Today we are sharing a brand new Community Spotlight, focused on Gonçalo Lopes, aka Shiryu Music. Shiryu has been creating digital music for over twenty years, creating many remixes of Metroid music. In addition to his work as a freelance musician, he contributes to gaming news website Nintendo Life, and to independent publisher, Bitmap Books. In this Community Spotlight, Shiryu talks about following his passions in music and video games into adulthood, and his life as a self-confessed “Bedroom Producer”. We truly appreciate his contribution to our Community Spotlight series, wish him the best of luck with all his future endeavours, and hope you will all check out the links to Shiryu’s work in the links contained within the feature!
EB Games in Canada lists Metroid: Samus Returns Collector’s Box
The video game retailer EB Games has recently listed a Collector’s Box inspired by 2017’s Metroid: Samus Returns, although only on its Canadian website. The package is the result of a partnership between Nintendo and CultureFly, a company that prepares various “boxes” inspired by popular media franchises.
The Samus Returns box contains eight items based on Samus’s adventure in SR-388:
- A vinyl miniature of the Baby Metroid;
- A beanie with colors inspired by the Varia Suit;
- A Morph Ball squishy;
- A notebook shaped like Samus’s helmet;
- A pen with colors inspired by the Zero Suit;
- A duffel bag with artwork of Samus;
- A Metroid keychain; and
- An art print showing Samus’s gunship headed towards SR-388.
According to EB Games’s Canadian website, the box will release on September 27, 2019, for the price of 59.99 CAD (approximately 45 USD or 40 EUR), and it can already be pre-ordered. Although EB Games is a subsidiary of GameStop, the box is not available for sale on EB Games’s or GameStop’s websites in other countries.
Nintendo has previously worked with CultureFly in 2017 to produce a collectible box based on the NES, SNES and Game Boy consoles, but no official announcement by either company has been made regarding the Samus Returns box.
Source: EB Games Canada
Feature: The Case for Traditional Metroid
Today we are sharing another feature to our growing collection, this one written by yours truly! I put the case for traditional Metroid to our readers, Nintendo and the wider Metroid fanbase. I wanted to highlight the importance of 2D Metroid games in an era of the Metroid Prime titles, especially with its fourth installment currently in the works by Retro Studios. My feature goes into the success of Metroid: Samus Returns and why it proves that there is a healthy appetite for traditional Metroid, and that the time is now for a sequel to Metroid Fusion (Metroid 5).
Metroid was almost made into a cartoon… with a twist
Those of you who grew up in the 90s may remember the Mario and Zelda animated cartoons from DIC Entertainment, as well as the crossover series Captain N: The Game Master, where Mother Brain was the antagonist (and Samus appeared in the comics). Personally, I’ve always wondered if they ever considered producing a Metroid cartoon. It’s been discovered tonight, that they did. Promotional art cells have surfaced from the estate sale of a former DIC employee, showing proposed cartoons that never went into production. One of them was Metroid. In a scene inspired by Alien, that art cell shows “Samus” (I’ll get to that in a moment) attempting to push a large alien creature through an open air lock. Astonishingly, here Samus is shown to be a man!
The producer of the Captain N show said Samus was never in it because he’d never heard of her. The lack of awareness about her clearly extended to other staff at DIC back in the day. Whatever resulted in this proposed show’s demise, perhaps it was for the best we never got to see this version of Samus. The art cells are currently being auctioned, with the bid at $61 US as of this writing.
Source: Kotaku
Community Spotlight: Woman of Wonders
We are delighted to shine another Community Spotlight today, on Gina John Crosland, the Woman of Wonders. Gina is a very talented cosplayer whose work has turned heads and won competitions. Her Assassin’s Creed cosplay even earned her recognition from Ubisoft. We’re excited to bring her recreation of the Gravity Suit from Metroid: Samus Returns to the wider Metroid audience. Gina’s Gravity Suit is a fine example of the creative capabilities of Metroid fans.
Retro Studios is hiring for Metroid Prime 4
In January, Nintendo announced that the development of Metroid Prime 4 was restarting under Retro Studios. A few days ago, Retro announced that they are hiring several key positions for the game’s development. These include art director, IT and gameplay engineer positions, character, cinematic and environment artists and physics engineers. Some of the jobs are either internal or external.
The fact that many key positions need to be filled in suggests that Prime 4 is still in the very early stages of development, three months after it was given back to Retro Studios. If you have the experience required and are interested in applying, you can do so at this link. On behalf of Shinesparkers, we wish luck to any applicants to these jobs, and to Retro in developing this long-awaited game.
Source: Twitter
Feature: The Reptilicus
We have a brand new feature to share with you today! Our staff member Quadraxis has shared his thoughts on the Reptilicus of Bryyo, including their history, their culture and what he thinks the future holds in store for them after Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. He has always enjoyed learning about and studying the fictional cultures found throughout the Metroid universe. This new feature is the first in a series that Quaddy plans to write about the enlightened races in the Metroid series, so we hope you’ll look forward to those!
Community Spotlight: Viking Guitar
We are happy to be sharing our latest Community Spotlight with our audience today. This time around, it’s Viking Guitar, who Shinesparkers fans may recognise from our Harmony of a Hunter albums, where he contributed tracks such as Earthroot and Omega Cannon. Viking Guitar is an audio engineer and composer who has worked with many notable and exciting projects professionally over the years. He has also made a considerable contribution to the video game music community, appearing live on stage at events such as MAGFest and PAX.
Feature: Dream Crossovers
Our latest group feature is now live! Our team have come together to share what game series we dream of Metroid crossing over with. We exchanged a lot of interesting ideas, including Mario Kart, F-Zero, and even Bayonetta! While it is fun to fight alongside characters from those series in Smash, we wanted to imagine Samus in racing, hack and slash and RPG settings, which are out of the element of traditional Metroid. We hope this leads to a discussion among the community about crossovers. If Link and Fox can appear in SoulCalibur II and Starlink: Battle for Atlas, who’s to say Samus can’t make a guest appearance or two herself?
Community Spotlight: Roar and Clank
Today we are delighted to share a brand new Community Spotlight in the form of Roar and Clank, a cosplayer from the Netherlands who got famous online for her awesome Dark Samus cosplay. She goes into detail about her three year journey as a cosplayer, and how participating in competitions has motivated her to push her craft further. She has big plans for the future, including more Metroid cosplay, which we will be following closely!