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.
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes | |
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Developer(s) | Retro Studios |
Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
Series | Metroid, Metroid Prime |
Platform(s) | GameCube |
Release date(s) | NA November 15, 2004 EU November 26, 2004 AUS December 2, 2004 JP May 26, 2005 |
Genre(s) | First-person action-adventure, First-person shooter, Action-adventure |
Mode(s) | Single-player, Multiplayer (4) |
Input methods | GameCube Controller |
Compatibility | 4 Playable |
GameIDs | |
See also... |
Trilogy Version |
Like it's 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 exists for the Wii as part of the Metroid Prime: Trilogy.
Problems
Black Bar and Severe Stutters
At seemingly random points throughout the game, the game will freeze for an instant, flashing to black and "redrawing". When it comes back, a black bar will be at the bottom of the screen, taking up 15% of the screen space and "squishing" the game in the remaining space. From thorough testing, this apparently occurs whenever the emulator stops the GPU thread for a split-second, causing the GPU and CPU threads to desync. Most games don't care about this, but Prime 2 freaks out and creates this error. Creating a new shadercache, from first run of the game or from going into a new area, will immediately cause the desync, as well as going in and out of fullscreen and even taking a screenshot. Building up a shadercache of an area helps, but it will still desync if a new effect or region is loaded. Playing with Dual Core disabled or using Sync GPU Thread is the only solution at this time. See issue 4336.
Micro-stuttering
All of the Prime games suffer from micro-stuttering: 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. 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.
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.
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.
Broken Scan Visor
If 'Skip Destination Alpha Pass' is turned on, the scan visor will display nonsensical data and fail to work. Running the game without this option fixes the problem.
Configuration
No configuration changes are known to affect compatibility for this title.
Version Compatibility
The graph below charts the compatibility with Metroid Prime 2: Echoes since Dolphin's 2.0 release, listing revisions only where a compatibility change occurred.
Testing
This title has been tested on the environments listed below:
Test Entries | |||||
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Revision | OS | CPU | GPU | Result | Tester |
r1943 | Windows | Intel Core i7-920 @ 4GHz | nVidia GeForce GTX 285 | Metroid Prime 2 on Dolphin 1943 (Emulator) - High Quality (Normally running on 45-60 FPS!!!) | |
r6569 | Windows 7 x64 | AMD Phenom II X2 550 @ 3.1GHz | ATI Radeon HD 4850 | Playable: 30-60 FPS with OpenGL plug-in and Recommended Configuration | |
r7346 | Windows 7 x64 | Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 @ 2.66GHz | nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS | Playable: 30-60 FPS with DX9 plug-in and Recommended Configuration. Just like Metroid Prime 1, if there are too many enemies, you will occasionally have some slowdown, especially since EFB copy to RAM is REQUIRED for the scan visor, which is an essential part of the game. Essentially runs flawlessly as of r7346. | ShobuPrime |
r7436 | Windows 7 x64 | AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.8GHz | ATI Radeon HD 4650 | Playable: Runs fine except for occasional loading pauses and the scan visor. Using slightly tweaked config based off of recommended config. | MechWarrior001 |
r7661 | Windows 7 x64 | Intel Core 2 Quad 9550 @ 3.2GHz | AMD Radeon HD 6950 | Perfect thanks to Dolphin DX 11 renderer without any issues and with the scan visor fully functional. 60FPS all the time. | Xenon |
^3.0 | Windows 7 x64 | AMD Phenom II X6 1100T | AMD Radeon HD 6850 | Perfect, just some slows when rain drops or water on the visor,audio some times crashes, graphics are clean and perfect | Aldaris |
4.0-256 | Windows 7 x64 | Intel i5 2500k @ 4.3GHz | AMD Radeon HD 7950 | Near perfect. Some slowdown when jumping out of shallow water, or looking up at open sky, but neither are significant issues due to their rarity. The green dot and black bar bugs persist, but I've yet to encounter flickering or micro-stutter. |