Echoes Creates a Stir
Samus Aran fights a dark version of herself in the single-player mode of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and up to four of her face off in multiplayer mode--a Metroid first. Mark Pacini, the game's Retro Studios director, led a roundtable forum on both game modes. As Samus travels between two worlds, the Dark World of the Ing and the Light World of the Luminoth, she makes use of two weapon types. Says Pacini, "We really wanted to imbue the game with reasons to switch back and forth between weapons, not just for the reason that they're good against enemies, but they're essential for solving puzzles." He also weighed in on boss design, noting that Dark Samus posed a challenge because "we had to make her just as interesting as the five-story-high bosses [of the original Metroid Prime], even though she's just as big as Samus." For multiplayer mode, one of the highlights is the Hacker upgrade, which allows players to "upload a virus to [competitors] that will shut their suits down, take away their beams or force them into Morph Ball form and give them some nasty side effect."
