Dark Echo

For other uses, see Dark Echo (Disambiguation).

Two Dark Echoes appear alongside the AU in a Diorama.

A Dark Echo is a copy of Dark Samus created during her battle with Samus on Phaaze. Dark Echoes are created by 'splitting' from Dark Samus (much a cell undergoing mitosis), and behaving in a near identical manner to the real Dark Samus. They possess a simple Phazon-based copy of the Power Beam, along with some of Dark Samus's other moves, and a far smaller supply of health than Dark Samus, thus they can be destroyed easily. A second type of Echo also appears during Samus' battle against Aurora Unit 313. This type is an somewhat etheral copy projected from the eye of Aurora, and are significantly weaker.

Description

One of their purposes is to act as decoys to distract Samus as Dark Samus absorbs Phaaze's energy to replenish her own in the final battle between the two, and to that effect, they can create the illusion of draining energy as well. Dark Samus will use one at first, but later can create two after taking enough damage. Their other purposes is to aid Dark Samus in amplifying some of her attacks by recombining with her.

Dark Samus can also perform another move with the Echoes, in which she and the Echoes will levitate a few inches off the ground and spin around the room rapidly, making them difficult to hit until the move ends and causing damage when hit by them. Another attack they can create together is a large, spinning, double Plasma Beam shot from the center of the room in opposite directions (this is performed only with one Echo at a time). If the Echoes fuse back into the original, Dark Samus will gain a purple aura that makes her invulnerable to attacks, along with one or two spinning lights (depending on the amount of Echoes she fused with).

If after an amount of time, the real Dark Samus has taken significant damage, both she and the Echoes will perform an energy-recovery move; however, if the Samus acts fast enough, the Echoes can be destroyed and the real Dark Samus can be damaged before recovering all her health. Ways in which to distinguish between Dark Samus and her Echoes are by switching Visors, as both the X-Ray Visor and the Scan Visor can differentiate them from the true Dark Samus. Visually, Echoes also have black visors, while the real Dark Samus has a bright blue visor. Destroying the Echoes will reveal powerups, such as Anti-Phazon Units.

Even weaker Dark Echoes are generated by Dark Samus when she is controlling the Aurora Unit 313. The Aurora goes into an immobile state when these Echoes are produced, possibly to concentrate solely on their control. They will either shoot at Samus or, after turning into their Morph Ball forms, use the Boost Ball ability to speed across the arena in a zig-zag pattern in an attempt to impact her. They are fairly easy to dodge and subsequently, easy to kill for powerups. After some time, these Echoes will vanish into thin air.

Scan

"Morphology: Dark Echo. Facsimile created by Dark Samus. Susceptible to Hypermode attacks."

Trivia

• They are presumably named after the game Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, which preceded Corruption. The New Play Control! variant of said game is "New Play Control! Metroid Prime 2: Dark Echoes".
• If a Dark Echo is near Dark Samus and is destroyed, Dark Samus herself will take additional damage from the impending explosion.
• The second type of Dark Echoes also appear in a Diorama along with AU 313, in the game's Extras menu.
• The explosion and sound effect when Dark Echoes die is similar to the way Metroids die in Metroid Prime, which suggests that they are Metroid-based copies spawned by Dark Samus identical to the way the Metroid Prime could spawn Metroids.
• Interestingly, Dark Echoes are never shown to physically split from Dark Samus. Dark Samus somehow duplicates herself seamlessly while cartwheeling, with Dark Samus and the Echoes going in different directions to further confuse the real Samus. This somewhat subtle split makes it nigh on impossible to distinguish which one is the real Dark Samus and which is fake at first, until closer inspection.
• When scanned, the pictures for the scan are glitched red versions of Dark Samus's images, suggesting that their similar nature to Dark Samus made the Scan Visor malfunction.
• Shortly before its "death", Metroid Prime also seemed to split into several copies of itself, although this is probably due to the instability it was undergoing at the time and was not actually a combat tactic.