In 2017, Nintendo partnered up with wrestling superstar John Cena to promote the Nintendo Switch during its early days on the market. It turns out that Cena was actually a massive Nintendo fan and enjoyed every second of his involvement with the Japanese company. Everyone has a favorite Nintendo franchise, for John Cena, that franchise is none other than the Metroid series, as he supposedly kept asking Nintendo to develop another 2D Metroid game.
According to Dan Ryckert, a representative of the collaborative projects between the games industry and WWE, Cena was relentless in his pursuit to inform Nintendo executives of his desire for another 2D Metroid game. Although his comments may not have influenced Nintendo’s direction, he got his wish last year with Metroid Dread, and he actually received a free copy from the company. Cena’s team then reached out to Nintendo to share the wrestler’s thoughts on the game, simply stating that “John loves it!”.
Metroid is an interesting part of Nintendo’s line-up of first-party titles, as it often tends to be ignored in favor of other Nintendo franchises. However, since the announcement of Metroid Prime 4 in 2017, it looks like Nintendo is starting to recognize the desire for more games in the series, hence the release of Metroid Dread in 2021. Hopefully, an update will be shared on Metroid Prime 4 soon, as the game restarted its development cycle in 2019 due to Nintendo being unhappy with the then-current state of the game.