Metroid Database.com

Some new information has been discovered online which could have possibly been a framework for the mysterious "Metroid Dread" project. This information comes in the form of a patent registered with the US Patent office and dates back to 2005, one year after the release of Metroid Zero Mission. This information provides us with a few probabilities:

• Nintendo, Sakamoto, et. al. was preparing a future 2D Metroid game after MZM. (Something we already knew anyway)
• The new game was to be made on a portable console (GBA was their choice at the time)
• The patent's main focus is a mechanic in which the player (Samus) will be in a state in which her weaponry is effective against an enemy, and then when she is in a state of distress, she will be ineffective against the enemy.
• The drawings are very reminiscent of the battle with Mother Brain, and how you are forced into the acid at times.

The patent's abstract is as follows:

A shooting game apparatus includes an LCD for displaying a target an an operating button for a player to perform operation of shooting the target. For example, an enemy character is switched between an ineffective state in which it is never damaged even if an attack hits it and an effective state in which it is damaged if an attack hits it. Different images are displayed depending on whether the target is in the ineffective state or in the effective state, when a player character enters into a state of being continuously damaged because it is positioned in such an area as it receives continuous damage, for example, the target is switched into the ineffective state.

For those that may be a bit confused, this basically means, "An enemy will be vulnerable to an attack at a given time, and it will be depicted as such when it is. When the player is being damaged continuously (i.e. they fell in lava/acid), attacks to an enemy at that time may not hurt it."

We can't really conclude that this is *THE* Metroid Dread patent, but just postulate that it was considered to be in the game. So in the end, it's an interesting little find, but nothing much can be gleaned from it.

--Infinity's End