Aazelion

The Aazelion is a large life form native to the planet Phaaze. It has five eyes, along with a pair of claws that it uses to capture and then hold its prey as it is slowly pulled towards its giant open jaws. It was seen living in the wall of the Hatcher Shaft, waiting for prey, such as Samus, to fall into its personal space. It is most likely a species of passive predators, waiting for potential prey to come by it, based upon its "observed" sedentary lifestyle. Its tongue, which appears to be an inner, secondary jaw, appears to be a weak part, and is for some unknown reason directly attached to its five eyes, since they are seen exploding as it is damaged.

It is extremely difficult to escape from this creature without taking massive damage in Hypermode, since the amount of damage needed for the creature to weaken its grip is very high to the given time for Samus to inflict said damage.

Official data

Scan

"Bioform species unknown. Mouth interior appears vulnerable. Damage it to loosen its grip."

Ben Sprout

Ben Sprout of Retro Studios designed, skinned, and textured this particular creature. Although the creature is unnamed in-game, Sprout names the creature in his blog.[1] He also changed the design of the creature after the final version made it into the game. Originally it had been planned that Aazelion would be defeated by targeting its eyes, but this was later omitted and the mouth was made vulnerable instead.

Design notes

"This is a concept for a creature I made in Metroid Prime 3. During the end of production there was not enough time to do a proper concept. In fact, it was mostly modeled and designed based on the in-game camera, since this encounter was very unusual/ never-been-done before. Even though you don’t really get to see the entire creature, there was more thought behind it’s[sic] design (something we strived to do at Retro) and I finally got around to make a proper concept to explain it.

It's called the Aazelion- a mole/ ant-lion-like monster that lives on the planet Phaaze. It uses its long whiskers to root and suspend itself into the side of a chasm. It’s[sic] grasping front claws and teeth fingers help it to capture and feed on anything that falls or ventures into the chasm.

note: you can see that I changed the creature somewhat in the concept. Originally you had to shoot all the eyes to escape this guy, but in the end that gameplay was abandoned in favor of just shooting it’s[sic] mouth. So I got rid of all the tacky eyes."

Trivia

• The sound effects used for the Aazelion are the same ones used by the Korakk Beast.

Gallery

The Aazelion grasps Samus.

From Ben Sprout Artworks

From Ben Sprout Artworks

Artwork of the arm that names this creature, from Ben Sprout Artworks

From Ben Sprout Artworks

From Ben Sprout Artworks

From Ben Sprout Artworks

From Ben Sprout Artworks