Metroid Prime (comic)

:This article is about the Metroid Prime comic. For other uses, see Metroid Prime (Disambiguation).
Metroid Prime was a comic series ran by Nintendo Power following the events of the game of the same name. This is similar to another series named Super Metroid following the events of the 1994 game.
It was created by Dark Horse Comics and Dreamwave. A brief interview with Pat Lee, the latter's president is featured on the beginning page of the comic.
==Plot==
The comic begins with Samus landing on the Frigate Orpheon and beginning to explore. She comes across an unnamed worm-like creature (presumably an experiment specimen), heavily wounded Space Pirates, a Metroid (not specified as a larva or Tallon) and the Parasite Queen. After she defeats the latter, the station begins to explode. Just before Samus can make it back to her Gunship, her suit is damaged by a random power surge, reverting it to her Power Suit.
She soon lands on the surface of Tallon IV and enters what appears to be the Hall of the Elders in the Chozo Ruins. A number of Beetles attack, with one of them grabbing the end of Samus' Arm Cannon. Blasting it off, she enters Morph Ball into a Chozo Statue's hands, and reveals a Chozo Artifact. Soon, Thardus emerges and attacks Samus, but she manages to defeat him.
"Over 10 hours" later, Samus enters the Artifact Temple. She mentions that she worried that her suit would not work as well in the Impact Crater, but was lucky to find the Phazon Suit upgrade. She prepares to open the seal to enter the crater, but then Meta Ridley attacks and destroys the totems. She incinerates him with her Flamethrower and continues on.
When she enters the crater, she soon encounters the Metroid Prime and battles it, destroying its exoskeleton and forcing the core essence of the creature to engage Samus in its true form. It creates a pool of Phazon and spawns Fission Metroids, which Samus destroys with a Power Bomb. She then discovers that the pool of Phazon charges her suit, allowing her to use the Phazon Beam to destroy the Metroid Prime. This overloads her Phazon Suit and reverts it to her Gravity Suit. She then escapes the crater and stands atop her ship, her helmet removed.
==Inconsistencies with the game==
The comic deviated occasionally from the game's storyline:
*Samus, for instance, exclaims that Zebes was destroyed two years prior (although she might have been referring to the base), while no time frame was given in the original release and was later confirmed in the art booklet to be three years. She also expresses surprise in seeing a live Metroid aboard the Orpheon, which again implies that this version is taking place after the events of Super Metroid rather than the original Metroid. In-game scans do show that Metroids were there at one point, but moved by the time the Bounty Hunter arrived.
*She also killed the Parasite Queen in a significantly different manner, firing a missile at an Ionized Nitrogenic Coolant Tank near the Queen's tank instead of shooting at the queen herself via gaps in the reactor's shielding.
**On a related note, the Parasite Queen was given a different design than her in-game appearance.
*In addition, the ending of the first issue implies that Samus lost her Varia Suit alongside most of her weapons and equipment barring her Power Beam and her Power Suit after she barely boarded her Gunship, when in-game she lost them due to being caught inside a power surge near an elevator terminal.
*Thardus was also encountered in the Chozo Ruins rather than the Phendrana Drifts and guarded a Chozo Artifact rather than the Spider Ball.
*Meta Ridley lacks his trademark head-crest and is easily defeated by the Flamethrower, despite being practically resistant to the weapon in-game, and was also actually defeated by the Chozo Statues in the temple and not by Samus directly.
**The comic also implies that she didn't even encounter Meta Ridley until she entered the Artifact Temple, while in the game, she actually encountered him as she was trying to promptly evacuate the doomed Frigate Orpheon in Biotech Research Area 2, and later pursued him down to Tallon IV before losing track of him and being forced to land in Tallon Overworld to conduct ground recon to track him down.
*Samus also mentions that she was able to find the Phazon Suit as an upgrade, while in-game it was created by viral corruption due to the Omega Pirate's corpse falling on her and covering her in Phazon.
*When entering the Impact Crater, Samus says "whatever secrets the Space Pirates are hiding lie inside." while only the NTSC version of the game depicted the Pirates entering the crater.
*When Samus defeats Metroid Prime, she mentions that her Phazon Suit was overloaded and then reverted to the Gravity Suit, while in-game, Metroid Prime absorbed the Phazon Suit to survive.
*Finally, at the end of the comic Samus stands atop her Gunship with her helmet off and hair loose and flying in the wind, while in-game it is tied back into a ponytail and it hardly billows.
**On a similar note, she seems to call her Gunship while she was still inside the crater, instead of her calling it after leaving the crater amidst the destruction of the Artifact Temple.
*The hint of Metroid Prime's survival from the 100% ending is missing.
==Credits==
Script: Kato Li
Pencils: Pat Lee (page one), Sigmund Torre
Colors: Gary Yeung, Alan Wang
Letters/Editor: Matt Moylan
Production Manager: Derek Choo-wing
Special thanks to Dark Horse Comics and Dreamwave.
==Trivia==
*At one point in the first issue, Samus while getting suited up is shown putting her helmet on with both hands while otherwise fully suited. This marks the second time she wears her Power Suit without its Arm Cannon, after her cameo in the NES Tetris game.
==Gallery==
Metroid Prime NP pencil drawings 1.jpg|Original pencil drawings for the comic by Sigmund Torre, which were donated to Art of Nintendo Power. (video)
Metroid Prime NP pencil drawings 2.jpg
Metroid Prime NP pencil drawings 3.jpg
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Metroid Prime NP pencil drawings 5.jpg
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Metroid Prime NP pencil drawings 7.jpg
Metroid Prime NP pencil drawings 8.jpg
Metroid Prime NP pencil drawings 9.jpg
Metroid Prime NP pencil drawings 10.jpg
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Metroid Prime NP pencil drawings 12.jpg
Metroid Prime NP pencil drawings 13.jpg
MP1 unused variant cover.jpg|Unused cover.Jeremyamoto. Metroid Prime Nintendo Power Comic Cover Art. OriginalVideoGameArt.com. Retrieved July 10, 2024. https://www.originalvideogameart.com/home/metroid-prime-nintendo-power-comic-cover-art-r465/
==External links==
*Online Archive of the comic on Metroid Database
==References==
ru:Metroid Prime (комикс)
Category:Prime Series
Category:Comics
Category:Nintendo Power