I've long suspected that Super Metroid is my favorite--and I think this logic applies for many other video game series--because it's not only the first one that I played, but the first one that I beat. I find myself nodding along to every criticism of the game, but there is just something special about that first play through. That incredible sense of simultaneous delight, fear, wonder, confusion, and suspense is still a really vivid memory for me two decades later.
Believe it or not, I have never played any of the Primes.
Totally understood. I feel that way about the first Prime: I'm slightly embarrassed to say it was the first Metroid game I really played (the original Metroid was just too much for little kid me). But I played it to full completion; it's possibly one of the first things I ever really finished in my life up to that point. I played MP at a friend's house, a couple hours at a time, utterly losing myself in the graphical beauty of the game (dude you can see her gun hand's gesture in X-ray mode!) and the calm exploration music. It was soothing, and I appreciated it a lot. The friend was an older disabled gentleman who kept his home open for the neighborhood kids to have a safe place to hang out; I knew him from church and wasn't a part of any real social group, but he thought I might enjoy it. And so I rode my bike over and played and left in the cool evening. Often he'd be tidying up his Animal Crossing dailies before or after.
I wish I was as eloquent as the OP in describing the experience, since I would love to have that feeling again. Oh well.
The circumstances of a good game well played can burn in and amplify the experience. So I consider myself lucky, since quite few games feel that much deeper given the state of my life while playing them. I can see and agree with all sorts of flaws in the games, but they'll remain special simply because at the time, they were.
> I can see and agree with all sorts of flaws in the games, but they'll remain special simply because at the time, they were.
I don't really have much to add to that, except that this is a really succinct way of describing, I think, what you, the author, and I are trying to say.
I don't own a Wii U and I don't unfortunately have any plans to get one. That sale is popping up all over the Internet though, so I guess this is the first time it's been offered on the Wii U as a bundle?
Metroid Prime Trilogy had a limited run and this is the first time it's been offered digitally. It's also one of the first three Wii games released on the Wii U that don't require you to go into Wii Mode first to play. (basically, booting up a virtual Wii inside of which you launch your game)
Believe it or not, I have never played any of the Primes.