The History of Metroid
A series of peaks and silences: 1986 to 1994, then echoes, then Madrid.
Metroid has never been a steady series. It arrives in bursts, vanishes for most of a decade, and comes back changed. This is the shape of it: five eras, each with its own hardware, its own studio, and its own idea of what Samus Aran is for.
THE DISK YEARS
1986 to 19941986 · The disk
Metroid ships for the Famicom Disk System on August 6, 1986: Nintendo R&D1’s nonlinear shooter, Mario’s jumping crossed with Zelda’s wandering, in a darker key. North America gets a cartridge a year later.
1991 · The handheld
Metroid II: Return of Samus sends the hunt to the Game Boy and finishes Samus’s design: the bulky Varia silhouette the series still uses. It ends with a baby Metroid imprinting on its hunter.
1994 · The landmark
Super Metroid, the biggest SNES cartridge of its time, turns the formula into a masterclass in teaching without words. Then the series stops.
THE SILENCE AND THE DOUBLE LAUNCH
1994 to 2002No N64 game
For eight years there is no new Metroid. Nintendo could not settle the series on the Nintendo 64; Sakamoto said he could not imagine its controller moving Samus. Samus’s 64-bit life is a Smash Bros. roster spot and a pinball cameo.
November 2002 · Two games, one day
The drought breaks with a double launch in North America: Metroid Fusion on the Game Boy Advance and Metroid Prime on the GameCube, the 2D line and the 3D line reborn on the same morning.
2004 to 2009 · The Prime decade
Zero Mission rebuilds the first game, Echoes and Corruption complete Retro’s trilogy, and the DS gets Pinball and Hunters in between. The decade ends with the Trilogy steelbook, withdrawn from sale within months.
THE SECOND SILENCE AND THE RETURN
2010 to today2010 to 2016 · The hard years
Other M divides the audience and the series goes quiet again. The only release in six years is Federation Force (2016), a co-op spin-off met by a cancellation petition.
2017 to 2021 · The Madrid years
Spain’s MercurySteam remakes Metroid II as Samus Returns, then finally builds Dread, the DS-era ghost project, for Switch. At 3.07 million copies it becomes the best-selling Metroid ever made.
2023 to 2027 · Prime returns
Prime Remastered shadow-drops in 2023. Prime 4: Beyond, restarted once and silent for years, lands on December 4, 2025 for Switch and Switch 2. A new side-scroller, Metroid Ravenous, is announced for January 2027.