If you’re a fan of the Metroid Prime series, then you may have been looking forward to new content to get your hands on while you’re waiting for the latest entry. Although this may not be in the form of a game, the Metroid Prime 1-3: A Visual Retrospective book contains a wealth of high-quality art and sketches from the series. What you can look forward to with this is a foreword from the producer, Kensuke Tanabe, a ton of producer notes and insights into the making of such a beloved franchise within the franchise.
A Stellar Art Book
Straight away, before you even open up this book, you’ll notice extreme qualities involved when putting it together. The cover alone is a sleek and simple design, with a black cover and a metallic Samus stencil on full display. Not only that, but the pages showing off all the art are sturdy and well-made. What you get is a book with a lot of weight to it, not just physically, but also with everything contained within its pages.
A brief introduction from Retro Studios itself accompanies each game in the series. Each game has its own section of the book, with each of these being broken down to cover Samus, Bosses, Enemies and Environments. There has been a ton of care involved with getting all the detailed information together for this book, and that’s what makes this more than just a normal art book you’d find for any other game on the shelf. It feels as though this has been put together with the utmost appreciation and respect for Retro Studios and the Metroid Prime series.
Each page within this book has an accompanying piece of text on every page. This can be anywhere from the lore of Logbooks that Samus finds during her travels, to producer or studio notes that give further depth and feedback into the making of specific portions of the game. Art accompanies every single page, and it’s all amazing, with no page being dull to look at while reading the notes left for us on every page. A retrospective on an instant classic that also ends up being a work of art in itself.
More Than Art
Like previously stated, this book contains insights into the development of the Metroid Prime series. With each introduction of the games, you’ll gain awesome information in regard to how the process had even began. For example, the Metroid Prime Remaster had begun development, and both Nintendo and Retro Games had wanted the game to look how you remembered it. When looking back on games, we tend to add in details, with the game looking so much better visually in our memories. It’s awesome to see how they prioritized something so simple to deliver a remaster for fans that satisfied everyone visually while bringing the gameplay up to the standards of today.
It feels as though this has been put together with the utmost appreciation and respect for Retro Studios and the Metroid Prime series.
Giving readers extra information about their favorite games isn’t necessary by any means, especially for a book showcasing the art and lore of the series, but it is most certainly welcome. Pages containing enemies will give you their lore snippets that Samus finds throughout her travels, as well as some notes from the producer. Finding out that enemies need to reflect their abilities and movsets posed a challenge early on in development is something which is fun to find out. Retro Studios went through several renditions of enemies, sometimes just to make sure that this was reflected in the enemies in this awesome collaboration of games.
You’ll also find out that those key enemies, such as the Metroid Prime itself, were mostly up to Retro Studios themselves. Nintendo would provide feedback on what the fight should be, but it was ultimately something that the developer would take into their own hands and craft themselves. This left them the freedom to create an amazing fight for players, while still delivering a product that Nintendo was happy with. These pieces of information and the behind-the-scenes view of the games are a joy to read through. Each page has only a small section of these notes, and there are pages that only showcase the art, but they all add up to a special display of how much work has truly been put into the series by everyone involved.
Metroid Prime 1-3: A Visual Retrospective reminds us all of how truly special the series is and can be. Retro Studios clearly put a ton of work into it and had a lot of ideas on where they wanted to go with each game. Each piece of text provided and every bit of art shows why this is the studio destined to make the series. There was so much hard work and dedication put into it that it shines brightly. While this isn’t the newest game in the series, you do get a fantastic little treat that tides you over until the release of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. It does provide more content than you’d expect when you look through the pages, and it’s more than worth it to take a gander and add it to your collection of game memorabilia.
