Metroid Prime Hunters

Samus Aran with aiming on a touchscreen, long before the mobile FPS was a given. Metroid Prime Hunters was an ambitious attempt to bring the three-dimensional action of the Prime series to a handheld and, above all, to prove that a stylus could replace a mouse. You turn by dragging the pen across the bottom screen, you shoot, you scan, and in the guise of the Morph Ball you roll through the corridors of a lost civilization's stations.

The core of the game rests on two pillars. The single-player campaign sends Samus after an artifact of the lost Alimbic race, while she is hunted by six rival bounty hunters, each with their own weapon and alternate form. The second pillar is the multiplayer, which was remarkable for its time, deathmatches for up to four players locally and online via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, where you could pick any of the hunters.

Development was overseen by Nintendo, and the game was created by the studio Nintendo Software Technology in North America. The title built on the success of the console Metroid Prime trilogy and was meant to show that the brand had a place in your pocket, too. The stylus controls divided players: some appreciated the precision of aiming, others suffered hand cramps during longer sessions.

Culturally, Hunters worked as an important experiment at a time when people were still figuring out how to sensibly play a shooter on a touch device. It foreshadowed much of what later spread to smartphones, and its online multiplayer was among the best that the DS of the day offered in the field of competitive action.

Today Metroid Prime Hunters is more of a curiosity for fans, but still an interesting, atmospheric and technically bold one. It recalls a time when control schemes were still searching for their form and every piece of hardware fought its own battle with ergonomics.

Why play: A bold handheld FPS starring Samus that experimented with stylus controls and offered a surprisingly strong online multiplayer.