Excitement is gradually building for the Metroid series' return as Metroid Dread's release grows ever closer. Fans of the franchise were treated to plenty of news and excitement during Nintendo's E3 2021 presentation, as the company not only revealed and showcased Metroid Dread but also gave fans hope for the future of the series by providing a brief update on Metroid Prime 4's development. There have been plenty of rumors surrounding the Metroid Prime series, but one of the most widespread is that Nintendo might be gearing up to release a remastered version of Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Switch.
The existence of Metroid Prime Trilogy has been rumored for years, but recently a few industry insiders have said that Nintendo is getting ready to announce it sometime soon. The most recent piece of news surrounding the project came yesterday, when Nintendo insider Emily Rogers claimed that the Metroid Prime Trilogy wouldn't be happening. Instead, she claimed that Nintendo is only planning on releasing a remastered version of the first Metroid Prime to celebrate its 20th anniversary. While this news might be hard for fans of the Prime trilogy to hear, it seems like it might make the most sense based on what's known about the hardware required to run all three Prime titles.
The Issues With Making a 'Metroid Prime Trilogy' For the Switch
The Switch is Nintendo's most powerful console from a hardware perspective. That's not saying much as its since been majorly eclipsed by both the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but this is important to note since it seems like the Switch should make it easy to port older Nintendo games as a result of its improved hardware. Unfortunately for the company, it put itself in something of a corner in terms of backward compatibility because of how integral motion controls were to many of the games published on the Wii and the WiiU.
This is where the issue regarding Metroid Prime Trilogy's rumored Switch port begins. Earlier this year, one of Retro Studios' senior game designers from 2000 to 2011, Michael Wikan, said that a Switch release of the Metroid Prime Trilogy would require "herculean effort" as a result of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption's motion control-based design. Essentially, every part of the game was designed around the use of the Wii remote, and taking that out of the experience would completely change it into something much less fun.
Wikan commented on the first two games in the series saying that Switch ports of Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes would be much easier, as they were both made for the GameCube and didn't require motion controls to function. While the Switch's Joy-Cons can and have functioned as Wii remotes with other ports, a Switch version of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption couldn't ask players to require using Joy-Cons as a remote, as that option doesn't exist for those who own a Switch Lite. It might have been possible before the release of the console, but the Switch Lite has also pushed Nintendo into a corner due to its lack of functionality with some of the Switch's core ideas.
It's for this major reason that it seems like a remastered version of the entire Metroid Prime trilogy on the Switch doesn't seem likely, but that it's much more realistic to anticipate an anniversary edition of the original Metroid Prime title. There's a possibility that Nintendo figures out a way how to port all three games to the system, but it seems more likely that the company would want to keep all of its resources working on Metroid Prime 4 instead of burning time and effort to remaster a 14-year-old game.
Metroid Prime Trilogy is rumored to be in development.
