The Video Game Revue

Metroid Pinball

Sunny got me Metroid Pinball for Christmas. I'm having a blast with it, and it's easily one of the most infectious DS games I've tried yet. You have to enjoy pinball game adaptations to get a kick out of it, though; if you either don't like pinball or are a hardcore pinball purist, then I imagine you could well have strong objections to Metroid Pinball that would be relatively foreign to me.

I'm not much of a pinball wizard, but I have had some experience with it in the past. Only a slim margin of this experience was with actual pinball machines, unfortunately. I had the old DOS version of Tristan, and I spent some time with Kirby's Pinball Land for GameBoy, which is one of the best GameBoy games ever made. I also have the Sonic Mega Collection for GameCube, which includes Sonic Spinball, although I haven't played much of that as I found it relatively frustrating. With this somewhat meager, yet adequate experience with pinball adaptations behind me, I've found it easy to dig right into Metroid Pinball. My current hi-score is over the 3 mil mark, although I'm consistently scoring near 2 mil and if I continue to find the time to play it, I expect to steadily improve.

Mind you, I'll be back to work on Tuesday and I have tons of other games demanding attention (Ico, Dragon Quest VIII, Mario Kart DS, etc.), so time will continue to be scarce. Fortunately, Metroid Pinball doesn't demand a whole lot of time--just a half-hour window here or there is plenty. The same could be said of Mario Kart DS though, or even Final Fantasy IV Advance, which I'm nearly 5 hours into now.

Oh yeah, one last note about Metroid Pinball: the "rumble pack" is pretty weak, which is to say that it's more like a "jiggle pack" or a "vibe pack" than a proper rumble pack. Somehow I remember hearing the same criticism of the original rumble pack for N64... was it Star Fox 64 that introduced that tech, or am I just making that up? Anyway, it's not a big deal, really. Metroid Pinball isn't made or broken on the strength of the rumble pack, and I'd rather conserve battery time by not using it anyway.

What does matter about Metroid Pinball is the vivid theme and interestingly varied levels. Metroid Pinball kick ass where it counts.

posted by Parappa @ 10:10 PM