Where Are the Metroid Prime 2 and 3 Remasters?

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond finally made its Switch 2 debut after rampant speculation that it would be gracing Nintendo’s newest system in addition to the original Switch before it gets kicked to the curb. It was obvious to assume that one of the next big announced Nintendo games would come to the next big Nintendo console. It was also seemingly obvious that Nintendo would remaster Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption after remastering the first game, but that has not come to fruition.

It’s strange, and an oversight Nintendo should correct before the time passes.It appeared as though Nintendo was gearing up to remaster this coveted trilogy before Metroid Prime 4 came out. Retro Studios and Iron Galaxy remastered the 2002 series debut for the Switch in February 2023.



It received rave reviews and sold over a million copies in just about a month. The dual-stick controls were a crucial step in modernizing the title and the touched-up visuals looked great, but the remaster mostly stood on the strength of its core design, occasionally obtuse mission directives be damned. RELATED: 5 Metroid Games You Need to Play Before Metroid Prime 4Metroid Prime 2 and 3 remasters have even been rumored for some time.

Giant Bomb’s noted leaker Jeff Grubb stated in summer 2023 that the remaster of Prime 2 was coming “relatively soonish” after saying that 2 and 3 would be more modest ports when compared to the first remaster. Others have also partially corroborated Grubb’s report, while a user on ResetEra claimed that Nintendo was going to contract out remasters of 2 and 3 since Retro was too busy working on 4 to get back to remaking the whole trilogy (disputing the claim that these remasters were already basically done). Nintendo has not officially commented on such rumors and the scattered multi-year buildup of these rumors implies chaos on some level, but it’s not too hard to infer that more Metroid Prime remasters are in the cards (or, cynically, were at one point).

If these remasters are still planned, the time to release them is now. Metroid Prime 4 still has no concrete release date — it’s still vaguely scheduled for 2025 — but the clock is ticking. They were nowhere to be seen in either the recent Switch or Switch 2 Directs, and that doesn’t bode too well.

However, the remaster of the first game was shadow-dropped right after the Direct that announced it in 2023, so there’s hope that something similar will happen with heavily rumored remasters of the following two games.Dark Samus has been dormant for too long.Metroid Prime 2 and 3 remasters would be important for a few reasons.

It’s almost always worth it for a game to reach a new generation of systems, especially now as storefronts are carrying onto successive hardware. Prime 2 is almost 21 years old, while Prime 3 is about 18 years old, meaning they missed a whole generation or two of players. 2022’s Metroid Dread is also the best-selling Metroid game, so it’s likely that there are relatively new fans who only got a taste with the first remaster.

Hardcore fans also likely don’t need much convincing, given the quality of the series and how long it’s been since they’ve been released.Both the hardcore and the newer players benefit from the added context that comes when a whole series is available on one platform. There’s value in seeing how Retro first adapted the series into 3D and how the studio grew from there over a few sequels.

Being able to play them and work through the games is more eye-opening than watching a playthrough on YouTube, which is what most would have to do now. They’re still worth playing today, too, since there still aren’t many games like them. Plenty of titles have picked up Samus’ torch in the 2D space, but 3D games like Metroid Prime are much more rare.

Outside of Journey to the Savage Planet, shooting and scanning around an alien planet in a fully realized 3D world is not something that has been repeatedly emulated and shows how much novelty the Prime series still has on a gameplay level.There’s narrative value here as well, as even though the story isn’t a huge component of these games, Prime 4 is picking up on some threads from the prior games. Sylux, who made a menacing debut in the recent trailer and extended gameplay demo, is from the DS game Metroid Prime Hunters and showed up in the special endings for Prime 3 and the 3DS co-op game Metroid Prime: Federation Force.

Prime 4 will probably have a summary that covers prior events, and that will be good enough for some, but it’s worth having the option to learn more about Sylux in the actual games.Street Fighter 6 is one of the many Switch 2 ports coming near launch.Metroid Prime remasters would also help fill out the Switch 2 launch.

Nintendo doesn’t have an anemic launch window or one without more than its share of ports — Hogwarts Legacy, Yakuza 0, Street Fighter 6, Cyberpunk 2077, and the two Zelda enhancements, to name a few — but the weight of a first-party classic that hasn’t been officially released since the scarcely printed Wii bundle would still stick out. And if Nintendo adheres to the lower pricing structure seen in the first remaster — Metroid Prime Remastered launched at $39.99 — it would stick out even more because of how pricey the overall launch is.

The official Metroid Prime trilogy retrospective art book slated for summer 2025 and previously mentioned shadow drop of the first remaster means there’s some potential that Nintendo will at least re-release Metroid Prime 2 in some form in the near future. It looks like it’s a matter of “when” and not “if.” But the window is closing.

Metroid Prime 2 and 3 will still be worth re-releasing down the line — they’re great enough to not require being timed before a sequel — but they’d have the maximum impact if they were paced out before Prime 4’s launch. And now would be the prime time to start.The post Where Are the Metroid Prime 2 and 3 Remasters? appeared first on ComicBook.

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