Just in case you didn’t get it from the title, Metroid Prime Trilogy combines the GameCube and Wii’s best-selling Metroid games – Prime, Prime 2: Echoes and Prime 3: Corruption – on one disc. But this release isn’t just a quick cash-in. A number of upgrades – visual and control-wise – have been included to bring older fans back to the Prime games, while giving newer fans enough to be excited about once the pack is released on August 24.

Above: A screenshot of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption

As soon as Trilogy is launched from the Wii menu, a brief cinematic intro (newly designed by Retro Studios, the original Prime devs) brings you to a hub. This hub enables you to choose whichever of the three games you want to jump into right away. A nifty touch lets you have three save slots for Trilogy, wherein each slot allows for a save from each of the three games. What’s cool is that you don’t have to play the games in any order. You can jump back and forth between the three games as you see fit.

Once you choose the game you want, another brief CG scene of Samus occurs. These are game-specific and we’re told will look different depending on what suit Samus is wearing at that point in your game. Once we launched into the original Prime, we were delighted at the modest upgrades. 

Above: Dark Samus from Metroid Prime 2: Echoes

The first welcome addition is that all three games now run in 16:9 widescreen (already a feature for Part 3, whereas the first two games originally ran in progressive scan). While the graphics do appear straight from 2002, they still hold up against many of the Wii’s offerings. What helps is that the visuals are slightly touched up, with added bloom lighting and motion blur. As the dev ran through the initial hallways in Prime, we immediately noticed how quickly the rooms loaded. If you recall, you’d shoot a door in Prime and wait briefly before it popped open. Not so anymore. Another plus? Scanning objects takes far less time.