Appearing in the WiiWare section of the Wii Shop Channel, downloading the free preview will cost you 70 blocks of your system memory. Once downloaded, it appears on the Wii Menu as a separate channel. Starting the preview channel takes you into a Metroid Prime-themed menu that displays four movies entitled Corruption (a general trailer for the game), Bridge Fight (a movie of a bridge battle between Samus and Space Pirates that has been playable at past E3s), Aurora, and Spider Ball (both greyed-out for the time being). A flashing message at the bottom of the screen promises more movies on August 13th, so one or both of these movies will surely be enabled at that time.
The movies don't reveal much that we haven't already seen, but the Corruption trailer does have a few new tidbits. The identities of several new bounty hunters are revealed. They are Rundas (a smaller, agile-looking silver hunter), Gandrayda (a female hunter in dark pink body armor, seen helping Samus in several cutscenes), and Ghor (a large hunter with a definite "mecha" look, who may be Gandrayda's friend or partner based on the amount of times they appear together). These hunters appear in several cutscenes, so they undoubtedly play a large role in Corruption's plot.
Various shots show Samus battling Space Pirates, her boss encounter with Meta Ridley, and another boss battle against a giant named Mogenar. There are several clips of Samus in her "corrupted" form, as well as several cutscenes of her ship in action. Longtime fans of the series will be pleased to find that Samus' Screw Attack is fully intact. The trailer closes with a giant tentacled monster (that looks to be half-creature, half-asteroid) menacingly floating through space towards a planet's surface. Mother Brain? We can only speculate.
In addition to the movies, the Metroid Prime 3 Preview also contains a small mini-game. The movie view can be minimized, at which point users can hold down the A button to "paint" in tiles comprising an image of Samus underneath. Uncover enough tiles and a "Reveal" button activates in the top-right of the screen, allowing you to display the entire image. There are two images so far, with more surely to come.
The Preview's help function also points users to www.metroid.com, which has finally been updated to include a reference to Metroid Prime 3. There is no extra content on the website; rather, Nintendo has chosen to instruct players to download the Preview to their Wii.
This downloadable content marks the beginning of what Nintendo is calling a "month of Metroid" on its online service. The original Metroid will be available as a Virtual Console download on August 13th, and the highly-anticipated Super Metroid will become available August 20th. This all culminates in the release of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on August 27th.
Stay tuned to Nintendo World Report as more Metroid Prime 3 information becomes available.
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Originally posted by: UERD
Is this why my Wii blue light of evil was flashing this morning? (I got the firmware upgrade already.)
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Originally posted by: BwrJim!
A few things to remember.
(1) not everyone is downloading games
(2) its a box for EVERYONE, even people who are not so adept at FOLDERS.
(3) you can re-download games
On my side, I only have 9 games downloaded and really from all my friends, they really are just COLLECTING the roms and not playing them that much (They might not realize it but they are). Myself, out of the 9 downloaded, I only wanted 7 of them. Sure I want tons others but until I have the time to play them, I just cant justify that extra cost. I am a hardcore, but I am also over 30 with a family. So just remember, not everyone is filling up their channels.
Thanks for your time,
Jim
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Originally posted by: BwrJim!
A few things to remember.
(1) not everyone is downloading games
(2) its a box for EVERYONE, even people who are not so adept at FOLDERS.
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(3) you can re-download games
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Originally posted by: Shorty McNostril
Where is the WiiWare section of the shop. I just had a look and I can't find it. Is it anything to do with being a PAL system?
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Originally posted by: Ceric
I think Nintendo didn't fully think about all the angles of their scheme. In actuality most of what is offered in the MP preview channel could have been relegated to one channel with multiple game areas. The channel could show whichever one Nintendo is currently wanting to promote or even just be a part of the shopping channel. We aren't going to ever see demos.
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Originally posted by: BwrJim!
Oh I'm not dismissing their faults here, just simply trying to justify their decisions. After all, the memory in the Wii can only be written to so many times before they start getting errors right? Until they can find a way to feel safe about piracy, this may be a little ways off. Piracy will always be here, but you can bet that they will make it damn hard before they offer such functionality.
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Originally posted by: Silks
That's what I'm questioning - if they're worried about piracy, why can't they just encrypt the VC data when it gets written to the SD card? For example, encode it with some sort of 128-bit hash based on the console's MAC address, such that it can only be decoded by a Wii with that same MAC address. The make the encryption hardware-based to add an extra layer of complexity. That way the VC games wouldn't work on anybody else's console.
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Originally posted by: Ceric
I think Nintendo didn't fully think about all the angles of their scheme. In actuality most of what is offered in the MP preview channel could have been relegated to one channel with multiple game areas.
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Originally posted by: Silks
(and who really wants to delete a Virtual Console game that they're in the middle of playing just to make room for a one-off demo?).
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Originally posted by: BloodworthQuote
Originally posted by: Silks
(and who really wants to delete a Virtual Console game that they're in the middle of playing just to make room for a one-off demo?).
It's not that big of a deal. You can't play 30 games at once, and even if you delete the game data, the save data is stored separately, so you don't lose your progress.
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Originally posted by: Silks
I was speaking hypothetically, if all of your Wii Channels were full. Games would take priority over demos for me. However, I didn't realize that the save data was saved separately, so that alleviates that concern.
I still think the SD isn't being used to its full potential, though.