Fans of the Nintendo Switch are eagerly awaiting any news about Metroid Prime 4. The game was announced in 2017 but then later on was announced to be completely scrapped and restarted with the original makers of the line in Retro Studios taking over. The only catch was that rumors of the Metroid Prime Trilogy coming to Switch have been going on for a long time. But while they have been seemingly debunked, it’s honestly a bit unclear as to why, until now.
During the Kiwi Talkz podcast, Metroid Prime senior game designer Mike Wikan touched on Metroid Prime Trilogy. But one of the many things he noted was that those honestly working on the game…was less than a handful. What’s more, there were a lot of fixing to do in the scan files, and Nintendo apparently added onto that:
Then Nintendo – to tell you the seriousness that Nintendo takes the product with – they had gone through all of our text, all of the scans from all three games and done a complete spreadsheet analysis on how it all fit together with the Metroid Prime universe in its current state. Like every word. Then they sent us hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of edits and changes for all the text, just to make sure everything harmonized and worked in the Metroid universe. That’s the level of detail that they put into it. Probably 50-60 percent of the work we did on the trilogy was changing those dang scan files.”
Now, before you go and blast Nintendo for adding to their work, they were honestly the ones who helped save Retro Studios. Because under previous leadership, which was there during the original Metroid Prime game, there was some SERIOUS crunch, but Nintendo changed that:
At the end of that time everyone was ready to quit. We were like, ‘We’re done.’ I had two job offers from two different companies, and to their credit Nintendo realized what was going on and came in and and took over the company and bought it out. They put Michael Kelbaugh in charge. He’s a sweetheart, real good. He was head of Nintendo’s QA department. He said, ‘Guys, give me a few weeks to turn it around.’ And he did.
He restored faith in leadership and the company. I loved working for Nintendo.”
While Metroid Prime 4 and the Metroid Prime Trilogy aren’t known in terms of their release on Switch, we DO know that Metroid Dread is coming on October 8th!