So a couple weeks ago I went back and finally finished up Echoes. I was pretty surprised by how much more fun it was than before. The bosses were awesome, the Spider Ball was awesome, the Screw Attack was awesome, Dark Samus was awesome, and like with prettymuch all Metroid games, the last few parts of the game were so great that I was compelled to start from my last save and fight the last bosses and watch the ending over and over. I knew beforehand that there was a timed escape, but I never expected them to use the escape music from the original Metroid. So, that was a rush, and fighting the last boss to that music was even better. I beat her with 35 seconds left my first time.

So, having beaten Echoes and really fallen in love with it, I went back and played Prime again from beginning to end. It seemed a lot easier just because it's so basic compared to Echoes, but at the same time I could appreciate everything better, too. I used to be freaked out by all those space pirates swarming around in the dark in that lab in Phendrana, going invisible with the freaky space pirate music and all, but this time I just laughed, especially once I realized that each one goes down with just a charged Wave Beam shot, which keeps them stunned, and a missile. Suckers. Even the last boss, which I remembered being really rough, was a simple affair; I only lost a couple energy tanks, and even that was because I knew I wasn't going to die and took it easy.

Then I went back and played through Echoes again. Wonderful. I'm not so sure about going for Hard mode, since the whole Hard mode concept has just never seemed too fun to me, but I could probably handle it and hey why not give it a shot. I love the Prime games now.