Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GC)

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, known as Metroid Prime 2: Dark Echoes (メトロイドプライム2: ダークエコーズ Metoroido Puraimu Tsū: Dāku Ekōzu) in Japan, is a first-person, action-adventure video game developed by Retro Studios and published by Nintendo for the GameCube. It is the seventh published game in the Metroid series and a direct sequel to Metroid Prime.

Like its predecessor, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes takes place in an open-ended world with interconnected regions, revolving around solving puzzles to uncover secrets, platform jumping, and shooting enemies. Echoes features parallel dimensions gameplay, Light Aether and Dark Aether, where changes in either dimension often reflect changes in the other. Dark Aether's atmosphere is caustic and damages Samus' Power Suit, requiring the player to move between designated "safe zones" that allow Samus' health to be regained slowly.

An updated version was released for the Wii as part of the Metroid Prime Trilogy.

Shader Compilation Stuttering
The Metroid Prime games are some of the most susceptible titles to shader compilation stuttering, thanks to a combination of very complex effects and dynamic loading. The GC and Wii have no concept of shaders - everything runs directly "on the metal" without any APIs. Modern desktop and phone systems do not work in this way, requiring the use of shaders as an intermediary so your system's GPU can perform the tasks that the GC and Wii GPU performed. But shaders have to be created, and since GC/Wii games are not designed to create shaders ahead of time as a PC game would, when a new effect appears Dolphin has to delay the CPU thread while the GPU thread performs the compilation; a pause that does not exist on the consoles. For most games shader generation takes only a few milliseconds, but for the Metroid Prime series and a few other demanding titles, the shaders that they generate are so large that they can result in noticeable stuttering.

Eventually stuttering will reduce as a shader cache is built up, but there is no solution to this problem at this time.

Visors
Visors will only work if Store EFB Copies to Texture Only is disabled. Though Store EFB Copies to Texture Only is forced off by the GameINI, visor corruption may still occur if the graphics configuration window is opened during gameplay. Disable Store EFB Copies to Texture Only in the Dolphin GUI to avoid any problems.

Dot
When playing above 1x Native internal resolution, there is a dot in the center of the screen. It's small and easy to ignore, but it is present whenever the HUD is on screen. There is no fix for this problem.

The Black Bar
During Shader Compilation, stuttering can become so severe that it desyncs the GPU and CPU threads in Dual Core mode. The game freaks out over this desync, creating a black bar at the bottom of the screen, which takes up 15% of the screen space and "squishes" the game in the remaining space. The black bar will remain there from then on whether stuttering continues or ceases.

After, enabling Virtual XFB or Real XFB will fix and/or prevent the problem. If XFB is disabled the problem may still occur. Details can be found in the September Progress Report.

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. Fixed by.

PAL
Enable 50Hz Mode [Ralf] EG75-68B7-QN0DF 3FTF-FBBX-V2BEQ