Oh Samus, how I love thee. If I could virtually marry any female games character then Lara Croft and whomever that bint from WET is wouldn’t even get a look in; no, I would be there in my orange power suit putting the old vows across to Ms. Aran. Heck, I’d even make a fun game out of the wedding day by arbitrarily losing all my power-ups first thing in the morning and having to undertake a platform-hopping quest to recover them and get to the church on time. Fun.

The reasons for this outpouring of love is not only that I am a terribly large Metroid fanboy, but that I have just trogged my way through the Wii release of the Prime trilogy and enjoyed every minute. A compilation of the two GameCube titles and 2007’s Wii finale, it upgrades everything to full-on Wii controls and smoothes out the odd bump here and there along the way for good measure. All of this for £30 or so, which pretty much works out at a tenner for each game save a few pennies here and there.

This is great news, as despite the lack of a massive overhaul for the first two games they stand up bloody brilliantly against the ravages of age. Whilst visually they are a little behind Corruption, in terms of play and atmosphere they arguably better the final episode and are as much fun to revisit as they were to discover for the first time on the GameCube. The control system adds greatly to the enjoyment as well, with the games’ adventure-over-combat nature lending itself well to the same Wii-mote that struggles with most first-person shooters.

The first Prime was released in 2002 (seems like yesterday, but there we go) and saw Samus heading to Tallon IV to respond to a mysterious distress call. Despite worries at the time that the shift from side scrolling to first-person would completely remove the series’ heartbeat it proved to be a dimensional leap as triumphant as Mario 64, instantly easing people’s fears by packing in exactly the same platforming and adventuring aspects that the series had been loved for before. It was, all things considered, one of the console’s greatest titles.

The second title – Echoes – picked up from where the original Prime left off and injected all sorts of new fun into proceedings, all whilst taking the rather sensible ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ line of thought to the overall way in which the adventure played out, the main difference being that the game featured a light and dark side of the map, with many areas being interconnected so that changes in one would affect the other. It wasn’t quite all good news, mind; the trade-off for the vastly improved single player mode was a token multiplayer effort (included in Trilogy) and a frustratingly inconsistent difficulty level, all of which stopped it from being acclaimed as the classic it almost was.

Going back and revisiting both of them with Wii controls is a joy, as it’s even more apparent with the benefit of a few years’ time since my last play through that each are truly brilliant games, no matter what era they are played in. The favouring of adventuring and discovery over combat is in keeping with the series as a whole, and although there are plenty of nasties to battle and bosses to vanquish, having a target lock eases the pain. That’s not to say the games’ combat is a secondary addition, obviously, but you do find yourself spending most of your time hunting down additional power-ups as the abilities you earn throughout open up new areas to explore.

It isn’t just the gameplay that hangs together either, as although there is much to be lauded when it comes to how well the maps are linked together and how well the pacing of obtaining crucial new equipment is judged, it’s the games’ presentation that shines through equally as much. Even with a little bit of a texture boost for the Wii compilation the visuals are still not amazingly beautiful, but they convey the feel of the alien worlds very nicely indeed with the contrasting dusty, expansive outside areas and buzzing, claustrophobic tech-filled indoor portions.

Even better, though, is the atmosphere the games manage to convey to the player right from the get go. There’s a stark sense of desolation and loneliness throughout your adventure as you attempt to piece together the shattered remnants of both Tallon IV and Echoes’ Aether whilst going about your business. Being able to flick to the scan visor and pick up tidbits of information on the back-story and characters within becomes somewhat of a compulsive task. To add to this, the musical score is dense and busy, buzzing along when confrontation awaits and settling into something akin to a rather symphonic Nine Inch Nails bracket at other times to make you realise that you’re never too far away from danger. Silence is also used particularly well at points, such as a moment in the first game when you enter an area and the music suddenly peaks, only for it to fall silent and leave you wondering what the heck is around the corner.

All of this transferred nicely into the third episode – Corruption – a couple of years ago, although obviously this time it was based on the Wii and had a new control scheme, which has now been retrofitted to the previous titles. Using both the Wii-mote to point and aim and the Nunchuck to run around, the system does take a little time to get used to as the visor switch is rather awkwardly placed on the 1 button and jump and shoot seem to be mapped the inverse way to what many would find natural, but soon enough you’re shooting and jumping you way around with pleasing accuracy.

Where Corruption falls down a bit compared to Primes part une and deux is that it seemed to eschew the adventure focus and go more toward being an action shooter, which although being down to personal choice felt a little disappointing. It was still a hugely enjoyable game as I mentioned at the [url=http://www.ultraninjas.com/articles/?article=95]time, but when played back-to-back with its older brothers it does feel a little lacking, especially now that Echoes has had the unreasonably hard difficulty spikes smoothed off to make it a less taxing experience.

As a package you can’t fault it. Visually it might lag a bit behind what could be considered up-to-date, but each of the three games – particularly the first two – are hugely involving, challenging adventure platforming efforts that belie their advancing years. It’ll be pretty interesting to see what Team Ninja do with the series when it comes to Metroid: Other M, but until then anyone wanting something a little more… well, better for their Wii, this is where it’s at. No ifs, no buts, this is where it well and truly is at.