Metroid Prime Pinball

"This game could have used a couple more months of development."

Metroid Prime Pinball, as one would imagine, is a pinball game based on Metroid Prime. It's an "adventure" pinball game, which means the main game involves playing on a series of boards. As in all Metroid games, there are items that you must find to complete the game, and bosses to defeat. All of these ideas are great, but very poorly executed, resulting in a short and incredibly luck-based pinball game.

Story: 9/10

What? It's a friggin pinball game. Metroid Prime Pinball is basically a pinball-based version of Metroid Prime - each table is based on a region from Metroid Prime, including Phendrana Drifts, Tallon Overworld, and so on. As in Metroid Prime, you are required to find twelve Artifacts scattered around Tallon IV, then return them to the Artifact Chamber and defeat the evil that infests the planet. Unlike Metroid Prime, however, Artifacts must be found by completing certain objectives on each table, as well as defeating classic Metroid Prime bosses, such as Thardus and Omega Pirate. The concept behind this game is actually pretty good - it involves warping many times between the table selection (of a whopping six tables! Yay! Not.) in order to finish the game.

Graphics: 10/10

Magnificent graphics. The game integrates sprites and models very well, creating a wonderfully lush environment that almost matches up to Metroid Prime, even on the DS's small screens. There aren't as many flashy effects and lights as on a real pinball table, but there are many screen notifications that appear and look very nice. The tables are also very unique (at least visually; most of the boards are pretty much the same) and although the bosses don't look very good, they're not bad and don't really detract from the game. The one thing that bugs me is the "space" between the two halves of the table. Each table is displayed on both screens, but the programmers decided to build a genuine gap equal in size to the gap between the two screens where the hinge is. This is a nice way to lose track of your ball. It's not really that frustrating, but it can sometimes distract if you get one of those wussy hits and it just hovers in that middle area.

Gameplay: 3/10

Remember the aforementioned story mode? It works like this. There are six tables playable in this mode, and you can start on two of them. From there, you must complete several minigames (activated each time by hitting a fairly difficult shot into an easily-missed kicker) before warping to another board. Aside from your basic pinball table, there are also "arena" tables where instead of getting points, you fight bosses. There are two point tables and four arena tables in the story mode. While fighting bosses and playing minigames, you must collect twelve artifacts and then warp to another table, play a VERY difficult minigame (involving a dozen challenging shots with up to six balls at once) and then fight the final boss.

So what's the problem? The game is infuriatingly luck-based. There are multiple occasions where your ball can get spat out of a kicker and straight down the hole. Additionally, monsters will occasionally appear on the table, and running into the monsters (Metroids, Triclops, Space Pirates, and so forth) will send your ball careening in another direction. More than once I've activated a minigame where you must defeat several monsters; the ball would shoot out of the kicker, bounce off a monster, and go straight down the hole. And then I'd lose the minigame. Triclops (the little red dudes from Prime that would pick you up while in Morph Ball mode) always aim straight down the hole if they catch you. Space Pirates can shoot homing missiles that will send you flying at top speed in a random direction. Omega Pirate's energy wave attack will send your ball straight down. Add on to the fact that the tables are ridiculously small and you might be dead before you even notice.

This isn't it. There is a nudge function in the game. How do you activate it? Drag the stylus or your finger across the touch screen to move the board in that direction. Problem? You'll never have the chance! As mentioned before, the tables are so small and the ball moves so fast that you probably won't nudge the ball far enough to get anything done. The effects of nudging are usually too small to matter, but even if they do, you probably won't get your fingers back to the flipper controls to save it, so it doesn't even matter, meaning that there's no salvation from the unlucky kicker spits. To add on to that, the bottom bumpers by the flippers blast the ball with the strength of a goddamn rocket, so you might spend up to half a minute just bouncing around between flippers and kickers that don't give you any points.

As for the items. There are three items: Missiles, Power Bombs, and Force Ball. Missiles are used in Combat Mode (later); Power Bombs destroy all non-bosses on the screen and severely hurt bosses, which is very nice. Force Ball allows your ball to cut straight through non-bosses without a problem. Now, as for Combat Mode: by fulfilling certain requirements, if you move the ball (that is, Morph Ball Samus) onto the Samus icon in the center, she'll de-morph and start shooting her cannon. This activates a minigame on either point board arena, and gives you a chance to unload missiles on the boss if you're on an arena level. Nice, but sort of lame and gimmicky.

So how do you save your ball? It's an adventure pinball game; surely there must be safeguards against SDTMs. Well, nothing significant. You get a force field between your bottom flippers when you:

-Start the level
-Locate an artifact, special token (points), or extra ball
-Collect an artifact, special token, or extra ball
-Get an item from the reward kicker

They don't last long. And that's it! There's kickbacks that shield the outside lanes, but the outside lanes are pretty easily missed, so it doesn't matter. The reward kicker gives you anything from some points to an extra ball, force field, or a recharge on missiles or power bombs. There are few bonuses on each table and hitting most shots gives you nothing.

There is a small multiplayer mode featuring its own table, but it's one table, and nobody I know is interested in the game. So there's that.

Sound: 7/10

Beautifully remixed Metroid Prime tunes throughout the whole game. Most tunes are pretty much straight from Prime; Phendrana Drifts is calm and tranquil until you fight Thardus; the Pirate Frigate plays the classic Metroid theme, etc. The sound effects are great, and the included Rumble Pack doesn't make a lot of noise (nor does it rumble a whole lot), which is pretty nice, too. I was impressed with the sound effects, back when Metroid Prime came out; I'm not too thrilled anymore.

Replay Value: 3/10

Well, what do you expect from a pinball game? I tell you what I didn't expect: paying $35 for a game with a miniscule table selection, and one unlockable. That's right, one: Expert Mode. What's Expert Mode? The same thing as Normal Mode, except you basically don't get any extra balls. Woo-hoo! Now those stupidly common SDTMs can't even be accounted for. So after you finally finish the story mode after a hundred frustrating restarts, you've got nothing.

Overall: 5/10

Metroid Prime Pinball is a frustrating, difficult, and unrewarding pinball game. I would not recommend spending $35 on this game, when you could get Zero Mission and Fusion for $35 combined for the GBA.

A note: to its credit, the whole Metroid thing was executed pretty well. It doesn't feel gimmicky (I'm talking about you, Mario Baseball), because many Metroid-based things in this game are not pinball conventions and therefore are more sensible to base off of Metroid monsters than make up new versions.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/14/05