Metroid Prime Trilogy Retrospective - NVC 790

This week on Nintendo Voice Chat with just one week to go until Metroid Prime 4 Beyond, Brian Altano and Perishneider stop by to take a look back at the entire Metroid Prime trilogy. NVC starts right now. You've switched to an Nintendo Voice Chat for the week of November 26th, 2025 at IGN's All Nintendo podcast. I'm your host Logan Plant. Joined this week by Brian Altano. Hey, what's up? And Perishneider, he's back after what? Like six months. It's been a long time, Per. Logan, I was never gone. He was never, he was here the whole time. Well, it's Thanksgiving here in the US this week. So we're doing a pre-recorded episode a little bit early and we're going to talk about the Metroid Prime trilogy because Metroid Prime 4 Beyond is one week away by the time you're listening to this. But none of us have played it yet outside. We've all played the intro and then the preview I talked about a couple of weeks ago. We haven't played the full thing. So we wanted to take an opportunity to talk about the trilogy one, two and three one more time before four joins the party. So let's start with Metroid Prime 1 and Prime Remastered, which launched November 18th, 2002 on the GameCube. The same day as Metroid Fusion on the GPA, which will always be a crazy fun fact. It was the first Metroid game in eight years since Super Metroid, the first game from Retro Studios and Per. I think we have to kick it off with a big report from IGN in 2001 that kind of told everybody what Metroid Prime was going to be. Yeah, that's right. I mean, people thought Metroid Prime would be a 2D shooter like Metroid. And then we broke the news that it was in fact a first person adventure game. We were very careful to not say first person shooter, first person adventure game. And then obviously, I think we talked about this before. It's like sort of blew up the internet. Like I remember the message board threat of people reacting to it on the IGN boards and then I love that we're doing this five minutes in. We're doing the first person shooter versus first person adventure. We're just still going to comment about to this day. It's still a debate, Per. This is all your fault. Yeah, but like it's so notable because we knew people would freak out and like we had, look, we had talked to people at the studio and we had high confidence that this game was going to be really good. And so how do you pass along this really important nugget that it was going to be a visor view game but not like piss people off to the point where they don't give it a chance, right? Like, and so yeah, we said no, it's like it's an action adventure, but it just happens to be in the first person and people were really mad about it. Like when Indiana Jones was shown as a first person game, people were mad about that too, right? It doesn't end. Per, you and I talked about this. We did a one on one episode leading up to the switch launch. And we talked a bit about how you guys had mocked up a screenshot for crime for the visor that turned out to be like sort of shockingly accurate. I as someone who was like reading and watching IGN at the time or whatever watching IGN was back then, it was just like clicking on, you know, postage stamp size videos and hoping they would download to Windows Media View or whatever. That blew my mind that this was for the first time ever, you know, this game was taking this franchise was taking the jump to 3D after you know, not being a thing during the N64, right? Like that they had done Super Metroid and then there was there was nothing for a while. And then getting two Metroid games on the same day, like Logan, you just said, like, I don't we had no idea how good we had it. Maybe we did. Maybe we did. But I just remember like reading everything about Prime leading into it and just being like, how is this going to work? You know, I think we were all very doubtful that they would be able to pull this off because it didn't make any sense to any of us who had played Super Metroid. Well, also the lead up to to Metroid didn't make any sense. Like we expected Nintendo to make a new Metroid game, right? So when we covered Nintendo's games on the N64 before, then we always said, oh, yeah, Metroid is coming. We get a snippet from Mr. Miyamoto saying, oh, we're really thinking about Metroid 64, right? Like there are quotes like that that you can find where they either had some sort of prototype or they thought about it and never got going on, whatever it was. We always assumed because of Mr. Yuko is untimely death, it was sort of nobody wanted to touch this franchise and it felt wrong to people maybe at NCL to take it over and like whatever the reasons were. Once we got to this point, suddenly, you know, we're like feasting, you get two Metroid games at the same time, they were really, really good. And then we thought that would be the new normal going forward. Yeah, it wasn't. It was not. I think like, you know, what was interesting about this one is that like allegedly it was a first person, like a sci-fi first person shooter in development at Retro and Miyamoto came in and sort of did his famous flip the T-Table over and be like, what if this was a Nintendo first party franchise game? And I can't even imagine what that was like at the time. Just the sort of, you know, having this smaller studio in Texas reporting to, you know, Nintendo that had been sort of notoriously guarded with the way that they handle game development, everything being in house, not really a ton of like examples at the time of them being like, we're going to lend one of our beloved first party IPs out to a smaller studio, not do it entirely in-house. And it's the results are amazing. All things considered, you know. It's really funny. If you look back at the first screenshots that were shown in shown of Metroid Prime, and they're like, they don't show the visor view or anything. And everybody said, not everybody, lots of people said, including us, hey, that looks a little bit like armorines. Armorines was an iguana developed game for a claim that, you know, most notably a lot of the iguana guys in Texas eventually left that studio and went to Retro Studios. And so there was that sort of DNA and you could see, oh, they've worked on a game like this before and it maybe they were inspired by Metroid, right? It had those vibes already. But yeah, it must have been it must have been nuts for them because Retro has founded and it worked on all these different projects, right? That an RPG in the works, had a football, American football game in the works. They were supposed to be the US extension to Nintendo in Japan, making very, very different games. And then it's sort of funny that Metroid, a very, very Japanese game. I mean, it's bigger in Japan than in the West, right? Or has been in the past. That would be one of their projects. And then they would add this very American viewpoint of a, you know, first person, person shooter to the whole shebang. Like it is a really unique, unique game, I think, because of those two sides clashing. And like in hindsight, the sort of no free look in the lock on view thing, it's hard to play today. But, you know, it's basically like the Legend of Zelda, where you remove Link and instead you have a visor. Yeah, it's a very early example of Nintendo stepping in. We're mentioning lending an IP to a studio that's outside of Nintendo in Japan. But you read development stories of Metroid Prime and they talk about how it took six months for there to be the first level that Nintendo kind of signed off on. And then they had a year to finish the rest of the game based on the quality, the standard that that first level met. So that Nintendo was very hands on, very involved with Metroid Prime and very particular about what they wanted this game to look like. And it turned out fantastic. And it kind of established retro as a studio that still makes outstanding games, right? They made all the Metroid Prime games in the Donkey Kong Country duology. We talk about a lot and now they're making Prime for, which we still don't know quite yet how it's all going to turn out. But this kind of crash course and here's how you be in Nintendo Studio and this really, really daunting experience of developing Metroid Prime turned them into a fantastic studio. Yeah. And then some of the choices that they made sort of are very influential. And you can see them in modern games, right? Like when you switch to the Morph Ball mode, there was talk we learned that Nintendo wanted that to be first person and that retro studios had to go to bat, right? To make that a third person sort of zoom out. And it's really cool because not only do you get a glimpse of like Samus leaping, like you see here in action, like in a full suit and then rolling into the ball. But it just it it's so different having this sort of zoomed out view of like the mazes on the walls with the, you know, that you can use your use the Morph Ball on and magnetically navigate. Like that would have been so different had it been in first person. People would be throwing up hair. They would be like flipping on 500 times. I don't think they're literally rolling forward with the camera. That would have been amazing. But like I mentioned Indiana Jones in the great circle, right? Like when Indy swings his whip, it does the exact Morph Ball animation of like going out of his first person view into a third person view and then going back in when he's done swinging. So yeah, it's just or climbing. It's it's it's really cool to see the decisions that led to what we now perceive perceived to be the modern Metroid, you know. I think what was so cool about that specifically is that Samus has such an incredible outfit, right? Like that is one of the coolest, like power suits, robot, whatever you want to call it in in in all of pop culture media and not being able to see anything. But her arm cannon and maybe her left hand would have been sort of a disservice to that. And so they came up with all these really clever ways, like every time you save, when you're in Morph Ball mode, when you're like it's pulling in and out of cutscenes and stuff like that. There were all these examples to be like, this is the suit I'm wearing. These are the upgrades I got. And, you know, then also weaving that stuff into your visor view and everything. Like when when you got upgrades for your arm cannon in the Prime Trilogy games, like you would see actual, you know, visual representations of the the different upgrades you were getting at stuff. And I think that was awesome. I mean, we're looking at it now, too. But like even the map was like, how do you take the map from Super Metroid and you turn it into something that operates in a 3D space? And there are still games that are trying to get this right on this level. Like the, you know, the Star Wars Jedi games, but, you know, pretty notary, very much prime. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's it's awesome. It's just it's such a great system. And it just made me go. They pulled it off. Like I remember at the time when this game first came out, people were like, no way. I don't get it. And it was also like to like to talk about the culture a little bit that was happening with GameCube and Xbox and PS2. There was a lot of like, you know, people kind of downplaying the power of the GameCube. They called it the little purple purse, you know, because it had a little handle and stuff like that. It launched with Luigi's Mansion. We did a whole episode on that recently. And so this was, I think, one of the first games where people were like, oh, it can do like the big, powerful next gen hardcore shooting games. Right. Like it can do all those like, you know, this is this is what the big kids are playing other on the on the other consoles. And I was like, well, I'm a big kid. We got cool games here. But no, this is one of the first games where it was like this this really showed some graphical parity with what people were playing on on PC and and and and Xbox and PS2 at the time. And it was awesome. And like that, you know, it worked perfectly well with the controls. Like that little the little like yellow C stick being used in this game was it just everything just felt really cool. It was just such a revolutionary. It's actually it's funny now that it's adapted to modern controllers and adds a free free look, right? Like you're missing that quick ability to switch the visors. Like the game was designed around the C stick being a quick visor selecting. What I find really interesting is like I the fact that when this game was developed, there were a lot of games that tried to do third person shooting in 3D and failed. Right. And like I will add Jet Force Gemini as an example, a cautionary example. Like the game never feels as good as Metroid Prime. You see your character, but to people who are not accomplished, like first person or third person shooter players, it's really difficult to get a hang of the controls. I bet a lot of people even now they try to play that game think it doesn't feel right. The character moves on. It's very floaty. Hey, even games like Elder Scrolls, when you switch to the third person, it doesn't feel right. Right. Like they don't feel as well. Now, since then, I think there are lots of companies that have solved this, right? Like think of the Arkham games or like, you know, shooter shooter heavy games, like Gears of War, that have a third person mode. And I would have loved to have seen Metroid Prime 4 actually being sort of, hey, now that we know how to do the camera perfectly in third person, let's do Metroid Prime, but with Samus on the screen and do it differently and maybe start a new trilogy or something. But I thought it was interesting that this sort of that we went back to the first person and continued Metroid Prime, even though I think we have solved the third person shooter problem. Yeah, I think that might be because of the inside the helmet is just so iconic. And the way we just saw it on the screen steam fogs it up. Or if you look up when you first drop on the talent overworld and the raindrops are just raining on to the visor and you see that or when you fire a charge shot and you see Samus's reflection in the visor, I think a lot of those things are visual effects that are really part of this series identity. And at the time, I think Metroid Prime, so maybe the last time Nintendo shipped a game that you could argue was the best looking game at the time. I don't think it ever really happened again after that. It was so technically impressive. And I think maybe that's why it's prime, right? That's one it's first person. And I think people there'd be a lot of backlash if people went away from that. Yeah, I think like it's it's it's kind of hard to really explain how special that was at the time, too. Like now it's one of those things that, you know, every every game has that that level of detail with everything. Like they, you know, they they delayed Red Dead so they could, you know, make the horse genitalia shrink in the cold. Like this it's we've gotten to comical levels of just like we didn't need all that. But like seeing all the stuff Logan was just describing in Metroid Prime and also hearing it, too. Like I was thinking a lot about how diverse the biomes are in that game. When you go to like the Magmor Caves area and it's just like oppressive. And there's this like crazy, like, you know, booming music comes in and like they they're literally like, get out of here. You shouldn't be here right now. Yeah. Yeah. And then you go to Fandrana and it's just like it's really delicate. Right. Yeah. Like that walking in that area for the first time and being like this is beautiful, but also oppressive in its own way, because things are going to start trying to kill me that feel alien and that feeling of you Ridley's shadow fly over. Oh my God. Yeah. First look in there. Very cool. It's just so cool. I mean, it's it's like just the way it was able to build atmosphere and mood in and this like fear of being in this alien place. And then, you know, kind of imploring to go hunt through every single corner of it, looking for upgrades and all this other stuff. Like I just loved it so much. It was it was one of those games where I once I rolled credits on it, like I knew I had to go back and do it again and again and again. And then having another, you know, 2D Metroid on the same day, like we were just eating so well, you know, we just had everything that that franchise has to offer all at once. And it was great. The the visors are so cool. I mean, it's like literally, you know, when you play the Arkham games, like the first Arkham Asylum is basically Metroid with Batman, right? Metroid Prime with Batman. And like you can see how how inspired everybody was with this sort of detective vision and the different visor switches and all of that. This this game really, really put that sort of concept on the map in a first person shooter to like let you see the world with different eyes and like even get around some of the some of the challenges of navigating a 3D environment like, wait, what can I blow up without ruining the visuals of normal play? You switch to a different visor, you go like, oh, that's a destructible animal element. And then it did a really nice job with platforming, where when you jump from platform to platform, the camera tilts down. And like we realize why the hell we fell in so many first person shooters before that, because you couldn't actually see your feet landing or, you know, the ground below you when you're landing on something. This game did that. The one and I think almost everything aged incredibly well and nothing had to be redone for the remaster, except one thing. And that's the the Wind Waker Triforce Quest, right? Like you get to a point in Wind Waker and Metroid Prime, where the game does not respect your time. It just goes, OK, now walk all the way back to do this one thing that you missed earlier. And it's like modern games solve that by having fast travel in better ways. And this one didn't. That's like the one thing that aged poorly. Yeah, it is. It is the only blemish. And when we talk about Super Metroid versus Metroid Prime, that to me is the deciding factor of why I like Super Metroid more is that it doesn't do this fetch quest at the very end, because otherwise Prime is a masterpiece on the level of Super Metroid. It very much is that same formula, too. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand. Marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online, in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your one dollar a month trial at Shopify.com. Slash set up. Bowser is back. Everyone calm down. The Super Mario Brothers can take care of the kingdom. Let's go on April 1st. Toad pack our things. The Galaxy. He's waiting. Who is this? So some cool dinosaur just shows up and he's now part of the group. Cool. The Super Mario Galaxy movie, only in cinemas April 1st. And the other thing is it's not a blemish, but it's just different pacing. The sort of scan and read can be a little bit disruptive, right? Like Metroid, Super Metroid is you just never stop to, you know, learn something about the environment by reading long text. Whereas like Metroid sort of in Metroid Prime entices you to scan everything. And it can it can become this sort of meta game that takes you a little bit out of the environment. And like in hindsight, it would have been so much better if the scanning had been completely organic with a voice over delivering the text and not interrupting and making you read something. But I'm sort of torn on that, actually, because I feel like there were a lot of games that came after this that tried to do the scan visor thing by just leaving like tape recorders all over the land. And you've got it. You're just constantly engaging. Yeah, those those are the first two that came to mind to me, too, where you're just getting all these like sort of like lore dumps in like two, three minute audio form. And so like, I think a little of that would have gone a long way with Prime. But I also really I liked that the player was sort of enticed to pull on that string as much as they wanted to, right? Like the problem is, is that like we're just going to scan everything, you know? Like that's the issue is that we have no self control on. And also like it did. I think it did reward you for scanning everything. So and they were miscible scans, right? And so that's where we get paranoid. And then we bring up the visor all the time. It's the same with the Arkham games, right? Like where Detective Vision just sort of becomes your default mode after a while, even though the world is way more beautiful when you have it off. And then and yeah, that was one of the challenges. The the European version of Metro Prime added voiceover, right? There was the logbook voiceover stuff that you could hear not not in the same way as you get to walk around and just listen to a recording. But like it has voiceover and like it was divisive. I remember there were lots of people said, I want to be able to turn it off. And like that's certainly true in the remaster you can choose, right? So there were certain players who really wanted the experience to be immersive. And for no character to talk over it, they wanted to feel that isolation. Logan is smart. That sounds familiar. It sounds really familiar, but I don't I don't want to get into all that today. Yeah. Yeah. And no, it is very silent and isolating. And they think that, yeah, as as Prime Four does go in a new direction, which could be good, the jury is still out. I'm open to seeing what they're going to do. I will always love Super and Metroid Prime One for just not talking to you at all and just letting you explore. It is just so alien and very immersive and haunting. And I love that about those two games. Maybe you just can't do it again, because it would be the same thing over and over. And they want to try something new to mix it up. But I will always appreciate the solitude that those two bring. Yeah. And Metroid Prime Two added a character that talked to you and delivered some more story to you, which was very different. We're going to talk about Prime Two and Three after a quick piece of housekeeping, which is if you're looking for something new to play and a way to give back, you can head over to Humble. Right now, you can grab eight great games for just $14.99, including Total War, Warhammer Three, Another Crab's Treasure, No More Heroes Three, Etrian Odyssey HD, Pharaoh and New Age, Synergy, Spin Hero and Paleo Pines. Every purchase supports No Kid Hungry, helping provide meals to students in need across the country. And don't miss our special holiday offer in annual subscription for $124.99. That's down 30 bucks from $154.99 when you use the code Holiday25IGN. Available now through December 1st. That code is Holiday25IGN. Metroid Prime Two echoes launch on November 15th, 2004, also on the Nintendo GameCube. And this takes place on the planet Aether, where it introduces this light world and dark world concept. Very a link to the past in that way, although this dark world hated you a little bit more than a link to the past. It introduced Dark Samus. It had a multiplayer mode, which is the big trend at the time. Brian, what do you think of Metroid Prime Two? So, I mean, I think that history has been kind to Metroid Prime Two. I think it was a really insurmountable task for the development studio to put this game together, sort of, you know, arm cannon to head in two years time with Nintendo's oversight and hit the same levels of highs and, you know, revolutionary new everything that the first game did, right? You're just not going to get that. Like Prime One hit and there was nothing like it in the entire world. And Prime Two was more of that with a couple of new twists. But it was predominantly building off of the successful foundation of the first one. And players were as excited, right? It's just it didn't sell as well. And it's kind of a bummer because it introduced, you know, Dark Samus, the light dark world thing that you just described, created some really interesting gameplay mechanics. It's harder, which I think is pretty cool. Like it's they deliberately made a more challenging game. And there's there's a lot to love here. And I think it was sort of the black sheep of the trilogy for a really long time. And people have come around on it a lot more. And so at the time, it was a little odd because it just didn't feel it didn't have that new car smell the same way, right? Or new airship, whatever you want to call it. But the longer we've gone from it, which it makes me bummed out that Nintendo didn't make a way for players to access Metroid Prime 2 and 3 leading up to Prime 4. You know, the remastered version of Prime 1 is awesome. It's it's beautiful. It feels like it, you know, there was a great opportunity to do that. Maybe they'll do it in the next 24 hours before Prime 4 comes out. Probably not. They didn't even, you know, as as of this recording, didn't even put them on the GameCube app on Nintendo Switch Online. So it's a bummer. But I think that there's I really hope that they give players a chance to revisit this one, because I think there's a lot of really cool stuff there. And I think it's it's kind of slept on. I'm holding out for that, too. I'm I hope retro can go back to this and give this the Metroid Prime remastered treatment. This is the game that I have the the fewest memories playing. Like I went back and played it on a Wii U running the Wii trilogy disc, but I only played a little bit and then went to three and played most of that again. I remember not loving the Dark World and because it was so it was punishing and it wasn't an interesting place to be. And like you could say that about Link to the Past, too. Like the first time you go into the Dark World, you're bunny. You don't want to be there, right? Like and then whenever you go back, like you do take more damage in the in the Dark World, but to me, it's to me, it's a little bit more like in Twilight Princess. Wolf mode, like I have no to me was inferior to being Link. And so it always felt like a punishment. And the combat system was was different and all that. And I felt like being in the Dark World in this game until at least you get your suit and you no longer take damage and all that was always a punishment. Like I didn't love it. That was the point of the game. But still, you know, it was something that kept me from liking it as much as as the original. Yeah, I I love Metroid Prime to your right. It's a little bit like the first time I've ever seen a Metroid Prime in a game where the player is punishing, is very brutal in that way. But I think that just when we talk about Metroid and isolation and how do you make a player fear this world that they're in in a new way? I mean, just sapping your health is a way to do it. And there's moments in Prime Two where you're just cowering in these light bubbles, waiting for your health to slowly trickle back up. And you're just you are actually catching your breath because it's so intense in the Dark World. And then when you get the light suit and then you can go anywhere in a incredible moment comparable to like when you can finally run through water, when you get the gravity suit, that's how it feels. But they did it in a new way. It's the most hardcore Metroid game besides like the first two before they were remade. It's one of the hardest Nintendo games this century. But I just I love how uncompromising it is in just being really, really brutal to you. I hear you. And again, I want to go back and I want to play through the entire game again. I'm sort of hoping that we get a remaster so that I don't have to re hook up the Wii U, which, you know, after I moved, I don't have it connected to my TV anymore. I know what Nintendo Land got to go back eventually. But to me, it's like what if Metroid Prime you got dropped into lava in like, you know, a couple of minutes into the game. And it's like, well, you're constantly losing energy now. Like that's what it felt like to me. When I first played, I remember those moments. I'm like, all right, I can't wait until I no longer take damage because it's not like an optional side path on area where I go like, OK, I'm not ready for this yet. It's like they go like, you better be ready right from the get go, you know? Yeah. And you do have to really learn the routes and the layouts in the light world. So then when you go into the dark world, you're ready for it. But it is hard. It is very hard to do that. And I do love the stuff of solving puzzles, like activating some generator in the dark world, fixes something in the light world you couldn't do. It's just really, I think the only time Metroid has toyed with a two world concept. I can't think of another off the top of my head. And I just think it does it really well. Yeah, it's funny, right? Like if you see this sort of like retro was making a Metroid game, but also making a Zelda game each time Zelda, like both of those games. Yeah, it is it is it's very Zelda and it's set up. Like bring it back, man, like seriously. And don't shadow drop it. Like I feel like I feel like the shadow drop of remaster hurt that game a little bit. Like this could have been a little bit more anticipation. Like Metroid Prime 2, like literally most Switch owners haven't even heard of it. Like it's just more obscure and it needs a little bit more than just surprises out. Yeah, I'm trying to remember what it went head to head with at the time on GameCube. Because I feel like it just didn't get the same conversation the first game did. Right. But it added some cool stuff like it has the screw attack, right? Which they limited to like a number of jumps because they didn't want people just like, you know, screw attacking to the main boss, basically, or like, you know, floor is lava, never touch the ground. So they did some clever stuff there. But yeah, I think it was it was very much like, you know, they had to make that game in just a few years using the templates off the first one. And also like I think they went in and they were like, we're going to this is going to be easy. We're going to be able to reuse these environments between the light and dark world. And then reading that they had just it created so many new problems for them. And instead of just them being just like, oh, we got this, you know, just one will be dark, one will be light. It was like, oh, man, we have to do so much in each of these things to make them special and make them feel interesting and feel that, you know, the combat and the enemies and everything like that needs to be unique. And so all this all this stuff, all these factors came into play. And I read that they basically finished this game and they were like, can we do Donkey Kong, please? Like, can we please stop? Make like, can we get a break from this? We were so we just we need to step away from from Prime for a little bit. And Nintendo was like, nope, not yet. You'll get to go to Donkey Kong land for a while or country, I guess, for a decade or so. But you got one more Prime game in you. Yeah. And that is Metroid Prime 3 Corruption, which launched on the Wii on August 27th, 2007. And my biggest takeaway from Prime 3, which I played this year after not touching it for a very long time is that this game is a Wii game that loves being a Wii game. It is in that early generation where it is just so motion control heavy. And I actually think some of it is kind of neat that you use Samus's use the weird mode, ask Samus's hand to grab a door on a lock, a lock on a door, twist it and push it in to unlock every door. You frequently have to flick the nunchuck to grab shields off of enemies and then pull them off with the grapple. Like this is so motion control heavy, even in Samus's ship, all the options you have to pick of where you want to go. And you're like controlling Samus's hand as this we pointer. It is such a Wii game and it's so clear playing in the trilogy, which one and two have been refitted with motion controls. But you can tell they weren't built that way. But three is like, yeah, this came out in the Wii's first year. Yeah. And it's a little it's a little annoying, right? Like it's a little. Yeah. To me, it's like when you use VR for the first time and you play a game, like I remember the Batman game, right? Like where the first time you're this immersed and you're interacting with the world at this degree, it's like super cool and fresh. But then you cannot do that four years later again and make you feel the same thing like at that at that first moment. It's like when we first ran around as Mario and Mario 64 in the garden, like just climbing on the trees and doing a handstand was unique. If you did that, now people would go like, what the hell? OK, all right. Like why do I do a handstand? And this game is like that, where like you start off and like you slowly press buttons in the ship and select things. And like after you've done it once, you're like, please, don't make me do it again. It's very difficult to go back to. Now, it's a really cool game underneath you. And like I will. I will also say that the sort of the experiences designed around the motion controls were kind of cool, right? Like the sort of slingshot, like you see it here in the in the marketing footage or like ripping a panel open. There's something really you do that with a nunchuck, which means it works like one in three times only. He has been so terrible. I can't believe how much they make you do that. Yeah. And but but but the one the one interaction I really loved. And I remember really loving back then was the welding. We point at the screen, you watch, you know, like, what is it cutting? Is it plasma cutting? One of the two. It's both. We sort of trace and outline. I thought that was really, really cool and immersive at the time. But going back to it now, I think the game would actually benefit from taking some of that away. Yeah, I agree. And I, you know, I loved this game. And this this felt like a sort of return to form. And, you know, again, didn't quite hit the same highs as Prime One for me. But it came really close. And it added a bunch of stuff that I thought was really impressive at the time, like being able to sit inside Samus's gunship and, you know, interacting with things there. But there was also if I'm remembering correctly, depending on what games you had saved on your Wii at the time, if you had the, you know, the little memory blocks and stuff like that, things would appear inside your your gunship cockpit. Yeah. If you have a Mario key chain, maybe people. Yeah. At this time. Yeah. It was that. And I think I had I had a bobble head of my me that was sitting on the dashboard. And yeah, there was a lot of really cool stuff like that, because this was, I think one of the first ones where you could get into your ship and and fly to different locales and planets and stuff. Also, like a lot of the biomes in this game were were awesome once again, right? And they they they kind of like I feel like there was a lot of like sort of like oppressive, highly technical robotic space station stuff in the second one. And then the third one, they went back to sort of a lot more organic biomes. And, you know, there were there were places that just straight up look like lush and beautiful. And it was like, well, does this does this make sense for a Metroid game? And then you'd get in there and you'd be like, oh, it does. And they did some really interesting stuff with verticality in terms of like, you know, grappling hooks in these like sky rails that you could fly around on that were that's right. Those were cool. Yeah. Really cool way to get around a Metroid game and also like give you a little bit of like, you know, there's a bottomless pit beneath me. And I'm I'm literally holding on with motion controls right now. Like there's, you know, it led to some really cool stuff. And so it was, you know, we didn't know at the time that the the the the series would basically go dormant for however, what, 18 years, 18 years. Crazy, you know. And we got we got Prime Hunters and stuff like that and, you know, Federation Force, but like we didn't get another dedicated Metroid Prime game after this until now. And it's it's nuts because this was so successful to me. You know, yeah, it's I mean, I I I. I actually like when you're watching this footage, you can see how cool and natural it was to have free look and being able to look around in this game. Right. Like with when the we Motion Plus was was working, it was actually really, really good. I think you had to adjust your sensitivity settings constantly as snappy as you're seeing in this old footage here. But like it felt really freeing like you're able to parkour around and jump and look down while jumping like that was different. And you couldn't do that with the old GameCube controller set up to this point. It when it didn't work, that's when it was a problem, right? Like when you get to the edge of the boundary box and like it snaps back or it loses, it's no longer centered or like you have to use the Nunchuck and the Nunchuck kind of go shopping for a while and returns later to to actually work. Like those were the moments when it became then worse than the original Prime games and like you were taking out of the experience. And then I will also say that the the world in three is not as coherent. Like Prime has such a cool like world set up in the way it connects and the way it opens up. I always vastly prefer to the sort of floating island set up of Prime 3. I think that's totally fair criticism. It's like you instead of elevators, there's different places for your ship to land. And then you find a new launch pad and you summon your ship to it. So it is kind of a clever way to eliminate a ton of backtracking. If that's something you don't want to do is if I need to get over there, I can go to any helipad, any launch pad. It's not just this elevator connects to this one and this one to this one. All of the launch pads can go to anywhere on that planet. I think that was what they were trying to get at. But I agree. Prime one, it is just this interconnected maze that is incredible and probably really, really hard to make. And I think looking at Prime 4, it's seeming like it's going to be something similar where you go to these self-contained levels and then you drive in the desert to the next one. So it's not you need to remember all these complex elevator paths to get from point eight to point B. You just leave, hop on the bike, which will pull Samus out to the third person like we've been talking about. We're going to see a lot of Samus' suit on the bike, presumably, and then drive to the next area. I think that's how it's going to work. Yeah, this one also introduced the sort of like the Federation Force side characters or Galactic Federation. And I remember like early on people were, yeah, people were kind of. I think that handled them pretty elegantly. Like they weren't really like a nuisance throughout the entire game. But I do remember it being interesting, like looking very early on and playing the first hour or two of that game and being like, who are all these guys? Why are you here? Like, why are you talking to me? It's very halo. Yeah, it's definitely very halo. But which is interesting because it's weren't as good. Like I didn't take me out. I like I didn't love it, the interactions with the characters in this game. Because it was sort of it felt a little bit like they've done it, they did it for the first time. And so they weren't that good at it yet, you know, if that's fair to say. There was a there were a lot of sort of parallels with halo at the time. And I'm right there with you, Logan. I feel like that was like a direct response to being like, let's, you know, let's let's bring in like the halo marine guys and stuff like that. And then Prime to having, you know, like this very simplistic multiplayer because they were like, you know, we need we need for, you know, space, space suit guys running around shooting each other. And also like there were former prime devs that went to work on the halo franchise. So there's a lot of like cross pollination between ideas and actual talent in those franchises. But yeah, it was it was odd to me. It was a little drawing at the time. And I remember like there were memes of that guy's helmet flipping up and down. Like that was one of the like earliest like internet things I remember around the Metroid games. Like it was probably IGN, the IGN forums and all that stuff. So yeah, it was cool. I don't know. I really liked that. And I believe it had it didn't have connectivity with zero mission. There was some sort of like thing where you plug in that one. Did prime did with fusion? Because how could you plug a Game Boy game into the into the week? This episode is brought to you by Simply Safe. And this Simply Safe on is the sound of peace of mind. Simply Safe sensors, HD cameras and 24 seven security monitoring protect your home inside and out against breakings, fires, water leaks and more. So you can relax. Visit Simply Safe dot co dot UK slash pod for an exclusive discount. Metroid Prime 3 is also easily the most cinematic of all the Metroid Prime games. It has the most characters, the most dialogue, and it really is a bigger emphasis on these action set pieces. It's opening comes to mind where you fight Ridley falling through this tunnel Star Wars style and Ridley's like grabbing Samus. And right before that, you're morph balling through these tunnels and Ridley crash lands on the tunnel. And then he's trying to attack the morph ball and you have to like zigzag around him. It's it's very cool and does a lot of these more epic grand scale things that I think it's not very Metroid of what we know. But I think it's really welcome and they were really cool in this game. Yeah, I totally agree. I love the way they handled that, especially in like in first person, Ridley grabbing you and you, you know, firing missiles at her while falling down this gigantic tunnel. It just doesn't make any sense. Of course not. Who cares, though? It's just cool. It's the rule of cool, right? Like it works and it's really fun. And, you know, this this gigantic, like half robot space dragon is trying to kill you in a tunnel. And it's a great time. I loved it. I know it makes it makes sure that you know this is really the battle of Gandalf against the Balrog, right? No, it's I like the I like the more cinematic feel to the game. Like a lot of games around that era started to reintroduce like sort of, you know, prescripted events that sort of disrupt your flow. You know, as the many years before that resident evil had done that with the dogs jumping through the windows and stuff. And then, you know, Bioshock three did this with the with the songbird and all of that. I loved seeing Metroid Prime three go in that direction. And I actually had no problem either with the introduction of characters that you talk to. I think that's cool. Like when sparsely done, it can be really cool because. I think after a couple of games, you start to ask what is Sam is fighting for? Right? Like it's sort of it's very the sort of sci-fi storyline behind it. It's usually oh, you crashed and you need to escape. And it sort of gets old and you see that with the alien movies, right? And like how the alien TV show went into the different direction. Like if you always tell the story where that's like, you know, the aliens are killing everybody on a spaceship, space station, whatever. At the end is just one character left standing like they're like we're no longer surprised, right? And it starts to feel a little stale. And so I appreciated that three tried something different. It didn't go back to like the dual setup world or to the original game. It tried to bring in human characters and do a little bit more with scripting. Yeah, I agree. I think that it's tough to sort of find that balance. I do think and I said this a few weeks ago in NBC, but that these games are predominantly about exploration and isolation and, you know, crash landing on these like scary, unknown alien places that you've never been to before. And I feel like the more there are outside voices telling you what to do, where to go or how to solve things, the more it sort of distracts from the core loop of what I'm here personally for these games. But I do think that like it does make sense to build out that world a little bit, because otherwise it's just Samus going on missions that, you know, she got a bump on her Apple watch that was like, hey, go to this planet and fight this guy. Like there's got to be more to it than that. So I don't I think that like three was probably, I mean, again, we'll see with four, but three was probably one of the better ways to kind of bring that that kind of element into it without it being too overbearing. Right. And we saw with other M that was that got too far. Right. Like that was like you're just they're in constant communication with someone telling you when when and where you can't do what you have to do. And that got annoying. So I think that there is there is a way to do what you're asking for a pair. And I think Prime three did it pretty well. It did it did take some cues from other modern games of that era. Like the Wii always feels anachronistic in that the games look like the previous generation and not like its contemporaries. Right. So Mitra Mitra Prime three looks older than it should because of the Wii hardware limitations. But you saw the little S popping up. It has an achievement system. Right. Like you can tell Retro was basically designing a modern game in many ways with voice acting scripted events and sort of bigger, bigger moments like that, including unlocking achievements. Yeah. I think that's a challenge. A Metroid Prime is that we mentioned Halo a little earlier. I think every Metroid Prime game came out within a year of its Halo counterpart in that same trilogy like 010407. And the Halo trilogy is right there on that timeline as well. And they're very different games. They're not the same at all. Right. First person adventure versus first person shooter, as everyone will tell you in the comments, but it's impossible not to make the comparison. They're both sci-fi shooters that look visually very, very similar. And Metroid Prime was old school in a lot of ways as Halo was pushing forward multiplayer and campaigns in ways that hadn't really been seen before. Yeah. And and Halo was always the Superman story. Right. Like the the Marines all look up to Master Chief because he kicks ass. And so they brought that into the games that you're fighting alongside these humans and you're riding in a in a Jeep with them. And you get all this sort of fun banter. And I think Retro was trying to bring a little bit of that into Metroid Prime 3 and maybe Metroid Prime 4. We'll see. Right. Where sort of like the humans are saying, oh, my God, you're such a bad ass rather than you just believing you're a bad ass because you're kicking so much ass. So my I just looked this up because I knew I remembered it. But my favorite human in Metroid Prime 3 is actually Shigeru Miyamoto, who appears in Easter Egg as a recorded message thing that you can interact with by being inside Samus's gunship and putting in the proper code and his quotes. It's ah, can you hear me? This is Miyamoto. All of you playing Metroid. Can you hear me? It's fun, isn't it? I've also worked on many Metroid games, but this one is the best yet. Don't you think? Definitely play it all the way to the end. See you. Which is like. It's so sweet. I love that so much. It makes me so happy. Yeah, there's actually there's a couple of devs that left messages in this game. So I don't know. I wonder if they knew at the time that this is going to be the last one for a while. Yeah, you have to wonder because if you complete Metroid Prime 3 with all items obtained, Silux from Metroid Prime hunters, who is the villain in Metroid Prime 4 beyond, follows Samus into outer space. And that is a thread that would be picked up nine years later in Federation force. It's barely teased. And then for real, 18 years later in Metroid Prime 4, where Silux is the main villain. So I don't know, is this a tease just saying the adventure continues? Or were they always planning to do something with this plot thread? That's a long time to follow somebody. The same with Metroid Dread, right? The Metroid Dread Mansion. Yeah. Yeah. In this game in Prime 3, right? It's this one. Took a long time to resolve and like we've got justice. Unlikely follow ups to this game in both instances. With Dread as well. Well, that is the Metroid Prime trilogy. And Brian, there is a new art book that compiles all three of the Metroid Prime games into one really cool coffee table book. It's out now. You have it. You flip through the whole thing. What was it like? So this is fantastic. So one cool thing about Retro's sort of game design. Psychology was like, we are not going to make anything that we haven't drawn first. So it is packed with art and sketches and illustrations and all of these great details, character renders, all of these things that they designed meticulously by hand. They talk about getting out of work at the end of the day and just go to a coffee shop, which I think they probably mean a bar and sitting down and just drawing creatures and concepts and and figuring out everything in every one of these games. But I think what I love about this book the most is that it is shockingly candid, is sort of narrated by Kinsuke Tanabe, who was producer on the Metroid franchise at the time. And he talks a lot about how much of a kind of a pain in the butt it was to make these games, specifically the first one, how how like they were set in their ways and retro was set in their ways. And I just feel like, you know, Nintendo has opened up, you know, they used to have like a sort of interview series that they would publish on their websites where they would talk about like a little bit behind the scenes and making of stuff. And they would get into the difficult parts of things, right? But they didn't talk too frequently about like just friction between ideas and philosophies. And in this book, they really do. And it's kind of fascinating because you see how much of that was there early on with retro being like, this is how we want this boss fight to go. And Nintendo being like, that's not what we do. You're not doing that. And then the second the second game, them being like, make another one of these, do it in two years and make this as fast as possible. And then by the third one, like Tanabe was hands off. A lot of Nintendo and Kyoto was hands off. They were they were coming to America and actually having meetings in person by then. And like, I think with Prime Three, they were a lot like they had earned the trust of Nintendo fully. And I think it was a lot of like, yeah, you guys got this, like have fun. So like they would start pitching concepts. The the thing you mentioned about Meta Ridley, the boss fight where she's holding on like Ridley is holding on to Samus. Like Nintendo was like, I don't know, man, at the time. And one of the producers at Retro was like, trust us and showed them. And they're like, yeah, that rules, ship it. You know, so there was a lot. There's a lot of that about this earning trust with them. And if you think about like the idea of this, I said it earlier in the show, trusting this this dev to create this, you know, prestigious reboot of one of their most beloved franchises, a hot off of, you know, or a couple of years after Super Metroid, which is, you know, one of the greatest video games ever made. That took a lot of a lot of trust and reading the book. They were like straight up nine hour long calls and video conference calls where they were just arguing. And at the end of the day, they were just walking away, just kind of mutually, you know, deflated from all of this. And, you know, sometimes you have to go through that. You have to go through that to create something that's really awesome. And I'm really glad they did because I think that there was like this really great push and pull. One of my favorite things in there is reading this anecdote from Miyamoto that was talking about how like when you see an enemy, it's it has to sort of explain to you how it can hurt you or how you can help you or interact with it in any meaningful way without you even knowing what it's going to do. Right. So like you see something coming along and spikes start shooting out. That's going to hurt you when you shoot something and it flips over and the spikes are gone. Hey, that's a platform, you know, like so there was a lot of like it's taking all the visual cues that he laid down in the original Super Mario Brothers game and Donkey Kong and stuff like that and bringing them into a a 3D space. And so, yeah, if you're a fan of these games and you're just a fan of like making of art books, I have so many. It's one of my favorite things. Like I just even like just behind the scenes documentaries, total tangent here. But if you guys haven't seen the new Guillermo del Toro Netflix Frankenstein movie, a it's phenomenal. Love it. There's this 45 minute making of documentary. And if you are like me, where you're just completely burned out on all the conversations happening around AI generated slop, taking over all the, you know, creative, artistic endeavors, seeing a bunch of people get together and make something by hand and, you know, working through the problems with a shared vision to create this like distinctly, wholly unique, special, artistic, you know, just celebration of just cool stuff. Man, get this book because it just it just it has it has all of those things. They saved every scrap of everything they worked on meticulously and they organized it super well with a ton of great producers. No, it's explaining to you how they came to those decisions at the time. So yeah, please check this book out. See, I had it preordered and then I moved and moved into a new house and we couldn't fit all the stuff that we had to mask. We got rid of some stuff, put some stuff in storage. So I was like, I was like canceling my preorder just because I'm like, am I going to have enough books, bookshelf space for for this? But man, you're making it really, really difficult. Nothing will make you want to buy fewer art books than moving. That is like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You might as well when you're moving, you might as well collect cinder blocks at that point because you're just like, yeah, I told myself like no more, you're done, you know, just look at the PDFs online. And then this one, I was just like, yeah, but it's Metroid Prime, man, I need it. I actually brought it's a good thing. I mean, I moved into the office here in LA and like I brought all my Metroid Prime statues into the office because I wouldn't know where to put them all like the first four figures have the light suit. I've got the classic one, various suits. So, you know, I can spill over now into this office so I can I can order it now. I did think it was funny that this book has, I think, one line on Prime Hunters and one line on Federation Force and other than that. And those are games that have Metroid Prime in the title. It basically jumps right over them. And I'm actually like I'm a I'm a defender of Metroid Prime Hunters and the first hunt demo. I thought those were like at least on a technical level, extremely cool to be able to have a portable Metroid Prime game in clamshell, you know, handheld form. Yeah, I remember you really loved Federation Force, too. You were the person assigned the review. No, it wasn't me. It was that was 10. And then we said, no, Brian. That was that was Jose Otero. And I think he actually like he he was able to find the good in that game. And I did. I love that guy. He did. Yeah. I like I love Jose for a lot of reasons. And for that specifically, he's, you know, he was able to like look past. I think a lot of us were just instantly dismisses dismissive of it. I always will be forever. But he was able to look at that game and go, you know, there's a lot of cool stuff in here. And like Logan said, it like it actually teases events that happen in Prime 4 in the post credit sequence. So, you know, even even the not greatest. When you saw the credits. Yeah, few people. That game sold so few copies. Now it did. It is in the credits. Yeah. And a pinball. I'll just say it. So you mentioned every game with. I love that game. I like to. Yeah. Logan has no comment. I've never played it. It's so expensive. I've never played the Prime pinball. Oh, yeah. I didn't get it at the time. And then yeah. Yeah, it's they've like never released it. And it's very expensive, but it's pinball with Metroid Prime's Morph Ball. Yeah, it's got these like kind of like very gritty, pre-rendered backgrounds and stuff like that. And did this use the rumble pack? I think it did. Right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. For the for the Nintendo DS. And yeah, I thought this was a really clever way to use the dual screens. You have that weird gap in the middle where the ball would disappear for half a second, but using the triggers to, you know, hit the hit the hit the flippers. And then also like Samus would occasionally turn into third person. She wasn't just in ball form the whole game, but turn in the third person. Then you could use the triggers to blast enemies that were coming down at you. There was a, yeah, there's, you know, this is probably the best pinball game based on Metroid Prime that you could possibly make, which is a very specific elevator pitch, but I liked it a lot. Look at it. I think it's really cool. I'd dug that game. Yeah. The closest. One game for the DS. Just tears both screens with pinball and the triggers. It's better than that. And it's land game. They made that was bad. It's Nintendo's whole like, let's, let's make every genre based around our characters approach, right? Like, I mean, you guys were joking about crossbow training, but there, there are a lot of those games, little spin offs with, with known characters that tried something different. Mm hmm. I don't joke about crossbow training. I love that game. Wait, really? Oh yeah. It's so fun and stupid. Yeah. Like I played that so much of that game with my sister when we were growing up. That game was really fun. It's, I haven't, I haven't played it since probably two months after it came out. So it would feel like a fever dream, even looking at a YouTube video, but I need to do that. Yeah. Oh, it is so bizarre. It is such a weird day, but it is so cool. And this perfect third person mode that they could have used in Metroid Prime. Yeah, it could have been. It works. Yeah. No, he looks like he's sort of floating around too. Yeah. Well, we have a few minutes here. Let's wrap up kind of this moment in a bottle before Metroid Prime 4 is here, before any of us have played the full thing. What are our final hopes and expectations for Metroid Prime 4? Well, last week we had previews go up. We got a seven minute overview trailer from Nintendo that showed a lot of what this game is going to be. Brian, where are you out on this? I will say that I'm, you know, I've said it before, I'm a little apprehensive with the NPCs and our potential escort missions and stuff. But the thing I really can't get over with this game is just how stunning it looks. I think this is the first time since the original one where I'm like, this is this is like this is reaching the heights of, you know, comparable games happening across the industry at the same time. Retro are some of the I think they're some of the most talented artists working in the games industry. I love their designs. I love the lighting in this game. I think that like there's it's doing so much cool stuff visually. I have zero desire to play it with mouse controls. I'm going to sit back on my couch or in handheld mode, and I'm going to play this game. I'm going to try and 100 percent it, go back, get every secret. I hope there's a bunch of Easter eggs and stuff like that, like the previous games had and unlockable costumes, all that fun stuff. Right. I hope none of it's tied to amiibos. And I yeah, I'm just some of it is, of course. But I'm I'm really excited for this game. I'm just really happy Metroid Prime is back, even if it's like it misses the mark and it's not as great as the other three. Those are three really good games. And so I'm I'm totally excited for this to just at least give us the next installment in the Metroid Prime franchise. I have no idea what that means for the future of this series. But the fact that after I was in the room at IGN at E3, when we first saw the logo for Prime 4 and that number four came up, that one right there and we lost our minds. And then we had to wait what seven, eight years for it. And had it got rebooted, it's kicked around different developers. The fact that this is actually a game that I can buy and play on my Switch to very soon makes me very happy. See, I'm I'm really bullish on it. And like, Logan, I watched your preview and like, I agree. The what Justin called him the MacLavin character. Yes. Is this guy? Yeah. I agree with you. It's it's not my favorite character seen in a video game. It's like Rick Moreno is like, you know, invaded our Metroid series. But I'm actually really like I can deal with that. I like I didn't get annoyed with Jar Jar and the Star Wars prequel trilogy either, especially since he disappeared in the third one somehow. Like I have a high tolerance. I have a high tolerance for sort of video game, Jack, like where the voice acting and the the storytelling aren't as great as in a movie because I feel like I can play it at my own pace. And I just want to like when I immerse myself into in the world, I can I can block out these these sort of smaller things. Like what I've seen and what I've played so far, I've only played the demo that everybody got to see before Switch to launch, which felt exactly like Metroid Prime. It felt like the original game. It didn't it didn't surprise me. There wasn't like a new gameplay element where I said, OK, that's super, super clever. I saw in your preview, you've got the, you know, Zelda style like floating beetle power and all of that stuff. Like that stuff gets me really excited to see how they like what they did with these puzzles. And then I'm just really curious to see what the new environments are that we haven't seen before. Like that weird like it looks like the the battery storage of the Matrix movies. You know, that weird like icky like H.R. Giger looking black tower thing looks really cool. And I can't wait to explore more of that stuff. So I'm actually really, really bullish on it. And like I think I will be able to deal with any sort of supporting cast banter and block it out. Yeah, no, I think I think I will, too. Really, the thing I can't handle is if they tell you what to do too much. Yeah. So what if they're traveling with me, that's fine. It's just I'm just someone where if there is a puzzle and a character tells you how to do it, I'm seriously like, what's even the point of creating this puzzle if you don't let the player solve it? So that was my biggest fear. But after it was an interesting dynamic and Brian and I were talking about this a little bit, we didn't see the overview trailer when we did the preview event. Right. We just saw Miles and just saw how much he was talking about what to do. So then when they drop this overview trailer, it's like, here's all these other companions and here's plenty of shots of Samus being alone. It's OK. This is what we theorized, a companion in each area. It's just as long as Miles was only like that because it was the tutorial, which I think is the most likely outcome that this is the beginning of the game. He's going to be overbearing and it's almost to the point of parody, which maybe is an intentional choice. I think this is going to be great because I loved everything else about it. Brian talked about how beautiful it was. It is gorgeous and it controlled fantastic. And the psychic powers, I think that if they up the puzzles, which they probably will, it could be really cool like this. You know, the Star Wars Jedi survivor shrines that have the different orbs that you have to move around with the forest to different places. That's like what the psychic puzzles are here. And I think that that has an opportunity to be a really, really great Metroid Prime game. There was a there was a funny moment with Metroid Dread. I will not not name the game designer. I don't want to shame him here, but a game designer played Metroid Dread and was in a room, a self-enclosed room, and you have to shoot the walls to get out of the room, right? And like the you can't you can't do anything. And so, of course, you're going to use your gun and shoot around and experiment. And that was sort of to teach you that, yes, certain certain blocks in Metroid games can be destroyed and you can find your way out, right? Like the game was sort of putting you in a box and saying, escape this box and you figured out. And like this game designer was really frustrated with that. He was like, there's no indication that I can do this. There's no sort of tutorial that teaches it to me. There's no visor or anything. Let's me scan and see the gap that I could open up. And like that was and he was frustrated at that moment. I always wonder if Nintendo saw that and said, maybe we need to give people more of a helping hand. And so when you see this beetle that has a hard shell, let's just have this. Jerk tell you, hey, you can fire missile at it. And like and like so that you don't get frustrated. But like I like games more where after a while, if you don't find the solution, then they come in to help you. Let's hope that this game actually turns out to be that way where in the future, in the beginning, it gives you a hint at how to take down one of the characters. And then later on, it doesn't do that anymore because it has established the language. It would have been actually cooler if that guy had said, hey, look, that can you see the hard shell on that beetle? That means you need to use a concussive missile or something like that just to basically give you the tools to solve it in the future rather than just giving it away. Well, we're telling you, hey, you should scan that to see how to kill it or something just that's more in line with what practice, but it's hopefully a small deal. And also Metroid has always done this where if you're too slow at solving something, it's like incoming signal and then the map tells you exactly where to go. It's like, oh, too slow. And that is going to be a thing in this one too. And like I think to guide people. Ocarina of time had come out today. Would we be even more annoyed at Navi constantly telling you, hey, listen, like it became a it became a meme much, much later. Like I remember when the game originally came out, we weren't that annoyed by Navi. Right. Right. I know I was complaining about it. Yeah, over time because you dazzled with all the rest of it, right? Like over time it became more of an issue. Well, like, you know, like Resident Evil 4, one of my favorite games of all time, Gamecube era game around the same era as the original Metroid Prime. One of the first truly successful third person shooters got a remake a couple of years ago, it's one of the best remakes ever made. I think it's the best video game remake of all time. They covered that game with yellow paint, like tons of it, like Wiley Coyote cartoonish levels of like, hey, go here, do this. And I think the average player these days just maybe needs their hand held a little bit. And so that's fine. I understand that, like, you know, I. But to like what both of you guys are saying, I hope it's one of those things where the player has the ability to kind of push and pull on how much we want all of that to interfere with the actual, you know, atmosphere of the game that we're playing. The yellow painting is so funny because because it's all it tries to solve something that Nintendo already solved with Breath of the Wild. It's like, you can climb it. That was Nintendo's answer. It's like, if you see something, you can climb it. Yeah. If it's got thorns or spikes on it, then you don't climb it, right? Like, and this is almost the opposite. It's like everything looks the same, but you can't climb it. So we're going to have to paint this path that you can climb. Like it's I think it's a necessity because it's very difficult to develop emergent systems like with Breath of the Wild and that sort of freedom and actually make, you know, sort of like control the pacing and the discovery of it. And so not every game can do that. But like it, you know, there there are definitely. I was playing Ghost of Yote and like you find these maps and you have to overlay them on your map. And if you don't place them within 20 seconds, the little maps start wiggling to show you where they belong. I was going to put it down like, you know, I think they've got to keep you moving. They've got to keep you entertained at all times now. Devs just spent the extra time to let us turn that stuff off. You know, yeah. Now, I think that the thing that really got pulled out of context from the preview over the last couple of weeks was this guy. But I really like I'm so excited for this game. It's retro. And I think if anything comes from this conversation is trust in retro studios, right? Brian just talked about this button. Of course, the staff is going to be a very different staff. But retro went on to make country returns and tropical freeze. Two games we talked about so much this year that we also adore so much. They made primary mastered, which yes, it's a remaster. It's one of the greatest remasters ever. It's gorgeous and a flawless recreation of that game. This studio makes amazing games. Can't wait for Prime Four. And I want to end here by Brian. You mentioned that you were at E3 eight years ago and this was announced. So was I. It was my first industry event ever. As a 19 year old and I ran into one pair of Schneider on the show floor. And I was like, oh, my gosh, it's Pear from IGN and NBC. We take a picture and it's like that. Michael Scott, quote, you can totally tell he's OK. Taking a photo with me. Yeah, that was I was 19 years old at my first ever industry event. The day Prime Four was announced. And I remember talking to Pear and Pear. I was like Metroid Prime Four and Pear was like, yeah, we knew ahead of time. And I walk away and I'm like, wow, he knew Metroid Prime Four was announced. And now I know Pear. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, he was just showing off. Yes, of course, we knew that Prime Four was coming. Yeah, I just wanted to share that now that it's real. Amazing. My entire career has happened in eight years since Prime Four was announced. Yeah, so cool. Seven days away, Metroid Prime Four beyond absolutely can't wait. Thank you so much, Brian and Pear. That was a very fun special episode of NBC looking back on the Metroid Prime trilogy. We're usually here every Friday with audio on your favorite podcast app and a video on the IGN Games channel on YouTube. If you like the show, please tell a friend or leave us a review, rating or nice comment or every you're listening. It helps us out so much next week on NBC. We just talked all about it. Metroid Prime Four beyond will be here and we will talk all about how it actually turned out. Can't wait. Brian, anything you're working on that you want to shout out? Yeah, I think by now or around now, the top 10 Metroid Games of all time video and article will be up on IGN. Worked on that one with the help of some folks helping me rank them. I almost ranked every Metroid game and then went to go with the top 10 because I think we've said enough about Federation Force today. No offense, I know you like that game. But yeah, go check that out. And we've got a bunch more cool big Nintendo lists and features rolling out before the end of the year as we wind down 2025 here. So yeah, keep watching. Pear Schneider IGN just launched a new website and it's very Nintendo related. We did. We just a collaboration between the team at MaxRoll, who are made an amazing website for ARPGs like Diablo, P.O.E.2 and so forth. IGN, which you know, and Eurogamer, where we have one of the foremost experts for this franchise in Ladi Lin. So we launched Planet Pokemon. Just type in planetpokemon.com. I think you're going to instantly understand why this site exists and what it is. It's basically you can build in ZA for now. There are a couple of games we cover. Eventually it's going to cover every Pokemon game ever made. You can plan your team. So there's this really cool team planner where you assemble the team from all of the all of the Pokemon in the game. That's right. Yeah. If you had choose Pokemon, you can you can add them there. It's really neat. You can adjust the stats, give them items, add moves, and then you get instant team defense and team coverage ratings. Then you can save that team and share it with your friends. And so it's really, really good for people who want to take a PVP to the next level and measure their team efficiency. But also there's full Pokedex, maps, item descriptions, guides and all that. It's a cool little experiment. We just wanted to do something new and hope people like Pokemon like this. And eventually it'll be live every Pokemon game ever made on it. This is one of the coolest things you guys have ever done, by the way. But it's really fun. You presented this in a meeting the other day and I was like, wow, on earth. It's so cool. Yeah, go check this out. Yeah, it's amazing. I will shout out my Kirby Airwriters review, which is up on IGA now. The game's been out for about a week, so go check that out. Hope that you're enjoying it out there. Thank you so much again, Brian and Perrin. Thank you to Tio for working behind the scenes on this special episode. And thank you so much for listening. But for now, that's all the time I've got. I got to go back to playing Metroid Prime Federation Force on my Nintendo 3DS. Have a great week. We'll be back next time with more Nintendo voice chat. The only place you can get the thing.