Downloadable preview contains new trailer with more movies to come; Nintendo announces Virtual Console dates for Metroid, Super Metroid. http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=14207 Many have wondered when the promotional blitz was going to start for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, one of Nintendo's biggest titles of 2007. Only a few weeks from launch, little has been heard from the Big N about the newest installment of one of its most revered franchises. That all changed today as Nintendo has posted a new offering on its North American Wii Shop Channel (look for your Wii's blue light to be pulsing), the Metroid Prime 3 Preview.
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 http://www.metroid.com/'>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.