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Number one:
I returned from Blockbuster Video late on a Saturday in November. It was raining freezing rain. I fired up Metroid Prime on the old Gamecube, and was nearly weeping into my bowl of popcorn in approximately thirty seconds.
Yes, my number-one gaming moment of 2002 is Metroid Prime's title screen.
I first beheld Metroid Prime's title screen with awe and wonder, and even a whole lot of sadness. I had a bowl of popcorn and a one-liter bottle of ginger ale at my fingertips, and I was thinking: why didn't I buy this game? Why did I rent it?
I didn't touch the Metroid Prime demo when it was in stores. I walked on by, not even looking at the title screen. So that's why it was so much of a surprise. When I first saw it, it nearly knocked the wind out of me.
If you haven't seen it, you should. There really isn't anything I can spoil by describing it to you. It starts with a "Nintendo Presents," and moves on to a cycling voyage through a some kind of electron-microscope-magnified net of tissues and structures. This Dust-Brothers-ish music kicks up. When the spinning camera finally stops, and the METROID PRIME logo materializes, and the background begins to flicker, and the music crashes and then drones on: you've got the best videogame title screen ever, on the best videogame ever.
Metroid Prime's title screen is, in many ways, a revamping of the former best-videogame-title-screen ever, a title which belongs easily to Zone of the Enders. That odd song in that odd language sounds so calm following such a fiercely action-packed FMV. The computer-ish cycling background echoes this calm. The logo contains a rough map of the moons of Jupiter, which move as slowly as the music's tempo rolls. All in all, you don't see title screens more perfect that that of Zone of the Enders.
Zone of the Enders is a hushed, understated title screen, like Metal Gear Solid's, yet different enough to feel different. Zone of the Enders' title screen intrigues us enough to intrigue us. That the rest of the game defies the title screen's tone is enough to keep that title screen interesting.
Metroid Prime's title screen is as mysterious as that of Zone of the Enders, and at the same time not as mysterious at all. By showing us a tiny thing amplified, it makes us wonder at the bigger picture; at the same time, the music, the flickering FMV begins shining a tone at us -- a tone that will carry through to the end of the game without the shortest break.
Something about the flickering background burns its way into your brain. It's something subliminal, and it's not lying to you. That feeling stabs you in the gut: the game grabs you right then, and it doesn't let go.
So me, with my popcorn, back in November, before the Morph Ball, before my first girlish scream directed at a Chozo Ghost, before the battle with the Omega Pirate, before my brother seriously thought I'd had a heart attack following the boss battle with Ridley, long before I beat the insane final boss and marveled at the unconventionality of it all -- before I even pressed start, I was thinking: my God, if the first ten minutes of this game are as perfect as its title screen . . .
And oh, it is.
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