Retro Studios’ 2002 game took Samus Aran into first person. An escape from an exploding Space Pirate frigate costs her most of her equipment, and on the planet Tallon IV she wins it back piece by piece, scanning Chozo ruins and using each new ability to reach areas that were closed to her before. If you own the game, Nagori lets you play it on iPhone and iPad.
What you need
- An iPhone 12 or newer, or an iPad with an A14 chip or newer, with iOS 17.6 or later.
- Nagori from the App Store. Your first game is free.
- A disc image of your copy of Metroid Prime:
.iso,.gcm,.rvz,.cisoor.gcz. The game fits on a single disc. - Ideally, a controller. Metroid Prime uses nearly every button on the GameCube pad.
No BIOS file is needed.
How to play Metroid Prime on iPhone
- Install Nagori from the App Store.
- Copy your Metroid Prime disc image to the Files app, in iCloud Drive or On My iPhone.
- Open Nagori, tap + and select the file. Add GameCube games this way, from inside Nagori: the Files app’s Open in menu doesn’t work for every GameCube format. Nagori copies the game into its own storage, so you can delete the original file afterwards.
- Pick a touch layout with a stick, such as D-Pad + Stick or Twin Sticks, or connect a controller. The default Standard layout has no stick, and you can’t move Samus without one.
- Find Metroid Prime on the GameCube shelf and press Play.
Controls
Metroid Prime was built around the GameCube pad. The stick moves and turns Samus, holding L locks on to a target so you can strafe around it, and holding R lets you stand still and aim freely. A fires, B jumps, X rolls into the Morph Ball and Y fires a missile. The C-stick switches beams, and the D-pad switches visors, including the Scan Visor you use to study creatures and activate panels.
Use a controller if you can. Bluetooth controllers that iOS supports, including DualSense, DualShock 4 and Xbox controllers, work with Nagori. The right stick acts as the C-stick, the touch controls hide as soon as a controller connects, and pressing the left stick opens the pause menu. Nagori’s L and R triggers are digital, so a press always counts as a full pull. Lock-on and free aim are buttons you hold, so that’s all they need.
On touch, the screen fills up quickly. If the buttons don’t sit where your thumbs rest, switch to My Layout, drag each control into place and pinch to resize it.
GameCube games don’t vibrate in Nagori, so there’s no rumble when Samus takes a hit.
Saves: Save Stations and save states
On the GameCube, Metroid Prime only saves at Save Stations, and dying sends you back to the last one you used. They can be a long walk apart. Nagori adds two safety nets:
- Quit any time. Leave the app in the middle of a room and Continue puts you back exactly where you were.
- Save states. Pause and choose Save before a boss like Thardus or the Omega Pirate. If the fight goes wrong, Load instead of walking back from the last Save Station. Nagori keeps your last four saves per game.
- The memory card still works. Saves made at Save Stations go to the game’s memory card inside Nagori, as on the console.
Keep using Save Stations along the way. That’s the save the game itself loads, and save states work best as a shortcut on top of it. The GameCube memory card isn’t shown in the Files app, and Save to iCloud isn’t available for GameCube games.
Best settings
- Quality: Medium, the default, balances frame rate and heat. Low keeps the device cooler, and High is for the newest iPhones and iPads.
- Play long sessions on Medium. Exploring Tallon IV for an hour at a time warms up any phone. Medium, or Low if your iPhone still gets hot, keeps it cooler.
- Resolution: Nagori shows GameCube games at their original resolution, without upscaling.
