Category: Features

My Retro Years: Tim Bowers

Tim Bowers My Retro Years, TimB

It’s the start of a brand new year and what better way to celebrate then to look back over my almost 30 years of gaming. Some of what follows is 90 percent true but as we’re dealing with a large time scale with at least 10 years of being abused by alcohol you’ll have to allow me some artistic licence in filling in the blanks!

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin…….

I was born in July of 1982, despite what I may think my parents assured me I was not born with a controller in my hand, of this I think my Mother is most grateful, however it always feels like it’s been there. I was far too young to be aware of the “Great Video Game Crash” of 1983 but during my infancy gaming slowly started building itself up again.

I may have had an Atari or an Amiga before this but the first console I remember having is Commodore 64 Games Console. This came out in 1990 according to Wikipedia which I guess would be about right for my age. I don’t really remember having a lot of games for it, in fact i can only remember one.

Fiendish Freddy’s Big Top O’ Fun was essentially a very very early version of a Mini-Game collection. In it you were tasked with saving a circus from an evil business man and his henchman, the titular Fiendish Freddy, by completing six circus events and raising the $10,000 needed to save the circus. The events were Diving, Knife Throwing, Juggling, Trapeze, Human Cannonball and Tightrope Walking. During the events Freddy would appear to the sides of the screen and attempt to thwart your actions, such as during the juggling he would chuck on bombs that you would be required to chuck back at him before they blew up. I remember it being very difficult, although that could of been due to my under developed hand eye co-ordination.

 

As I said I can only really remember that game from the Commodore days but a year after getting that I got my hands on my first real console, the console that had almost single handedly revived the gaming world. The Nintendo Entertainment System.

My love for the “Big N” knows no bounds, in fact I have owned every Nintendo console that has been released and it all began with that little grey box of joy.  I remember the slot that held the game in was broken so I had to use a cassette tape box (remember them!!) to hold the game in place when I wanted to play. I must of spent a small lifetime playing that machine. I kept mine for years and every now and then I used to dust it off and fire it up. Oh the games, THE GAMES!!!!! This was the start of the New World of Gaming. So many of the biggest franchises still going today started off with the NES. Super Mario Bros. Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, Mega Man. The list goes on and on.

During my time with the NES I also had a Sega Master System, it was ok, I did and still do enjoy Sega’s consoles but in the same way I’ve never really taken to Microsofts forays into todays market, I never really got on with Sega. Sorry. Go Team Nintendo!

After this you can follow my gaming life with the subsequent releases of Nintendo consoles. Our next stop is the Super Nintendo era and a game that devoured an entire Christmas Holiday and still to this day I can’t listen to George Michael’s “Jesus to a Child” without my mind thinking about it. It’s the one, the only, the sex bomb herself. Super Metroid.

The adventures of Bounty Hunter Samus Aran on the NES were unknown to me. I was possibly too young to really notice and too swept up in the colour of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. 3 to really notice the dark environments of Zebes but I found them on the SNES. The game blew my mind, it was like Zelda but in space and with aliens!! How awesome! I was running around, exploring, fighting giant space monsters and weird brain sucking things (later I would realise these were Metroids). It was everything a game should of been but was vastly overlooked back then. Still to this day the Metroid franchise is the forgotten child of the Big N’s Big Three. Did you know it was Metroid’s 25th Anniversary last year…..No didn’t think so, the fanfare that accompanied the Mario and Zelda anniversaries is sorely missing in celebrating the accomplishments of Miss. Aran. If you own a Wii and have never played Super Metroid you resolve this by downloading it from the Wii Store. I urge you to do it as it is one of the best games you will ever play. FACT!

I can’t move on from the SNES era without talking about The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The first console Zelda since Zelda II on the NES. A Link to the Past was a return to the top down, treasure hunting, dungeon solving Zelda that people had fallen in love with but it was better oh so so better. Again the game reaffirmed my love for the series and still remains a firm favourite.

I think I may leave it there, we’re slowly heading into modern territory now but all you need to know is that if there has been a Nintendo Home system with a new Zelda or Metroid game – I have owned it. My love for these series is unwavering – even when one stumbles (Metroid: Other M)

If you were wondering I currently own a PlayStation 3 so my love is spread over both Nintendo and Sony.

If you don’t mind I will leave you with Jerry Springer style thought. To be a gamer in this day and age is a wonderful experience, it finally feels like Gaming as a hobby is being accepted, yes it may have taken the watering down of some of our beloved franchises and the invention of a new genre which strikes fear into the heart of any hardcore gamer (“Party Game”) but it’s where we want to be as an accepted and admired art form. There’s still enough people out there who would be happy seeing our hobby vanish from the face of the earth so don’t compound their small mindedness by hating on each other because I have a PlayStation and you have an Xbox and they have a Wii. Do you think the studios and the programmers and the artists and the developers give a crap about that or do you think they’re more concerned about being part of an awesome industry, doing a job they enjoy?

Take care of yourself, and each other!

 

Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue

Z1GTeam Features, Hidden Gems, Retro, Reviews

It’s damn near impossible to not have heard of Hello Kitty in this day and age; her face has been plastered on virtually everything. From notebooks to purses to , Hello Kitty’s iconic look and charm has won over females from ages five to twenty-five and her notoriously extensive line of merchandise has garnered the attention spans of kawaii-loving fans worldwide.

Sadly, when it comes to the gaming market, though, the cute furry feline has a tendency to fall flat on her yellow little nose. Her licensed games, which are obviously geared towards younger generations, tend to be cheaply made, shallow, and packed full of dressing up, cooking food, and other monotonous domestic activities. It usually costs little to produce such casual titles; they are comparatively low in production and distribution costs for the publisher, and Sanrio, the company that owns the rights to Hello Kitty, is no stranger to licensing out their characters for any use, as we have found.

However, like many other things in life, there are small hidden gems, games that have a tendency to be overlooked on your normal trips to the local game shop. Perhaps it’s because of the cutesy text scrolling across the top of the game case, or perhaps it’s just because the obvious girly looks and aesthetics do not appeal to the casual observer. Or perhaps it’s because many gamers are already tired of seeing various franchises being exploited for financial gain; think about the last time you walked into a local used game store and saw dozens of copies of Tony Hawk or Hannah Montana taking up half of the available shelf space. Whatever the case or the individual, sometimes it’s worth taking another look and getting a second opinion on a game or franchise.

While Roller Rescue has an obvious appeal to young female gamers, the game’s success isn’t just because of the cute houses that are shaped like teacups or the brightly colored flowers and vegetation that bespeckle every pixel of every scene. It’s not just because the game is Hello Kitty, as there are plenty of other titles to pick from that would be more in-tune with what Hello Kitty fans typically would want from a game. The game works because it is a perfect translation of a 2D conceptual world into a fully working 3D environment. Blending Sanrio’s cute looks with good gameplay featuring combat, puzzle, and platforming elements, Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue is the game that requires the player to look at our iconic little kitty, not just as a pie-baking lovable homemaker, but also as a kick-ass feline heroine who has the potential to save the world.

The main storyline of Roller Rescue is rather simple. You, playing as Kitty White (or better known as the series’ more familiar name “Hello Kitty”) are a sweet young girl living with her family in peaceful SanrioTown. This tranquility, however, is short-lived, as the evil invading Block Battalion descends on Earth, thus bringing chaos and destruction to Kitty’s hometown and enslaving her friends and family. In order to fight this terrible threat, Kitty bravely dons a pair of roller skates and brandishes her trusty magic wand in an effort to defeat the evil that has been unleashed on her world and restore peace to her hometown.

Before you start your adventure, you begin every game in Hello Kitty’s house. From here, you can perform other tasks, such as changing game options, saving, checking Kitty’s email, viewing character bios, listening to music or cutscenes, or changing Kitty’s outfit for the next mission. The wardrobe variations, while purely cosmetic, add a fun element to the game for those who wouldn’t mind scoring Kitty some sweet-looking threads. By finishing stages and fulfilling mission objectives, you can unlock more clothes and weapons for her to sport in future adventures, lending the game a bit more replay value for hardcore gamers.

The levels in Roller Rescue consist of a blend of combat, puzzle, and platforming elements, following a linear path through each of the game’s sixteen different areas. Before each mission, Kitty is briefed by another Sanrio character, Keroppi, who provides her with a basic mission outline. These missions range from rescuing Kitty’s twin sister Mimmy in an amusement park to infiltrating an enemy ship in outer space. The areas themselves are colorful, cleanly designed, and easy to follow with a strong sense of linearity, making it hard for newer gamers to get lost or easily frustrated.

The developers did an incredible job at creating an accurate translation of Sanrio’s ideal 2D world into a full 3D environment. Each of the game’s various locales still capture the essence of Sanrio’s love of all things cute and cuddly; each level is crammed full of enough adorability to make your eyeballs bleed straight out of their strawberry-scented sockets. Despite Roller Rescue’s obvious combat-oriented gameplay, the game’s bright, colorful environments seem to somehow justify your decision in allowing your young impressionable kids to play such a violently adorable title.

As for any fighting, Roller Rescue’s battle system mainly features real-time, hack and slash combat. By performing button combinations, Hello Kitty is able to bash her foes over the head with her melee weapon of choice, causing her enemies to explode into colorful stars. Collecting enough of these sparkling gems will unleash deadly attacks: one allows Kitty to spin around wildly, effectively bludgeoning anything in its deadly path, and one unleashes a powerful area magic attack that eliminates all enemies in the vicinity.

Luckily, Roller Rescue features a great combination of beat ‘em up, platforming, and puzzle-solving elements to keep it moderately well-paced throughout the duration of the game. The boss segments themselves are fun and strategic, a nice change from the usual “hack and slash” feeling the rest of this game seems to favor. Each boss has certain attacks and weaknesses, effectively requiring Kitty to revise her strategy to defeat it. For instance, one boss shoots baseballs at Kitty in a small baseball field enclosed by an electric fence. Kitty, the resourceful little feline that she is, picks up the baseballs and rebounds them off of the sides of the fence, returning the favor in a cute, but brutal fashion. The numerous boss battles require a slightly different technique to defeat them, which offers a different, but welcome change of pace for the game.

No adventure is complete without companions and an important aspect of Roller Rescue is rescuing your friends that have been kidnapped by the Block Battalion. By doing so, you can unlock that party member as a support character in future missions. Each of the various Sanrio-licensed characters have their own move sets, strengths, and weaknesses. Monkichi, the monkey, flings bananas at his enemies and My Melody, another Sanrio icon, heals you whenever your health begins to plummet. All characters has a special move and varying levels of attack, speed, and stamina.

The game implements quite a few standard features from games of similar genres. Your health, which is displayed as a row of bright red shiny apples in the top left corner of the HUD (Zelda fans, feel right at home), can be replenished by buying food from shops or by simply knocking fruit off of trees for consumption. The star gauge, which grants Kitty her power ups, is filled by defeating enemies and progressing through the game’s areas. As for the map, it is easily viewable as a standard radar (recognizable for those who play enough shooters) with a pink arrow indicating your position and the target objective being displayed as a blue star.

While Roller Rescue is undeniably cute and flashy, the game itself is entirely too short; experienced gamers can blaze through it in just a few hours’ time. Perhaps this is because of the game’s strong linearity or perhaps it’s because there are only sixteen levels total, making saving the world a relatively short affair. Luckily, while this is the only major complaint I have with this title, it is still an important issue to address to our readers, especially for those who are hoping the game is worth the initial purchase. While I obviously can’t speak for everyone, I would venture to say this is the strongest attempt to break in the gaming market that Hello Kitty has made thus far, even more than the grindfest MMORPG, Hello Kitty Online, that has went live since the release of this title. And while Roller Rescue is not terrible game by any means, I would not recommend it to very young gamers, as they may find the platforming elements or high level of combat unappealing or too violent for their tastes.

But for those who would want to see this sweet little feline in a different light, they need not look any further. Roller Rescue is a good game, but not without its flaws. The environments are colorful, well-designed, and the game features a lot of familiar and favorite Sanrio characters. The gameplay is moderately paced and the combat system and boss battles are simple enough to be grasp quickly for younger gamers. While the selling points of this title may not be worth the initial investment for all gamers, Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue is a strange and unique departure from the normal Hello Kitty-franchised games, one that surely deserves an honorable mention.

7/10

My Retro Years: Kirsty Fraser

Z1GTeam My Retro Years

As a contributing writer to Zero1Gaming.com – it’s obvious that I would have an interest in games so I’m here to talk about how I first got into them and my first experiences of gaming.

I vaguely remember sitting in my living room and playing my next door neighbours Sega Megadrive that I had borrowed for the weekend. I would be playing as everyone’s favourite blue hedgehog – Sonic, a very old version of FIFA ( this was back when I did actually bother playing football games, nowadays – I don’t see the big hype) and a game called James Pond.  James Pond always amused me to be honest – I think it was the title mostly due to the many spin-offs of James Bond in the game through mission titles etc. This was my first ever interaction with games and I must of only been perhaps 4 or 5.  I hated every time my parents told me they wanted to watch something on the television resulting in the MegaDrive having to be turned off as I loved sitting on the floor for hours playing on it.

There was one week I was coming home from being at my Grans during the Summer holidays in which I was glad to be going home because I could play the Sega Megadrive again for hours – yippee! Instead, my Dad took me to my room and showed me that they had bought me my own television for my bedroom. Instantly my mind wandered to “Yes, I can play the Megadrive up here and not have to worry about the parents wanting to watch some stupid documentary!” however, there was a bottom attachment on this new TV. To be honest I just thought it was part of the stand, no big deal, so when my Dad started laughing at me as I turned it on to watch The Simpsons (had a bit of an obsession with them as did any kid growing up in the 90’s), I was rather confused. Turned out the ‘attachment’ was actually a storage drawer with a lovely new gaming console for me by the name of Playstation One. This became my new obsession. I loved playing so many games on that including Spyro, Theme Park World where I would cause countless hours of chaos on the little visitors entering my park, V Rally 2 that my Dad officially was rubbish at and the game also featured a heartbeat sound that was at the start of every race when it was loading up that I got really scared of . Throw in a couple of the odd WWF wrestling game (where I could never learn all of the moves which is where I soon learnt the wonder of ‘button bashing’ ) and I was on my way to becoming addicted to gaming.

I vividly remember playing a game called Croc 2 and this soon started my rage at games when I found them difficult. I would spend hours playing  a cheap copy of it (I got my Playstation chipped for around a tenner which meant I could play copies of games for around a fiver each – perfect for my Dad who was buying me all my games at the time to feed my new found gaming addiction) It was always a game that even though I was getting annoyed because I couldn’t get past certain points, I would forever go back to it in the hope that some miracle had happened so that I would manage to get past that frustrating point. This only lead to me chucking the controller onto the floor twenty minutes later and shutting the Playstation off and never speaking to it again for several hours.

Apart from this, with a games console that was actually mine instead of having to borrow my next door neighbours – I really couldn’t be happier. I could honestly loose days being in my disgusting looking room (sickly looking yellow with posters of 90’s pop bands… yeah, you can imagine *cringe* ) just merely sitting playing video games and completing them. The first ever game I completed was the tie in game for the Harry Potter and the Philosphers Stone movie. I was honestly so happy that day that I had managed to fully complete the game as me and my friend had a small competition going to see who would complete it first. Instantly I was on the phone to her bragging about it. Even to this day, I get a warm feeling in my stomach whenever I complete a game, which grows depending on whether I’ve obtained 100% in the game, or got all the achievements for a game. To me, the game doesn’t stop after the campaign, there’s so much more to do in games these days.

Soon after this introduction to gaming, I became aware of more and more consoles and was highly impressed by Nintendo’s GameBoy. It was portable. You didn’t have to hook it up to a TV but just go through countless amounts of batteries just to play a black and white pixelated game on the tiniest of screens. This  solved the problem of being bored at my Grans during the summer holidays – no more watching four channels for a whole week. One of my favourite games for the GameBoy was indeed the Pokemon series. The music was always a thrill to listen to and I am still purchasing the latest instalments of the games even today when I’m twenty years old. Over the years I’ve gone through so many different games consoles including the Nintendo 64 spending hours on 007 Goldeneye multiplayer with friends, Playstation 2 and seeing the Guitar Hero series taking shape (The third instalment will forever be the best one for me) and playing the amazing GTA series. Finally, after months of saving up, my beloved Xbox 360 called Charlie got bought and put through its paces. This was when I first got introduced to the Assassins Creed series and I’ve never regretted playing them.

I think one of the things that always made me love games is the fact you could be controlling a purple dragon one minute and with the change of the disc be driving around in snowy Monte Carlo with a lovely Subaru Impreza and this feeling had never gone away.  I’m always being surprised on how much gaming has changed and expanded especially in recent years bringing more and more people into it and enjoying gaming as well whether it’s by themselves or over Xbox Live or Playstation Network.  I only hope in 15 years’ time I can look back and talk about the Xbox 360 as I’ve spoken about all of the older generation consoles that I’ve mentioned in this retro years post.

 


 

My Retro Years: Paul James

Paul James Editor's Picks, My Retro Years

First off, I would just like to introduce myself and say ‘Hi’, I’m Paul, Founder of Z1G  and if you have ever interacted with on Twitter then it was me you were interacting with, I’m the guy behind the big red Z.

‘My Retro years’ is a feature where the author tells his/her story of their early months and years as a gamer.

Before I go any further I should point out that I’m no writer, hence which is why this is my very first written post, but I think it’s only right that I should contribute my story to this brand new feature. I hope you enjoy!

Being born in 1971 meant that my generation was going to be the first generation that was lucky enough to grow up alongside the growth of video games. My first experience of video games would have been in the late 70s early 80s playing iconic games such as Space Invaders and Pacman in arcades in the local seaside resorts of Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, places my family visited a lot during the summer months of my childhood.

The first game I can remember getting hooked on in these arcades was called Pole Position and I would have been around 11 years old. It was 10p a go and I would spend all my money on this one game, I played this until I was about 15 and it took me a good two to three years before I mastered that game and completed it.

The first time I ever saw and played on a console was at youth club at about the age of 12 or 13. I can’t remember the exact model, but it was an Atari and the game us kids played on the most was called Pitfall. 

Although the Atari was a huge success during the late 70’s through to the mid-80’s, I can honestly say I didn’t know anyone who actually owned one, apart from our youth club. To be honest I didn’t really spend too much time playing on the Atari, I was too busy getting up to no good with my mates whilst wearing our skin tight jeans and luminous yellow socks. Oh yes that was the fashion at the time, spray on jeans as we used to call them and to gain access into these jeans you literally had to give yourself a wedgy, the most effective way I found getting into them was to pull on them as hard as you possibly could whilst bouncing around your bedroom like a baby kangaroo on a diet of smarties, after about five minutes of this you were in. Once in the spray ons, the bottoms of them would sit about 2-3 inches above your shoes so the luminous yellow socks could be seen by anyone within a one mile radius. Oh dear, what a bunch of Wally’s we all must of looked, but hey, it was the 80s, it was allowed. And the fashion seems to have come back around again anyway, haha!

Getting away from baby kangaroos and bunches of Wally’s, although the Atari wasn’t the world’s first games console, it was the first console to be a huge commercial success which shaped the way forward for all the consoles that have succeeded it…… and I got to play on it.

My first experience of video games in the home was round my best mates house. His parents bought him a Commodore 64 and we would spend many evenings in his bedroom waiting for the games to load, back then we spent more time loading them than we did playing them. A few months later, Christmas arrived, it would have been around 1985 and I managed to talk my parents into buying me a Commodore 64 which cost £200, a lot of money now, let alone then, but I managed to talk them round to my way of thinking and get one. However when the C64 first hit British shores in 1983 to take on the British built and market leader Sinclair ZX Spectrum, it cost a whopping £399 where the ZX cost less than half at £175. By 1986 the C64 had taken top spot and was outselling the ZX. Did I ever play on the ZX? Well I seem to remember my cousin having a ZX, but cant remember what games we played on it. I also remember going round a friend of my mates who had one and we played Manic Miner on that, and I recall the graphics being pretty similar in standard to the C64, maybe the Commodore slightly edged it.

Leading up to that Christmas, I remember going shopping with my mother to buy some games for the C64 so I had some to play on, on Christmas day. The first game I bought that day was called Monty on the Run and it cost £9.95, this is one of the games my mate and I had wasted large parts of our teenage years waiting to load in his bedroom, and I wanted that game too. This game from memory used to take about 20-30 minutes to load and would quite often crash right at the end and the process would have to start all over again. Very expensive games were made on a cartridge which had an instant loading time but most games back then were on cassette tape and the loading times were horrendous. Another downside to gaming in the 80s for most kids playing in their bedrooms was, most of us had black and white TVs, yes we had to play our games in black and white but we were the lucky ones because a lot of kids didn’t even have a TV in their bedroom, let alone a computer to play games on. Other games I owned or played on the C64 were Manic Miner, Pole Position (but the graphics were awful compared to the arcade version) Kickstart, Ghostbusters, Bounty Bob Strikes Back, Fruit Machine Simulator, Rambo,  I also had a game which came free with the C64 on a cartridge called The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4, it was based on the TV series and it was utter tosh! If you don’t be believe me, please check out the video below, this game was about as addictive as pulling your finger nails out. The only good thing about this game was that it was on cartridge and it loaded instantly, had it of been on tape, its fair to say the loading time would of been more interesting than the game itself and without doubt just before the little analogue tape counter on the tape deck would of been nearing the end of loading the game, I would of been begging for it to crash!

At about the age of 15 my mate and  I started hanging around in our local café and played the arcaders in there, there was two I played an awful lot of and they were Pacland and Paperboy. I loved Pacland, the graphics were so smooth and cartoony, which is what got me hooked on it, I don’t think I ever completed this game but I certainly got very close if I didn’t. Paperboy I did complete, took me a while but I did complete and loved that game too.

After all this, gaming would pretty much leave my life for quite a few years while I went out into that big wide world and built a life, but it came crashing back into it in the late 90s when I went out to buy my sons first ever console, the PS One, for Christmas. I distinctly remember when I got it home I just had to give it a try to make sure it worked before wrapping it up and putting it under the tree lol. Gaming was back in my life!

Today I’m playing Battlefield 3 and experiencing graphics I hoped as a kid gaming would achieve one day, but never believed it would happen in my lifetime.

Also the ability to game with your friends whilst they are sitting in their house and you are sitting in yours playing over the thing they call the internet.

It’s fair to say the internet conversation was way beyond our imaginations and never discussed when my mate and I were growing bum fluff waiting for Monty to load.

That’s ‘My Retro Years’, if you are still reading thank you, the rest of TeamZ1G will also be telling their stories in the coming weeks. But us here at Zero1Gaming would like to get to know our readers better and what better way to do that is to hear your story too, every gamer has a beginning and every gamer has a different story to tell, we would love to hear your story and share it by publishing it on this very feature.

If you are interested in telling us your story, please contact us using the form below, our or drop me a tweet over on Twitter.

Before I leave, I would just like to take this opportunity as it will be a while before I post again, to thank  all of Team Z1G, Anthony, Hannah, Kirsty, Matt, Mike, Ollie, Rachel, Raymond and Tim for all their hard work and fantastic content they provide for Zero1Gaming, thanks guys. Also like to thank a very special person in my life called Ally, she has supported Z1G from day one and helps me daily with bits and pieces behind the scenes, thanks girl. Last but not least, thank you to each and every one of you who has supported us since we launched, that goes to everyone who reads our posts, follows us on Twitter, Youtube and Facebook, retweets our tweets, reads and shares our Facebook page posts. I have met some truly wonderful people over the last nine months, thank you all so very much.

I think it’s time I returned to my comfort zone, slip back behind the scenes, grab the steering wheel of the Twitter feed and leave this writing malarkey to the experts.

Please check out the videos of some of the games mentioned above and don’t forget to contact us with your ‘Retro Years’.

Thanks for reading

Paul

[formidable id=2]

Metroid Prime

Tim Bowers Features, Retro, Retrospective, Reviews, TimB

Being asked to pick your favourite game of all time and review it is, in my opinion, like asking a parent to pick a favourite child and to announce it in front of all their other children, and then give a list of reasons as to why this child is better than the other. I’ve been gaming for about 20 years now and I’ve played many games, some beyond awesome, some not so awesome and some I would rather forget, so trying to whittle it down to one game was a tough job.

After much floor pacing, list making and consulting with auguries, the afterlife and other gamers I managed to settle on one game and annoyingly it was one of my original choices.

Metroid Prime may not be the most iconic of the much loved, but lesser known Nintendo franchise, for that accolade please see Super Metroid, but it is the game that the word “game-changing” was invented for. Released between November 2002 and April 2003, depending on where you are in the world, Metroid Prime was the rebirth of a franchise that some considered dead. It was also the first Metroid game in eight years, the previous instalment being the aforementioned Super Metroid. The game continues the adventures of everyone’s favourite Bounty Hunter as she travels through the galaxy kicking Space Pirate booty!

For those of you that have never played a Metroid game Samus Aran is our protagonist in the ongoing fight against the evil Space Pirate horde. At this point in the series she is a bit of a mystery, but what we do know is that she was born on a planet that came under Space Pirate attack, her parents were killed in the attack and she grew up vowing to avenge them. She briefly joined the Galactic Federation, however she soon dropped out for reasons unknown at this time and went freelance.

The plot finds Samus answering a distress call from a Space Pirate frigate, finding some rather unseemly experiments and bumping into her old pal Ridley. Ridley was last seen burning to death in some lava eight years ago although as the Metroid Prime Trilogy takes place before the events of Super Metroid Ridley hasn’t actually been burnt yet. The Metroid timeline is a confusing place to be. Second degree burns aside; he has been put back together and is now known as Meta Ridley. New and improved Meta Ridley then scarpers to a nearby planet with Samus in hot pursuit.

Samus lands on this new planet and after a bit of exploring discovers the planet is known as Tallon IV and that it was once a part of the vast Chozo civilisation. Our heroine then proceeds to search the planet and try and find out what it is the Space Pirates are up to. The game continues to use the same path as previous Metroid games – an “open” world that requires certain upgrades to allow you to fully explore. So while not exactly a groundbreaking plot it was the way in which this game was presented that really makes it stand out.

In the eight years since Super Metroid, gaming had moved on in leaps and bounds. The move away from 2D side-scrolling games prompted Nintendo and Retro Studios to try something new and different. Nintendo crafted the moniker “first person adventure” and promised fans that they would get something completely mind blowing.  They delivered.

From the first moment Samus’ ship lands on the abandoned frigate Orpheon, to the final battle with the Phazon corrupted Metroid, Metroid Prime is a visual feast. The textures, the colours, the scenery, it is beautiful to behold.  After so long out of the spotlight Nintendo had to show fans that it was committed to the Metroid franchise, and that the eight-year wait between games had been worth it. Retro Studios cancelled four other games in order to concentrate on Prime and the dedication shows.

When the move from 2D Samus to 3D Samus was announced the fans reaction was overwhelmingly negative. Fans just couldn’t imagine how their beloved heroine was going to move and many thought that Nintendo was taking too big a risk and that Retro Studios should be given a project with less history and preconceived ideas. The gamble truly paid off and the game was a massive critical success. It won numerous “Game of the Year” awards, was given some of the highest scores on any game during the Gamecube era and beyond, and still to this day it regularly crops in the Top Ten of many “Games of all Time” lists.

The Metroid franchise has always been popular with the sub group of gamers called Speed Runners. The current quickest completion time for Metroid Prime is 1 hour and 1 minute! The best 100% completion time is 1 hour and 24 seconds! If you’ve played any games of the series before you know that that is an amazing achievement

I could literally talk and write for hours about this game, trilogy and franchise as a whole. Ever since those crazy Super Metroid days I have been in love with this series and even when the series falters (see Metroid: Other M) they can still produce something amazing. Metroid Prime was the first part of the “Prime Trilogy”, followed by Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Prime & Prime 2 were both on the Gamecube with Prime 3 being released on the Wii. In 2009 the whole trilogy was re-released with added wiimote capability on one disc for the Wii however I am aware that some regions have now discontinued this and it was never released in Japan. Personally I’m looking forward to the inevitable HD remake when the Wii U hits in a few years. The thought of Metroid in HD is beyond awesome!

So, if you haven’t played the series before or if you haven’t played it for a while I recommend you do so now. Dust off that Gamecube pad, hunt for that memory card, sit down and be prepared to remember why you love gaming.

Follow me on Twitter