Metroid Prime is getting remastered. Rumors of a Metroid Prime remaster have been whispered for over a year, but now those rumors have a date. Speaking on the Game Mess podcast, insider Jeff Grubb said that Nintendo plans to release Metroid Prime Remastered later this holiday season.
"I can say that I've been told pretty definitively that Metroid Prime Remastered is going to be one of their big holiday games," said Grubb. "In the past this was something I'd heard was in the works, they have things happening with that game; now I've been told that their plans are to release that game this holiday I think almost certainly to line up with the 20th anniversary in November."
Elsewhere in the podcast, Grubb also said that Metroid Prime 2 and 3 are also getting updated, but not as extensively as Metroid Prime 1.
"My understanding is [Metroid Prime 1]'s getting the big remaster treatment, and Metroid Prime 2 and Metroid Prime 3 are probably getting updated controls and some things like that," Grubb explained, "but they're not getting quite the same overhaul that Metroid Prime 1 is getting."
Last year, Grubb revealed sources stating that Nintendo had actually already finished the Metroid Prime remaster but was "holding it" due to an already packed holiday release schedule as well as limitations on its QA teams brought on by the pandemic. Metroid Dread's release proved that Nintendo still has plenty of faith in the Metroid franchise, and there's even a Metroid Prime 4 on the way.
Former Retro Studio design lead Mike Wilkan said in May 2021 that making a Metroid Prime Trilogy port would take a "Herculean" effort due to the motion controls used on later Metroid Prime entries. Metroid Prime 3 in particular, he said, would take a team of four to five people a year just to convert to more standard controllers. It looks like Nintendo put in that effort since a year later we're hearing about exactly the Metroid Prime Trilogy remaster Wilkan was talking about.