Metroid - The History Metroid Prime is the fifth Metroid game in an acclaimed series that started way back in 1986 on the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System. Samus shone on the system alongside future icons such as Kid Icarus, MegaMan, Simon Belmont(Castlevania), and everyone's favourite plumber - Mario. Here's a breakdown of the previous adventures of Samus, their date of release, and some background information. Metroid (NES, 1986) The game that began the series. On the planet Zebes the evil Mother Brain and her cohorts Kraid and Ridley are gathering the power of the Metroids. Samus travels to Zebes to stop them. At the very end of the adventure the game surprised many by revealing the character Samus, who had just fought off the Space Pirates, was in fact a woman!

Metroid Prime (Nintendo GameCube, 2003) After defeating Mother Brain in her previous outing, Samus tracks down a Space Pirate ship on Tallon IV. There Samus finds strange experiments being conducted with an element known as Phazon, a dangerous and unstable substance. The game is set in all manner of locations, from icy cold caverns to scorching hot caves. For her first outing on the Nintendo Gamecube the gameplay takes a turn from the usual side-scrolling platform adventure and instead takes the form of a First Person Shooter. Players are looking through the eyes of Samus herself as she explores the planet, allowing for some spectacular effects such as lens flare and reflections.

Metroid II: Return of Samus (GameBoy, 1991) Metroid II is set a while after the first game released back in 1986. In her first GameBoy adventure Samus visits the home of the Metroids, SR-388, with a mission to destroy all the Metroids once and for all. However, after defeating the Metroid Queen a baby Metroid hatches and follows Samus believing her to be its mother. Super Metroid (Super Nintendo, 1994) Samus hands the baby Metroid over to the Galactic Federation, but shortly after this the winged Space Pirate Ridley steals it and flees.     A clever touch during this scene at the beginning of the game was that Ridley would drop the Metroid, providing you did enough damage, rather than escaping outright. Unfortunately the cheers would be short-lived, as Ridley would sneakily snatch the Metroid back again during the escape. Samus gives chase to the (now rebuilt) planet Zebes where Ridley, Kraid, and the other Space Pirates are waiting. In the final battle with Mother Brain (in a surprising new form) Samus has her life saved by the baby Metroid, now grown up due to the Space Pirate experiments. In a tear-jerking moment the baby sacrifices its life for its 'mother'. Metroid Fusion (GameBoy Advance, 2002) Set just after Super Metroid, Samus goes with a research team back to SR-388 (the planet of the Metroids). There they discover the X Parasite - a life form that was the food of the race of Metroids. During the game Samus gets infected by the X Parasite, but is saved by a vaccine made from the DNA of the baby Metroid. Unfortunately the X Parasite has created a copy of Samus: SA-X. This enemy is the main foe in Metroid Fusion.