Metroid Prime Pinball: Hands on

Metroid is one of the few Nintendo franchises that has remained pure. With the exception of Samus Aran's appearance in Smash Brothers, Metroid has stayed out of racing, partying, extreme sports, dancing, and the other assorted oddball activities the Mario crew finds themselves in. Metroid has also never had a bad game, putting it far ahead of Star Fox (which now stands at 2 good games and 2 terrible ones) and even Zelda (I'm counting those CD-i turds.) So why now with the Metroid universe being glorified with the astounding Zero Mission remake of the first game and the superb play of Prime... why now do we see a Pinball game? Mario Pinball Land is one of the worst Nintendo games ever released. But while the associated is blasphemous, the game itself is actually pretty good as as faithful as can be expected. We could've done a whole lot worse. I played the Tallon IV overworld table, with the DS' L/R buttons working the triggers. Enemies from Metroid Prime show up here and there, since Samus is ball mode, she'll need to use the B button to drop bombs to take out some of them. At certain points you'll lock into position just above the bumpers and stand up and Samus will rapid fire at an onslaught of approaching enemies. This also is controlled very simply by using the d-pad or just the L/R buttons to aim left and right to blast them as the get close. Just from the very short playtest, I could tell this is going to be a very fun game. Its not a new 2D adventure (as the oft-rumoured unseen DS title Metroid Dread is), and its not Hunters, which is aging very quickly. Even though it sticks out like a sore thumb in the Metroid mythos and breaks the series consistent reputation as the best action/exploration title available, it is not a bad game. The visuals, sounds, and play are all well within the established Metroid world and don't do the history a disservice in the least. But if I see Ridley & Kraid playin' baseball, there will be trouble