Trilogy? We’ll see about that.
I love the Metroid series games. The exploration aspect and the neat power-ups combined so well into using new powers to re-explore old areas to find even more powers… it was so satisfying. Metroid, Metroid 2: Return of Samus, Super Metroid, and Metroid: Fusion were all 2D side-scrolling games. The Prime series were first-person games. You were no longer merely controlling the main character, intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran… you were in control of her power armor AS her.
Metroid Prime released on the Nintendo GameCube on November 17, 2002. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes released on the GameCube November 15, 2004. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was released on the Nintendo Wii on August 27, 2007. So it’s been 10 years since the last Metroid Prime game.
Sales for Prime 1 were great for the Metroid franchise at 2.78 million (12.78% attach rate [copies of games sold to number of consoles sold]). Unfortunately, sales for Echoes at 1.10M (5.06% attach rate) and Corruption at 1.41M (a mere 1.39% attach rate) were huge disappointments that seemed to be worse each time.
I thought the series was dead. Almost all of the fans did. We’d learned to appreciate what we had and reminisce about what could have been. We wanted another Metroid Prime game. We knew it wasn’t happening. It had been too long. Sales were just too poor. Nintendo released the Wii U console in 2012. No Metroid Prime games were made. Nintendo released their newest console, the Switch on March 3, 2017. Again, no mention of Metroid Prime at launch. We’d learned we were always going to get the same thing… nothing at all.
At E3 2017, to our wonderful shock and surprise…
we learned how amazing it can be to be so wrong.
