Why we need a Metroid Prime: Hunters remake
Ever since the announcement of Metroid Prime 4 way back in 2017, and especially after it was announced that the development of the game would be reset and get back to Retro Studios’s hands, I have speculated about whether a remake of Metroid Prime: Hunters would be made as a teaser of what is to come. This blog post will cover my reasons as for why we need one, and why I initially thought there was one on its way.
Hunters aged really badly
The Metroid Prime series has defined a new standard when it came to first person action-adventure games. Some games tried to follow the steps of this, but there hasn’t been any notorious examples of this so far.
This is also true for Hunters. The game was released under a fairly troubled and confusing development cycle, and very early in the Nintendo DS era.
Aesthetically speaking, Hunters is very subpar with the rest of the series, considering the original Metroid Prime was a title developed around at an earlier relative timeframe as Hunters (approximately one year after the GameCube was released) and yet the first Prime is deemed one of the most good-looking games on the platforn, while the former is not.
However, it’s not just the graphical and visual style that don’t feel inferior. The audio shows heavy signs of compression, as well. While this was common in games of the earlier Nintendo DS games, Hunters is one of the notable cases where this is prominent.
Of course, the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection functionalities from the DS and Wii era that this game took a heavy bet on was eventually discontinued, so by purchasing this game now, you’re missing out on pretty much half of the experience.
There’s no way to legitimately max out your online card like this anymore!
It might have been a good introduction for new players
Now, this reason has been completely crushed by the release of Metroid Prime Remastered, but at the time, I did consider Hunters could have served as a decent way to introduce players to the Metroid Prime series.
However, it might need several changes when it comes to area layouts and story. Many areas and gameplay mechanics were originally designed thinking about the multiplayer mode first, so much so that the game was delayed in order to properly had support for Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and online matchmaking.
The story mode of Hunters was mostly built as a side story for the Prime series without much cohesion to the rest of the timeline. At first. Metroid Prime 3: Corruption only extended upon this side story with the cameo of Sylux.
This brings me to the next point…
The Sylux in the room
Sylux is a bounty hunter who has been marketed as a character shrouded in mystery when it was introduced in —you guessed it—Metroid Prime: Hunters. Aside from booklet and information from the official site
Ever since then, Sylux has made cameo appearances in the following Prime titles: Corruption and Federation Force. In these games, he appears as if he were to be plotting something. While his appearance in FF is more significant to the plot, his appearance at the end of Corruption is perplexing.
One would assume that Sylux would be relegated to a recurring antagonist within the spin-offs of the Prime series, but this is clearly not the case. Kensuke Tanabe confirmed he does indeed appear in Corruption.
Kensuke Tanabe is the mastermind behind the Metroid series. Whatever he says is set in stone when it comes to answering the most burning questions about an iron woman dealing with squishy space jellyfish.
If he was going to be relegated to spin-offs, why making an appearance in a mainline game? Considering how deeply interconnected and carefully designed the Metroid lore is, this doesn’t seem like just a treat for the fans.
Also, all the mainline Prime games had the radioactive substance called Phazon as their centerpiece. However, it is heavily implied that the storyline involving Phazon is over after Corruption concludes. It seems like Prime 4 could be a turning point for Sylux’s character arc. Whether this is fleshed out from the spin-off games a la Kingdom Hearts style, or he is properly reintroduced as a central character to the story is not clear to me.
But if his character extends from the lore of Hunters, this could pose a problem.
Lack of availability
Metroid Prime: Hunters is arguably one of the hardest games of the series to play legitimately. With the discontinuation of the Nintendo eShop for Wii U and 3DS, the only legitimate way to play this game is by getting an original physical copy of the game. So far, no DS games have appeared on the Nintendo Switch Online service, so there’s little hope for this game to show up there for now.
The other games where Sylux has appeared are also unavailable digitally, so you have to buy a physical copy. Federation Force is especially notable because not many have bought the game, so getting a copy at a reasonable price might be tricky.
So if Prime 4 is going to feature Sylux, it might not be a good idea to present him with the expectations that players will want to play the other harder to get games to understand his character a bit better.
With this in mind, my ideal storytelling approach would be:
- Metroid Prime Remastered as an introduction for newer players to the Prime series.
- Metroid Prime: Hunters remake as a proper introduction for Sylux (and maybe the other hunters)
- Metroid Prime 4 for delving deep into the Sylux arc.
At first, I didn’t had much hope for a remake of Hunters after Prime Remastered was shadow dropped, but with the recent history of Nintendo releasing remakes and remasters of previous games, I believe now that this has started to become an ever likelier scenario. We’ll see with time if I’m right or not.
