Review: Metroid Prime Pinball
What is it?
The first word on Metroid Prime Pinball was a retailer listing, which I was confident had to be a mistake. When it turned out the game was the real deal, I reacted very badly. As a huge fan of the Metroid franchise (obviously), I was upset that Nintendo would be involved in a Metroid-themed pinball game. I believe my exact words were, “No, Nintendo. Bad use of franchise.”
I warmed up to the idea eventually, once I let go of my obnoxious unwillingness to at least try the thing. I found the game running on a Nintendo DS in a Target, and as soon as I flippered a morph-balled Samus the first time, I wanted the game. Metroid Prime Pinball is a pinball game, developed by Fuse (who made the Mario Pinball Land game for GBA), designed around the original Metroid Prime for the Gamecube. The tables are based around locations in Prime, the last four bosses are represented in the game (on the appropriate tables), and many of the smaller enemies are represented as well.
How does it play?
The controls are very simple. You’ve got two functions: left, and right. The left flipper can be activated with the L button, or any other control on the left hand side of the DS. The right flipper is naturally the opposite. I alternate playing using the L and R buttons or left on the D-pad and the A button, as these buttons are closest to the edge of the system and feel the most intuitive. The physics between flipper and ball seem perfect, which is very important in pinball but rarely accomplished.
The game is particularly unusual in that you’re playing one large game of pinball across multiple tables, and access to the tables follows access to the regions in the way it did in Metroid Prime. That is to say, you start on the Pirate Frigate table, work your way to the Tallon Overworld, then you can go from there to Phendrana Drifts or Phazon Mines, each of which has a boss just as it did on the Cube (Thardus and Omega Pirate), and eventually (once you’ve claimed all 12 artifacts) you can enter the Artifact Chamber and try to knock 12 stone pinballs into notches in statues while Meta Ridley pummels the area with missiles and general bad disposition. Take down that challenge and you drop into the Impact Crater to take on the great beast itself.
Several of Samus’ franchise mainstay power-ups made it into the game as well, such as missiles and power bombs. Missiles are used in certain situations where Samus unrolls and takes on waves of small enemies (like shriekbats and beetles) with an auto-firing stationary assault. The flipper controls turn Samus left and right to take out the enemies that are zipping down from the upper screen. It’s a fun break in the pinball action and it gets challenging very fast. Modes like this grant you things like artifacts when you clear them. A wall-jump mini game is a lot of fun too in the middle of the Tallon Overworld table, letting you alternate the flipper buttons to work your way up a channel and claim bonuses as well.
The gap between the screens is perplexing at times, but after a while you can tell where the ball is based on where it would naturally go, and it becomes almost as if you’re playing a real table with a horizontal black bar painted across the middle. It’s certainly not the ideal form for a pinball table, but it beats confining the action to just the bottom or top screen, and it wouldn’t work to have it pan up and down.
How does it look and sound?
Despite the fact that there’s not a polygon in the game, the meticulous attention that the visuals received makes the graphics amazing. Some of the enemy animations are lacking as there are really only so many frames in each creature’s movement, but there are only a couple of places where it’s really noticeable. Nice environmental effects like rain on the Tallon Overworld table make for a surprisingly immersive experience for a pinball game.
The audio is nothing short of shocking. Most of the audio sounds almost exactly as it did in Metroid Prime, including the music which was very surprising, incorporating the music from each of the locations in Prime properly. It’s a real treat, and there’s a real problem as a result. The sound is so good that you really want to catch all the nuances, and you simply can’t if you use the bundled rumble pak, which looks like a GBA cartridge and plugs into Slot-2. It produces such a small amount of rumble with such a large amount of noise that it detracts from the game in a lot of ways. Better results would likely be reached with the third-party alternative rumble pak from eWin.
How is the replay value?
This is pinball. If you love pinball, you will play this game on and off on a long-term basis as I have. Multiplayer modes are nice too, with different tables to play than in single-player via single-card DS Download Play. I’ve seen Magmoor Caverns there, but the Chozo Ruins are unaccounted for just yet, and may be unlockable. My multiplayer time has been very limited.
If you’re not so into pinball, you’re going to get bored with it and lose interest. In my opinion this is better than real pinball simply for the fact that these tables could not exist for real, they’re completely impossible anywhere but in this medium. That, and smacking the piss out of a screeching metroid by flippering a morph ball against it is pretty damn satisfying.
Is it worth it?
It is now. The game’s dropped from an unreasonable $35 at launch (a while ago, yes) down to below $20 with the rumble pak. It’s worth finding it used for even less and finding an alternative rumble pak if that’s an option, because the one in here is very annoying to use. I picked my copy up brand new for $20 or so and I use the rumble pak when I forget how annoying it is. If the eWin one is as good as it seems, that’s the way to go, because it is nice to have some rumble there. Also, that rumble is good for Elite Beat Agents, Metroid Prime Hunters, and a couple of other games as well.
I give Metroid Prime Pinball four out of five.
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TheBrain
