Metroid: Samus Returns Devs On The Likelihood Of A 2D Metroid Game For The Switch

Earlier this week during E3, Nintendo revealed Metroid: Samus Returns for the 3DS. Metroid producer Yoshio Sakamoto has sat down with Gamespot to talk a little bit about the game. Sakamoto touched on a variety of topics, including the inspiration behind the game’s art style, if he had ever thought of ideas for a 2D Metroid 3DS game, and if there is any possibility of a 2D Metroid coming to the Nintendo Switch.

First off, Sakamoto addressed the game’s art style with the following:

“For myself, my answer would be, of course, we wanted to incorporate a lot of varied animation. We wanted to make it look as good as we could and we thought really the polygonal art style was much more suited toward what we wanted to be the look of the game.

I think another merit of using polygons was that, because the games in 3D, we wanted to be able to look at things from a variety of different angles and we wanted to create what we think are these very dramatic and cool cut scenes.”

Next, when asked if he ever had any ideas for creating a 2D Metroid game on the Nintendo 3DS, Sakamoto said this:

“I always thought that the use of the two screens, one for gameplay and one for sort of a submenu or map screen was a really special feature of both the DS and the 3DS.

By the time we were ready to start development on this project, the 3DS was the platform, so it came out originally intended for the 3DS. Not just because of the timing, but we also were like, wow, this 3D feature is something we really want to use.

There’s something else the DS couldn’t do, the incorporation of an analog stick allowed us to incorporate the free aim mechanic.”

Finally, Sakamoto commented on the likelihood that fans would ever see a 2D Metroid come to the Nintendo Switch:

“We are always, always thinking about ways that we can excite the fans of the series and come up with stuff that they will want to see and play, and we love that challenge, but there’s nothing we can discuss in terms of Switch at this point. Yeah, we’ll discuss it. (laughs)”

You can read the full interview here.