Excitement is gradually building for theMetroidseries' return asMetroid Dread’s release grows ever closer. Fans of the franchise were treated to plenty of news and excitement during Nintendo’s E3 2021 presentation, as the company not only revealed and showcasedMetroid Dreadbut also gave fans hope for the future of the series by providing a brief update onMetroid Prime 4’s development. There have been plenty ofrumors surrounding theMetroid Primeseries, but one of the most widespread is that Nintendo might be gearing up to release a remastered version ofMetroid Prime Trilogyfor the Switch.
The existence ofMetroid Prime Trilogyhas been rumored for years, but recently a few industry insiders have said that Nintendo is getting ready to announce it sometime soon. The most recent piece of news surrounding the project came yesterday, when Nintendo insider Emily Rogers claimed that theMetroid Prime Trilogywouldn’t be happening. Instead, she claimed that Nintendo is only planning on releasing a remastered version of the firstMetroid Primeto celebrate its 20th anniversary. While this news might be hard for fans of thePrimetrilogy to hear, it seems like it might make the most sense based on what’s known about the hardware required to run all threePrimetitles.
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The Issues With Making a ‘Metroid Prime Trilogy’ For the Switch
The Switch is Nintendo’s most powerful console from a hardware perspective. That’s not saying much as its since beenmajorly eclipsed by both the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but this is important to note since it seems like the Switch should make it easy to port older Nintendo games as a result of its improved hardware. Unfortunately for the company, it put itself in something of a corner in terms of backward compatibility because of how integral motion controls were to many of the games published on the Wii and the WiiU.
This is where the issue regardingMetroid Prime Trilogy’s rumored Switch port begins. Earlier this year, one of Retro Studios' senior game designers from 2000 to 2011, Michael Wikan, said thata Switch release of theMetroid Prime Trilogywould require “herculean effort"as a result ofMetroid Prime 3: Corruption’s motion control-based design. Essentially, every part of the game was designed around the use of the Wii remote, and taking that out of the experience would completely change it into something much less fun.
Wikan commented on the first two games in the series saying that Switch ports ofMetroid PrimeandMetroid Prime 2: Echoeswould be much easier, as they were both made for the GameCube and didn’t require motion controls to function. While the Switch’s Joy-Cons can and have functioned as Wii remotes with other ports, a Switch version ofMetroid Prime 3: Corruptioncouldn’t ask players to require using Joy-Cons as a remote, as that option doesn’t exist for those who own a Switch Lite. It might have been possible before the release of the console, butthe Switch Lite has also pushed Nintendo into a cornerdue to its lack of functionality with some of the Switch’s core ideas.
It’s for this major reason that it seems like a remastered version of the entireMetroid Primetrilogy on the Switch doesn’t seem likely, but that it’s much more realistic to anticipate an anniversary edition of the originalMetroid Primetitle. There’s a possibility that Nintendo figures out a way how to port all three games to the system, but it seems more likely that the company would want to keepall of its resources working onMetroid Prime 4instead of burning time and effort to remaster a 14-year-old game.
