While Nintendo had a pretty full plate at the Electronic Entertainment Expo a few weeks ago (particularly with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate), there were a couple of things that were missing off of it.
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The first was Metroid Prime 4, which was initially announced at last year’s E3 event; and the second was the Nintendo 64 Mini, which still has yet to be announced.
But Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, is well aware of the excitement behind these things. He recently had a chat with Game Informer to discuss both Metroid and Nintendo 64.
And while he didn’t spill any new information about these projects, he also didn’t casually brush them off either.
First off came word about Metroid Prime 4 and why it wasn’t shown during this year’s Direct. “Last year was important to us to message to the Metroid fan that there was a Metroid Prime experience in development, as we showed Metroid: Samus Returns for the 3DS. We didn’t want that fan to say ‘You just launched a new system, when are you going to bring me a Metroid on that platform?’ We said it was coming. This year, with so many games launching effectively between [now] and the first half of next year, we wanted to focus on those games. Rest assured, Metroid Prime 4 is still in development and proceeding well.”
As far as the Nintendo 64 Mini is concerned, Fils-Aime focused on the other platforms instead, but did give a slight word of hope. “Look, we know that our fans love our legacy content. Being in this business 40 years, we know we have a lot of content we can surprise our consumers with. We’re aware of it, and stay tuned. Right now the focus is let’s make sure that we give the consumer that wants NES Classic the chance to pick it up again. I believe we’re also going to have a strong holiday with SNES Classic as well.” (By the way, both systems should be available for purchase now.)
Hopefully we’ll be seeing more of both of these around next year’s E3 event, if not sooner.
When it does release, Metroid Prime 4 will be available for Nintendo Switch.