Well I’ll resurrect this thread to point out that the game is released now.
Got my copy today in fact. The casing really is pretty sweet, so I’m glad to see Nintendo and Retro have put some effort into the compilation beyond slapping the games together. There’s even a pamphlet-like thing which details the history of the Prime games, starting with the creation of Phaaze and up until the end of Corruption. It even mentions Samus’ history where Ridley killed her parents according to Nintendo’s official web-manga.
Besides the obvious changes to Prime 1 and 2 with the control scheme, the unlockables from Prime 1 that you normally got via GBA-Fusion link-up come from the same voucher/merit/thingy system they had in Prime 3. Prime 3, as far as I can tell, doesn’t really have anything new to it, which makes me glad I sold my copy back when it was still worth something. My only gripe is that I don’t think I can import saves from Prime 3, so I’ll need to replay it eventually.
Also, despite having 3 games crammed on one disc, the loading times aren’t that bad. There’s a brief load when you select your game, naturally, but if anything I’d say that the wait time is less when it comes for waiting for rooms to load when you shoot a door. Granted my experience playing the new Prime 1 is limited, but it feels that way. I’ll know for sure when I get to Flaahgra’s room, that one was always slow one to load.
If you’ve never played the Prime games yet and own a Wii then it’s definitely a worthy purchase. Even if you own the GCN games, consider picking it up since the Wii control scheme does give a new spin on them. While Prime 1 and 2 are still worth keeping if you have the originals, there’s no point in keeping 3, so if you own it and want to buy the Trilogy, ditch if if you can still get a good price for it. Despite that the trilogy is out I saw that it was still listed as ‘Most Wanted’ among used Wii games at EB, so you might get lucky.
Anyway, this should be enough to tide me over till Other M comes out next year.
EDIT: Having gotten to Flaahgra, I can say the rooms ARE loading much faster. There was pretty much no wait time when I reached it so they really must’ve tweaked them. Flaahgra was even easier with the new control scheme, though, with your added movement freedom while aiming.
The new controls also grant you the morph ball jump from Prime 3 (via flicking the Wiimote upwards) in the first two games, though they wisely keep it disabled until you obtain bombs. It really makes the puzzles that involve some bomb jumping almost trivial, but I don’t think it’ll break the games or anything.