Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is a 2007 action-adventure game developed by Retro Studios and published by Nintendo for the Wii. The seventh main Metroid game, it was released in North America on August 27, 2007, followed by Europe on October 26, Australia on November 8, and Japan on March 6, 2008.
Corruption is set six months after Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (2004). The player controls the bounty hunter Samus Aran, who becomes infected with Phazon by her doppelgänger, Dark Samus. Samus works to prevent the Phazon from spreading to other planets while being corrupted by the Phazon.
The player uses the Wii Nunchuk to move and the Wii Remote to jump, aim and fire. Corruption introduces features such as Hypermode, which allows Samus to use more powerful attacks, and the ability to command her gunship. The new control scheme took a year to develop and delayed the release several times. The game was first shown to the public at the E3 2005 trade show.
Like the previous Prime games, Corruption received acclaim for its gameplay, graphics and music, though some were divided on the controls. More than one million copies were sold in 2007. It was rereleased in 2009 as part of the compilation Metroid Prime: Trilogy. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was released on December 4, 2025 for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2.
Gameplay
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is a first-person action-adventure game. The player controls Samus Aran using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk devices. The Nunchuk enables the player to perform actions such as moving Samus and locking on to enemies and targets. The Wii Remote allows the player to execute actions such as jumping, aiming, and firing weapons.
Corruption is an open-ended game that takes place across several planets, each with regions connected by elevators, rail systems and bridges. Each region has rooms separated by doors that can be opened when shot with the correct weapon. The gameplay involves solving puzzles to uncover secrets, jumping on platforms, and shooting enemies with the help of a "lock-on" mechanism that allows Samus to move in a circle while staying aimed on an enemy. The "lock-on" mechanism also allows Samus to use the Grapple Beam to attach onto and pull objects, such as enemy shields or certain doors. The game uses a first-person view, except in Morph Ball mode, in which Samus' suit transforms into an armored ball and the game uses a third-person camera. The third person camera is also used in conjunction with the Screw Attack power-up: in this case Samus' suit emits strange energy waves as she performs a continuous jump.
The heads-up display simulates the inside of Samus' helmet, and features a radar, map, ammunition gauge and health meter. The player can change visors to enable new abilities such as X-ray vision, collecting information on many items, creatures and enemies, and interfacing with certain mechanisms such as force fields and elevators. Corruption also includes a hint system that periodically displays on-screen instructions and navigation assistance. The game also has the addition of the Hypermode, a feature in which health is drained to give temporary invincibility and more powerful attacks at the cost of one energy tank. Hypermode will end after 25 seconds or when a gauge that indicates the left-over Phazon is depleted, but if it's filled up completely or Samus gets hit by a Phazon Grenade thrown by a Space Pirate, the player will enter Corrupt Hypermode. If Corrupt Hypermode is not stopped, it leads to a non-standard game over, due to Samus being overtaken by Phazon. Another new feature is the Command Visor, which allows Samus to summon remotely her gunship from a suitable landing site to save the game, or travel to another destination quickly. New abilities can be obtained to allow the ship to perform aerial attacks against enemy targets and transport heavy objects. In the achievement system, players can earn special credits by completing objectives. These credits can be exchanged for bonuses such as concept art, music for the sound test, and decorations for Samus' gunship.
Synopsis
Setting Metroid Prime 3: Corruption takes place six months after Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. The protagonist, Samus Aran, is a bounty hunter hired to assist the Galactic Federation during its ongoing conflict with the Space Pirates. After facing defeat on the planet Zebes during the events of the first Metroid, the Space Pirates sought to gain power by using a newly discovered mutagen called Phazon, but Samus managed to disrupt their operations throughout the Prime trilogy, while the Galactic Federation confiscated and repurposed their Phazon armaments.
The Space Pirates' operation was left in disarray following defeat in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. They inadvertently encounter Dark Samus, Samus' sinister doppelgänger, while trying to harvest Phazon. Dark Samus eliminates a third of their forces while indoctrinating the remaining Space Pirates into servants. Their combined forces seek to corrupt the universe with Phazon by first executing a series of methodical attacks on three Federation planets: Norion, Bryyo and Elysia. The game is primarily centered on these planets and three other locations that become accessible after completing certain in-game tasks.
Plot
Fleet Admiral Castor Dane (Timothy Patrick Miller), the commander of the Galactic Federation flagship GFS Olympus, calls for a meeting with Samus Aran and three other bounty hunters—Rundas (Christopher Sabat), Ghor (Edwin Neal), and Gandrayda (Claire Hamilton). The bounty hunters receive orders to clear a virus from several organic supercomputers called "Aurora Units" (Lainie Frasier), located throughout the galaxy. The meeting ends abruptly when Space Pirates attack the Federation fleet. Samus and the other bounty hunters are deployed to the planet Norion, where a Space Pirate force led by Ridley is concentrating an attack on the main Federation base. While suppressing the attack, Samus learns that a Phazon meteoroid, called a Leviathan Seed, will soon collide into Norion. Samus and the other bounty hunters attempt to activate the base's defense systems, when they are suddenly attacked by Dark Samus and knocked out by a Phazon Beam. With the other bounty hunters unconscious, a severely wounded Samus manages to activate the system just in time to destroy the Leviathan Seed before falling into a coma.
A month later, Samus awakens aboard Olympus, where she learns that Dark Samus' Phazon-based attacks have corrupted her. The Federation equips her suit with a Phazon Enhancement Device (PED) that enables her to harness the Phazon energy within herself. She is informed that her fellow bounty hunters, also corrupted with Phazon and equipped with PEDs, have gone missing during their missions to investigate several planets embedded with Leviathan Seeds. Samus is first sent to the planet Bryyo and later Elysia to determine what happened to her missing comrades. She soon discovers that both planets and their inhabitants are slowly being corrupted by the Leviathan Seeds and that she must destroy the seeds to reverse this. Samus encounters heavy resistance from the Space Pirates, Phazon-corrupted monstrosities, and her fellow bounty hunters who have been corrupted by Dark Samus.
Throughout her mission, which eventually takes her to the Space Pirate homeworld, Samus slowly becomes further corrupted by Phazon. She stops the Space Pirate assault with the assistance of the Federation troops. After defeating a Phazon-empowered Ridley, Samus and the Federation fleet use a stolen Leviathan battleship to create a wormhole that leads to the planet Phaaze, the origin of Phazon. Samus travels to the planet's core, where she finally defeats Dark Samus and then the corrupted Aurora Unit 313. Dark Samus is obliterated, and Phaaze explodes, possibly rendering all Phazon in the galaxy inert. The Federation fleet escapes Phaaze's destruction, but loses contact with Samus in the process. Samus eventually appears in her gunship, and reports that the mission is accomplished before flying into space.
Samus returns to Elysia, where she mourns the loss of her fellow bounty hunters. If the player completes the game with all of the items obtained, Samus flies into hyperspace with Sylux's spaceship following her.
Development
Retro Studios intended to give Metroid Prime 3: Corruption larger environments than Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, including open world features, and to have it run at 60 frames per second. Retro canceled plans for more interactive sequences involving Samus' ship when they found the Wii was less powerful than they had expected. They were also interested in using the WiiConnect24 feature to provide additional content accessible from the internet.
As Samus is a bounty hunter, Retro initially planned to have Samus embark on missions to collect bounties. Nintendo opposed this, saying she was driven by altruism rather than profit. Eventually, Retro discovered that the Japanese Nintendo staff imagined a bounty hunter as a selfless hero rather than someone who captures fugitives for money.
Retro announced that Corruption would be the final chapter of the Prime series and would have a plot "about closure, told against the backdrop of an epic struggle". After the Wii Remote was revealed, Nintendo demonstrated how Metroid Prime 3 would take advantage of it with a version of Echoes modified for the Wii and shown at the Tokyo Game Show in 2005. At the Media Summit held by Nintendo in May 2007, the Nintendo of America president, Reggie Fils-Aimé, said that Metroid games "never played this way before", and that Nintendo employees said it would "reinvent the control scheme for a first-person shooter".
The director, Mark Pacini, said that Retro's biggest concern was the controls, which had "too many functions for the amount of buttons". Pacini also said the Wii Zapper, a gun shell peripheral, was never considered because it was unveiled when the development was almost done. The Retro president, Michael Kelbaugh, said the delays gave them more time to tune the controller, which took a year. He also said that while he felt Retro did "a great job" on the Echoes multiplayer, they focused on the single-player for Corruption, which they considered the franchise's core strength. The art director, Todd Keller, said the graphics team focused on texture detail and variety, making every room unique. Nintendo EAD suggested Retro turn Hypermode into the core of the game, saying it would enhance the tension as it made players powerful but leads to a game over if used excessively. Retro initially felt it would be too difficult to implement the feature without dampening the entertainment value, but after discussion turned Hypermode into a regular functionality. Engineer Paul Tozour cited the Halo series as an influence.
The soundtrack was composed by Kenji Yamamoto, Minako Hamano and Masaru Tajima. The increase in the Wii's increased RAM allowed for higher-quality audio samples. Yamamoto used Hirokazu Tanaka's musical design of the original Metroid (1986), keeping the music and themes dark and scary until the uplifting music of the credits. Corruption is the first Metroid game to feature a significant amount of voice acting; previously, Samus "[acted] alone [... and] always came across as a lone wolf". The producers included voices to create a stronger connection between players and the characters. The voices were performed by Timothy Patrick Miller, Lainie Frasier, Christopher Sabat, Edwin Neal, Claire Hamilton, Brian Jepson, Gray Haddock, Clayton Kjas and Ken Webster.
Release