Metroid Prime Hunters

Summary

Samus’s first 3D adventure on the Nintendo DS takes her to the mysterious Alimbic system where she must fight against other bounty hunters to discover the Ultimate Power and secure it for the Galactic Federation. This is also Samus’s first full-fledged experience with online multiplayer gaming. Compete with other Metroid fans over a Wi-Fi connection for some intense shooting action.

The Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt demo appeared as a pack-in cartridge with the first release of the Nintendo DS.

Release Date

Metroid Prime Hunters is the first Metroid soundtrack composed by an American team, Lawrence Schwedlerand James Phillipsen. That said, the score is influenced heavily by Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, with an arrange of Phendrana "Arcterra II", and even tunes from the conclusion of Echoes in the ending theme. The best of these by far is "VS. Fire Spawn, Ice Spawn", which is a fast mix of "VS. Parasite Queen" from the original Prime.

There are a few outstanding tracks, such as the jazzy exploratory "Celestial Archives II" and "Multiplayer ~ Alinos", which makes great use of choir and percussion. "Alinos II" also makes use of organs and bass to create a strong balance between melody and ambience, relying on tones rather than environmental sounds. The Oubliette/Stronghold Void theme is another good example of this, with menace reminiscent of "Gold Statue Chamber" from Super Metroid. One track in particular to watch out for is the unused menu theme, which is a hip, hardcore arrange of Prime's title theme.

Schwedler and Phillipsen had a technical achievement with Hunters, creating some truly dynamic audio. By turning on and off different sound channels, the two were able to store multiple songs inside a single audio track. However, this means many of the tracks sound similar, such as the hunters themes. Because of this quirk, all tracks were recorded from the emulator, with careful attention paid to the sound settings in order to replicate DS audio as accurately as possible.

The First Hunt soundtrack gives a taste of what to expect in the full game. Created two years prior to Hunters, several of the tracks are early versions of the finalized tracks, including "Morph Ball ~ VS. Parasite Queen", which played for the Fire and Ice Spawn battles, "Multiplayer ~ Trooper Module", which played in "Multiplayer ~ Celestial Archives", and "Multiplayer ~ Ancient Vestige", which played in "Multiplayer ~ Alinos" in the final. The Hunters renditions are higher quality due to improved music formats, but the compositions were also improved. There is also a nice Brinstar arrange through the "Regulator" theme, and a "VS. Ridley" arrange in "Survivor". With the exception of the two multiplayer themes, all tracks were recorded from the emulator, with careful attention paid to the sound settings.

 

This playlist contains jingles and other miscellaneous tracks found in the game outside of the main soundtrack.

This playlist contains jingles and other miscellaneous tracks found in the game outside of the main soundtrack.