Metroid: Samus Returns Being Developed by Award-Winning Indie Studio

Nintendo revealed not one, but two new Metroid games yesterday. It was a very good day. In addition to Metroid Prime 4, about which we know nothing, Nintendo revealed Metroid: Samus Returns, a total re-imagining and re-working of Metroid 2: Return of Samus for the Game Boy. The remake will be coming to Nintendo 3DS and 2DS on September 15. Today, it was revealed that indie studio MercurySteam is working on the game.

MercurySteam is an award-winning independent game developer based in Madrid, Spain. The studio is best known for rebooting the Castlevania franchise for Konami, developing Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which sold multiple millions of copies.

"Metroid is one of the most recognized Nintendo franchises and we are so honoured to collaborate with them on the latest game in the saga of space-faring bounty hunter Samus Aran," said Enric Alvarez, Head of Studio at MercurySteam. "Our collaboration with Nintendo will give gamers around the world the chance to play this fantastic adventure in a completely new way not seen before".

As revealed yesterday during a special Treehouse live stream, this new Samus Returns will feature a number of upgrades and quality of life improvements not found in the original game. Players will be able to leave pins on certain points of the map whenever they encounter obstacles or doors that they cannot pass through, and Samus will have full a 360° range of movement with her arm cannon. There's also been a new melee counter ability added to the game which leads to some flashy moments during boss battles.

"The development of this Metroid game with Mercury Steam has gone very smoothly and more than anything, it has been very exciting," said Yoshio Sakamoto, senior officer of Nintendo's Entertainment Planning & Development Department, and the producer of the overall Metroid franchise.

"Metroid: Samus Returns is based on the GameBoy classic Metroid II: Return of Samus, and we are very confident that this collaboration with Mercury Steam is the reason we have been able to successfully pull together various features like actions never seen before in the Metroid series, a stunning recreation of the planet SR388 and classical Metroid gameplay elements into a single powerful package."

The game looks fantastic so far, and we've heard repeatedly that it makes wonderful use of the 3DS' glasses-free 3D. We'll definitely be keeping our eye on this one, and will have full review coverage before September 15 rolls around, so stay tuned!