Special Mission

The Special Mission is a flash game that was made available on the Japanese Metroid Prime 3: Corruption website in promotion of the game. The home page of the website is navigated through a first-person perspective similar to that in the game, with the mouse being used to control Samus Aran similar to the in-game Wii Remote motion controls. Clicking the left button of the mouse causes Samus to shoot. The purpose of the Special Mission is to collect fifteen Bonus Credits (five each in Red, Yellow and Blue) hidden around the website, which reveal access codes that unlock desktop wallpapers.

The website and game are still available as of November 2018 and can be found here.

Gameplay
The game's home page is set in a corridor on the G.F.S. Olympus, with various terminals leading to traditional sections of the site explaining the game's story, controls, characters and locations, among other things. The Energy Meter (with a full Energy Tank), Radar and the Missile Counter with ten Missiles are present on the game's Heads-Up Display, but Missiles cannot be used, and the Radar does not pick up enemies. A Crawltank, "Jolly Roger" Drone and several Pirate Troopers can be encountered and killed on the home page, with the drone based on its early model (seen in the 2006 prototype of Corruption).

Each time a Credit is collected, a small window will appear with a number and instructions of where that number fits into a five digit Access Code, which is then entered into a Key Code terminal to unlock wallpapers and other content. There are two groups, or "sides" of each type of credit, Side A and Side B. Completing Side A allows the player to make Side B credits available for collection. Collecting all of these credits will simply reset the Side A credits, allowing them to be collected again.

On the home page, the MP3 Title Music or SkyTown themes can be heard playing, but there are otherwise no sound effects. An option at the bottom of the screen allows the sound to be turned off, if desired. A cookie is placed on the player's browser to allow them to retain any Credits they have collected if they close the game and return to it; removing the cookie, of course, will erase progress.

Flash must be enabled on the user's browser in order to access the game; without it, the individual pages will be displayed in HTML and the home page will be inaccessible.



Story and World
The Story section of the website briefly touches on the game's backstory, including the corruption virus being introduced into the Aurora Unit network and the disappearance of the G.F.S. Valhalla. It then leads into the first hour of the game, where Samus and other Bounty Hunters are called to the Olympus, and then sent down to Norion to repel a Space Pirate attack, where they encounter Dark Samus. This section of the website calls the G.F.S. Olympus the Galactic Federation Flagship Olympus.

The World section touches on some of the locations Samus will visit in the game: the Olympus, Norion, Bryyo and Elysia. For spoiler reasons, it does not mention the Valhalla, Pirate Homeworld, Leviathan Battleship or Phaaze. It refers to Fuel Gel as "Bryyo Gel", and suggests that Zebes is the homeworld of the Chozo.

Certain names in the body of the texts are highlighted in green. These words can be clicked on to produce an in-browser popup with more details on the subject, such as Aether, the Galactic Federation, Space Pirates, Bounty Hunters and Dark Samus (in the Story section), and "Bryyo Gel", the Chozo and Elysians (in the World section). According to the latter, Dark Samus was born from a combination of the Metroid Prime's cells with Samus's matrix, and she uses Phazon energy as a life source.

Samus Aran's Appearance Fanfare and the Darkness and Space Pirates themes play in a short video on the minihub page linking the Story and World pages. As no Japanese voice actors were hired for the game, the original English dialogue of Fleet Admiral Castor Dane can be heard with Japanese subtitles.

Action
The Action section discusses the game's controls, and includes an explanation of a first-person adventure game. It includes three videos, or "Actions" demonstrating the motion controls. Action 1 demonstrates aiming around, Action 2 demonstrates aiming and shooting, and Action 3 demonstrates Context-Sensitive Mode. Norion's theme plays during the Action 1 video, Gandrayda's theme plays during the Action 2 video, while an unrecognized theme plays during Action 3. The G.F.S. Olympus theme plays in all of the aiming calibration videos. A short video on the Action minihub page features gameplay from the Olympus segment of Corruption; MP3 Title Music plays throughout the video.

Character
This section is based on the Logbook, with a video replacing the entry on the minihub page. This video features the ingame cutscenes of Samus stepping onto the Olympus, Rundas, Ghor and Gandrayda encountering Samus on Norion, and Dark Samus reviving herself aboard the Colossus. Each character's name is flashed (in Japanese) on the bottom right corner when they appear. Rundas' battle theme is heard during the video.

Biographies of Samus, Dark Samus, Rundas, Ghor, Gandrayda, the Federation Marines and Space Pirates are provided here in the style of the Logbook in Corruption. The character's render is placed in the middle of the page, with their description below. The scan images on the left and right that are in Corruption are replaced with a "Character Selection" chart on the right, and a smaller copy of the character render with their affiliation (either Bounty Hunter or Others). The only highlighted words are Chozo (Samus) and Phazon (Samus and Dark Samus).

Ability
This section's minihub page features a video of gameplay that demonstrates the Grapple Swing, Morph Ball, Scan Visor and Screw Attack power-ups, and using Zipline Cables. Worthy of note is that Samus appears to collide with a Zipline Gate, but seems to pass through it, whereas in Corruption she would fall off the Zipline and respawn where she began ziplining. The Bryyo theme plays during the video.

Similar to the Inventory, items are split here into categories: Beams and Missiles, Visors, Morph Ball and Grapple. Each power-up includes a description and a short clip of the item in use.

Hypermode
This section's minihub page video includes footage of the growing Phazon within an unspecified organ of Samus's body, Samus entering Hypermode and her two Phazon Overloads in the Corrupted Pool and Phaaze Landing Site. The section discusses the Phazon Enhancement Device used by PED Marines, Samus's PED Suit, Terminal Corruption and strategic use of Corrupted Hypermode to remain in that powered state until the PED Auto Vent kicks in. The word PED Suit is highlighted.

Credits and Codes

 * Red Credits (Side A)
 * The first can be found on the Bryyo page in World, to the right of Bryyo's description.
 * The second can be found on the Action minihub page.
 * The third can be found on the Samus biography page, to the right of her render.
 * The fourth can be found on the Space Pirate biography page, in the left side panel with the smaller render of the Pirate.
 * The fifth can be found on the Grapple Lasso page in Ability, beside the video player.

The code hints read: "Second number from left is 8, furthest right is 4, second from right is 5, furthest left is 6 and middle number is 9". This forms 68954, and unlocks a wallpaper based on the game’s Western boxart.


 * Red Credits (Side B)
 * The first can be found on the homepage, by shooting a terminal with two screens that flash at intermittent rates. Shooting them will cause a panel below the screens to open and reveal the Credit.
 * The second can be found on the Stage minihub page, beside the video.
 * The third can be found in the Ability section, by clicking on the green word (Phazite) of the Nova Beam’s page; it will be in the pop-up window.
 * The fourth can be found on the third page of the Hypermode section, inside the Radar.

Strangely, there is no fifth credit. The code can be discovered through brute force methods using the four numbers available to the player: 25479.


 * Yellow Credits (Side A)
 * The first can be found by moving to the right of the terminals on the home page, and shooting the Galactic Federation Crate, then shooting the Crawltank.
 * The second can be found by moving to the left of the terminals and shooting the larger Crate beside a Galactic Federation Blue Door, then shooting a Pirate Trooper.
 * The third can be found on the Story and World hub, above the video and to the right of the Energy Meter.
 * The fourth can be found in Ability on the X-Ray Visor page, on the far right next to the Missile Counter.
 * The fifth can be found in Hypermode when clicking on the green "PED Suit" words, inside the description box.

The code hints read: "If you double the second from the left number you'll get the right-most number, the number to the left of 2 is 8, the middle is 3, the number to the left of 1 is 7 and the 4th from the right is 1." This forms 71382, and unlocks a wallpaper based on the game’s Japanese boxart.


 * Yellow Credits (Side B)
 * The first credit can be found in front of the Galactic Federation Door to the left of the terminals. Shooting a red wall-mounted light to the top right of the door will release a Pirate Trooper. Killing them will release this credit.
 * The second is hidden behind the barricade where the "Jolly Roger" Drone is found, in between the bars.
 * The third is included on the "Action 1" video page, under the description.
 * The fourth can be found in the pop-up window on the Bryyo page that opens when clicking on the words "Bryyo Gel" that are highlighted in green.
 * The fifth can be found on the Grapple Lasso’s page in the Ability section.

The code hints read: "The number next to 5 is 9, subtract one number from 9 to get the rightmost number, the number between 9 and 1 is 6, the number on the far left is 5 and the second number from the right is 1." This forms 59618.


 * Blue Credits (Side A)
 * The first can be found on the home page, by shooting the only button on the terminals that flashes red. The Targeting Reticule will turn red when it hovers over this button.
 * The second can be found by moving to the left of the home page terminals, and shooting the "Jolly Roger" Drone behind the barricade.
 * The third can be found when clicking on the first green-highlighted word (Aether) in Story.
 * The fourth can be found on the Hypermode minihub page, to the right of the video player.
 * The fifth can be found in Ability on the Spider Ball page, inside the Radar on the top left corner of the screen.

The code hints read: "Add the left most number and the second number from the left to get the second from the right number, the left most number is 4, if you double the second number from the left you will get the left most number, the right most number is the fourth number from the left divided in half, and the number to the right of 2 is 7." This forms 42763, and unlocks a wallpaper based on a render of Samus for the game.


 * Blue Credits (Side B)
 * The first can be found by shooting the red button above the "Special Mission" tab on the home page.
 * The second can be found in Action, in the pop-up window for the second calibration video.
 * The third can be found beside Dark Samus on her biography page, under Character.
 * The fourth can be found beside Ghor on his biography page, also under Character.
 * The fifth can be found in the Hypermode section, on the first page describing the Phazon Enhancement Device, beside the Energy Meter.

The code hints read: "The number in the center is a number obtained by halving the second number from the right, draw the middle number from the leftmost digit to make it the rightmost number, the third number from the right is 2, the number on the right is 6, and the number to the right of 8 is 3." This forms 83246.

Trivia

 * The Bounty Hunter description mentions that they are hired by the Federation to complete missions in exchange for bounties. This is inconsistent with Nintendo's apparent definition of a Bounty Hunter, which is more in line with that of a hired gun or mercenary, which they made clear when rejecting Retro Studios' original pitch for Metroid Prime 3 of a Bounty Hunting mission-based game.
 * The English Metroid Prime: Federation Force website also includes clickable icons scattered around the site, called The Federation Files.
 * Special Mission is also the name of one of the two DLC Metroid quests in Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.