For years, Samus and Link staved off the mascot mentality that has put Mario in so many game genres, but the allure of using established characters to spice up hard-to-market games was too great.

It could be worse, I suppose. Metroid Prime Pinball ended up being hailed as a pretty good pinball game, and Link's Crossbow Training works surprisingly well for what it does. I played through the first nine stages during Nintendo's recent game showcase in San Francisco and, to the game's credit, when I got to the end of the demo I wanted to keep playing.

Link's Crossbow Training is sort of a hybrid of Duck Hunt and an arcade-style rail shooter. Using the Wii remote and nunchuk linked up via the Wii Zapper attachment with which the game comes bundled, you shoot your way through a series of stages, taking out hordes of enemies or targets. There is a fair amount of variety to the stages--the first stage of the first level is as basic as they come, with a static camera and bullseyes popping up around the screen. The next stage give you control of the camera using the analog stick, as Link is stranded out in the middle of the desert with skeletal Stalfos enemies closing in on him from all angles. In the third stage, you have full movement and camera control as you point and shoot your way through a Bulbos camp--it actually feels somewhat like a less close-up Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition, and actually shares little in common with Duck Hunt or a rail shooter.

Few stages are that free, however. Most run along a scripted path, often with user camera control and the ability to zoom in for careful shots. Hitting targets with consecutive shots--that is, not wasting any crossbow bolts--gives a stacking combo bonus that proves to be utterly essential in achieving the multiple tiers of high scores. Each level, which consists of three stages, has bronze, silver, and gold scores to be reached; with my fairly limited playtime, I'm not sure what kind of bonuses these milestones confer, but they do serve as incentive to be more precise and less wasteful.

Other level premises, all of which are inspired by locations and sometimes events from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii, GCN), include sailing down a river in a canoe while shooting aquatic denizens, shooting targets held up by Gorons while avoiding "X" targets, a full-on Duck Hunt throwback in which skulls act as macabre clay pidgeons, and another Duck Hunt-esque level featuring those much harder to hit flying things from Twilight Princess.

As Wii owners probably already know, because of the difference between the Wii remote pointer and actual light gun technology, playing Link's Crossbow Training is a different kind of feeling than playing an arcade shooter. It doesn't have that really predictably solid feeling, but you get used to its quirks relatively quickly, and that one guy is sure to make a ridiculous YouTube video that makes the rest of us feel like toddlers with poor motor skills.

Link's Crossbow Training is definitely a pack-in game. Though it does have better production values and considerably more variety than some of the more shameful Wii shovelware, and it is surprisingly engaging and well put-together, it doesn't seem like something most gamers will get more than some casual enjoyment out of. It's not something that's going to garner lots of attention on its own, but if you plan to pick up the $20 Wii Zapper for use in fuller titles, the inclusion of this game makes that purchase all the better.