Metroid Dread launched on Nintendo Switch last year, ending an incredibly long wait for the next chapter of Samus's 2D journey. It's not the first time Metroid fans have been made to wait a very long time for a new game, though. The Metroid series skipped the Nintendo 64 altogether, launching nothing between Super Metroid on the SNES and Metroid Prime on the GameCube. That has prompted one fan to go back in time and imagine what Metroid 64 might have been.
Luto Akino is an indie developer but has been working on an N64-style Metroid game in their spare time, as highlighted by Kotaku. The video below shows what Akino has so far, and while it might not look like much, it's more than enough to make Metroid fans wonder what could have been. Samus in the console's 64-bit style, rolling around a cave, firing her arm cannon at some stationary white cubes that might one day be enemies.
As for who those enemies might be, Akino has even gone as far as to write a short synopsis for their hypothetical Metroid game. Samus and her crew are ambushed which results in their ship crash-landing on an unknown planet. The explosion kills most of the crew, and a surviving Samus is sent into the bowels of the planet by a second explosion, technically saving her from space pirates. That underground network is presumably where Samus finds herself in the video below.
As for whether Akino's vision will ever become a fully realized Metroid fan game, that remains to be seen. The developer will continue to work on the project in their spare time and one day, we may get the chance to experience how a Metroid game on the N64 would have looked and felt. That's if Nintendo doesn't step in and shut the whole thing down, of course. The company doesn't take kindly to this sort of thing, even if the creator isn't profiting from the project.
As for Metroid's future, the massive success of Dread would suggest there will be more to come from the series. Then again, after almost two decades between the time the concept was first thought up and its eventual arrival, Samus fans might have quite the wait on their hands. On the bright side, Metroid Prime 4 is still in development, there's just no word yet on when it'll be here.