Last year, Fuse Games and Nintendo worked together to send Mario into the world of pinball. Though it had some merit, ultimately the attempt was a dud, which made people sort of roll their eyes when they heard that the development team was sending Samus to that same world of pinball. The game is on the show floor at E3, and I can safely say that this game, in its current demo form, is a far, far better pinball game than Super Mario Pinball Land.
Because Samus' morph ball is a standard part of her theme, it actually makes a lot of sense seeing her rolling around the pinball environment. The pinball actions spans both screens in a non-scrolling environment, with most of the graphical effects using pre-rendered artwork. The Samus morph ball is smoothly animated thanks to being rendered at several different angles.
The E3 demo is in two portions. First, in a multi-task pinball table, players will activate special challenges. "Bug Hunt", for example, brings Samus into unrolled status at the bottom of the screen where she'll blast her guns up at the top screen, and players will rotate her left and right with the flipper buttons to blast at the huge invasion of alien insects. "Space Pirates" brings an invasion of the alien beings to the table, and players will have to whack them out of play with the Samus ball. The second portion is a boss battle with a giant prerendered alien that invades the upper screen, and players will have to take it down with powerful shots.
The pinball physics are pulled off extremely well in Metroid Prime Pinball, showing the team's strengths in this area. Fuse Games employs touch screen control for table nudging; by touching the screen with a finger and pushing in a direction, the table will nudge in that direction to emulate a jolt to the machine. It's actually a pretty cool effect that pinball wizards will enjoy, since most video pinball games don't give directional control to table nudging the way Metroid Prime Pinball does.
I also love the visual flair of Metroid Prime Pinball. It's very energetic when you've collected an artifact or activate a special mode, really fitting the futuristic theme.
So far, so good, guys. Let's hope the game fleshes out into a complete project when it's released later this year.
:rofl2: 
