[BreakABone]

More details on the Prime Achievement idea

Metroid Prime 3 features a very welcomed rewards system that some have compared to achievements on Xbox Live. As you progress through the game, you earn Samus medals for accomplishing various goals, from 500 kills to beating certain enemies and scanning items. There are differently colored medals for your various successes, and you can use combos of these achievements to buy special unlockable extras -- concept art, music, storyboards, stickers and bobbleheads, and even a screenshot tool that enables you to (by pressing up on the D-Pad) snap in-game photos and send them to friends over WiiConnect24. The game also uses WiiConnect24 to let you trade friend vouchers with players you've already added to your Wii system address book. Friend vouchers can be converted into friend credits, which are also utilized -- in combination with the other medals -- to unlock the extras. Indeed, the best extras can only be purchased if you trade friend vouchers with your buddies. For the purposes of our hands-on update (and eventually our review), we traded vouchers with our friends at GameSpy, and then we converted those vouchers into friend credits to buy, for example, the screenshot tool.