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‘Metroid Dread’ took a pretty bumpy ride to get to this point.
Nintendo
One of Nintendo’s biggest surprises at E3 this year was the announcement of Metroid Dread. The first 2D main series game in 19 years, its development history is surprisingly involved as well.
In 2002, Metroid Fusion was released for the Game Boy Advance. This followed directly from the events of Super Metroid and addressed the re-emergence of the X Parasites.
The reason for this was that Samus had wiped out the main predator of the Parasites X, the Metroids.
However, when Samus first encountered the X Parasite, her suit was corrupted and she required some sort of Metroid vaccine to fight the X Parasite-based infection. This is where the merger in the game title was born and in effect meant that Samus had become the last Metroid type in existence.
There was also Metroid Prime at that time and you could play with the Fusion Suit in the game if you connected your Game Boy Advance to your Game Cube. This connection to Metroid Prime is important, especially when it comes to Metroid Dread.
Following the release of Metroid: Zero Mission on the Game Boy Advance in 2004, a remake of the original Metroid, rumors began about a later game that would be a direct continuation of the Metroid Fusion narrative.
The first confirmation of this was in 2005 that a new game, called Metroid Dread, was in development for the Nintendo DS. However, the game slipped into development hell and nothing more was known until 2007.
Cue Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and its now infamous mention of terror, which resulted in Retro Studios having to clear up the confusion and explain that it wasn’t a new game at all.
Then at E3 2009, the press was shown another version of Metroid Dread, which was closer to Metroid Fusion and also dropped the moniker Dread, but once again this game was put on hold and disappeared from the seen shortly after.
It seems that Metroid Dread was a difficult needle to thread, and Yoshio Sakamoto was not happy with the limitations of the hardware compared to what the game had to offer. This is something Sakamoto refers to in the announcement video for the new Switch version (shown below).
However, with the release of Metroid: Samus Returns in 2017 on 3DS, it seems Sakamoto was happy to be working with the same developer, that of Mercury Steam, on Metroid Dread.
The result is something that feels really special and although I was a little disappointed with Samus Returns, as it was a bizarre surrogate remake, this feels like a real Metroid game that will advance the series functionally.
As for the new robotic enemies known as EMMI, my guess is that these have been invaded by the X Parasites and are chasing Samus, as he has the last remaining vestiges of Metroid’s DNA in his system. With this is the only threat to the rise of the Parasites X.
Either way, Metroid Dread is definitely something I’ll delve into once it’s released this October on Switch.
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