Samus Aran rolls her way back onto the DS
We imagine that could be the only reason why it has taken Samus' pinball outing a full 18 months to reach us Brits after it was released in the US. Not that we're bitter.
Metroid Prime Pinball is a sweet pinball quest wrapped in a Metroid Prime overcoat. Everything from the worlds and enemies, to the missions and music has been ripped straight out of the GameCube series and Metroid fans will love it.
The tables are full of your usual pinball tricks - bumpers, flippers, rails and those infuriating slip-gaps on the sides that the ball always seems to go down. But that alone wouldn't do, so the game uses the Metroid theme to throw all sorts of enemy-based challenges at you, and that's what makes this one of the better pinball games of recent years.
Hitting certain targets within the detailed tables cues different events and challenges for you to complete. One, for example, makes a swarm of parasites appear on the table and gives you a minute to kill them all without dying.
Another spawns tough-as-you-like Metroids that have to be bashed multiple times to defeat. But if you roll past these Metroids slowly they grab you, just like in the main adventure games, and can spit you to your death.
Great Balls Of Fire
But best of all are the challenges that take you away from the pinball altogether. In one challenge, you have to defeat a swarm of attacking aliens, but not by rolling into them - Samus morphs back into her normal form and stands on a fixed point shooting her arm cannon while you press the L and R buttons to rotate her and blast your enemies into oblivion.
Beyond all that, you also have the equally as hectic eight-player versus play, which has you link up with your friends to compete for the highest score on a multiplayer-only table.
The US version of the game came with a Rumble Pack not included here but even so, like we said, this all comes together to make for one of the best pinball packages of late.
But, as with most pinball games, its ultimate downfall is in its tiny selection of tables and it could have done with a more fleshed-
out single-player quest to keep you hooked. It's a good effort but all over far too quickly.