Metroid Prime (creature)


 * This article is about the creature. For the game, see Metroid Prime.

The Metroid Prime is a highly mutated, sentient Metroid which appears in Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption as the main villian or one of the many villians.

History
At an unknown time before Samus Aran was born, a meteor crashed onto Tallon IV, a planet inhabited by the Chozo. It brought with it phazon, a deadly material that kills most who touch it, and mutate those who survive. The local Metroids were drawn to the substance, but one of them was significantly mutated, to become Metroid Prime. Prime became inextricably linked to Phazon, producing it as well as feeding upon it. As it grew stronger and more of a threat, the Chozo of Tallon IV made the Temple, using twelve artifacts to seal the creature they called the Worm in place. But too much Phazon had already settled, killing and corrupting. The Chozo themselves were troubled by the Prime's continually growing strength, because the Cipher they created could only contain so much. The other plight of the Chozo was they were confined to non-corporeal forms, their sanity slowly eroding from the corruption of Phazon everywhere.

Space Pirates, eager to harness the power of Phazon energy, came to the planet in search of the substance. What they found was a world slowly being killed by the radioactive substance, desert slowly claiming more and more of the world. The Space Pirate mining operations also entailed experiments with Phazon, trying to find ways to use it. Despite total failure being the usual result, the Space Pirates slowly began to understand Phazon's properties, and used it in genetic and weapons experiments. But soon, the Space Pirate's most feared enemy, Samus Aran, came to the planet to stop them. In the process, she learned of Metroid Prime, and decided that she must eliminate that threat as well.

Samus's battle is depicted in Prime as the final boss. She must fight the first form of Metroid Prime, its "face", through a series of subrooms in the Phazon Infusion Chamber. Metroid Prime will only be damaged by a beam of same polarity to its eyes. Therefore, when the eyes turn yellow, Samus must use the Power Beam; when they turn purple, the Wave Beam; when white, the Ice Beam; and when red, the Plasma Beam.

After Metroid Prime's first form is defeated, she will come back into the main room and unleash its "core", the final form. Metroid Prime now relies on circular waves of energy to attack. Due to its powerful form, Metroid Prime will become extremely unstable. To keep itself alive, it will periodically drop Phazon from itself to dump out used energy. To damage Metroid Prime, Samus must stand in this puddle and fire rapidly. Pretty soon, Samus will engage Hyper Mode, when she fires blasts of pure Phazon energy. This is the only way to damage Metroid Prime. It can also summon lesser Metroids in this form. It also has a defense mechanism which allows it to switch spectra; Samus must track it with the Combat Visor, X-Ray Visor, and Thermal Visor in each respective spectrum.

The battle ends with Prime being destabilized by the uncontrolled bursts of energy shot through it. Its form degenerates, and as a last-ditch effort, it pulls the Phazon shell off of Samus's Gravity Suit, as well as getting some of Samus' genetic material, and uses the two together to 'grow' itself a more stable form, making the Phazon suit its actual body. Metroid Prime, now Dark Samus, searched through space for a large quantity of Phazon, and found it on the Dark Side of Planet Aether. Prime now seemed entirely fixated on finding sources of Phazon and draining them to power her (since it was now a corrupted form of Samus, grown from the original's DNA, the feminine gender applies) Phazon suit and the suit's weapons, letting her unleash more destruction the more power she had stored. Dark Samus hunted throughout the planet for more Phazon. When the Space Pirates landed and began extracting Phazon, they were mystified at the Hunter's change in appearance and motivation. Before, Samus had sought out and eliminated Pirates on her raids, but now, Samus (really Dark Samus) only killed those who got between her and large amounts of Phazon. Meanwhile, Samus Aran had landed on the planet in search of the Galactic Federation Marine Corps, and after learning from U-Mos the fate of the Luminoth, went to save the planet. The Space Pirate response to learning of there being two Samuses now was along the lines of, "Oh, no, there's two of them now."

Samus first encountered Dark Samus in the Agon Wastes. There, she fought Dark Samus by shooting her with various weapons, although the Power Beam worked best in the first stage and the Charge Beam in the second. Dark Samus's attacks included a Phazon Beam, a Phazon Missile, and Screw Attack. Once defeated, Dark Samus discorporated into a cloud of drift blue sparks.

However, she was not dead. Dark Samus escaped the battle with Samus and went off to regain her lost energy and gather strength. During this time, she appeared before Samus in Torvus Bog, but did nothing but break into maniacal laughter and then disappear. Later, she destroyed the bridge to Sanctuary Fortress solely to inconvenience her hated enemy.

The next time Samus sees her, Prime is gunning down several Pirate Commandos, laughing insanely as she does so. Samus follows her into a tall elevator shaft, and the intense battle continues all the way to the top.

This battle is also depicted in Echoes. To defeat her, Samus must track her with the Dark Visor when she changes spectrums, and shoot her with Super Missiles and other weapons she sees fit. Dark Samus will retaliate with a Boost Ball attack and more Phazon Missiles. Once half her health has been depleted, she will start using Phazon radiation shields that consume enemy fire, even the concussive blasts of Missiles.

But once again, Samus defeated her and acquired the Echo Visor. Now Dark Samus disappeared, apparently to absorb all the Phazon she could find in the Dark World, nearly overloading herself with power in her desire to annihilate her nemesis.

Dark Samus's final encounter with Samus is right after the Emperor Ing battle, in the seven-minute countdown that is given. In this fight, Dark Samus has absorbed massive amounts of Phazon to turn into a skeletal being of massive power. In the first phase of battle, she will unload a massive beam of Phazon energy. Samus must hit her with a Charge Beam or Super Missile right after she lands to damage her.

The second phase of battle is much harder. Dark Samus will go into the center and raise a spherical, nigh-impenetrable shield around herself, then fire Phazon Super Missiles. After those are gone, she will fire small Phazon particles into the air, which can be collected with Samus's Charge Beam and fired back at her as a volley of pure Phazon power. This is the only way to damage her. Then Dark Samus will descend, move around (if Samus shoots her she will engage the Phazon particle blast earlier), then Samus must repeat the process until she is defeated.

With no more power and out of luck, Dark Samus tries one more life-saving attempt. She slowly walks up to Samus and tries to possess her Light Suit - but disintegrates right before contact is made. With few precious seconds left, Samus walks past a bunch of Ing and jumps into a Light Portal just as Dark Aether explodes. Not even Metroid Prime can survive an explosion like that...or can she? In a special cut-scene only granted to those who scaned 100% of all items, a scene shows many Phazon particles collecting and then forming Dark Samus. It is expected that she will appear again in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, by now having made a definite alliance with the Space Pirates, infesting entire planets with Phazon Seeds, an unknown hazard that presumably serves as a source for the creation of Phazon.

Abilities
The Metroid Prime had a large amount of powerful abilities that made it an extremely difficult opponent for its various adversaries. In its actual form, the Metroid Prime harnassed circular waves of energy to destroy its opponents. However, while in this form, the Metroid Prime was unstable, and thus regularly had to dump phazon energy out of its body to survive, which is why it formed an exoskeleton around itself.

With its exoskeleton around it, the Metroid Prime could use energy blasts similar to Samus' Power Beam variations to damage its enemy. Whether it was actually copying Samus or could do this naturally is unknown. However, at this point, the Metroid Prime could be damaged by an opposite-polarity beam.

As Dark Samus, the creature utilized many abilities similar to Samus, in more powerful forms. It could fire phazon beams at enemies, and use phazon-charged Super Missiles to blast opponents into bits. She could also do a phazon Screw Attack, phazon Boost Ball, and phazon shields in this form. However, when Dark Samus consumed too much phazon, she gained the disadvantages she had in her previous form: phazon could overload her, resulting in very powerful phazon attacks to discharge phazon from her body, including a pure beam of concentrated phazon.

The Metroid Prime also has a very powerful essence. It can survive in the vastness of space, travel through it, and live through the explosions of planets, even dimensions. This is how it has constantly been able to regenerate itself after defeat and fly to another planet for phazon absorbtion.