Following a more than five-year drought since the last Metroid game, Nintendo is bringing back their space adventure franchise with what looks to be a multiplayer-centric first-person game that, at least from its debut trailer, doesn’t feature much (or any?) of Samus Aran.
The game is called Metroid Prime Federation Force. The trailer showed three masked soldiers running around on an alien planet. A tagline indicated that the game features four-player co-op missions set in the “Metroid Prime Universe,” a somewhat puzzling reference given that, until now, it’s been assumed that all Metroid games take place in the same franchise universe.
The trailer also showed a mode called Metroid Prime Blastball, which looks like a sport. Nintendo sneakily debuted that part of MPFF on Sunday during the company’s World Championships tournament. As best we can tell, Blastball supports 3 on 3 matches.
The game is set for release on the Nintendo 3DS in 2016.
If you at all think this is weird, you’re not alone. The most recent Metroid Prime was 2007’s Metroid Prime Hunters, the third of an acclaimed trilogy of first-person adventure games from Retro Studios. In recent years, Metroid has risen to the top of the list of Weirdly Neglected Nintendo Franchises, but Nintendo’s top two men in charge of game development told me last year that they were hoping to speak soon about the future of the 2D and 3D branches of the Metroid series. We are hoping to deduce what in the world this new game is as E3 progresses.
Hopefully it’s as cool as it is baffling.
Comments
11 responses to “Metroid Prime Is Returning In The Weirdest Of Ways”
What is Nintendo thinking these days..?
Ummm, no. Metroid Prime Hunters was a DS game released in 2006 by Nintendo Software Technology.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was the game released in 2007 for the Wii by Retro Studios.
Metroid Prime Hunters was a DS game
Missed that, corrected.
The general reaction from r/metroid: YOU DONE BLEEPED IT UP
Bring back the 2D version of Metroid or at least do a HD version of it. Not a fan of the FPS Metroid.
hopefully it has a decent singleplayer campaign might make me dust of my 3DS again.
As long as they aren’t continuing in the vein of Metroid or Alive: Xtreme Space Morphball, there’s still hope for the franchise. Other M was one of the WORST things I’ve ever seen done to a once-revered franchise in the history of gaming and any indication that Nintendo is trying to tactfully pretend it never happened can only be a good thing.
And yet I thought Other M was right up there with the Prime series.
STOP THE PRESSES, ACCORDING TO AN IGN ARTICLE WITH THE PUBLISHER OF METROID PRIME, THIS GAME IS GOING TO BE THE HALO ODST EQUIVALENT OF A NEW METROID PRIME SERIES
THIS PERSON HAS CONFIRMED THAT IT IS SYLUX FROM HUNTERS THAT FOLLOWED SAMUS AT THE END OF PRIME 3, WITH THE NEW SERIES GOING TO BE A HUNTER VS HUNTER SERIESTHIS GAME MIGHT EXPAND OUR THINKING OF THE LORE OF METROIDImo just give us Super Metroid on 3ds
…and while there at it why not other snes games too.