Quickie time: Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt. This demo for Hunters was distributed a couple of years before the game was ready, at the DS’s launch. By comparing it to the final product, not only are there lots of differences but the content it offers is largely unique. The multiplayer maps are apparently similar to ones in the final game, but I couldn’t test that anyway.

The uniqueness is in the three single player modes. Regulator is a combat challenge map where you clear each room of enemies, including (unlike Hunters proper) Metroids, which behave as in the larger Prime series. Survival is a larger free-roaming map where you have to hunt down enemies to get a high score before you die. Morph Ball is a cool race/obstacle course where you roll along collecting tokens. They’re like fun minigames that I think could have fleshed out the Hunters game in addition to the story and multiplayer, if they’d been included and expanded on. Imagine that Hunters the game is a combination of this and the final release, and you have a more full proposition.

Apart from the HUD and such being shifted around, there’s things that I’m glad were removed from the final game, like the basic beam using ammo, and a shared ammo/missile pool. I may be missing other gameplay subtleties, but I had to play this in the far from ideal conditions of an emulator, which necessitated button-only controls: an awkward situation, to be sure.

You do see carts rarely, but since the full game fleshed out the multiplayer over this preview, the unique solo modes are the only reason to check it out, and there’s not much there. Like I said, a nice extra to Hunters, and I wish they’d explored those ideas further in addition (but not in place of) the story mode. Plus Metroids! On the DS! That’s new (although the solo modes are stated to be a training simulation, so they’re not real).