Top Gamecube game: Metroid Prime

I was one of the few people that got on board the Gamecube train. It seems as though very few people (relatively) had anything to do with the system and they were in a 3rd place war with Xbox and both of them were extremely far behind the sales of the PS2 which to this day is the best-selling console of all time.

I was one of the 21.4 million people worldwide that actually purchased a GameCube and I thought it was a pretty solid system even though it had quite a few limitations the main one being that many of the games were incapable of fitting on their very tiny disks.

They somehow managed to get all of one of my favorite games ever made, Metroid Prime onto 1 disk and what an amazing game it was.

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Like many gamers at the time, I was less than enthusiastic about the transition to a first person perspective being introduced because Metroid (NES) and Super Metroid (SNES) were such legendary titles. I didn't feel as though a change as needed and even once I started playing I groaned a little bit as I struggled to come to terms with navigation in a 3-d (ish) environment. However, once you accepted the fact that this is your world now, it was just such an amazing experience the likes of which I feel very few games have been capable of accomplishing before it or even to this day.

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The simulated H.U.D. took a little bit of time getting used to, but then once you had it figured out, as well as determining where your enemies were and how to lock on to each one individually worked extremely well. Plus even though I didn't find the map terribly helpful at first, you spend enough time in certain areas that you start to memorize where it is that you are supposed to go just by memory.

Of course there is always the addition of areas that you clearly cannot access yet but know you will be able to at a later time and this is what makes this Metroid, as well as all of the rest of them, so exciting.

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I also appreciated the fact that the boss battles were not always as cut and dry as figuring out patterns and then firing at will to do enough damage. There was a bit of thought that you had to put into it because many times your strikes would only do enough damage to "wound" the boss and the actual damage was done by some secret something or other that was necessary and could only be accomplished during these brief periods when the boss was downed.

This normally involved using a powerup you recently acquired - which should come as no surprise.

One of the most interesting battles of the entire game that was initially very frustrating to me was against the Omega Pirate. After blasting off his 4 armor plates dude would just disappear and then when he came back all of this plates had been restored.

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This would go on forever if you don't have the instinct to switch over to your x-ray goggles or whatever they were called, so that you can discover him while he is recharging. Once you figure this out, it is actually when he is at him most vulnerable. Fights that seem unfair and impossible become much easier with one simple trick. We didn't use the internet for everything back in 2002 believe it or not, so often we would just figure this out on our own.

This commercial was actually on TV if you can believe that people used to do that but it still had that cheesy mix of 30% actual gameplay and 70% cinematics that weren't even in the game.

This game might be a bit tough to play on a ROM but here it is anyway if you care to check it out.

Did you play Metroid Prime? What are your thoughts? I'd love to discuss it in the comments!