There’s been a second major announcement today in Metroid news: Metroid Fusion is coming to Nintendo Switch Online on March 9th, exactly a week from today! (in Eastern time, where I’m publishing from anyway) Nintendo announced this minutes ago with a trailer on their YouTube channel, which you can watch below.
Icons based on Metroid Prime Remastered are now available through Nintendo Switch Online until March 9th. There are six and they each cost 10 Platinum Points. The icons feature Samus, the Morph Ball, Meta Ridley and a Metroid. Notably, the banner image says “Wave 1”, implying that more might be on the way. We will update you if this turns out to be the case.
Original Metroid Prime engineers Zoid Kirsch and Jack Mathews have criticized Metroid Prime Remastered for omitting the original game’s credits. The remaster instead credits the new Retro Studios employees, and staff at external partner studios, for their work on the game, while adding this general credit to the end: Based on the work of Metroid Prime / Original Nintendo GameCube and Wii Version Development Staff. This marks a change from Metroid Prime Trilogy, which included the original credits in addition to new ones.
Additionally, Ashley Rochelle, an Environment Artist who was hired for the remaster, found that she was credited under special thanks in Remastered despite doing significant work on the environments, including the Hall of the Elders. She said that she and other people who left Retro before the credits were finished got listed under special thanks instead of receiving full credit for their work. She also claimed that at least one artist was completely left out, as was anyone who was laid off during development.
This is not the first Metroid game to have its crediting practices criticized by people who worked on it. Metroid Dread also had this issue, where at least three developers found they were not credited since they did not work on the game for at least a year, per MercurySteam policy.
While it might be that this is the result of an internal policy at Retro Studios, we believe that this is wrong. Two of the original developers, Mark Haigh-Hutchinson and Andy O’Neil, have since died, and it is imperative that we remember their work and contributions to the Metroid Prime series, along with everyone else who is still with us. We hope that Retro Studios will make this right by releasing an update that adds the original credits, and acknowledges new developers’ roles appropriately.
You can read the original Metroid Prime’s credits on Wikitroid at the link here.
Source: Zoid Kirsch/Jack Mathews/Ashley Rochelle
We are happy to report tonight that another Metroid mystery has been solved! Back in 2018, we interviewed Metroid Prime Audio Lead Clark Wen. One of the questions we asked was about the effort noises made by Samus when she is hit or killed in the Prime series. Clark examined the filenames from his ProTools sessions and determined that “JH” (Jennifer Hale) had in fact recorded Samus’s pain grunts. However, he had used the death scream from an actress with the initials “VM”. A few people, including us, had speculated she was Vanessa Marshall.
Recently, we reached out to Vanessa with a link to the interview to confirm if she had recorded for the game. Tonight, she shared both Clark’s interview and the Launch Trailer for Metroid Prime Remastered, and confirmed she had done voice work for Samus. Vanessa even signed off with a message to us signed “VM”. We now know another actress who’s given her voice to Samus! What a great way to wrap up a wonderful week for Metroid fans.
Source: Vanessa Marshall (first/second tweet)
Our first Community Spotlight of 2023 is now live! We are starting off this month with Topher Putnam, a talented Metroid fan and sculptor who has created action figures based on characters from the series. There are so few official ones and he wanted to bring characters like Sylux, Rundas and Gandrayda to life. Outside of these Metroid figures, Topher is also an accomplished illustrator and animator who created a children’s television series. We hope you’ll check out his fantastic work!
During the Nintendo Direct today, it was announced that Metroid Prime Remastered is officially coming… today! It has been fully remastered with glorious HD visuals and new twin stick controls. A physical version will be released on March 3rd. We can tell you that many of the team were watching the Direct together, and we screamed when this was announced!
Additionally, Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games, including Metroid II: Return of Samus, are now available to play through Nintendo Switch Online. Metroid Fusion will come at a later date.
More to come…
Our first feature of 2023 is now available on our website! As a follow-up to last year’s feature on the Space Pirates, team member Quadraxis has written an overview of their Zebesian counterparts. These pirates were responsible for the attempted mass breeding of Metroids and posed a major threat to both the Galactic Federation, and society as a whole. Quaddy examines the history of the Zebesians, as well as their physiology, culture, technology, weaponry and the wars they have fought. We hope you consider reading this new feature!
Our twenty-sixth episode of the Shinesparkers Podcast stars Bryan Walker, the former Development Director at Retro Studios, who oversaw Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Metroid Prime Trilogy and the standalone New Play Control! Wii port of Metroid Prime. Bryan shares his memories of working at Retro Studios, answers our questions, and offers his thoughts on video game leaks and the Bounty Hunters in Metroid Prime 3. We also answer our mailbag on the topic of potential downloadable content for Dread.
Podcast is hosted by Amanda, with team member Roy.
00:00 – Introductions
01:26 – Interview: Bryan Walker
26:44 – Topic: The Corrupted Bounty Hunters
32:25 – Mailbag
37:05 – Bloopers
The GameSpot tour mentioned in this podcast: Retro MP3 days
The whiteboard mentioned in this podcast:
A few years ago, we reported that an animation cell surfaced in the estate sale of a DiC employee, revealing a Metroid TV series was considered at one point. Notably, the cell depicted Samus as a man. Now, in an oral history of DiC’s The Legend of Zelda series, the story editor and writer of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, Reed Shelly, has revealed more. DiC had considered creating the Super Mario Bros. Power Hour, an hour-long block of animated shows based on games including Metroid, as well as Mario, Zelda, Castlevania, Double Dragon and California Games. Ultimately, only Mario and Zelda were made into shows.
We may also have an explanation for why Samus was depicted as a man. Nintendo conducted little oversight of the Zelda show beyond providing character designs and a “franchise bible”, along with copies of the first two games. Presumably, this was also the case with Metroid. Since none of the writers were themselves gamers, they did some research and then decided to take the shows elsewhere. Without the internet at the time, or playing Metroid and getting the best ending, they would not have known Samus was a woman and therefore assumed she was a man. Ah, what could have been…
Source: Polygon
Our final piece of content for the year is our annual End of Year feature. We wanted to highlight the Metroid news we got in 2022, including the free updates to Metroid Dread, as well as the wonderful community projects that came to fruition this year, and the content we published. We interviewed seven Metroid developers in writing and on the Shinesparkers Podcast, highlighted seven creators in our Community Spotlight series, and restored some of our legacy content from before 2017. All in all, a good year.
On behalf of the team, we want to thank all of our readers for their support this year. From all of us, Happy New Year, and here’s to more content and Metroid news in 2023! (Metroid Prime 4 trailer pretty please?)
