Nintendo might be sitting on a Metroid Prime Trilogy remaster for the Switch and waiting for its release. The three-game compilation was first developed for the Wii in 2009, and rumors that the company might bring Metroid Prime Trilogy to the Switch have circulated since 2019.

Metroid Prime Trilogy features three Metroid titles compiled onto a single disk - Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. The first two installments were originally GameCube games while the third was a Wii game, so Metroid Prime Trilogy developers redesigned the first two iterations to feature the Wii remote control scheme introduced in Corruption. The final result was a critical success, in large part due to the game's motion mechanics. But the years-long delay of Metroid Prime 4, among other factors, might be keeping a Switch port for Metroid Prime Trilogy off shelves.

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According to Video Games Chronicle, gaming journalist Jeff Grubb claimed Metroid Prime Trilogy for Switch is finished - but Nintendo is deliberately holding off on its announcement and release. He went on to explain that the company is withholding the game and further information from the public due to a few key factors, with the biggest being the restrictions in Nintendo's quality assurance testing resources brought on by the pandemic. He said, "I think Nintendo was focusing its quality assurance resources on one or two big projects at a time, and that meant that some games that were basically finished were sitting on the side." Grubb also theorized that Metroid Prime Trilogy would likely accompany the arrival of Metroid Prime 4 as a marketing tactic, but it is unclear when Metroid Prime 4 will be released after Nintendo scrapped its progress and restarted its development in 2019.

Metroid Prime 4 Trilogy Nintendo Switch Pro

As recently as this past May, though, former Metroid developer Michael Wikan took to Facebook to explain why a Metroid Prime Trilogy Switch port would never happen. He said the process to transfer Metroid Prime 3's mechanics to the Switch would be a "herculean effort" because the Switch's regular controls lack compatibility with the Wii's remote pointer controls - even with the motion controls of the Joy-Cons. He also explained that his former studio, Retro Studios, “no longer has functional editor tools to work with the Prime code base, so everything has to be ‘brute force’ hard coded.”

Despite the consistent Metroid Prime Trilogy rumors and the definitive nature of Grubb's commentsit is hard to be sure that fans will see a future Switch port for the game until Nintendo officially announces its plans for its release. Speculation never hurt anyone, though, and fans can at least feel confident that a future installment of the Metroid Prime series is on its way. Until then, Metroid fans can look forward to October's release of Metroid Dread.

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Source: Video Games Chronicle