Metroid’s Samus Aran has been all over the galaxy hunting bounties large and small. She’s wandered perilously into cavernous volcanoes filled with liquid hot magma. She’s traversed serene glaciers and hot, wet rainforests. But never has she rolled her way into a pinball game, yet it makes so much sense – she can morph into a ball after all.
Developer Fuse Games honed its virtual pinball creation skills with its first attempt, Mario Pinball Land for the Gameboy Advance, which was an awkward, new-age attempt at making a pinball game with more playability than scoring huge points through the well-timed use of nothing more than virtual flippers. This time, however, Fuse stripped all the nonsense and created a classic pinball game immersed in the beauty and whimsy of the Metroid realm. Plus, it comes with free hardware.
Metroid Prime Pinball comes with a rumble pak that fits in the Gameboy Advance slot of the Nintendo DS. Simply slide it in and feel the jolt of the pak as Samus plummets and bounces around the board.
The board covers both screens of the DS and a little tap on the bottom touch screen gives the virtual pinball machine a nudge. Samus can be given that extra nudge that could send her flying into that highly-coveted jackpot slot or go careening into certain doom.
As gameplay moves along, chances for one of six mini-games will eventually arrive raising the level of chaos and suspense tenfold. One mini-game spawns half a dozen colored balls on the board that can score different points depending on the color of the ball and the color of the target hit. Others put Samus in the middle of the board for a little target practice as swarms of space beetles move in for a bounty hunter snack. The game also allows Samus to drop morph ball bombs any time for yet another nudge opportunity.
The only downfall is the “dead zone” between screens. It is sometimes hard to gauge where the ball is going to go as it shoots up to the upper level or plummets down to the lower. In the shooting mini-game it’s even harder to aim as the beetles scurry closer and closer.
All in all Metroid Prime Pinball is a classic virtual pinball simulator filled with tasteful and unencumbering add-ons that ties the game of pinball to the game of Metroid seamlessly. On top of its spectacular gameplay, Metroid pinball is spiced up with all the old tunes from the original Metroid Prime on Nintendo’s Gamecube. I give it four bouncy morph balls out of five.
