Fact: Retro Studios does not get enough credit for the work it did on the Metroid Prime series.

Stand up and remove your hats, people, because it's time to pay our overdue respects to one of gaming's most unheralded achievements.

Metroid Prime Trilogy takes the three games in the series and combines then into one convenient-to-use disc. No longer do you have to get out the old GameCube whenever you want to play Metroid Prime or Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Both games are here, in their entirety, along with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

Look out, you Door! Here comes my yellow beam of fist light! Shzzzzzz.

Remember a few months back, when we were tripping over ourselves to anoint The Conduit as a benchmark for what the underpowered Nintendo Wii is capable of? It makes me wonder if we suffered from a case of soap-opera-style amnesia. How on Earth did we forget the jaw-dropping beauty of Corruption?

Know that I don't say this lightly: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is one of the finest videogames of all time. It's up there with BioShock for me. I played it, and finished it, back when it shipped in August 2007. Yet somehow I've completely forgotten about it. (Sorry, Retro.)

While Prime 3 is the main draw, the other two games are also fine in their own right. Wait. Correction: The original Metroid Prime is fine; Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is a bit of a mess. Metroid games have always been a backtracking-centric slog, but Echoes is even more of a backtracking-centric slog than usual. Weapons in Echoes feel underpowered; and the light-world/dark-world dynamic is at best clich?d and, at worst, downright annoying. Of the three games, Echoes is the only one that eventually chased me off before I could finish it.

Hey, where are you guys going? Guys? Seriously. Guys?

But for a series that dates back to 2002, all three Metroid Prime games have aged very well. The first two games now feature Corruption's Wii control scheme (steer with the Nunchuk; point/shoot with the Wii Remote). It works well enough, though constantly pointing the Wii Remote at the screen always makes my right arm feel tired. Visuals have also been given a slight bump in fidelity -- at least, it looks that way to me -- and have been widened to accommodate 16x9 high-definition televisions.

Most alien worlds in videogames look and feel like backdrops. But the alien worlds in these three games (yes, even in Echoes) feel cohesive and credible and authentically alien. They have their own, foreign aesthetic; their own indigenous creatures; and -- most importantly -- their own logic. Each world represents a puzzle you have to solve; and watching the huge, alien machinery finally click into place around you is ridiculously satisfying. You play these games, and feel like you've actually inhabited another place.

Of course, Metroid games have never been afraid to frustrate gamers in an old-school fashion, and these three games carry on that tradition. Within the first hour of each, I typically encountered a room that completely stumped me. A bit of advice for anyone preparing to tackle these games: Keep moving. If one route isn't working, don't scour the room for a solution. And for God's sake, don't stand there scanning and re-scanning everything. There's nothing more embarrassing than re-scanning things. Backtrack and suss out another route. You'll thank me later.

These games are essentially stubborn experiences. There's pleasure to be found here -- plenty of pleasure -- but you're going to have to really work for it. At a time when most games trip over themselves to make you feel like you're being rewarded with something -- Achievements, unlockables, EXP, etc. -- Trilogy will make you hustle, and then hustle some more, for anything you might get. Example: Note the way that doors between rooms in all three games sort of hiccup for a moment before opening. It's frustrating to keep blasting away at a blue door, waiting for it to open. I feel like this is Retro's quiet way, and Nintendo's quiet way, of saying, "Slow down a little and smell the flowers, buddy; what's the rush? You're not supposed to just go tearing through this experience like it's Halo or something. This is Metroid. Ease off the gas a little."

At the core of the three games is, of course, bounty hunter Samus Aran, the medium's strongest, least-sexualized female protagonist. Despite a waistline the size of a cigar band, there's nothing about Samus' space suit that is remotely sexualized. Even the boobs are in the wrong place (shoulders). That's a good thing.

Congratulations to the Graduating Class of Metroid High! You guyz will always be the kewlest!!!!!!

We rarely see Samus without her suit. And when we do, she's not terribly interesting to look at. Her clich?d features -- blue eyes, blond ponytail -- make her look as banal as a UCLA cheerleader. I wind up feeling like there's more intelligence and humanity -- and more soul -- in those eerie, inside-the-helmet reflections of her face during firefights.

Metroid games have always been, at heart, about isolation and loneliness. There's something cold in these games. The storylines aren't always particularly nice to Samus. Bad things happen to her, and then more bad things happen to her. She gets infected with something, or she loses something, or something is taken away from her.

Retro Studios deserves the most credit for resisting the temptation to Halo-ify the Metroid experience during a time (2002) when Halo was all that any that of us was talking about. Instead, the folks at Retro chose to preserve the oddball essence of the series. They kept the unfriendly spirit intact. They weren't afraid to frustrate the gamer. They boldly let the gamer feel alone -- and more importantly, alien -- in these alien worlds.

This review is based on a retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.