I realized just now that I've actually played every home console Metroid game (EDIT: actually, I forgot about Other M, so not technically). Granted, I've barely played the first one. I guess as someone who was born the year that it came out, I don't have much in the way of 8-bit nostalgia. My first exposure to video games was very much of the 16-bit era, and the 8-bit games are so basic and rudimentary that I don't really have fun playing them in the way that I do when returning to SNES classics.
What shocked me, though, to realize, was that there have only ever been two main-franchise Metroid games for home console.
I should add in that there's a huge caveat here - the Metroid Prime trilogy and Metroid: Other M are also home-console games, making that six over the past 35 years. The Prime games are great, though I'm given to understand that Other M was a big letdown.
Metroid has had a lot of releases on mobile systems. Metroid II: The Return of Samus was on the Gameboy (and we have the Gameboy's black-and-white monitor to thank for Samus' iconic Varia suit pauldrons, which were necessary to visually distinguish the suit from the initial one). Metroid Fusion, which is technically the fourth game in the series, was also released on a mobile system, the Gameboy Advance. Subsequently, the remakes, Metroid Zero Mission and much more recently Metroid: Samus' Return, which remade games 1 and 2, game out on mobile systems.
One reason for this, I think, might have been that in the wake of such revolutionary games as Super Mario 64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the N64 Era was one in which all the major gaming franchises became 3D. The capability existed, and so the gaming industry seemed to decide that all games would have to make the leap. Some of these did better than others, but notably, Metroid skipped the N64. I first became aware of Samus because she was a playable character in Super Smash Bros., and then got a used copy of Super Metroid for like 5 bucks, which might be the best video game deal I ever got (oh man, I miss FuncoLand. Seriously, before it was bought by Gamestop, FuncoLand was an amazing chain of video game stores that all seemed like independent funky stores where you could try out games picked out by the staff on myriad consoles set up around the store, and you could find tons of really great stuff.)
I think the limitations of the mobile systems meant that they were the de facto home for side-scrolling games. In more recent years, things like New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Donkey Kong Country Returns would bring this style of gameplay back, but in the late 90s and early 2000s, it was as if the games industry worried that side-scrollers would be too retrograde in style (Yoshi's Story on the N64, something of a follow-up to Yoshi's Island, was a rare exception).
Mario made the transition to 3D very effectively, and Zelda freaking knocked it out of the park with what is, by many, considered the greatest video game of all time. But some transitions were a little less impressive, like Donkey Kong 64, which went a little insane with the "collect things in the level" concept imported from Super Mario 64. Notably, we haven't had another DK game like that since, and instead the series has returned to its side-scrolling roots with Returns and Tropical Freeze.
Metroid went for eight years without a follow-up to Super Metroid, but in 2002, we got a dual-release of Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion. The former was for the Gamecube while the latter was for the GBA, and the two were, I believe, released simultaneously. (Actually, a quick Google search puts Fusion as one day later,) and there was even a thing where you could hook up your Gamecube and GBA using an accessory I sure as hell didn't have (I also didn't have a GBA) where you could give Samus the fusion-style suit in Prime and... some cosmetic benefit in Fusion.
Anyway, Fusion built on Super Metroid's legacy, but I can't say a ton about that given that I never actually played it.
Prime, however, was a radical departure. The America-based Retro Studios reimagined the Metroid series as a first-person shooter, and while there were some who were mortified to see that, it turns out that in practice, the fundamental gameplay wasn't all that dissimilar. You were still shooting your arm cannon and missiles at foes, collecting upgrades that let you do new things which let you explore new places where you could get new upgrades.
Prime took the first-person perspective and played with it in a way few games do. Rather than simply adopting the perspective and leaving it at that, the Prime games had tons of environmental effects - your visor would steam up or catch droplets of water if you were out in the rain. Electrical interference would cause the HUD to obscure your view with static, and bright flashes of light would occasionally let you glimpse your own reflection in the visor, or rather, Samus' reflection.
The Prime games had three main entries, the first two being on the Gamecube and the 3rd being on the Wii (which, confession time, is the only one I actually beat. I got nearly to the end of the first two but never actually got to the final boss of either - I used to have a bad habit of giving up right at the end of a game I liked, perhaps so that it wouldn't be over.)
In 2006, actually prior to the 3rd Prime game, this spin-off series (though spin-off only in terms of continuity and gameplay, as it was still Samus) had a mobile release in Metroid Prime: Hunters, which took the FPS gameplay to a mobile platform.
In fact, there have been a fair number of mobile releases in the series, from the commercial failure of Metroid: Federation Force to the much better-received Samus Returns a year later, which was a remake of Metroid II.
In terms of home console releases, though, the most recent was Metroid: Other M, which came out in 2010. This means that the gap between console Metroid games is actually longer than it was between Super Metroid and Metroid Prime at 11 years.
Of course, given the nature of the Nintendo Switch, you could argue that this is also a mobile release as well.
Before Dread was even announced, there was a tantalizing tease that Metroid Prime 4 was in development back in 2017. However, about a year ago, Nintendo announced that they had scrapped the original project and were starting again from scratch, claiming that the project was not living up to their standard of quality.
It's certainly disappointing to have to wait a whole lot longer for the next Metroid Prime game, but the announcement of Metroid Dread basically washed away that disappointment.
The Nintendo Switch came out in 2017. Console generations typically last roughly 5 years, so we might be due for a new console some time in the next year or two. If that's the case, I'd think that Prime 4 is probably going to be on that, rather than the Switch. That being said, I think the Switch has been a hugely popular success, and the hybrid mobile/home console design is one I think Nintendo is likely to keep doing moving forward (or at least one I think they probably should).
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