Ryan's Archive

Ghost Song Trailer & Release Date

9 years ago, the Kickstarter for a Metroidvania with infinite potential arrived. Now, we FINALLY have a release date: November 3, 2022.

So happy that Ghost Song is coming out after all these years. Congrats to Matt White & his team on what looks to be the best Metroidvania released this year and might be a better game than Hollow Knight. I truly hope it wins some awards.

[WEBSITE]

[STEAM PAGE]

Epic Metroid Queen Diorama

Dion, a hobbyist sculptor living in central Texas, was kind enough to allow me to visit his home and take photos of this beautiful Queen sculpture he made. Inspired by both Other M and Samus Returns, Dion recongized the lack of an official Queen statue, so he created his own.

  • The full diorama dimensions are 19″ x 8″ x 9″ (48 x 20 x 23cm).
  • Samus is 3.5″
  • Starship is 8″

The Queen features a light-up morph ball within its belly, representing when Samus Power Bombs it in the epic battle within both Metroid Samus Returns and Metroid Other M. The lower jaw also opens and closes. Dion also sculpted Samus’s classic gunship and mounted it on a Starlink controller chassy. Until some modder comes along, it’s the only way we’ll ever get Samus into Starlink!

Enjoy the gallery of this awesome creation!

 

Once agan I’d like to thank Dion for his generosity in allowing me to view his artwork. Dion goes by @ninsonyfan on Twitter.

Dread Samus Figma (And EMMI!) Revealed!

This weekend in Japan is SmileFest 2022, a festival which allows toy manufacturer GoodSmile to show off all its upcoming lines of new products. Two of them are from Metroid Dread – Power Suit Samus and the EMMI. The EMMI is not painted yet but both action figures look incredibly accurate to their game iterations:

These are currently the only images that are available online.

 

If you’re unsure where to buy, I personally use a website called amiami.com which allows you to get these highly sought-after Japanese action figures. I would also like to remind you that Nintendo did bring over the other two Samus Figmas to North America so it’s incredibly likely they’ll bring Dread Samus & EMMI over here as well. As far as pricing goes, nothing has been announced, but it’s likely Samus will retail ~$70-80 and the EMMI will be $120-140. (Don’t quote me on that!)

 

 

 

 

In other news, today is the 36th Anniversary of Metroid 1’s release in Japan. Here’s a copy/paste of the statement I made about Metroid on our social media sites:

Happy 36th anniversary to Metroid, the game that started it all!
—
It’s very telling about Nintendo’s marketing budget priorities at the time when you compare these two TV commercials. The North American version basically shows a kid in a chair with some very low budget special effects, your standard “let’s get kids excited” VO, and only lasts 13 seconds. The Japanese version features great sfx, a person in a game-accurate M1 Samus costume surfing on a giant FDS cartridge, with a robotic voiceover. And shows tons of game footage. Lasts 30 seconds.
—
M1 may not look like much by today’s standards, but if you give it some time, the game is truly an enjoyable one. I highly recommend those who haven’t beat Metroid on NES to go and try it. Yes, it’s difficult – especially knowing that if you die you restart with 30 health. There are alternatives to make the game less demanding.
1. Use NARPASSWORD 000000 000000 to give you infinite health and all the weapons at start. You can then breeze through the game without any problems.
2. If you have the Online Subscription on Switch, you can rewind time on their NES offering, so it may make the game a little less frustrating but still get the feeling of the game’s challenge.
3. There are also hacks people have made (including yours truly) which allow the game to be enjoyed and be accessible without ruining the overall experience.
—
Here’s to 36 more years of Metroid!

Metroid Prime HD Rumors…Again

While we don’t usually make a habit of stoking rumors, podcaster Jeff Grubb has once again made a definitive note that the long-rumored Metroid Prime HD is coming to Switches everywhere this holiday season. This would be an incredibly well-timed move for Nintendo, as the game will be celebrating its 20th anniversary come November (along with Fusion.). Watch the excerpt below for the full quote:

It’s hard not to get caught up in the hype as Prime remains one of the greatest titles in the series’ history and fans are frothing at the mouth for Nintendo to give this game a proper HD remaster (not a port like we got with Trilogy). As always, take rumors with a huge grain of salt, but my fingers are crossed for it. I’ve also taken the time to create a mockup boxart for it. Enjoy.

Synamax Forced to Pull Content

Synamax, who we reported on a while back, is an indie composer who has been dedicated to one thing lately: deconstructing the music of the Metroid Prime series. During his investigation, he was able to uncover that series composer Kenji Yamamoto used a sample CD called Uncivilised G’rooves as a base for nearly all of the sound design for the music of Prime 1 and Prime 2.

 

Ever diligent, the remixer put his skills to the test and flawlessly recreated the Torvus Bog theme from Prime 2 in its entirety. That was the last straw for Nintendo, unfortunately. Their legal rep contacted the YouTuber and asked him to take down the content including the recreation track and several other remixes, citing he would need “compulsory licenses” to upload the tracks on his channel.

In the video above, Synamax explains the situation, but after this, he is no longer interested in anything Nintendo-related and seems to be washing his hands of the company once and for all. We don’t blame you dude – this kind of corporate bullying is very petty, even from them. Synamax in no way makes money off this and he never planned to. All he wanted to do is educate and preserve, also pointing out the fact that Nintendo missed their chance releasing Prime 2 & 3’s soundtracks officially. Guess Nintendo really hates that kind of thing?

 

Anyway, working with him directly, we’re now hosting .mp3 and .flac files of the track. You can find it here. You can also download a video version of the track featuring a visualizer of when each sample plays. Enjoy.

New Pins…OH MY

Dear friends, today I bring you one of my proudest moments: The Spinning Bug rotating enamel pin.

I have had this idea for several years and due to our incredibly successful store sales, was able to finally bring it to fruition. I hope you all enjoy this pin as much as I had getting it made.

We’ve also dropped 4 brand new pin designs, iterations on the “Prime-style” S-Logo:

These pins can be purchased as a set of 5 or you can buy them individually. Head on over to our store and get yours today!

Metroid Prime Movie Trailer in 4K

Many of you who were alive in 2002 may remember this and anticipating Prime’s release in November. This YouTube user has recently scanned the film reel in a machine called the Gugusse Roller (which is a complete, open, and fully functional analog motion picture film scanner) and converted the whole thing to 4K! Revel in all its glory:

Reggie’s False Other M Prediction

We don’t normally post “soundbyte” news, but in this case, we had to make an exception. Reggie Fils-Aimé, the former president of Nintendo of America for 13 years, recently conducted an interview with a podcast called Kinda Funny Gamescast. When asked about a game that didn’t perform as well as he had hoped, he touched on some thoughts about Other M, where he had predicted the game was going to create a long lasting, positive impression on the fans, which in fact it got quite the opposite due to its heavy handed writing and “unfavorable” depictions of Samus’s personality.

“I really thought that that was going to be a defining moment for the Metroid franchise. It was giving much more of a perspective about Samus. I really thought that was going to be a killer moment in the franchise’s history, and it wasn’t. It didn’t deliver – not the business results, it really didn’t touch the player the way we hoped it would.

Interestingly, I was in a large group meeting, a strategy meeting with Iwata and Miyamoto and the game developers, and we talked about why not. I was always the brash American. I was the one who would say what I believed was truth to try and help the business move forward. The point I made to the developers was it took too long to get into the meat and potatoes of this game. The first five hours of the game, you kind of “plodded along.” There wasn’t a lot of payoff, there was a lot of dialog, and I’m sure I pissed people off in the room. But I said, ‘The learning here was the player wants to get into this much faster. Yes, there are elements we need to do from a tutorial standpoint to help them understand the game mechanics, but you need to move things further along much quicker.’ And hopefully that advice had a little bit of an impact on the developers in the room.”

Listen to the entire Podcast Episode here. (The soundbyte happens ~16:45 mark.)

Did You Know Gaming? METROID PRIME

Mind-blowing revelations about Prime from the DYKG team! Check out this 25 minute video on the game’s early development history.

Discord Server Boost – Free Sticker Pack

Earlier this week we unveiled a new bonus for anyone who decides to Boost our Discord Server.

Requirements:
Purchase a Server Boost for the Metroid Database Discord for at least 1 month
You must contact admin @Infinity’s End via DM and provide me with your mailing address. (I’m not going to do this automatically!)
Will ship anywhere in the world.
1 free sticker pack per member. That’s it!

Here’s what you’ll get:

  • 3″ MDB Circle Magnet
  • 2″ MDB circle sticker
  • 3″ Metroid sticker
  • 2″ 8-bit Metroid pixel sticker
  • 2″ 8-bit Samus pixel sticker
  • 1.5″ 8-bit Screw Attack pixel sticker
  • 2″ Holographic S-Logo sticker
  • +1 extra mystery bonus sticker!

 

Thanks to all existing Server Boosters!

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