An unofficial Metroid Prime fan project that aims to recreate the Nintendo GameCube [141 articles]”href =” https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/nintendo/nintendo-gamecube/ “> Classic 2D GameCube launched its first playable demo.
‘Prime 2D’ has been in development in some form since 2004 and promises to take all the elements of Retro Studios [26 articles]”href =” https://www.videogameschronicle.com/companies/nintendo/retro-studios/ “> Retro Studios first person title and the transition to a traditional 2D Metroid game.
The developers of the game, ‘Team SCU’, say they are building the game using their own mechanism, and the demonstration shows that they have already incorporated some specific features of Prime, such as the scan display, which allows players to view the story based items in the environment.
“We have a long history, starting in April 2004,” said Team SCU. “[We] went through 5 different main programmers and had hundreds of volunteers creating thousands of resources. But that is past and we are now. “
Although work on the project took longer than expected, Prime 2D developers say the work has accelerated in recent years.
“Prime 2D has always been focused as a fan project for the joy of creating and learning – this has been exemplified by many previous contributors who used the skills learned from this project as a way to enter the games industry,” said SCU.
“Instead of copying the source material exactly, we are focused on taking the basic concepts, translating them and then implementing them in a logical 2D solution.
“By doing this, we allow ourselves to focus on building a good game first and then use that as a basis for creating a familiar experience, instead of restricting ourselves to trying to implement 3D ideas in 2D space.”
It is unclear how the SCU Team intends to avoid a likely legal action by Nintendo [1,688 articles]”href =” https://www.videogameschronicle.com/platforms/nintendo/ “> Nintendo, especially since another Metroid fan project, AM2R, ended its development after legal threats in 2016.
The next official episode in the series, Metroid Prime 4 [26 articles]”href =” https://www.videogameschronicle.com/games/metroid-prime-4/ “> Metroid Prime 4, is currently in development at Retro Studios, based in Texas.
About half of the full-time developers who worked on Metroid Prime 3 remain at Retro Studios, according to the VGC analysis conducted in August 2019.
He found that a core team of about 50 people worked full-time on the 2007 Wii shooter and about 27 remained on the developer, including four permanent contractors.