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Metroid Prime

Metroid Prime Samus Varia Suit statue

First 4 Figures opened pre-orders for its latest Nintendo statue today, and is going back to the Metroid Prime well with a new Varia Suit statue for Samus.

The company says it “faithfully recreated the Varia Suit with its sleek design and iconic components.” Included on the base is a version of the Screw Attack emblem. It even comes with two interchangeable arms, which lets Samus be posed with her left hand on her hip or with her arm by her side and her hand in a fist. We’ll also mention the LED light-up function that is able to “bring Samus to life.” The lights provide a glow to the suit, including the helmet, Arm Cannon, and green stripes.

Metroid Prime GameCube dev kit freezer

Believe it or not, the developers at Retro Studios working on Metroid Prime back in the day actually put their dev kit in a freezer while attempting to fix a particular issue that affected a small portion of GameCube owners.

Jack Mathews, a technical lead engineer that worked on the project, shared this story while reflecting on the 20th anniversary of the game. Nintendo had shipped a “bad batch” of GameCubes that affected the CPU, but it turns out that Metroid Prime was the only game that wasn’t working properly. Because of this, animated objects weren’t acting the way they normally would on any other console.

metroid prime Autechre

According to Sean Booth of Autechre fame, the music duo almost got a chance to create the soundtrack for Metroid Prime.

The information was revealed during a Twitch AMA with one fan asking about how Booth as well as Rob Brown – the other half of Autechre – were included in the game’s credits. Booth responded by saying that they almost handled the soundtrack for Metroid Prime, but the role eventually landed with Kenji Yamamoto, who handled music for other entries in the series.

metroid prime 1 remaster switch

According to Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb, who has a track record of leaking gaming news, a remastered version of Metroid Prime will be released on Switch this holiday. Additionally, Metroid Prime 2 and 3 will be appearing on the system at a later date as well.

Grubb shared what he’s heard about previous Metroid Prime games for Switch during his “Game Mess Mornings” show today. He started out by sharing the following:

nintendo crunch retro studios

In a new episode of the Kiwi Talkz podcast, former Retro Studios developer Mike Wikan spoke about early crunch at the company, which Nintendo put an end to.

Wikan said that Retro Studios experienced significant crunch during the development of Metroid Prime 1. He even spoke about a instances in which he “was there 48 hours straight with one hour of sleep, and then a couple of 36-hour days.” But despite what may have been previously reported about Metroid Prime 2, there wasn’t much crunch on the game after Nintendo came in and put Michael Kelbaugh – who is currently the president and CEO of Retro – in the main leadership role.

Below is Wikan’s full words:

Metroid Prime Trilogy

With Metroid Prime 4 in the works for Switch, many fans have hoped that Nintendo would bring the series’ first three games to the platform. It’s unclear whether or not that will ever happen, but a former developer at Retro Studios has weighed in by sharing his own thoughts.

Michael Wikan spent many years at Retro having played a big role in all three mainline Metroid Prime titles as well as Donkey Kong Country Returns. In fact, he was a senior designer on each one of those projects.

First 4 Figures has revealed a brand new life-size replica statue of Samus’ helmet from Metroid Prime. It comes in standard and “exclusive” versions, and if you opt for the latter, it’ll feature LED functionality for the visor and dots around the base. Also, First 4 Figures says that “the mount on the base where the helmet rests can now be manually rotated a full 360 degrees, giving you the option to display your base in an X-shaped pattern, as opposed to the fixed plus-sign shape of the Standard Edition.”

Here’s the official product description:

Metroid Prime 4

Nintendo’s Kensuke Tanabe is working on Luigi’s Mansion 3. That’s not the only important project he’s involved with, however. Tanabe is also one of the key staffers helping to make Metroid Prime 4 happen.

At E3 last week, Eurogamer decided to ask if Tanabe had any sort of update on Metroid Prime 4. He gave a bit of an interesting answer, noting that he wants people to pay attention to Luigi’s Mansion 3 for now.

Shinesparkers has published a new interview with former Retro Studios staffer Jack Mathews. Matthews worked at the company as a former technical lead engineer on the initial Metroid Prime Trilogy.

During the discussion, Matthews had quite a bit to say about revised plans and cut ideas for the series. These include the initial idea to have Metroid Prime 2 be multiplayer focused, a more bounty hunter-like setup for Metroid Prime 3, and more. He also touched on some of the projects that were cancelled at Retro before Metroid Prime released.

You can find some notable excerpts from the interview below. Head on over here. for the full talk.

Metroid Prime has a pretty interesting development history. Before it was a Metroid game, Retro Studios was working on an original first-person shooter that had no ties to anything Nintendo-related. It was only when the big N stepped in and saw a level of the game that the game eventually morphed into Metroid Prime.

Speaking in the latest issue of Switch Player, senior designer Mike Wikan noted:

“When I came on board, the Engine group was significantly behind schedule and there was no way to create gameplay demonstrables in an effective fashion. I was told, quite literally, by leadership that designers would design the game on paper, then hand it off to engineering and art to create it. In my opinion that was insanity.”

“When Nintendo arrived suddenly, wanting to see demonstrables of all the games that the teams were working on, only our FPS had demonstrable real-time scriptable content. Nintendo liked what they saw and proposed we adapt that game and viewpoint, but restart it as a Metroid game.”

“The moral of the story is that if you see a problem, work to solve it; don’t assume someone else will take that responsibility on.”


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