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.

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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!

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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.

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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?

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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!

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Metroid EX manga could get a volume release

You may remember that the Metroid Database translated a rare Metroid manga called Samus and Joey between 2011 and 2015. This 4 part story was published in the now defunct Comic BomBom magazine, and later collected into three volumes. However, the last part, known as Metroid EX, was never bound into a collection. Now, it could finally get its chance.

The original mangaka (manga artist), Idzuki Kouji, is seeking to prove to Fukkan.com, which handles printing and reprinting of out-of-print books, that there is demand for an official volume release of Metroid EX. As of this writing, there are currently 166 votes calling for its re-release. If you’d like to vote, you can sign up at this link and click the red vote button at the bottom of the page. Please give it the support that you can, so these stories can be viewed for generations to come.

Source: Fukkan/Siliconera

Feature: The Decisions of a Remake

Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of Metroid: Zero Mission. The title made its debut in North America on February 9th 2004 on GameBoy Advance. To celebrate this great milestone, our team member Renan has written a new feature called The Decisions of a Remake which demonstrates how game design evolved over the years since the original Metroid for the Nintendo Entertainment/Famicom Disk System.

Check out the feature here

Community Spotlight: Anaugi

Our latest Community Spotlight feature is now live! This time around its artist Anaugi, who focus on cartooning and illustration. He currently works as a freelancer, taking commissions and printing designs to various products. His passion for Metroid and its universe fuel his inspiration. We hope you’ll check out the feature below and follow him on social media to spread the great work he does!

Click here to view the feature

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