Is it possible to beat the Metroid Prime 1 boss without losing energy?

Out of all the bosses I've ever fought, I've had the most trouble with this SOB.

I can manage to get to the 2nd form where it turns into a floating jelly thing, but I always end up losing even though I manage to nearly kill it each time.

It seems to be reviving itself somehow, is this correct? I know I'm supposed to use the hyperbeam when standing on the phazon but this is hard to do when so much is happening.

Can someone basically give me a good strategy for beating this boss (both forms) along with the metroids it throws out in the 2nd form? I usually can't avoid losing energy to it in the 1st form, then by the 2nd form I'm so battered that I'm basically fighting to survive.

Also, should I have a certain number of energy tanks before attempting this boss?

There isn't much of a trick to defeating its first form. Do your best to dodge its laser attack, and when it launches the slower flying missiles (I think, it's been a long time since I finished Metroid Prime) destroy them as quickly as you can. If you've unlocked super missiles for the gun its weak to, definitely use that as well (especially for the ice and normal guns, not sure how helpful the other super missiles will be against him). Also learn when he's about to switch sides, and change into your morph ball and get to the middle of the area so he won't damage you as he moves across the room.

As for the second form, are you switching your visor when he changes which spectrum he is visible to? As I recall, he goes from normal -> heat -> X-ray and then back to normal. If you are only damaging him when he is visible to the normal visor, this makes the fight much harder.

Other than that, the fight is really about killing the secondary metro ids as fast as possible in order to concentrate on killing the boss as quickly as possible. So get good at destroying metroids. :)

Again, it's been a long time since I finished Metroid Prime, so I'm not sure how many energy tanks are needed at a minimum. However, if you're having problems it wouldn't hurt to get more - this gives you more of a buffer to work with. There are plenty of guides online to where all of the items are so they should be easy to find if you get stuck.

I recently beat Metroid Prime with no extra energy tanks (working on doing the same in hard mode now) and having skipped the thermal visor, so I can attest that it is possible to beat him losing little to no energy.

For the first form, stay locked on and use super missiles for yellow, charged wave beam shots (they auto-lock and home in) for purple, the ice spreader (the fact that it contains missiles makes it auto-lock, which is nice due to the slow rate of fire) for white, and charged plasma beam shots (the flamethrower is a waste of missiles, and charged shots set Metroid Prime on fire). Make sure to stop firing as soon as it flashes red and when you roll into the grooves to dodge its charge, pick one of the side grooves, because its tail often drags through the center groove and can cause lots of damage.

For the second form, keep the ice beam up as your default weapon and just wait for him to spawn a Phazon pool. Pick the right visor (I believe the pattern is thermal, x-ray, combat) and hyper-beam away. After the first pool, it spawns metroids too (first standard, then hunter, then fission). Use the ice beam and missiles to dispatch the standard and hunter metroids, but when he spawns fission metroids, my best tactic is too roll into the puddle in morph ball mode and lay a power bomb to take care of them quickly.

Hope this helps!