Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Metroid Prime: Trilogy)
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Retro Studios |
Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
Series | Metroid, Metroid Prime |
Platform(s) | Wii |
Release date(s) | Original release NA November 15, 2004 EU November 26, 2004 AUS December 2, 2004 JP May 26, 2005 Metroid Prime: Trilogy NA August 24, 2009 EU September 4, 2009 AUS October 15, 2009 |
Genre(s) | First-person action-adventure, First-person shooter, Action-adventure |
Mode(s) | Single-player, Multiplayer (4) |
Input methods | Wii Remote + Nunchuk |
Compatibility | 4 Playable |
See also... |
GameCube Version |
Metroid Prime: Trilogy is an action-adventure video game compilation developed by Retro Studios and published by Nintendo for the Wii video game console. It features Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on a single dual-layer disc.
Metroid Prime 2 in Trilogy has been updated with many features from Metroid Prime 3, such as its aiming system, bloom rendering, 16:9 aspect ratio, and reduced difficulty level (to play the original difficulty, play "veteran" instead of normal). The update also has higher resolution textures, and uses Trilogy's menus, save system, achievements, and unlockable soundtracks.
Game Pages
This page should be used for specific issues with the Metroid Prime 2: Echoes sub-game of Metroid Prime: Trilogy. For other Metroid Prime: Trilogy games or launcher information, please see the following pages.
Problems
Performance
Performance in general seems reduced compared to the game's GameCube counterpart. This may be related to the higher resolution textures and various new screen effects added for the Trilogy versions.
Shader Generation Stuttering and the Black Bar
This game suffers from severe stuttering during shader generation. Because of the differences between how the Wii works compared to personal computers, whenever something uses the Wii's GPU, Dolphin must generate a shader to emulate it on a PC GPU. Shader generation causes a slight emulation delay while it's being created, so Dolphin caches these shaders in its shadercache folder to help keep things smooth. Most games don't care about this and play fine, but with all of the games in Metroid Prime Trilogy, the shaders are so massive that they cause a significant delay, which creates a hard stutter and desyncs the GPU and CPU threads. 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. Going into new areas or showing new effects will cause the stutter and black bar, 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.
There is no solution at this time. Playing with Dual Core disabled or using Sync GPU Thread is the only solution currently available, and both result in a significant performance hit on one of Dolphin's most demanding games. See issue 5185.
- PAL users can disable "PAL60 Mode (EuRGB60)" in the Wii settings to prevent the black bar from appearing. The stuttering during shader generation will remain, however.
Constant Wiimote Disconnects
Since 3.5-471, when using the MS Bluetooth Stack (the default Bluetooth stack on Windows) this game will think that the wiimote is constantly disconnecting. Pressing Alt-F5 will restore it, but it will disconnect again seconds later. Windows users can disable "Enable Speaker Data" to solve this problem, or move to either the Toshiba Stack or the DolphinBar.
Bloom Offset
Like Prime 3 and all the Trilogy games, Prime 2 Trilogy has bloom offset problems. Fortunately, it is not very noticeable with this game. There is no known solution to this issue. See issue 5573.
Refraction Slowdown
Refraction effects, such as raindrops on Samus' visor and the heat effect after firing her weapon for an extended period, 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's always there. There is no fix for this problem.
Visors
Visors will only work if EFB to Ram is enabled. Though EFB to Ram is forced by the GameINI, visor corruption may still occur if you open the graphics configuration window during gameplay. Turn on EFB to Ram in the Dolphin GUI to avoid any problems. Additionally, the graphics hack "Disable Destination Alpha" needs to be OFF for the Scan Visor to work.
Configuration
Only configuration options for the best compatibility where they deviate from defaults are listed.
Wii Remote
Config | Setting | Notes |
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Enable Speaker Data | Disabled | Causes constant wiimote disconnects |
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 |
r7689 | Windows 7 x64 | Intel Core i5-2500K @ 4.4GHz | nVidia GeForce GTS 250 | Close to perfect -> constant 60FPS, 1280x720, 3xNative textures and DSP-HLE sound (still must use dol swap though) | Zlutz |
3.0-766 | Windows 7 x64 | Intel Core i7-3770k @ 4.4GHz | AMD Radeon HD 6970 | DX11 at 1900x1200 (using internal resolution auto, 4xAA), averages 50 FPS. EFB-copy-to-RAM must be used 100% of the time for the scan visor to function (contrast to MP1 where it is only required for the rarely-used x-ray visor), but fastest cache option can be used (causes very minor graphical glitches). "Skip Destination Alpha Pass" also breaks the scan visor and should be left off. "Accurate V-Beam" (in right-click options) provides noticeable speedup in large rooms with no ill effect. DSP-HLE works fine, except for very occasional loss of BGM (can be resolved by save/load or reset); DSP-LLE does not drop BGM but instead causes crackling and clicking sounds whenever framerate drops below 60 FPS. OpenMP texture decoder, cache display lists, and disable fog/per-pixel-depth are all recommended for slight speedup. DOL swap still required to run. | anon |
4.0-2826 | Windows 7 x64 | Intel Core i7-4790k @ 4.6GHz | AMD Radeon HD 7970 | OpenGL at 1920x1080 (3x internal res), no AA, 4x AF, works consistently at 58-60 FPS so far - I will update if I see similar drops like I saw in MP1 | anon |
Gameplay Videos
- Retro Studios (Developer)
- Nintendo (Publisher)
- Metroid (Series)
- Metroid Prime (Series)
- North America (Release region)
- Europe (Release region)
- Australia (Release region)
- Japan (Release region)
- 2004 (Initial release year)
- First-person action-adventure (Genre)
- First-person shooter (Genre)
- Action-adventure (Genre)
- Single-player (Game mode)
- Multiplayer (Game mode)
- 4 (Players supported)
- Wii Remote (Input supported)
- Nunchuk (Input supported)
- 4 stars (Rating)
- Enable Speaker Data (Config Required)
- Tested On (OS): Windows
- Tested On (CPU): Intel
- Tested On (GPU):
- Tested
- Tested On (Release): 3.0
- Tested On (GPU): AMD
- Tested On (Release): 4.0
- Untested for 10000+ revisions
- Wii games