Seven years…
The initial announcement of Metroid Prime 4 had me bouncing up and down like a child on Christmas. At that point, the Metroid series had been absent. I had given up my favorite game series for dead. Then, bam! Metroid Prime 4 and a remake of Metroid II, all in one day! I don’t believe in miracles, but after that, how could I not?
I remember that day clear as it was yesterday. I couldn’t forget even if I tried. See, at the time, I was a teenager working at McDonald’s; it wasn’t glamorous work, but for a seventeen year old, it was decent money. Each day, I spent the first hour cleaning the grill. I wasn’t even working the kitchen that day; my manager kept saying I was the best at it, so that’s how I started every shift.
Does that sound like bragging? Rest assured: it isn’t. See, on that day, I got just a little too close to the grill. My knee bumped the big red button, and the next thing I knew, the grill was closing down on my arms like a death trap in an Indiana Jones movie. I managed to get away largely unscathed, but not before taking a nasty burn on my left arm. Bastard took a month to even start healing. Faded as it is, I still have the scar.
You would think that would have ruined my day. It didn’t. See, for all the pain and the blistering and the extreme discomfort, I had one thing to keep my spirits up. No matter how bad the day had turned, one thing kept my spirits as high as a bird in flight: I was finally, finally getting new Metroid games.
Then the wait began. The long, agonizing wait. ‘Metroid: Samus Returns‘ and ‘Metroid: Dread‘ both scratched the itch for a long time. But amazing as those games were, I was still eager for more news on Prime 4.
And news, I got. Just not the news I wanted. Because the game was being sent back to Retro, the fathers of the Prime series, and development was restarting completely.
Still, that was fine. I’d rather wait for a good game then get a bad one into my hands more quickly. So I waited. Me, and the rest of the Metroid fanbase. We waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Silence. Nintendo Directs came and went. Every time, we waited with bated breath. Every time, we were disappointed (except that one in 2021 that gave us ‘Metroid: Dread‘). Prime 4 became like an urban myth. A legend. A story.
I’ll be honest: I gave up hope. Again. I figured the game wasn’t coming out. That it had been shadow canceled. That, or it would come out for the Switch 2 whenever the hell that comes out. I couldn’t see a world in which Metroid Prime 4 actually released on the Nintendo Switch. Which bummed me out, because that game was the sole reason I bought the damn thing!
Then, on June 18th, I awoke to a text message from my little brother. A link to the day’s Nintendo Direct. I had the day off and no desire to get out of bed yet, so I snuggled into my blankets, popped in my earbuds, and watched it on my phone.
And it happened. At long last, after seven long years, there was news. A brand new trailer featuring gameplay for Metroid Prime 4, the subtitle: Beyond, and most thrilling of all: a release window. 2025. It was a glorious moment that had me all but whooping for joy like a little boy!
I could do a frame-by-frame analysis of the trailer. Hell, I probably will in my own time. Instead, I want to show just how insanely long the wait for this game has truly been. While the game was announced seven years ago, the series’ creative leads have been pointing us in its direction for a long time.
The key to it all: this guy.
This is Sylux. He’s set to be the main villain of Prime 4. And thus far, he’s making one hell of an impression! But it isn’t his first appearance in the series. Far from it. This guy has been around for a very long time.
He first appeared in ‘Metroid Prime: Hunters‘ back in 2006 for the DS. Of all the bounty hunters you fought in that game, he made the strongest impression. Mostly because his design was the coolest out of the lot. I remember gushing about him with my friends on the playground way back in elementary school when I was about eight or nine years old. Dude was just cool!
We next saw Sylux in ‘Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.’ Though most players might have missed him. If you got 100% item completion before you beat the game, you unlocked a series of bonus post-credit cutscenes. In the first, Samus takes off her helmet and stares out at the clouds of Elysia, mourning the other three bounty hunters she had befriended and subsequently killed throughout the game. In the second, we see her get back into her ship and fly off towards the next adventure, only to be followed by another ship.
Then ‘Metroid: Other M‘ happened and sent the franchise into hyper sleep. Neither Samus nor Sylux would appear again for nearly a decade, barring Smash Bros. Not until… ugh…
‘Metroid Prime: Federation Force.’
While Samus Aran was mind-controlled for the worst boss fight in franchise history, Sylux was breaking into a Federation research facility. His objective: what else? To steal a Metroid. It’s wholly possible that we witness this very event re-animated in the Prime 4 trailer!
You thought seven years was a crazy long time to wait? Nintendo has been foreshadowing and building to this game’s story since 2006! Seven years? Try almost twenty! This is one of my childhood dreams coming back from the dead! It’s ‘Metroid: Dread‘ all over again!
Now, that long buried dream is finally, finally, finally becoming a reality! And it looks incredible! The music, the visuals, the shooting, the scanning, the in-game cinematics, this game looks to be as Metroid Prime as it gets! While we were all waiting, the devs were in the kitchen cooking like Gordon Ramsay!
I would say I can’t wait. But I’m a Metroid fan. At this point, I’m the grand master of waiting. For now, I simply take solice in knowing the cliffhangers I have been hanging on damn near my entire life are finally going to come to be.
Seven years. Twenty. Now, we only need to manage one more.
I’ll see y’all on the other side.
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