Metroid Prime Pinball - Development

Development

Metroid Prime Pinball was developed by Fuse Games, the company that also developed Mario Pinball Land for the Game Boy Advance. While making Metroid Prime Hunters, another Metroid video game for the Nintendo DS, Kensuke Tanabe, a Nintendo product manager, came up with the idea to make a pinball game based on the Metroid series, after learning that Fuse Games had finished working on the pinball video game Mario Pinball Land. Tanabe realized that since the series' protagonist, Samus, can morph into a ball, the Metroid universe would fit well into a pinball setting. The development team for Metroid Prime Hunters collaborated with Fuse Games to elaborate on specific aspects of Metroid Prime Pinball, such as Samus's wall climbing and shooting abilities.

Named Project Code: Metroid Pinball while in development, the first gameplay footage from the game was released on May 17, 2005 at the E3 convention. Nintendo of America revealed on August 22, 2005 that the game, by then titled Metroid Prime Pinball, would be sold with the Rumble Pak accessory, which can be plugged into the Game Boy Advance slot of the Nintendo DS. When the Rumble Pak is installed, the Nintendo DS shakes whenever the pinball in the game hits an object. This was the first time that the Nintendo DS version of the Rumble Pak was introduced. It was first sold exclusively with Metroid Prime Pinball before becoming available as a standalone product from Nintendo.

Nintendo DS games that use the device's top and bottom screens as one continuous screen are harder to control because of a gap in the middle, sometimes called a visual "dead zone"; objects in this area are not visible. The developers of Metroid Prime Pinball, a game which takes advantage of both screens, resolved this problem by placing a second set of pinball flippers at the bottom of the upper screen to give players a reference to work with. The tabletops in the game use pre-rendered artwork for graphical effects, including Samus's Morph Ball, which uses renderings of images at several different angles to provide a smooth animation. To simulate the appearance of a real pinball game from a player's point of view, the tabletop in Metroid Prime Pinball was tipped back. The game offers players the ability to nudge the table, a technique used in pinball games to influence the ball's movement. This is achieved by touching the Nintendo DS's bottom touchscreen with a finger and pushing it in the direction that the player wants to nudge the tabletop. The game's soundtrack was composed by Kenji Yamamoto and Masaru Tajima, with audio effects from the Metroid Prime series are borrowed by the game to provide a "CD-like" music experience. The voice of the Power Suit was provided by Lorelei King.