Metroid Prime (GC)

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Metroid Prime
Metroid prime box art.jpg
Developer(s) Retro Studios
Publisher(s) Nintendo
Series Metroid, Metroid Prime
Platform(s) GameCube
Release date(s) NA November 17, 2002
JP February 28, 2003
EU March 21, 2003
AUS April 3, 2003
Genre(s) First-person action-adventure, First-person shooter, Action-adventure
Mode(s) Single-player
Input methods GameCube Controller, Game Boy Advance
Compatibility 4Stars4.pngEdit rating: Metroid Prime (GC)
Playable
GameIDs
See also...

Wii Version
Trilogy Version
Dolphin Forum thread
Open Issues
Search Google
Wikipedia page

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.

Emulation Information

Shader Compilation Stuttering

Metroid Prime (GC) is one of the most susceptible titles to shader compilation stuttering. The GC and Wii have no concept of shaders - everything is executed directly by the hardware without an intermediate programming language (API). Modern computers and mobile 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 directly. Shaders have to be generated though, 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 a few demanding titles, the shaders that they generate are so large that they can result in noticeable stuttering, in severe cases pauses of over a second may occur.

Since 5.0-4869, this problem can be solved by enabling ubershaders. Changing GPU, updating GPU drivers, or updating Dolphin may invalidate the shader cache, requiring specialized shaders to be compiled again. Since 5.0-6461, Dolphin caches shader pipeline UIDs independently of the video backend and compiles them on game start. This allows cached shaders to work across different video backends, platforms, hardware configurations and even Dolphin versions as long as changes aren't made to Dolphin's actual shader pipeline. These shaders are compiled in the background when the game starts, which may cause stuttering for a short period. Enable Compile Shaders Before Starting to avoid this.

Problems

Raindrop Effects

Raindrops will have varying degrees of corruption, usually sporting a black line that can take up half of the actual raindrop. To fix, disable Store EFB Copies to Texture Only.

Missing Effects

Lightning and some other graphics effects are not rendered appropriately on the OpenGL backend with Intel and perhaps some other integrated graphics cards. This can be accounted for by using a different graphics backend.

Enhancements

16:9 HUD Mod

https://mega.nz/#!XwFl3SzL!zn53p1lKpiK22yd1-Qo1rcyrtqYd9FTOq9R7SJykjsA

16:9 Aspect Ratio Fix

Make sure to disable the Dolphin Widescreen Hack before using these codes.

NA

Only works for version 1.00 of the game.

$16:9 Widescreen [gamemasterplc, Parax]
C237D530 00000004
3DC03FAA 61CEAAAB
91C20000 C2620000
ED330272 ED6A4824
60000000 00000000
043452A8 C342CB78
045AE898 40000000

EU

$16:9 Widescreen [Ralf]
0400C754 38A00356

VR Culling Fix

In VR, culling needs to be disabled completely and these Gecko codes will do that. Make sure to enable the Dolphin widescreen hack for these codes.

NA

This code only works for the NTSC version 1.00 of the game.

$VR Culling Fix
04344FCC 38600001
04344FD0 4E800020
0434502C 38600001
04345030 4E800020
04345098 38600001
0434509C 4E800020
04345188 38600001
0434518C 4E800020
043451D0 38600001
043451D4 4E800020

PAL

$VR Culling Fix
0432D7A0 38600001
0432D7A4 4E800020
0432D800 38600001
0432D804 4E800020
0432D86C 38600001
0432D870 4E800020
0432D95C 38600001
0432D960 4E800020
0432D9A4 38600001
0432D9A8 4E800020

HD Textures

Metroid Prime Trilogy - HD Interface Textures. This texture pack works with the Trilogy and the standalone GameCube/Wii titles.

Configuration

Only configuration options for the best compatibility where they deviate from defaults are listed.

Graphics

Config Setting Notes
Shader Compilation Asynchronous (Ubershaders) Fixes stuttering
Store EFB Copies to Texture Only Off Render rain effect correctly

Version Compatibility

The graph below charts the compatibility with Metroid Prime since Dolphin's 2.0 release, listing revisions only where a compatibility change occurred.

Δ
5.0-21222 (current)
Δ
Δ
Δ
Δ
Δ
2.0 (r5384)
Compatibility can be assumed to align with the indicated revisions. However, compatibility may extend to prior revisions or compatibility gaps may exist within ranges indicated as compatible due to limited testing. Please update as appropriate.

Testing

This title has been tested on the environments listed below:

Test Entries
Revision OS CPU GPU Result Tester
r6569 Windows 7 AMD Phenom II X4 @ 3.7 GHz ATI Radeon HD 5770 Great, but heavy FPS drops in some places
r6569 Windows 7 AMD Phenom II X2 550 3.1 GHz ATI Radeon HD 4850 Playable: 30-60FPS with DX9 plug-in, OpenCL Enabled and Recommended Configuration
r7338 Windows 7 Intel Core i5 @ 2.53 GHz NVIDIA GeForce 330M It runs great, though when heavy particles kick in, it gets a little sluggish, but recovers. Rymar
r7417 Windows 7 Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 @ 2.66 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 It started when i loaded it the first time. After saving in the first level, it only plays audio and shows a black screen. I can´t play it anymore. AssAsSin
r7647 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-2600 @ 3.4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 Crashes in "Temple Entryway" (Phendrana Drifts) after you get the wave beam, when you go back to Phendrana Shorelines. Forced passage. Seems to freeze when loading the next location data, in the middle of the corridor.
r7661 Windows 7 Intel Core 2 Quad 9550 @ 3.2 GHz AMD Radeon HD 6950 Great, no significant performance drops so far, sound problems sometimes
r7670 Windows 7 Intel Core i5-2500K @ 4.1 GHz AMD Radeon HD 6850 Runs perfectly fine. There still is glitches along the edges of the screen using "stretch to window". MegaJump
r7719 Windows 7 Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti DX11, 1920x1080, 3x Native, 2x AA. Game runs smoothly at 60FPS at almost all times. Audio popping and crackling problems persist, but the frequency of audio errors appears to be drastically reduced when using XAudio2. Occasionally sound effects will drop out for a bit or fail to play. FPS drops immensely when splashing into water, and when looking upwards at rain droplets in large rooms. Helvetica
3.0-153 Windows 7 AMD Phenom II X4 @ 3.4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 Used Recommended Configuration; Fullspeed 60FPS, Audio still cracks and pops (happens when pressing digital type controls e.g. D-Pad, A, B) extreme framerate drop 95%+ when water droplets get on HUD (but does not happen from visor being covered in condensation), same effect from Arm Cannon overheat smoke and when falling in water. Some rooms cause framerate drops, not sure why yet. Sometimes when using the Scan Visor framerate will drop to 20-21FPS, not sure why yet. AnonMX
3.0-201 Windows 7 Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 @ 3 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GT 220M Used Recommended Configuration with 4xAA. Very little audio popping. Speed was mostly good, dropped to 60s% in some areas due to weak GPU (overclocking GPU helped). Widescreen hack doesn't work here, models that are outside of the 4:3 ratio disappear. Maave
3.0-201 Windows 7 Intel Core i5-760 @ 2.8 GHz ATI Radeon HD 5850 DX9, 2x IR, 4xAA, and running very smooth. Haven't noticed any negative effects from Cache Display Lists. XAudio2 distorted various sounds, using DSound instead. Maave
3.0-201 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-2620M @ 2.7 GHz Intel HD 3000 Using recommended settings and dx9 back-end. Its playable, with a consistent 30FPS, however it will glitch only in certain rooms, and sometimes in morph ball form it will drop to 11FPS. Some audio issues but for the most part very good and consistent. Also playing in 720p and frame set to auto instead of native. cohn
3.0-415 Windows 7 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 3 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 With recommended settings, XAudio2 and 2x native resolution I get almost perfect emulation speed, but will drop at larger boss fights to around 60% and snowy areas to around 80%. Sound and music are sometimes missing or playing strangely, like if you are far away or closer to the source. The alcove room sky bug mentioned in the wiki didn't trigger. Got a single crash after the second boss.
3.0-586 Windows 7 AMD Athlon II X4 640 @ 3 GHz ATI Radeon HD 4200 With recommended settings works almost flawlessly. Lava, water, and snow sometimes lowers the FPS, but the FPS will go right back up if you turn the visor to scan mode. IMPORTANT: I don't know about other revisions, but save states are broken; loading a state results in a black screen.
3.0-631 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.7 GHz AMD Radeon HD 6950 Absolutely fluid FPS even with 2.5x native on HLE audio, however, massive audio glitches occur (cracking, noise and 90% of sounds are wrong), LLE audio fixes this but yields a comparatively pathetic performance, even on 1x native with settings trimmed on extreme performance very annoying lags occur in fights with more than 2 opponents. LLE on a discrete thread seems to improve this a bit, but not satisfyingly. High FPS drops in large outside areas when water drops come onto the visor. UPDATE: I have recently found the solution: Enabling "Accurate VBeam emulation" causes a slight lag and FPS-drop in the menu and just after entering new areas, but increases overall performance substantially and makes it well playable.
3.0-688 Windows 7 AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition > X4 B50 @ 3.2 GHz ATI Radeon HD 4890 Been playing for a few hours. Default settings yield 60FPS. Sometimes Audio is choppy. Random glitched noises appear when "boss" fights start. Once in a while certain textures appear black. Works great otherwise. Oerg866
3.0-787 Windows 7 Intel Core i5-2450M @ 2.5 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GT 635M Running at 2x internal resolution, 720p screen res. Minor audio issues: sometimes audio clips make a crackling sound, sometimes they play at odd volumes and occasionally they don't play at all. Stable 50FPS, drops during cutscenes and action heavy sequences, but never drops below 30. It will sometimes freeze for a few seconds, but this has only happened twice so far and it corrects itself. Overall its a very stable game.
3.5-126 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-2670QM @ 2.2 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M Running with D3D9, 1x native, 9xSSAA, EFB to Ram, Fog/Per-Pixel Depth and DSP HLE usually results in a solid 60FPS, although significantly lower during bosses/fights with Aerotroopers, still playable though having it beat it all the way through. Audio glitches are annoying but no big deal, all I ever encountered in that regard was music disappearing randomly or when loading Save States Phazon Lord
3.5-134 Windows 8 Intel Core i7-3520M @ 2.9 GHz Intel HD Graphics 4000 Occasional sound glitches, common for background music to drop out. After uncovering a large portion of the map, viewing it drops FPS dramatically (around 10FPS in some cases (this is ONLY for viewing the map)). Otherwise, runs consistently at 50FPS and 50VPS. Very playable. I don't use the LLE recompiler because it still appears to have the same sound issues, and will also decrease FPS, I would suggest you just deal with the sound issues, and use the HLE engine. QwertyMaster
3.5-380 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-5960X @ 4.5 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Perfect, no slowdowns due the great performance of i7 5960x and GTX 980, but, background music still stop, please fix it AngelX
3.5-2215 Windows 8 Intel Core i7-4700HQ @ 3.2 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 765M Playable, 40-60FPS with proper config. Sound was perfect thanks to the new DSP HLE engine. Autofire
4.0-263 Windows 8 Intel Core i7-3630QM @ 2.4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M Very Playable, 45-60FPS, but VPS was a constant 60. Occasional loud static accompanied with cutscenes. nos770
4.0-4199 Windows Vista Intel Pentium D @ 3.2 GHz ATI Radeon HD 3800 Somewhat Playable, 40-50FPS, Particle effects and fire caused FPS to drop lower than 40, VPS was jumping from 60 to 45. Cutscenes ran mostly at 60 with exception of scenes with fire or explosions. Opening Visor and Entering Morph Ball caused short 2-3 second freeze, Levels with explorable space (such as the first) lag the most, in general, The game is playable, but not pretty. Madamunkey
4.0-4478 Windows 8 Intel Core i7-3520M @ 3.3 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M LE Played with D3D, 1.5x resolution. Near perfect, slows down only in very large areas or when splashing in water for some reason. FPS is constantly at around 60, VPS is stable as well. Micro-stuttering still an issue but barely noticeable; the sound is fantastic with the HLE engine, not a single error. I managed to complete the game with minor problems; the x-ray and thermal visors failed to work once for some reason, but worked again after resetting the emulator. It crashed four times in total, always in the same situation; when entering rooms where purple energy enemies are found, those that can only be killed via wave beam, the game randomly crashed. In other cases a FIFO overflow error occurred, although it didn't stop the emulation or crash the game. This is very close to perfect, and my computer is nowhere near powerful for Dolphin. Modifications to the JIT and FIFO have made a huge difference. UDEM42
4.0-5347 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-4770K @ 4.2 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Played through the pirate frigate section, it seems perfect and running at full speed. Using D3D, auto rescaling at 1920x1080, 2xAA 4xAF, other settings at defaults. The microstuttering is there but isn't really a problem. It was present at places like the pan over the frigate during the opening cutscene and using the morph ball for the first time. Each pause was 150ms or so. Repeating these actions did not result in stuttering since the shaders were cached. ThatBum
5.0-rc-34 Windows 10 Intel Core i5-6600K @ 4.5 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Final Verdict: At the expense of the unfortunate stuttering and slowdown issues (varying from mostly minor, to sudden Matrix-inducing moments), Metroid Prime looks absolutely stunning in Dolphin, running in 1080p widescreen at a mostly consistent 60FPS. What's more, there are no stretching artifacts or culling issues involved. Used Gamecube Controller, with Mayflash Adapter, and installed the Gamecube drivers via the Dolphin wiki itself.

Settings: Backend OpenGL (Direct3D seems to deliver similar performance), Enable Cheats (true), Force 16:9, V-Sync (true), 3x Native (1920x1584), 4xAA (4x SSAA is possible, but tends to cause more stuttering? it's difficult to say), Per-Pixel Lighting (true), Widescreen Hack (true) (don't forget to enable cheats or the following AR Code). AR Code Disable Culling (aka Widescreen Hack fix): 043451D0 38600001 043451D4 4E800020. Thanks to the community for the code. This fixes an issue where most objects that are outside of the original 4:3 FoV would turn invisible to try and save on graphical resources (a technique called Culling). This AR code is essential for Dolphin VR. Keep in mind certain visual effects still render incorrectly in a 4:3 aspect ratio, such as the "Colour Correction" effect when Samus is underwater. You might also wish to disable the HUD and Helmet view within the game's Options. For a true native experience, set the aspect ratio to 4:3, disable Widescreen Hack, and disable the AR Code. All other settings left to default. It's hard to say if there's a performance difference with reduced/increased settings due to the micro stuttering issue that occurs regardless of settings. On a side note, Dolphin VR 4.0-9170-dirty with Oculus Rift DK2 and SDK 0.7 works well, drawback being choppy headtracking. With OpCode Replay Settings: Pullup 60FPS to 75FPS (true), and Disable Opcode Warnings (true), headtracking is smooth but geography will flash everywhere making the game quickly unplayable.

PyroPaperPlanes
4.0-7816 Windows 7 Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.3 GHz ATI Radeon HD 6870 Completed a 100% playthrough. D3D, auto rescaling, fullscreened to 1920x1080, all other graphics options set to default or auto. In certain areas there was extreme slowdown, namely the completed map screen for most sections, and the Chozo Temple, which made fighting Meta Ridley a tad difficult. There is also slowdown during special visor effects, such as when jumping into or exiting water, shooting a beam at a wall directly in front of you, or stuff splashing on it when killing Scarabs, but those were only a minor nuisance. The microstuttering shader cache issue still seems to exist here and there but the pauses were always extremely short and not too noticeable. BallsOfSteel
4.0-7873 Windows 10 Intel Core i7-3930K @ 4.2 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Game has terrible slowdown issues on OpenGL, but runs nearly perfectly on Direct3D, save a tiny bit of slowdown (about 57FPS) on the whole map view, and sometimes when landing in water. Stutter issue due to shader generation still exists, but it's not too bad. Used DSP HLE with the only issue being that some rooms in phendrana drifts have a slightly messed up echo effect, but last I checked this is a known issue. No sound issues otherwise; even the background music worked fine. Played through the entire game to 100% completion without a single issue otherwise. 1920x1080 fullscreen, auto rescaling, anti-aliasing, no texture filtering (I never use it as it often breaks things), and all the optimized defaults, including EFB to texture, which now works fine for the thermal and x-ray visors. Techjar
4.0-9222 Windows 10 Intel Core i7-4710HQ @ 3.3 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M Played through many times with DirectX11, 3x native resolution, 16x anisotropic filtering, 2x MSAA, and various compatibility settings. No issues whatsoever, aside from visor effects causing temporary slowdowns. Emulation is perfect, and the only limiter to graphics quality is my laptop hardware. If you want to play with 16:9 aspect ratio and widescreen hack, consider downloading a modified HUD for the best experience (I recommend looking into this; the game is simply stunning with the widescreen HUD!). Anonymous
4.0-9442 Windows 10 Intel Core i7-4770K @ 3.8 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Been playing to Phendrana and the only problem is the shader stuttering (read above). The only zone the shader stuttering was noticable was in Phendrana. Might be a stutter of 2 frames at most. Other than that it emulates flawlessly.

Settings used: General: DX11, V-Sync Enhancements: 6x Native (4k), 4x SSAA, 16x Anisotropic, Scaled EFB Copy, Per-Pixel Lightning, Widescreen Hack Hacks: Ignore Format Changes, Store EFB Copies to Texture Only, Disable External Buffer (XFB), Fast Depth Calculation, Disable Bounding Box Advanced: Crop. Currently running with Widescreen Hack and Widescreen HUD (don't forget to input the AR code 043452A8 C342CB78 to fix the culling on the sides (AR code only works on REV0 / 1.00).

Hetsig
5.0 Windows 10 AMD A4 7210 AMD Radeon R5 Graphics Good but a little choppy. Dogmander25
5.0-129 Windows 10 Intel Core i3-6320 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 TI Works great even on moderate hardware. Black bar problem is gone and shader stutter wasn't as bad as i remember but I did have a brief moment of lag right after the opening cut-scene. I only did the intro so far but I am impressed by how much better this game runs! IceStrike256
5.0-5421 Windows 10 Intel Core i3-3220 @ 3.3 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 Nearly perfect with default settings (OpenGL). Most of the stuttering on a fresh shader cache is confined to the intro; afterwards, things were a lot more smooth. Hybrid ubershaders eliminates the stuttering entirely, but for me using hybrid ubershaders with OpenGL caused massive slowdown to below 50% speed when looking at the map (gameplay is fine). Direct3D11 and Vulkan with ubershaders both fix stuttering as well and keep the map at full speed. Xerxes

Gameplay Videos