Ryan's Archive

Kiwi Talkz – Retro Studios Episodes

UPDATE 1/22/2022: Kiwi Talkz has released a new podcast with one of the senior gameplay programmers of Prime 1 & 2, David “Zoid” Kirsch!

In case you missed ’em. Kiwi Talkz is a New Zealand-based interview podcast dedicated to game industry professionals. Reece has interviewed five ex-Retro Studios employees thus far, all having worked on Prime Trilogy titles in the past. If you’re into podcasts, insight on game development, and Metroid, these are definitely for you.

 

Those interviewed:

  • Mike Wikan – Design Lead for MPT
  • Bryan Walker, Senior Producer, MPT
  • Clark Wen, Sound design for Prime
  • Kynan Pearson, Design lead for Prime 2
  • Jack Matthews, Engineering lead for MPT

 

Playlist is found here.

The 16-year History of Metroid Dread

100% required viewing for all Metroid fans.

New Storefront – Shopify!

Happy New Year, everyone!

We have officially launched our new storefront, courtesy of our new store host, Shopify. You can find the URL at https://metroid-database.myshopify.com/

And for the record, yes re-stock on many of our items are coming very soon, thank you for your patience while we wait for them to be manufactured. We should have the stock in no later than the end of the month.

 

As it stands, you can no longer purchase items from our Storenvy shop or through their marketplace. I’d love to explain to you why I made this decision, but before your eyes begin to glaze over:

TL;DR: their discount/coupon system was incredibly broken, and I had to pay $5 just to offer y’all discounts/coupon codes.

That’s right – in order to be a successful online business (tons of sales were driven through our discounts and coupons throughout the year) I had to pay a fee just for that service. $5 / mo. may not be much, ($60 a year) – but how about you offer it free for something that is relatively necessary for a small business to make any headway at all? Oh, I can get this same service for free, and it’s not completely broken over at Shopify? Well then, buhbye Storenvy! It’s been real.

 

So here’s the details of why Storenvy’s coupon system is broken. (this is only one example)

  1. Let’s say I created a discount “coupon code” for any item in the store. That coupon was for $1 off an item.
  2. When creating the coupon, if you chose “dollar off,” it would display the discounted price along with a new price with a strikethrough the old price on each product listing. If I wanted to pick multiple products to also have that discount, it would also show that discounted amount above the price of each listing.
  3. Scenario: a customer goes to our store and chooses to put 1 of each of the discounted items in their cart – assuming, as most people logically would, that each product they added would offer a $1 off discount. But nooooo that’s not what Storenvy does. Instead, their dumb discount system is SPLIT ACROSS THE ENTIRE CART!!! Not added! If I wanted 3 items in the shop to be $1 off, if I put those 3 items in my cart, it would NOT give you $3 off as it should, instead it would give you $0.33 off for 2 and $0.34 for 1. IT IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS! 

 

The reason it does this is because Storenvy’s (absolutely batshit crazy) cart system only allows *ONE* discount per sale. Just facepalmingly, head-desking type of shit here, folks. And yes, of COURSE I took this up with their support department. In their eyes, absolutely nothing is wrong with their system – working as intended. Several emails later, I gave up. Not worth the effort. If people want to be so blind to the absolute incredible shortsightedness of this system, then you deserve it.

 

In the end, our new storefront – powered by Shopify – is gorgeous, works great, and best of all for you, it allows me to offer you discounts on multiple items without dealing with the incredibly broken discount system that Storenvy offers. The only downside is Shopify is $30/month. I am biting the bullet on this because you deserve a better system. We all do. And Storenvy ain’t it.

3D Printed Fanmade Dread Suit Samus

We just found out about this *ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE* 3D printed and handpainted Dread Suit Samus. The hobbiest who made them is known to make incredible figurines, just as good as official products, if not better. I truly hope Nintendo and GoodSmile make a Dread Suit Figma because after seeing this, *I HAVE A MIGHTY NEED!*

Source: kurumi_tsuchi (Twitter)

Holiday Merch Discounts

Howdy y’all! We are offering some discounts on a lot of the items in our store. The discounts will be available until the first day of the new year.

 

We’re offering the following:

  • 50% off on our High Jump Boots enamel pin
  • $2 off all SpotArt stickers
  • $1 off our 5″ Boss stickers
  • $1 off our pixel Zero Mission Samus 3-pack sheet
  • $2 off our Smash Heroes 8-pack sheet

Metroid Database Store

IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING DISCOUNTED PRODUCTS

Storenvy’s system is dumb and only allows ONE product discount to be applied per sale (the one with the deepest discount). That means if you put multiple products in your cart that should also have discounts applied to them, the cart will only apply to the one that gives the most money off. The other discount products will be ignored. It’s incredibly shortsighted.

If this case applies to you, please complete the sale and email us contact@metroiddatabase.com with your order # letting us know that you should get the other discounted products and we will gladly refund you the difference!

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Our other enamel pins went REAL quick, and we took that as a big sign that you want more, so restock is on the way, but probably won’t make it to us until sometime in January. Also on the way, we’re going to be offering 3.75″ decals of the newest Samus S-Logo! This size was chosen because it’s perfect to place on a Switch dock. They’ll be available in black and white varieties:

Thanks as always for your neverending support. We wouldn’t continue doing this if it weren’t for you. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, and anything in between.

Dread wins “Best Action Adventure” at TGAs

Last night were The Game Awards, an award show that is basically a thinly veiled way of showing new trailers and making big new announcements for AAA titles. Highlight of the night was when Metroid Dread took home the Best Action Adventure Game. You can see Nintendo’s thank you tweet below:

And Doug Bowser’s acceptance speech (where he is clearly a little nervous!):

On behalf of this website and the Metroid community at large, I’d like to congratulate the entire staff and all contributors to Metroid Dread. Thank you so much for making the game we have waited so long to play.

View all the winners here.

Metroid/Samus Origins and Influences by Critical Kate

Required viewing for Metroid fans. Incredible retrospective by Critical Kate.

Metroid Dread ad featuring Brie Larson

Brie recently posted this on her Instagram page. In case you’ve been living under a rock the last year or two, Brie has been outspoken in her love for Metroid and Samus and expressed how she would love to play her in a possible movie. Heated arguments ensued.

While I personally don’t think Brie would be a good fit for Samus, I would not be protesting or dying on that hill. My preferences for any kind of show-based Metroid content would strictly animated, either 2D or a 3D cel-shaded animated series like Pacific Rim: The Black on Netflix.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Brie Larson (@brielarson)

New Metroid Dread Trailer

Nintendo still pumping out the ads for Dread. Looks like they’re going to push it as hard as they can for the holiday season.

Metroid Mission Logs – Scanned

Finally, it’s here. The full scan of Metroid Mission Logs, which is the title of the art book that came with Metroid Dread Special Edition, is available on our site. This 192-page book is an amazing trip down memory lane, as well as a close look into the concept art behind MercurySteam’s incredible Metroid Dread. Their concept artists are incredibly talented and this book is a testament to all of the hard work that was put into the game.

 

Sadly, the book doesn’t contain all of the classic key art that was released over the last 35 years. Notably missing is a bunch of stuff from Zero Mission – Mother Brain, Ridley, Ridley Robot, King Worm, Mua, the 3 forms of Kiru Giru, the Ruins test, the Chozo tribes art, and worst of all, absolutely NO Zero Suit Samus! Not a single image of her in the entire book. It’s kind of baffling, honestly.

 

Maybe some of you have seen other scans of this art book floating elsewhere around the internet. I’ve seen one scan myself and I can’t say I enjoyed looking at it, the scan quality was…subpar, to say the least. Settle for nothing less. It took me a while since I scanned it at 600dpi and then cleaned up and adjusted the levels for each page, one at a time. Anyway, hope you enjoy it!

 

Download by clicking the cover image below: (125MB, .pdf)

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