Metroid Prime, running native and stable on iPhone and iPad for the first time. No emulator. No streaming from a Mac. This is EctoPad. Built on Metaforce, the native Metroid Prime engine developed by AxioDL and its contributors, it plays great on both devices and runs at full speed... on iPhone 14 and newer. Touch controls, controller support, and 4x internal res. I am still working through a visual issue that causes some textures and lighting to render inaccurately, along with a smaller problem affecting the first tutorial door. Sol 5.6 was used to make this possible. Open sourcing it below.show more

Full source and build-and-run guide are on GitHub. Bring your own legally obtained Metroid Prime USA Rev 2 disc image and you can get it running on your iPhone or iPad. No Nintendo game data is included. IPA is here.

The work behind this goes back more than a decade. AxioDL began the project that became Metaforce in 2015. Its contributors rebuilt Metroid Prime as a native engine. Aurora brings its graphics through WebGPU and Dawn to Metal, while PrimeDecomp continues improving its accuracy. Metaforce added iOS support and was demonstrated on an iPad in 2022. I did not build the engine or renderer. My contribution is EctoPad, the Apple wrapper and compatibility layer that makes it stable and playable on current iPhones and iPads. I adapted my SunPad interface and built the touch controls, controller integration, on-device setup, saves, settings, lifecycle handling, packaging, and Apple-specific fixes. Sol 5.6 and Deepseek-V4-Flash were used for longer sessions to get this to the finish line. Fable was briefly brought in to fix an early audio bug. I am still working through the black geometry rendering issue and a smaller visual problem with the first tutorial door. None of this exists without the Metaforce community’s work.

Also: I’ve been using DeepSeek V4 Flash in Codex to save on costs while doing this, which is a wild $5 per month sub. I just learned about it and it has changed how I use Codex. If you want to try OpenCode Go with this referral, you get $5 in usage credit and I get $5 too. Win win. More inference to port more games.

Don't you dare take credit for my project working on a platform we already had it working on, you're lucky I don't DMCA your garbage.

I’m NOT taking credit for MetaForce. Let's be clear on that. My original post said EctoPad was “built on MetaForce, the native Metroid Prime engine developed by AxioDL and its contributors,” and the repo names and links MetaForce before describing any of my work. I built EctoPad because the public iOS revision I tested was not the stable, usable mobile build shown in my post. It had an iOS target, but it expected game.iso to be placed in app storage and, as far as I could find, did not include the on-screen controls, Files-based setup, touch settings and diagnostics, or automatic iOS memory-card provisioning I added. Sustained play on my devices also required fixes to lifecycle and resume handling, controller reconnects, and save preservation. If that version already existed, I would not have built it. That is what “native and stable” referred to. Not the engine, not the renderer, and not the original iOS target. MetaForce’s MIT license allows downstream modification with its notice preserved, and that notice is included. If I missed an upstream implementation or required notice, point me to it and I’ll correct the record.

The problem with all these native ports is there are no options for native rez which the games were designed for. And no scanline options. If you want to preserve the game, it needs to have options to play it in OG mode.

Agreed. EctoPad already has 1× native GameCube rendering and original 4:3 output, alongside 2× through 4× render scales. It does not have a scanline filter yet. That is a fair preservation feature request, and I agree higher-resolution modes should not replace an original-display option.

Omg, I need this for windows.

Metaforce works for Windows!

will this make it easier for the 2nd and 3rd to be ported as well?

Most likely yes. Metaforce being more mature means any retro studios games can more easily be played natively.

DUDE! Bar none your best one yet! GameCube ports is legit so hype

The last few visual glitches are quite annoying, but I'm confident we'll resolve them this week. For now, it is still playable. Logs are going to help me out quite a bit, so if you happen to download it and it has issues, please submit via Issues to GitHub.

Will definitely keep you posted! So far though, getting all the ports on my phone via Xcode has worked pretty much flawlessly. Hyped for the future ports to come (selfishly hoping for windwaker lol)!!

as soon as its possible it'll happen. it is top of the list

OMG, thank you for this. Any chance it'll import a save file from a previous Dolphin emulator session?

Yes! Dolphin saves are compatible. It’s not a one-tap in-app import just yet, but I’ve tested importing a Dolphin-exported Metroid Prime USA Rev 2 .gci save into EctoPad safely. Keep your original save file around, I’m working toward making that process easier.

Amazing. Been loving your ports so much – thank you ☺️

A shame it's for Apple crap, but hopefully someone can port the code to something better.

What would you like to see it ported to?

Linux for starters.

Metaforce already works on Linux.

So I can't just download it and play like a normal game? I got to use Lutris and read pages of documentation to fire it up?

I'm not maintaining Metaforce, and this is the nature of how some of these ports work.

Please dude I think everyone would LOVE to see it on mobile, me included 😭 it would be so cool to play it natively on my phone

It runs on iPhone, I'm not aware of Metaforce working on Android (yet).

I would love to see a recomp of other m

same, but not aware of any active decomp projects for metroid other m

Wow looks much sharper than on Gamecube

Checked the github contributors for this and metaforce and it seems it's actually not made by Ai. Correct me if I'm wrong tho

PORT PSVITA IS POSSIBLE??

Perhaps someone could take Metaforce and attempt this. I'm doubting how well it would run given the compute constraints of the Vita, but it might be possible.

Woww seria fantastico esse feito o vita ultimamente vem recebendo grandes feitos na cena

Put this on PC and my life is yours

It's already on PC -- Metaforce is the main project. Ectopad just makes it a bit easier to play on MacOS/iOS.

Another vibecoded port???

Do Pokemon Colosseum

need this for vision pro

Is this available on android too?

No, it is not (yet)

LETS FUCKING GO DAMNIT

Looks fantastic! Is there any version out there that would run in Windows or Steam Deck?

Yes

exist for android?

Not yet. if there's enough interest I'll do it.

🙏🙏🙏

wtf is going on lol

Decomp projects used to mean something when a new one dropped. Now it’s AI based :(

Metaforce is not AI-based. It is a years-long community reconstruction of Metroid Prime by AxioDL and contributors, backed by Aurora and PrimeDecomp. I used AI for my Apple integration and focused platform fixes around that foundation, and was explicit about it precisely so I would not erase the people who built the engine.

That’s my bad, but the use of AI still lessens the impact of a project to me

A couple of days ago release Metroid Prime Origins (New Metroid Prime 2d), but now i watching native port metroid prime. WOW!

Congratulations on an amazing project milestone.

@Nintendo are asleep right now...they should be jumping on this ASAP. They have a back catalogue of games I'd happily buy on my phone.

Hopefully there’ll be decomps of the James Bond GameCube games one day!

Metaforce has already been played on iPads and iPhones before.

Correct, Metaforce added iOS support and was demonstrated on an iPad in 2022. All prior demonstrations I've seen had numerous technical glitches.

Impressive stuff. Quick question: is the aspect ratio off? When rolling around in ball form, it seems to be a little stretched on the y-axis?

Prime changes the aspect ratio when Samus converts into a ball.

native and not emulated means the gamecube binary got statically recompiled to arm with the GX graphics calls remapped onto metal. that's the decomp scene's payoff, you run real code at native speed instead of interpreting it. wild that it's stable on ios.

Meanwhile Nintendo:

rom de gamecub ou switch?

Metroid Prime already works on Switch

or, I can just play Metroid Prime remastered on my Switch. Enjoy the game that way.

Not debating that the Switch is superior in a ton of ways. This gives people the option to play it on other platforms.

We're gonna have an Android version too? 🥹