Nintendo Switch: 15 GameCube Games That Must Be On Virtual Console

Where Super Mario Sunshine had been received by a starving fanbase and subsequently mauled by its most hardcore Nintendo fans, conversely Metroid Prime came out as an unrecognizable game in a different genre and was instead critically acclaimed.

It took all the key ingredients for a Metroid game: puzzle solving, exploration, backtracking with new powerups and vitally, isolation, and threw them into glorious 3D. The genius wasn’t just in the visual design where players were inside Samus’ visor; the genius also lay in the lock-on mechanic that meant it wasn’t a play-by-numbers dual analogue shooter, it was more targeted and focused. The fact it looked downright gorgeous and better than other heavy hitting first-person shooters of the era also won points in its favour.

Boss fights were epic, the scanning mechanic really fleshed out the lore of the Chozo and the range of environments really made it feel you were trekking across an entire planet. The morph ball also transitioned beautifully into 3D and didn’t become an overly difficult or finicky gameplay mechanic. Kudos to Retro Studios indeed.

In fairness, Metroid also had the extra advantage that those who hated the transition to 3D had 2D titles on the Gameboy Advance like Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission to tide them over. All the Gameboy Advance Mario games were ports of the original NES and SNES games until the Nintendo DS shook everything up with New Super Mario Bros.

And pro-tip: it’s not a first-person shooter. It’s a first-person adventure, OK?