A Super Nintendo classic was almost playable within Metroid Prime on Nintendo GameCube, until Nintendo stepped in and stopped it from happening.
In the latest episode of the Kiwi Talkz podcast, Metroid Prime developer David “Zoid” Kirsch shared insight into the development of Prime, including this retro easter egg. Zoid said he first played Super Metroid after he was assigned to work on development of Metroid Prime, but he completed the game twice in under a week because he loved it so much.
“I got assigned to Metroid, and I’m like, well I should probably play this Super Metroid since we’re making kind of a sequel to it,” Zoid said. “Holy crap, I missed [out on] this game! This game’s incredible. I played through it twice in like three days, I just loved it.”
This led Zoid to put Super Metroid into Prime itself through an unofficial SNES emulator. Nintendo ultimately rejected the idea because the emulator wasn’t approved, but Zoid said this little side project led to the inclusion of the original Metroid from the NES.
“That started the idea churning, and Nintendo did have the NES emulation library that they had built for the GameCube, and so that turned into bringing the original Metroid to the game.”
Super Metroid is still one of the greatest games ever made, coming in at #5 on our list of the top 100 games of all time. Metroid Prime itself came in at #42, so it would have been pretty wild to have to of the best games ever on the same disc back on the GameCube.
The Kiwi Talkz channel has been diving into the development of the Metroid Prime series over the past few months with developer interviews. A previous video revealed the extent of Retro Studios’ crunch during the development of Metroid Prime.
Metroid fans are still anxiously awaiting Metroid Prime 4, the upcoming sequel announced way back in 2017. For now, players can enjoy Samus Aran’s latest 2D adventure in Metroid Dread, which we awarded the best action-adventure game of 2021.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.