What is the name of the first Metroid game to include a multiplayer mode?

The first Metroid game to include a multiplayer mode is Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Released for the Nintendo GameCube in 2004, it added split-screen combat for up to four players alongside the series’ traditional exploration-focused campaign.

Echoes offered two multiplayer formats: Deathmatch, where players competed for eliminations, and Bounty, where defeated players dropped coins that opponents could collect. Matches took place across six arenas and used Samus’s familiar first-person controls, including the lock-on system.

The feature was a major addition because the previous Metroid Prime had been strictly single-player. Retro Studios had considered multiplayer earlier, but the mode was not completed in time for the original game. Echoes therefore became the first Metroid title with multiplayer, although later games such as Metroid Prime Hunters and Metroid Prime: Federation Force expanded the series’ multiplayer experiments in different directions. Its multiplayer was local rather than online, a distinction that is easy to miss when comparing it with later Nintendo games.