Metroid Prime Producer Seems as Excited as Fans for a Metroid Prime 2 Remake

[Wesley Yin-Poole]

If you are interested in catching up on the Metroid Prime trilogy ahead of Metroid Prime 4, Nintendo isn’t making it easy at the moment. We think that should be remedied — and so does Metroid Prime series producer Kensuke Tanabe.

In the new book, Metroid Prime 1-3: A Visual Retrospective, out October 28, 2025, the legendary Japanese developer brings up the idea of a Metroid Prime 2: Echoes remake himself while musing on the multiplayer mode Echoes introduced, saying: “Retro completed the multiplayer mode without compromising on quality... Being of its time, it was designed for local play, so the number of players who actually experienced it might not have been very large. If it is remade, I would be delighted for more people to have the chance to experience it.”


Metroid Prime’s 2023 remake for Nintendo Switch, which I scored a lofty 10/10, seemed to be, ahem, priming us for more remakes, with Metroid Prime 2: Echoes being naturally on deck. In the lead up to Metroid Prime 4’s December 4 release date, a series of remake drops seemed like a natural choice. But remakes take lots of time and resources, which made it even more likely, perhaps, that Metroid Prime 2: Echoes would appear on the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack’s recently added GameCube selection. But no!

As of right now, you can’t play Metroid Prime 2: Echoes anywhere but off of an original GameCube or Wii disc. It is not easy to play any Prime game other than Metroid Prime Remastered. The Metroid Prime Trilogy for Nintendo Wii was the last time Echoes or Metroid Prime 3: Corruption were made available, and that disc has long since become a hot collector’s item. And you can forget about playing Metroid Prime Hunters for DS, or Metroid Prime Pinball, which are both locked to DS carts – and you can just plain forget about Metroid Prime Federation Force for Nintendo 3DS entirely, that’s fine.


How Was Metroid Prime 2: Echoes’ Multiplayer Mode?

And about that multiplayer mode in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. It was split-screen local multiplayer and, while we gave the overall game a 9.5, reviewer Matt Casamassina had reservations about the limitations of a local multiplayer experience. Here’s an excerpt from that review:

Up to four players can duke it out in a standard deathmatch-style competition and true enough, Retro Studios has tried to Metroid-ize the feel and function of arenas. There are Morphball Cannons, which launch Samus across chasms and up to second-tier levels. There is a Death Ball that immediately eliminates any opponent you happen to roll into. And you can even hack the suits of your foes, temporarily disabling some of their functions. And to top everything off, there's also a treasure hunt mode in which you compete against friends in a collect-a-thon. The multiplayer mode runs smoothly and as far as four-player split-screen goes, it really isn't bad. But at the same time we simply don't feel that Metroid Prime needed a multiplayer mode to begin with -- the series has succeeded on its single-player merits for more than a decade. Despite Retro's attempt to put a Metroid spin (pardon the pun) on the multiplayer mode, in the end it's still just deathmatch, and deathmatching doesn't work so well when you can always see exactly what your opponent is doing. And there's no getting around the fact that the multiplayer mode feels archaic compared to the onslaught of online-ready fragfests available to owners of Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation 2 consoles.

While Tanabe’s comments don’t get us any closer to a Metroid Prime 2: Echoes remake, each day gets us closer to Metroid Prime 4. Who knows, maybe the GameCube games will hit Nintendo Switch Online, or better yet, we’ll see a re-release of the Wii’s Metroid Prime Trilogy with its upgraded controls and widescreen graphics that we scored a 9.5 ala the recent Super Mario collections… or even better, Metroid Prime 2 and 3 Remastered. But maybe we are being too greedy, Metroid Prime 4 is, after all, mere weeks away. And you can get this nifty art book, filled with insights from the Retro and Nintendo teams that assembled a series of Metroid masterpieces.


Samuel Claiborn is IGN's managing editor and a fixes/breaks ancient arcade and pinball machines in his garage. TCELES B HSUP to follow him @Samuel_IGN on Twitter.