Phazon Suit

The Phazon Suit is an upgrade to the Power Suit from Metroid Prime. While other suit upgrades involve the incorporation of advanced technological hardware, the Phazon Suit is a result of the Power Suit being corrupted by an overload of pure Phazon upon defeating the Omega Pirate.

In Metroid Prime
After Samus defeated the Omega Pirate, it collapsed on top of her, bathing her in Phazon. Viral corruption from this event created the Phazon Suit. This suit has a faint aura emanating from it, and this suit's color scheme is now shades of black, crimson, and silver, as opposed to the usual scheme of red, yellow, and orange. The suit provides 55% damage reduction, the greatest level of defensive shielding in Metroid Prime. It also makes Samus immune to the radiation from blue Phazon (although it does not protect her from the much deadlier Red Phazon found in the Impact Crater), and allows her to channel pure Phazon into the Phazon Beam, an ability that would prove vital in defeating Metroid Prime.

After defeating Metroid Prime, it absorbs the Phazon from Samus's suit (leaving Samus with the Gravity Suit), and it manifests itself as Dark Samus. The hand that appears at the end of the game, Dark Samus's, is colored similarly to the hand of the Phazon Suit. The Phazon Suit is then presumably reborn as the suit Dark Samus wears, but is never regained by the real Samus, even after Dark Samus's defeat, so it was most likely destroyed with her.

Mike Sneath interview
"The look of the Phazon suit was just one of those things that happened because we were running out of time. One thing I became known for our team was that I could create cool looking shaders or surfaces that just looked interesting. We didn't have time to concept or model a new suit for Samus so Todd Keller came to me and said, "make a cool looking suit by messing with the shaders and textures."

"So the Phazon suit came about because of time constraints but sometimes the most creative ideas just happen when you're not given the time to over think it. I think I only worked on the phazon suit idea for a couple of days at the most."



Trivia

 * In the GCN version, the cutscene showed Samus being corrupted, before she assumed a pose where she aimed her Arm Cannon to the right. However, this scene was altered in PAL and Wii versions of the game, as she simply stands normally before clenching her fist.
 * When four players face off in Metroid Prime Hunters, all using Samus at the same time, the fourth player’s color scheme strongly resembles the Phazon Suit.
 * If Samus had retained the Phazon Suit she could have theoretically been able to withstand the atmospheres of Dark Aether and Phaaze, since the former's corrosion is a result of Phazon and the latter is known to have a high Phazon content. It is also possible that she wouldn't have become corrupted or almost corrupted due to the suit's protection.
 * This is the only item that is not gained from a capsule left behind, but rather automatically acquired after defeating a boss.
 * The Phazon Suit does not get included in the game's item percentage until all other 99 items are obtained.
 * The PED Suit appears to be a more "upgraded" and refined version of the Phazon Suit, as Samus can absorb Phazon to replenish energy, and enter Hyper Mode at any time to use the radioactive energy to blast away enemies; the Phazon Suit can only withstand Phazon and only use the Phazon Beam when in direct contact with pools of pure Phazon. However, the PED Suit can be corrupted and work against the wearer, whereas the Phazon Suit seems to be invulnerable to corruption. There are types of Phazon which can damage the Phazon Suit, however.
 * The Omega Pirate could absorb Phazon to restore its energy, an ability not featured in the Phazon Suit. This ability is, however, also featured in the PED Suit, although it only seems to work with Liquid Phazon. On the other hand, there were no large forms of Solid Phazon encountered within Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
 * This suit may contain strands of Space Pirate DNA, as the Power Suit "absorbed" the Phazon particles of the Omega Pirate. However, the Logbook makes no mention of this.
 * When the Fusion Suit extra is enabled in Prime, the Phazon Suit takes the color scheme of the Omega Suit.
 * If Samus was to acquire the Phazon Suit before the Gravity Suit by Sequence Breaking, Samus will appear to obtain the Gravity Suit from the Omega Pirate during the cutscene after the boss fight. Although after the cutscene, the game will show Samus having the Phazon Suit as normal. The same applies to the Fusion Suit.