There’s an interesting rumor going around now regarding the Metroid Prime remasters.
This all doesn’t start with the games, but with a new Metroid Prime-related book. Publisher Piggyback, who had been publishing video game guides in partnership with Nintendo, recently announced their first art book.
Metroid Prime 1-3: A Visual Retrospective will have 200 pages of original art, with the promise of “exclusive commentary from Nintendo producer, Kensuke Tanabe, as well as the esteemed Retro Studios.”
The key detail here is that the book is scheduled to be released this Summer 2025. Samus Hunter, quoting a tweet about this book, shared this statement:
“I’m looking forward to replay the entire Trilogy on the Switch before that.
About 2 Remastered, I can confirm what Grubb mentioned, it was planned as a stand alone release but got moved a couple of time and now is planned for early next year, lkely between DKCRHD and Xenoblade X.
It is very peculiar how Nintendo has handled the 3 games, with releases more than a year after their completion, in fact they can release them whenever they want. Personally I wouldn’t rule out an announcement of them at TGA, as timing would fit, but I have no information on that.”
We can corroborate some of Samus Hunter’s claims here. Grubb made similar claims that Nintendo made remasters of the three Metroid Prime games last February 2023.
Grubb shared this rumor shortly after Nintendo released Metroid Prime: Remastered in the same month. That release may have prompted Grubb that this rumor that he had been sitting on for a few months now was real.
Grubb said that the Metroid Prime 2 remaster was coming as far back as July 2023. Of course, that absolutely did not happen, and we still haven’t seen either of these other rumored remasters get announced or released.
If the rumor is true, it is arguably a missed opportunity. Some have argued that Nintendo didn’t release too many big games this year, and so they didn’t get major nominations for this year’s The Game Awards. In that point of view, it looks like Nintendo should have published that Metroid Prime 2 remaster in the past few months as well.
But the flip side to that is Nintendo did release a staggering number of games this year, whether they were to get 10/10 reviews or record-breaking sales or not.
This may have been a situation where Nintendo, like Sony and Microsoft right now, had one too many games that got delayed so long that they’re all ready to release at the same time. Nintendo may simply be pacing their game releases in relation to what they think will work out best for them.
One can certainly argue that Nintendo will be better served with getting kid-friendly games like Super Mario Jamboree and Mario & Luigi Brothership released for the holidays, since their bottomline counts for more than their awards tally.
And if this is the situation, as frustrating as this could be for fans, Nintendo may have decided the best time to release the other Metroid Prime remasters is close to the release of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. They employed a similar strategy for the Pikmin franchise on the Switch, so it’s hard to argue with a successful precedent.
At least, Samus Hunter and Grubb seem to agree that these remasters are for the Switch, and none were moved forward to the Switch 2. That makes them yet another essential addition to the Switch’s already impressive library.
