metroid

Metroid Prime 1.5 [GameCube – Cancelled Pitch]

Metroid 1.5 was an undeveloped new game in the Metroid Prime series, internally pitched at Retro Studios between the development of Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. This lost project was found in 2011 thanks to online research by Mama Robotnik on the NeoGAF forum, who unveiled the Metroid 1.5 design document written by former Metroid Prime designer:

“This adventure would take place immediately after Samus takes off from the surface of Talon IV. Upon exiting the planets surface, Samus decides to take a long rest in her Cryo chamber as her ship autopilots home. However, something goes wrong and Samus’’s ship computer hones in on a distress signal. The distress signal is coming from a huge alien vessel (huge, like the size of several Star Destroyers) that is drifting out in space. As Samus’s ship approaches the alien craft, a tractor beam activates and the Ship is pulled into one of the gigantic docking bays. As the ships doors close, the gigantic vessel folds and enters a parallel dimension, thus begins Samus’’ new adventure…

Upon awakening, the ship appears to be abandoned, there is no power except for auxiliary lights and telemetry from computers. It is up to Samus to unravel this mystery. The mystery being that the ship’s AI has gone mad and the ship is actually a war vessel that is on a collision course with a peaceful planet. It’s goal? The entire enslavement of the race of beings on said planet as well as natural resource stripping as its (the planets) destruction. So in essence, the ship AI has split into several different personalities, and is playing a deadly game with Samus. The Alien inhabitants of the ship are also in a state of suspended animation because as the ship travels through the parallel dimension, the alien inhabitants are being created and refined for warfare until the ship arrives at its destination and assaults the planet…. However, the robotic and automated entities are not, these will be the primary enemies that Samus must deal with. In addition, Samus must also deal with the ships cunning AI, who will all the while be taunting her and trying to trick her at every opportunity.”

“The Main reason Samus and possibly other Bounty Hunters are being pulled into this ship is to assimilate their best and most deadly abilities into the personality construct of not only the ships AI, but also into the actual Alien Inhabitants in order to further their quest for perfection. As the ship reaches its target, it will unfold into this dimension and begin its attack. This has what the ship and Alien race who created it has have been doing for past thousand or so years, going from planet to planet, assimilating the most violent parts of a culture and asserting it into its own being.

The main goal for Samus is to disable the engines of the ship, destroy the AI, and eradicate all life forms on the ship. The catch is that even though Samus is all powerful from her previous item acquisition on Talon IV, she will be limited to use them in certain areas of the ship due to the containment matrix that the Rogue AI has set up all over the ship. This will force the player to handle situations differently than expected, and once the containment matrix is disabled, Samus will be free to use all of her abilities. Due to being in a parallel dimension, there are areas within the ship where floors may become ceiling due to gravity being reversed, Time may run backwards, (illustrated by creatures and machines moving in reverse, water moving up into a faucet) and other sorts of environmental weirdness, that Samus as well as other Bounty hunters will have to learn to adjust to in order to survive.”

“Mad AI, the central computer of the ship has gone crazy, it sees inviting Samus onto the ship as a game for its amusement. Will taunt and try to trip Samus up at every move. The Mad AI has four distinct personalities…: The Child, The Killer, the Martyr, and the Fool… each one is deadly and utilizes different tactics and techniques.”

This cancelled project was meant to have a short development time, to release it shortly after the first Metroid Prime while the main team would take their time to develop the true sequel:

“So this is pretty much what I think we could crank out in a year, A Smaller Adventure with expanded mechanics and a few new ones thrown in. The beauty of spaceship design is that a lot of corridors and hub rooms can be reused over and over again, with minor variation; it also lends itself well to our room/door/hall layout. Plus, we can make the world denser by exploiting the super structure of the ship using morphball mechanics. Even though the idea of an AI gone mad has been used before in games as well as films, I feel that we could put a unique twist on it. And by allowing Samus to use only certain abilities in certain parts of the game, we can get a fair amount of replay value by offering the player different solutions to a single problem. This I feel would satisfy gamers who completed Prime and are hungry for something more with a few new mechanics and ideas thrown in.

With the addition of the co-op multiplayer components I have noted in the previous paragraphs, I feel that we would still have a game that feels like Metroid, albeit the feeling of Isolation would no longer be there, at the expense of the multi-player experience. However, I think the by unlocking the additional multi-player modes, after the actual game is completed, it won’t detract from the experience. Unlike TimeSplitters 1 and 2, we can keep the player focused on the main portion or adventure of the game which is what Metroid is all about.”

Concept art was also found in the design doc and on the websites of other former Retro Studios developers. You can find a deep-dive into the document’s details on Wikitroid.

Images: 

Metroid Other M [Wii – Beta / Unused]

Metroid: Other M​ is an action-adventure developed by a team consisting of staff members from Nintendo, Team Ninja, and D-Rockets. Metroid Other M did something that no Metroid game before it even attempted. It gave samus a human side. Known as being the cold bounty hunter, Samus was given a softer yet unrefined image. Other aspects of the game rocked the boat to a degree, but overall, it still has that metroid gameplay that true fans of the series have come to love.

Production had a really large scale, with over 300 storyboards which took six months to be completed, and ten teams being employed to develop cutscenes. To make a game though, you have to decide what to put in, and what to leave out. Thanks to the unlockable art gallery, we can see some of what was left out of the game, over it’s 3 year development period.

Thanks goes to Proto1 for pointing out these differences and to Metroid Database for sharing the artworks!

In the beta gallery below you can see:

  • Samus’ beauty mark was not part of her conceptual design, likely added towards end of development.
  • Unused GFtrooper armor.
  • A conceptual, streamlined powersuit. Not in game.
  • A shot of an unused Lyle character model that depicts him unarmored (no helmet, w/undershirt). Not in the game at all.
  • Alternate, unused designs of MBs hair piece.
  • Concept art depicts Waver once had the ability to infect other enemies. Further, art shows them recoiling off of walls. Not in game.
  • Grippers might have at one point been able to fly.
  • An unused baby Dragotix.
  • Alternate design for Biosphere terminal.
  • Unused Ian and Samus photographs
  • Teenage Samus w/different hairstyle.
  • Unused Samus civilian clothes, purple shirt.
  • Unused Phantoon design

Also, FacePunch are currently hacking apart Other M, and have found some interesting unused assets:

  • Unused Power Suit, likely beta. It’s missing several creases along the shoulder pads, arms, legs and has a different colored arm canon.

Here’s a list of several unused character models that have yet to be ripped:

  • 249-zss body HQ
  • 250-young samus (from prerendered cutscenes)
  • 251-adam in uniform (from prerendered cutscenes)
  • 252-255 hq samus powersuit
  • 257/260- metroid

Another member found test rooms and unused clothing:

“There are some development left over files for sure. So far i found the old suit model i posted earlier, a few characters/outfits which are only appearing in pre-rendered sequences and some test rooms from a very early stage of development.”

Thanks to Zero7 for the contribution!

Images: 

Moon (Renegade Kid) [GBC – Cancelled]

Moon is a FPS developed by Renegade Kid and released in 2009 for the Nintendo DS, but originally the project was born as a 2D side-scrolling action adventure for the GameBoy Color. Moon GBC was revealed by Jools Watsham, game director at Renegade Kid, in a video from his Youtube Channel.

The GameBoy Color version of Moon was never released, but the scenario and the characters were later reused to create the DS version. Moon looked like an interesting adventure, similar to Metroid II, and it’s sad that it did not had its chance on the GameBoy Color.

Props to Jools Watsham for sharing these screens from the prototype!

Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

Images:

Videos (he talks about Moon GBC @ 3:30):

For comparison, here’s the DS version:

 

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption [Wii – Beta]

Retro Studios intended to give Metroid Prime 3: Corruption larger environments than Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and enable the game to run at 60 frames per second. The developers were also interested in using the WiiConnect24 feature to provide additional content for the game that would be accessible from the Internet. A small Metroid Prime 3 Tech Demo was shown at E3 2005, created with the MP2 3D Engine. Nintendo then demonstrated how Metroid Prime 3 would take advantage of the controller’s special abilities with a version of Echoes modified for the Wii and shown at the Tokyo Game Show in 2005. The title Corruption and some of the first gameplay footage were revealed at Nintendo’s Media Release at the E3 2006 trade show.

From early screenshots we can notice that the Ridley fight in the beta did not have Meta-Ridley as in the final, different HUD, graphic details and thanks to some concept arts we can see various early character designs that were created before the final ones.

Also, thanks to a model viewer created by Interdpth and Revel8n, it is possible to find various unused models hidden in the game’s data. You can download the Metroid Prime model viewer (mpxviewer) in here. If you are able to find more unused models, please do let us know.

In January 2012, thanks to fundraising organized by user over on Assembler Games, a 2006 demo, which documented a beta version of the second planet of Metroid Prime 3, was dumped and released to the community. The proto was developed to run on Gamecube hardware with 128 mb of ram, so it’s playable only on a custom version of the Wii emulator Dolphin. Using the debug menu it is possible to active/deactivate the various power-up and to try the third-person  camera.  The map is still incomplete, so only a few areas are accessible. Apart from minor differences, the general layout of the location is remarkably similar to the final version. Cutscenes are unfinished, and of course  the interface is still based on the gamecube controller.

Thanks to Dark_ViVi for the contribution!

Images:

Video: