After years of anticipation (and a major development shakeup), Nintendo gave fans a first look at Metroid Prime 4 during Tuesday’s Nintendo Direct. The game is now known as Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, and it will come to Switch in 2025, Nintendo said.
The first trailer for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond features some actual gameplay, with galactic bounty hunter Samus Aran battling hordes of space pirates, scanning alien environments for clues, and going into ball mode to traverse the environment. It was all classic Metroid stuff, and a tease of a very exciting adventure to come.
Metroid fans also got a peek at what appears to be Metroid Prime 4: Beyond’s villain, a space pirate commander who commands two Metroids as pets.
Nintendo first announced that a new entry in the Metroid Prime series was in the works at E3 2017. At that time, the company only showed a logo for the game, and since then has not provided game details or shown gameplay. At E3 2018, Nintendo did not showcase the game, saying it did not want to repeatedly tease fans until the game was closer to completion. Then, in 2019, Nintendo said it was rebooting development of Metroid Prime 4 and shifting the project to Retro Studios, the Metroid Prime series’ original developer.
Metroid Prime 4 marks the return of the popular take on the classic adventure series, which debuted on Nintendo GameCube and was last seen on Wii with 2007’s Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
Metroid Prime 3’s follow-up was Metroid: Other M, a Wii game that failed to win over fans of Samus Aran’s intergalactic adventures. Nintendo never made a Metroid game for Wii U, although it released a reimagining of Metroid 2: Samus Returns for Nintendo 3DS in 2017. Samus’ most recent adventure, Metroid Dread, was released on Nintendo Switch in October 2021. That was followed by Metroid Prime Remastered for Switch in early 2023.
