Metroid Prime (GC)

Metroid Prime is a video game developed by Retro Studios and Nintendo for the Nintendo GameCube. It is the first 3D game in the Metroid series, the fifth main installment, and the first of the three part Metroid Prime storyline.

Despite taking place in the first person view, Metroid Prime is classified by Nintendo as a first-person adventure rather than a first-person shooter, due to the large exploration component of the game and its precedence over combat. As with all Metroid games, players solve puzzles, perform platform jumps, and fight enemies in a large, open ended world. Along the way, the player finds power ups that improve her abilities, and clues about the mystery of the planet. The story is told organically; the story is revealed through scan logs, allowing the player to dive into the story or ignore it as they see fit.

An updated version exists for the Wii as part of the Metroid Prime: Trilogy; which also contains the sequels Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

Micro-stuttering
All of the Prime games suffer from micro-stuttering: screen redraws and small stops in the video that can become very annoying. It occurs in all graphics backends, but the OpenGL backend has consistently been the most resistant to the problem. DSP HLE and DSP LLE are both affected, though DSP LLE appears to make it worse in some revisions. Its severity varies depending on the revision and settings used, so if you want to play the game you should try a wide variety of combinations. Enabling a virtual External Frame buffer may improve microstutter issues greatly.

Savestates
Savestates may randomly fail, especially if a lot of activity is going on screen when making the save. Use in game save stations to avoid any issues.

Refraction Slowdown
Refraction effects, such as raindrops on Samus' visor, cause slowdown in OpenGL. Even the strongest computers are affected by this issue, and there is no solution with the OpenGL backend at this time. D3D is not affected by this problem in this game.

Visors
The Thermal Visor will only work if EFB to Ram is enabled. However, EFB to Ram is set as default within the game INI, preventing the user from using anything but EFB to Ram for this game (unless manually modifying the .ini file).