I've been wondering for a while now, why Nintendo of America and Europe didn't announce Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes for the western "New Play Control!" series. But that was apparently for a very good reason. They decided to bundle those games together with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on ONE single disc, titled "Metroid Prime Trilogy".
Sounds awesome. The games will be started from a hub, that lists all three games and the multiplayer mode seperately. Metroid Prime and Echoes both now use the awesome controls of Corruption including the Spring Ball ability, which should make getting certain items much easier, both now have 16:9 support and thus better visuals and the loading times will be much faster (which means, doors open faster). Also, both games now use Corruption's credit/voucher system for unlocking artwork and other extras. This will be used to unlock the Fusion Suit instead of the GameBoy Advance connection (but the playable version of Metroid will get cut out, since they want to sell the Virtual Console version). And very handy will be a global options menu, where you can set the controls and other options for all three games at the same time. Besides that nothing has changed, which also means, nothing else got cut out. The mutliplayer mode of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes will still be there, though it will only support local 4 player splitscreen and not online multiplayer via Wi-Fi. But that's better than nothing. Also, the difficulty stays the same (except for some ball jumping puzzles obviously). The bad news is, there won't be any new content. No new multiplayer levels or anything.
I'm really looking foward to this, the Metroid Prime games were my favorite games on the GameCube and Corruption's strenght always lied in the awesome and well implemented controls. So, both combined definitely is something worth getting and will raise the enjoyment of the first two games substantially. I was pretty pissed, when Nintendo didn't announce Metroid Prime 1 and 2 for the "New Play Control!" series on the western market, while Japan already got their copy of Metroid Prime. But this definitely settles it. Buying one game will also be cheaper than buying two "New Play Control!"-games, plus you also get a copy of Corruption, which still is a full price game. So, this is pretty much the best deal since "Super Mario Allstars" on the SNES.
It will be released in North America on 24th August and hopefully in Europe soon after. Update: In Europe it's dated for September 4th.
Source: Kotaku.com
Additional info:
Japanese MP2 Echoes site
IGN preview
This is absolutely teriffic! I figured they'd do something like that eventually. I love metroid, it's one of the best yet iconic thing that has ever happened to Nintendo (in my opinion) You have mario, kind of like the pikachu of mushroom kingdom with a far lighter genre, and then you have metroid, a nintendo game of action and deep storyline. I've followed them all and posted a blog of my very own dedicating it to Samus in a way, summarizing the storyline in the true order and such. But i will wait patiently for this to arrive. My wallet's prepared to spend lol
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