There were many reasons to watch the Nintendo Direct that happened on Wednesday. The biggest was to see if Nintendo would reveal any surprises that would genuinely shock fans. Some met those criteria, including the return of Professor Layton, some big collections of past franchises, and so on. But easily, one of the most shocking announcements was that of Metroid Prime Remastered. Why was this one so far above the rest? Well, the biggest reason was that they shadow-dropped the digital version of the game on the same day! The physical version is coming out on the 22nd.
Nintendo has done shadow drops of games in the past, but they weren’t necessarily “high-ranking” titles for their systems. Moreover, there have been rumors for the entire Prime Trilogy to get remastered and brought to Switch for years. So to see the first game getting the sole remaster and then dropped into our laps minutes later was a bit of a shock.
That being said, those who have tried out the game have had nothing but positive things to say about it. Here are a few of the reviews that have come out for the game:
As you can see, very positive. When you dive deeper into the reviews that have come out, you’ll see that testers felt it was the definitive version of the title in every way. So if you have never experienced this adventure with Samus Aran, you should try it out. When it first appeared on Gamecube many years ago, it singlehandedly revitalized the franchise and made fans want more. Two sequels followed, and a third is on the way. We hope.
And as an insider noted on Twitter, Retro Studios kept things in-house to develop the game in one major way:
Hearing that they’re using the same engine for the Metroid Prime Remastered port is important for multiple reasons. One, it shows that they wanted to keep things as close to the original but improved. Two, it’s good to know their game engine is still in use and can make things look good. Finally, if this is their game engine, it’s the engine they’re using to make Metroid Prime 4.
Granted, there are likely to be some visual differences between the two, as Retro Studios wanted to keep things in line with how the original game looked. But many noted that the remaster looks very sharp on Switch, and that’s enough to get fans excited for the future.
