settlement. As she explores the ruins, she learns that the Chozo on the planet had been killed off by the Phazon infesting the planet, which originated from a meteor that impacted on the planet many years ago. After regaining her lost abilities in the ruins, as well as defeating a mutated plant creature that was poisoning the local water supply, Samus finds her way to the Magmoor Caverns, a series of magma-filled tunnels, which are used by the Space Pirates as a source of geothermal power. Following the tunnels, Samus travels to the Phendrana Drifts, a cold, mountainous region which is home to another ancient Chozo ruin and a Space Pirate research laboratory, Glacial One, used to study the Metroids. After obtaining new abilities, Samus explores the wreckage of the crashed Orpheon and then infiltrates the Phazon Mines, where she learns the outcome of the Phazon experimentation project, including the Metroid Prime, a creature that had come to Tallon IV with the meteor. Advancing deeper into the mines, Samus fights her way through the Phazon-enhanced Space Pirates and obtains the Phazon Suit after defeating the monstrous Omega Pirate.
Development
thumb|right|[[Concept artwork of the Impact Crater|alt=A series of drawings of a cave complex filled with root-like structures. On the upper right corner are drawings of larva-like creatures.]]
According to producer Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo did not develop a Metroid game for the Nintendo 64 as the company "couldn't come out with any concrete ideas". Metroid co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto said he could not imagine how the Nintendo 64 controller could be used to control Samus. Nintendo approached another company to make Metroid for Nintendo 64, but the offer was declined, supposedly because the developers thought they could not equal Super Metroid.
Metroid Prime was a collaboration between Nintendo EAD and R&D1 and the American company Retro Studios. Retro was created in 1998 by an alliance between Nintendo and Iguana Entertainment founder Jeff Spangenberg. The studio would create games for the forthcoming GameCube targeted at a mature demographic. After establishing its offices in Austin, Texas in 1999, Retro worked on four GameCube projects. When Miyamoto visited Retro in 2000, he suggested a new Metroid game after seeing their prototype first-person shooter engine. In 2000 and early 2001, four games in development at Retro were canceled, including an RPG, Raven Blade, leaving Prime the only game in development. During the last nine months of development, Retro's staff worked 80- to 100-hour weeks to reach Nintendo's deadline. Concept artist Android Jones, a lifelong fan of the series whose work included Samus's Varia Suit and most of the art in the Scan Visor, would sleep in the office and resume working when he woke up.