With Metroid Prime 4 on the way, we finally have a visual retrospective of the first three Metroid Prime games, and it is both amazing and very thorough.
Boring stats stuff first, this is a hardback book consisting of 212 pages, featuring the concept artwork from the first three Metroid Prime games that were released on the GameCube and Wii. It even features the updated concept art used for Metroid Prime Remastered on the Switch.
The book also features a foreword and numerous notes from Nintendo producer Kensuke Tanabe, giving context to how the games came about.
There are also lots of comments from Retro Studios and other text boxes explaining certain pieces of artwork.
As for the artwork itself, it’s both numerous and very nicely detailed in terms of the presentation. You can really feel Retro Studio getting to grips with Metroid as each game progresses, and the Prime games finding their own artistic feet with each release.
The initial designs for the first Prime are also particularly noteworthy in just how imaginatively alien they are.
You need to understand that when the first Prime and Metroid Fusion were released in 2002, we hadn’t had a proper Metroid game in a decade.
There was a great deal of well-founded skepticism that a US company like Retro Studios could pull off a full-blown 3D Metroid game, so to see what they were really working off in terms of concept art at the time is genuinely fascinating.
Obviously, the GameCube couldn’t quite reach the level of intricacy and strangeness that Retro Studios managed in the concept art, but they did get awfully close, especially for the second Prime game, Echoes.
As I said at the start, this is a thorough collection of Metroid Prime concept artwork, and for that, as a long-time fan of the Metroid series, I am genuinely grateful. However, it would have been nice if each art piece had received an appropriate credit and comments from the original artists.
Treating all of this artwork as some kind of studio-wide monolithic undertaking is strange considering how much granularity in terms of detail is shown elsewhere.
Honestly, why we can’t see artists have their day in the sun after al these years is somewhat beyond me.
In any case, to all the artists that worked on the first three Metroid Prime games, you’re work is astonishing, and thank you for all your readily apparent hard work and clear talent.
Overall, if you are a fan of the first three Metroid Prime games, then this book is a must-buy. It’s wonderfully laid out and is very comprehensive in terms of all the concept art available. If you love the Prime games as much as I do, you will not be disappointed with what this wonderful art book has to offer.
Metroid Prime 1–3: A Visual Retrospective is available in hardback via Amazon for $46.59.
Disclosure: Nintendo sent me this book for the purposes of this review.
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