Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii)

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Developer(s)	Retro Studios
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Series	Metroid, Metroid Prime
Platform(s)	Wii
Release date(s)	JP March 6, 2008 NA August 27, 2007 EU October 26, 2007 AUS November 8, 2007
Genre(s)	First-person action-adventure, First-person shooter, Action-adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player
Input methods	Wii Remote + Nunchuk
Compatibility	5 Perfect
GameIDs	RM3P01, RM3E01, RM3J01, G2MEAB
See also...	Trilogy Version Dolphin Forum thread Open Issues Search Google Search Wikipedia

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is a first-person action-adventure game developed by Retro Studios and published by Nintendo for the Wii video game console. It is the tenth game in the Metroid series, and the final entry in the Metroid Prime Trilogy. The Wii Remote and Nunchuk devices are featured in a new control scheme that took a year to develop and caused the game's release to be delayed several times.

Gameplay for Metroid Prime 3 is similar to its predecessors: players explore open ended worlds, finding story clues and power ups, solving puzzles, jumping on platforms, and fighting enemies. Unlike past games however, the game is divided into several open worlds; each world is smaller than the single open world environments of Metroid Prime or Metroid Prime 2, but the combined size is greater. As with Metroid Prime 2, exploring the worlds is not aimless: players explore the world freely, but there are specific tasks meant to be accomplished on each world which are told to you beforehand. The game also includes hypermode, a phazon overload system that allows players to exchange health for massive damage. The biggest change is the controls. Metroid Prime 3 uses a new control system using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, allowing free aiming and movement similar to mouse and keyboard controls.

Metroid Prime 3 was also included in Metroid Prime: Trilogy, which includes updated versions of its prequels: Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.

Problems

Random Crashes

Prime 3 has a tendency to crash randomly, its severity depending on the revision used. There is no known solution to this problem at this time, but restarting should allow you to get past the crash point. Save often.

Savestates

Using savestates in MP3 will crash Dolphin. Use the in-game saving to avoid any problems.

Constant Wiimote Disconnects

Since 3.5-471, Prime 3 will think that the wiimote is constantly disconnecting. Pressing Alt-F5 will restore it, but it will disconnect again seconds later. Disable "Enable Speaker Data" to solve this problem.

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 3 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 5185.

• PAL users can disable "EuRGB60 Mode (PAL60)" in the Wii settings to prevent this issue.

Correct emulation

Black bar and squishing

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. 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.

Pixelation Glitches

A large pixelated block may appear in the upper left area of the frame. It may only appear during movement (newer revisions) or be stuck there permanently (older revisions). To avoid this problem, use the D3D graphics backend.

File:MP3-Pixelboxes-cropzoom.jpg

Example of the pixelation, top half is blurred

Refraction Slowdown

Refraction effects, such as raindrops on Samus' visor and the heat effect after firing her weapon for an extended period, cause slowdown on all backends. OpenGL is affected worse, though D3D is affected as well. It also has slowdowns when several grapple points (yellow pulsing) are present on screen at once. Even the strongest computers are affected by this issue, and there is no solution at this time.

Bloom Offset

Prime 3 has noticeable bloom offset problems. It will have several copies of the bloom spread out from the source, and can be very distracting. The only solution is to disable "Scaled EFB Copy", but this has some issues of its own. See issue 5573.

Example of the bloom offset

Another example of the offset

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. Turn on EFB to Ram 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's always there. There is no fix for this problem.

The dot, zoomed in 8x

Configuration

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

Wii Remote

Config	Setting	Notes
Enable Speaker Data	Disabled	Causes constant wiimote disconnects

Version Compatibility

The graph below charts the compatibility with Metroid Prime 3: Corruption since Dolphin's 2.0 release, listing revisions only where a compatibility change occurred.

r1546

3.5-367

3.5-380

Δ

5.0-21453 (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
r5442	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 @ 2.6GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 275	Intro slow, but in game full speed.
r7111	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600	ATI Radeon HD 5770	20/40 frames
r7478	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i7-2600K @ 3.4GHz	AMD Radeon HD 6950	Works great. Real Wiimote errors. Have to use emulated Wiimote.	Robodt7
r7670	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i5-2500K @ 4.1GHz	AMD Radeon HD 6850	Runs flawlessly. 60fps all the time. Still has Wiimote control lag issues. Red blooming from light sources now fixed.	MegaJump
r7670	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.3GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti	Struggle to reach 60fps. Enabling any kind of anti-aliasing has a serious hit on performance 20-40 frames on 4x internal res.	boeoz

Gameplay Videos

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on Dolphin Wii/GC Emulator (720p HD) Full Speed

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on Dolphin the Wii Emulator (1080p HD)