Metroid Prime

1. Scan everything immediately. Hold L to lock-on, press up on the C-stick to enter Scan Visor. Orange icons are lore; red icons are critical — doors, enemies, bosses. You cannot progress without scanning certain objects. Get in the habit now.

2. Learn the lock-strafe. Hold L to lock onto enemies, then move left/right to circle-strafe while firing. The game is built around this. Free-aim is for puzzles and weak points, not general combat.

3. Shoot every door. Blue doors open to any beam. Other colors require specific weapons you’ll acquire later. If a door won’t open, you don’t have the right beam yet. Backtrack when you do.

4. Morph Ball comes first. After the frigate escape, land on Tallon IV and head through the Tallon Overworld. Your first major upgrade is the Morph Ball in the Chozo Ruins. You cannot progress without it. Follow the linear path.

5. Save at every Save Station. They’re the glowing holographic pedestals. The game does not autosave. Death sends you back to your last manual save with all item pickups retained but door unlocks reset.

6. Charge Beam is your bread-and-butter. Hold A to charge, release for heavy damage. Charged shots also home in slightly when locked on. Use it constantly to conserve Missile ammo.

7. Check your map obsessively. Press Start, then Z to cycle map zoom levels. Red doors are unexplored, blue are explored. Purple icons are Save/Energy Recharge stations. The map is your best tool for tracking sequence and finding missed pickups.

• Scan everything once. The logbook archives every creature, lore entry, and research terminal permanently. One successful scan per target is all you need—subsequent scans burn time in combat for zero gain. Completion percentage matters for 100% runs; the scan itself matters once.

• Strafe-lock large enemies instead of free-aiming. Lock-on lets you circle-strafe while maintaining target, which trivializes most boss patterns. Free-aim is necessary for specific weak points—Flaahgra’s dish mirrors, Meta Ridley’s mouth, distant turrets—but strafe-lock handles the rest.

• Charge Beam combos consume far less ammo than mashing fire. A Super Missile costs 5 missiles; a Charge Combo costs 10 but deals roughly triple damage with area-of-effect properties. Against Metroids and armored Pirates, combos are the efficient choice. Save standard missiles for doors and minor threats.

• Backtrack for Chozo Artifacts only after acquiring the full mobility suite. You need all twelve Artifacts to access the final area, but several are gated behind Spider Ball, Boost Ball, or Phazon Suit checks. Attempting early collection wastes time retracing routes—sweep Tallon IV once with endgame gear.

• The Space Jump Boots are not a double-jump. Release and re-press the jump button at the apex of each arc to chain consecutive jumps—button-mashing fails. Practice the rhythm in Tallon Overworld’s tall vertical shafts before attempting the Phazon Mines ascent.

• Morph Ball bombing up vertical shafts has timing windows. Lay a bomb, let it launch you, lay the next bomb at the peak of your ascent. Too early and you fall; too late and the bomb explodes below you. The Ice Beam’s freezing platforms offer safer alternatives in most bomb-jump-required rooms.

• Missile Expansions hidden in Morph Ball tunnels are usually visible from the main room. Suspicious grate, tunnel entrance, breakable floor panel—mark it mentally and return with bombs or Power Bombs. Very few expansions require scanning to reveal.

Flaahgra (Chozo Ruins) — Missiles stun the plant-boss, but shooting it won’t finish the job. When Flaahgra collapses, four tunnels open around the arena perimeter. Morph Ball into each tunnel and bomb the solar-panel mirror inside to cut its sunlight feed. One mirror per stun cycle, four cycles total. Players who skip the tunnels and keep firing watch the boss regenerate indefinitely.

Omega Pirate (Phazon Mines) — This elite goes invisible and heals at Phazon pool stations. Switch to Thermal Visor to track him while cloaked, then X-Ray Visor to see his shoulder armor plates glow white. Charged Plasma Beam shots to those plates interrupt the heal. Spamming Power Beam at center mass burns ammo and loses the DPS race. Target lock does nothing — manual aim on the glowing plates is mandatory.

Artifact of Warrior (Phazon Mines) — Sits behind a Bendezium wall in Phazon Processing Center, but the Power Bomb expansion that breaks Bendezium is in Ore Processing after the Omega Pirate fight. Artifact-hunting before that boss leaves you scanning the wall with no tool to proceed. Finish Omega Pirate, backtrack for Power Bombs, then return. The game never signals this dependency.

Crashed Frigate underwater — The Gravity Suit comes after Thardus in Phendrana, so your first frigate visit is slow and floaty. Players drown in the reactor core’s vertical shafts trying to space-jump against the current. The game gives you infinite underwater Morph Ball bombs for exactly this: bomb-jump up vertical passages instead. The Cargo Freight Lift to Deck Gamma center shaft requires bomb-jumping — space-jumping fails every time.

Meta Ridley’s swooping charge (final boss) — When Ridley flies to the far end and roars, he’s about to charge across the platform for a one-shot kill. Boost Ball to either side edge immediately. Standing center = death. After he misses, he’s vulnerable for 3–4 seconds — charged Plasma Beam or Super Missiles to the chest.