That Metroid series took a little nap during the N64 era as Nintendo was unable/unwilling to release a single home console game between the success of the SNES Super Metroid in 1994 and the GameCubes Metroid Prime in 2002. So a fan steps in – and back in time – to make one for themselves.
What you see here is the work of Luto Akino, who works as a programmer and indie developer by day, but has started cobbling together his vision for an N64 in his spare time Metroid Game could/should have looked like.
Here’s a quick example showing Samus rolling around and taking a few shots:
Here’s a rough clip showing what the morphball looks like with 64-bit sensitivity:
And here’s a look at how the targeting system would work:
Well, as you can probably tell, this is about as rough as it gets. All we’ve seen is Samus rolling around and shooting a bit, making this more of a tech demo than a glimpse of anything approaching Game. But Luto is serious about the whole thing and keeps working on it, even going so far as to do it Plan an action for the thing (note that this is a translation from the original Spanish):
Metroid 64
Samus Aran and a Galactic Federation squadron escort the cargo ship Gemini-502-86 en route to the mining planet 799-Pegasi-B with a valuable cargo of minerals and rocks, all goes well until someone sabotages the ship and forces them to land on it An inhospitable and uncharted planet where most of the crew are killed by a powerful explosion caused by the violent crash landing on the planet’s surface, only to be ambushed by a large force of space pirates who expected them in advance.
As the crew is scattered amidst a large cloud of toxic gases expelled by the Gemini’s explosion and surrounded by enemies in all directions, Samus valiantly fights for her life, but the enemy outnumbers them and she is easily killed Trapped, but just when all seems lost, a second explosion from the wreckage of the Gemini rips open the surface of the alien planet, taking Samus with it while saving her life at the same time.
After a long fall and several minutes of unconsciousness, Samus wakes up alone, injured and without any communication deep in the planet’s subway channels. Now Samus must search for a way to find her companions and the survivors of the Gemini-502-86, while at the same time uncovering the space pirates’ malicious plans on the alien planet…
Who knows what will happen, maybe one day he’ll quit the game and let Nintendo’s lawyers ruin it. But even if that’s all we ever get to see, it was still great to watch because when you see that blocky Samus rolling around and shooting stuff that N64 style, you can almost convince yourself that this is indeed the case a game you played in 1997 and just kind of forgot all along, or something that was shown at a Japan only game show in 1996 was canceled and the only surviving recording of it is some blurry VHS footage.
