Nintendo may have let Metroid‘s birthday slip by unremarked, but a bunch of fan creators didn’t, commemorating the game’s 40th anniversary by releasing Metroid Prime Origins, a 2D remake of Metroid Prime. Spotted by PC Gamer, the demake pixelates the 2002 GameCube game, rendering it in graphics similar to that of its NES ancestor, Metroid.
Last year, Nintendo finally released Metroid Prime 4: Beyond after the game had spent almost a decade in development hell, a period which included at least one development reboot. However, for as generally well-received as the game was, it felt a bit flat compared to the previous games in the Prime series. While Origins is a fan project, it’s at least something to acknowledge and celebrate Samus’ 40th, as apparently Nintendo forgot. A quick check of Nintendo’s website and X page reveals…nothing. Not an acknowledgement of the anniversary, no birthday wishes for Samus, not even a celebratory sale on Metroid Prime 4 or Metroid Dread to mark the occasion.
In a post on Reddit, Origins‘ creators at Lv. 4 Games, a small indie studio that previously made the Castlevania fangame Castlevania ReVamped, say the game took three years to make. They also assured fans that no generative AI was used in the creation of the game. There apparently was a trailer to go along with Origins, but it was removed from YouTube due to unspecified terms of service violations. While the devs say they hadn’t received any cease-and-desists, they know they’re flying too close to Nintendo’s sun, with one member of the team writing in the Reddit post, “I know I am now a target of the Nintendo ninjas.”