Seven years after it was first announced, Nintendo has finally debuted the first look at Metroid Prime 4.
Revealed during a Nintendo Direct on Tuesday, ‘Metroid Prime 4 Beyond’ was confirmed for release in 2025 for Nintendo Switch.
“The galaxy’s greatest bounty hunter Samus Aran will embark on a new mission,” Nintendo said in its PR. “Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, a new entry in the Metroid Prime series, is coming to Nintendo Switch in 2025.”
You can see a gallery of Metroid Prime 4 Beyond screenshots via the link.
Nintendo first made the surprise Metroid Prime 4 announcement during its E3 Nintendo Direct presentation on June 13, 2017.
All that was revealed was a 43-second animation showing outer space and a ‘4’ symbol appearing, along with a message reading “Metroid Prime 4 now in development for Nintendo Switch“.
Until now, however, nothing else was shown of the game. Mainly, that’s because in 2019 Nintendo revealed that the game had essentially been started all over again, with development moved from an unnamed team – reportedly Bandai Namco – to original Prime developer Retro Studios.
Retro has been hiring for Metroid Prime 4 ever since, recruiting the likes of lead engineer Bharathwaj ‘Bat’ Nandakumar (who had previously worked on every Call of Duty: Black Ops entry) and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze lead designer Stephen Dupree, who re-joined Retro after a two-year absence.
In September 2020 it also hired Jon Marcella, an environment designer who had previously spent a decade at Sony’s Santa Monica studio where he also worked on God of War II and God of War Ascension.