Why Metroid Dread Got Stuck In Development Hell

Metroid Dread has finally been announced, over fifteen years since the game was first teased to journalists at E3 2005. Metroid fans have rejoiced at seeing Samus run and hide from EMMI, in gamplay segments that will bring back a lot of nightmares for anyone who remembers the SA-X from Metroid Fusion.


Nintendo's latest adventure starring Samus Aran has not been in active development for the entirety of the past two and a half decades, but according to Yoshio Sakamoto, the team at MercurySteam (which we incorrectly call MercuryStream in this video, sorry about that) have been working off design documents from the Nintendo DS era.


Why has the game taken so long? Well, according to Sakamoto, it just wasn't possible to do what he wanted to do with Metroid Dread in the past, partially because of hardware limitations, but also because, he feels, the project needed the ingenuity and talent that only MercurySteam can provide.


The team at MercurySteam first caught Nintendo's eye for their work on Castlevania: Lord of Shadows, before being tasked with co-developing Metroid: Samus Returns for the 3DS.


This, of course, makes MercurySteam the only true literal Metroidvania developer in the world, as they've worked on both Metroid and Castlevania.


After Samus Returns, Yoshio Sakamoto set his developers to work creating Metroid Dread, finally fulfilling a dream that he'd been holding onto for years.



Anyway, hope you're doing well!


Lots of love,
BretonStripes (http://twitter.com/bretonstriped) and Kotor (http://twitter.com/kotorcomics)



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFpLm3Dg7Yg
https://kotaku.com/nintendo-new-metroid-is-not-metroid-dread-5277377
https://web.archive.org/web/20160215030723/http://www.gamestm.co.uk/features/yoshio-sakamoto-discusses-metroid-64-metroid-dread-and-the-unwritten-future-of-the-warioware-series/3/
https://web.archive.org/web/20070827193635/http:/ds.ign.com/mail/2005-09-19.html
https://twitter.com/crankycraig/status/1404852001117118464
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afUI8nIrGgI
https://www.ign.com/articles/yoshio-sakamoto-metroid-dread
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2021-06-17-nintendos-sakamoto-on-bringing-metroid-dread-back-from-the-dead