This Is The Best Birthday Present Metroid Fans Could Have Asked For Outside of a Brand-New Game

Metroid just turned 40 — not that anyone would know from Nintendo’s attitude. The series, long considered a fan favorite even if it hasn’t gotten the attention of Pokémon, Mario, or The Legend of Zelda, celebrated its fortieth anniversary with little fanfare from the company. Despite the series having a new game as recently as last year, there was no real retrospective or release meant to celebrate that. 

Thankfully, some intrepid fans had their own ideas on how to best celebrate the legacy of Samus Aran. A new 2D fan-remake of Metroid Prime is now online, highlighting the enduring strength of the franchise’s core game design while also leaning into all the ways the GameCube classic reinvented the series. It’s also a much better way to celebrate the legacy and evolution of the franchise than what Nintendo actually did, which speaks to a long-running pattern of the massive publisher failing to recognize the sci-fi action series.

Metroid Prime Gets The 2D Treatment Courtesy Of Fans

Created through three years of hard work by fans like Lv. 4 Games, an indie developer who had previously made fan games of classic franchises like Castlevania, Metroid Prime Origins takes the 2002 GameCube classic Remakes and purposefully downgrades it in terms of both visuals and game design. Built from the ground up without using any generative AI in the development, Metroid Prime Origins serves as a means of combining the more modern touches of the Prime series with the aesthetic and game design of the original titles. While the original Prime was a striking 3D first-person experience, Origins reimagined it with the kind of 8-bit pixel art style and side-scrolling gameplay that originally defined the series.

The larger maps are now the puzzle-filled labyrinth of the series’ origins, with an emphasis on exploration and tricky combat. The visuals, score, and design all reflect the earlier days of the franchise, all while taking cues from the original Metroid Prime. Elements like scanning creatures to get more information about them are still a key component of the game, while a free range of fire for Samus’ arm cannon adds a new dimension to the puzzles and battles of the older gameplay mechanics. In theory, it’s a sweet love letter to the legacy of the franchise. In practice, it’s one of the most engaging-looking Metroid titles in years. The game has fun with all the trappings of both gameplay approaches, finding a way to appease fans of both the older games and the Prime trilogy. It feels like a genuine culmination of what the series has become over the years. It’s overall a very impressive title, especially for a fan project.

Nintendo Should Have Done More For Metroid’s 40th Birthday

It’s all the more notable because it’s the best present Metroid fans could have gotten — and it wasn’t from Nintendo. In fact, the publisher did little to celebrate the iconic series. Despite being a foundational block in modern game design and one of Nintendo’s more iconic franchises, there was little actual celebration for the series by any of the publisher’s official channels. There was no news about the future of the series. Nintendo’s social media let the occasion slip by unannounced, with no celebrations of the franchise’s history, popularity with fans, or legacy success. There wasn’t even any anniversary sales for the earlier titles, which seems like a particularly wasted opportunity given last year’s Metroid Prime 4. The closest fans got was rumors of a formally unannoucned Metroid game going into development.

It was all pretty underwhelming, especially in comparison to the much greater fanfare other Nintendo properties have been getting once they’ve reached that benchmark. However, it’s also pretty in-line with the history of the franchise as a whole. Metroid was a massive success for the NES that changed the landscape of action-adventure game design and went on to inspire countless imitators. Super Metroid is regularly hailed as a highlight of the SNES era. The Metroid Prime trilogy was one of the best additions to the GameCube library. Despite all this, the series is often ignored in favor of other franchises. Despite being a crucial icon for the industry and an early example of how gameplay mechanics could be a genuine synthesis of previous material, Samus has gotten little fanfare from the company behind her.

That’s reflective of the years that will often pass between new entries in the series, as well as the comparative lack of focus the series receives in comparison to some of the publisher’s other biggest games. Years will pass between even announcements of the next game. It’s frustrating for fans of the series who have long felt Nintendo hasn’t addressed their expectations and hopes for the series, with that lack of any anniversary celebration underscoring it. That’s why a fan-made game being the best Metroid birthday present shouldn’t be surprising but remains galling. It shows how much some fans are still dedicated to the series, even if Nintendo seems content to let it lie for extended periods. It highlights how there is still plenty of room for the series to evolve. Gamers are still willing to embrace the series with love and appreciation, even if Nintendo isn’t the one scratching that itch.