In the run up to the 20th anniversary of Metroid Prime's release, I've been watching and rewatching playthroughs on Youtube. My controllers have been scattered, my discs are in the loft, and this is as close as I can get to this vivid, potent, unsettling classic. Every video, there's always a shock right near the start: the GameCube logo. It's weird. I know that this shouldn't surprise me - I know that I'm watching these videos in part because this game is 20 years old. But when I see the GameCube logo, I always think, really? Back then?
Is Metroid Prime timeless? I'd put it slightly differently - it has an enduring sheen of recent-ness. Is that the same thing? Anyway: I watch the Morph Ball rushing through a ruined space station, the gold light on its equator lingering on the screen like burn-in, and I think: cor, those graphics are a bit special. I see the starting screen, with its bubbling microscopic horrors and I wonder if any new games will steal this unsettling method of introduction and build on it.
And this is the thing about Metroid Prime: I don't have one singular memory of it, but dozens, maybe hundreds of little memories. The way the screen pauses when you scan part of the landscape. The brilliant - never beaten - 3D map, that wriggles around in the top right of the screen when you walk and makes the environment seem alive. Specific enemies, bosses, rooms: this is a game of details, of pieces. It's no wonder that the best way to celebrate this anniversary is by reading through the tweeted memories of one of its designers, talking about why Morph Ball tunnels exist, or where the game's static came from. (It's also worth remembering, of course, that the game is the result of pretty awful crunch.)