A former Retro Studios developer has stated that he believes a Metroid Prime Trilogy Switch port to be unlikely. There have been rumors circulating for a few years of a possible Metroid Prime Trilogy port, but while this doesn’t necessarily debunk those rumors, it doesn’t make the outlook good either.
The state of Metroid Prime 4 is also currently uncertain due to a variety of factors. It’s been two years since it was announced that Retro Studios would be taking over the development of Metroid 4 from scratch, and nearly four years since the game was first teased during E3 2017. There continues to be silence regarding the current development state of Metroid Prime 4, with the only new being the frequent new hires Retro is recruiting for the project.
Former lead designer Michael Wikan took to commenting on a Facebook post to explain why he believes a Metroid Prime Trilogy port wouldn’t happen. He stated that the biggest issue would be converting Metroid Prime 3’s controls to regular controls as opposed to the game’s standard pointer controls with the Wii remote, saying that it would be a “herculean effort” due to the specific motions at play with how the game is designed. He also stated that “The biggest issue is [that Retro Studios] no longer has functional editor tools to work with the Prime code base, so everything has to be ‘brute force’ hard coded.”
The Metroid Prime Trilogy was originally released on the Wii before being ported over to Wii U. The first two games were released on the Gamecube, with the third releasing on the Wii. All three games were ported to the Wii with motion controls being put into the first two games. The rumors of a possible Metroid Prime Trilogy Switch port came from various store listings such as Best Buy, but there’s no way to know whether these listings were accidents or if they had a nugget of truth in them.
While this does put a damper on the possibility of Metroid Prime Trilogy coming to the Switch, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible, since things could have changed within the last few years at Retro. Several Wii games like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario Galaxy have also been ported over to the Switch. But given Retro’s silence on Metroid Prime 4, there’s no way to know if a Metroid Prime Trilogy port is likely or not. Metroid Prime 4 is the only currently known project that Retro Studios is working on, so all fans can do is wait for a reveal of any sort in order to bring hope that the Metroid Prime series will be free from its limbo.
Source: Michael Wikan/Facebook