Metroid Creator Would 'Encourage' Retro to Do Prime Sequel

One of the bigger surprises to come out of Nintendo's E3 conference was that Nintendo is now working with Team Ninja (Ninja Gaiden) on a brand-new Metroid game called Other M. Unlike the Metroid Prime games from Retro, Other M will see involvement from Yoshio Sakamoto, the creator of the Metroid property. 

Metroid Other M is already on our most wanted list

Sakamoto recently shared his vision for the new Metroid with the folks at Wired: "Within the greater Metroid series, the Other M story will tie together the stories that took place in Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. One of my goals is to present Samus as an appealing human character, and that involves explaining a little bit about what happened in her past as well as the characters that influenced her. The story will play a big part. There’s another facet to the Project M team, and they’re responsible for creating the cinematics, some of which you saw in the trailer yesterday. Of course, Metroid is a very sophisticated action game as well. So our goal is to create an experience that is seamless between the cinematics and the actual gameplay, and creating a game that anyone can play that is only playable on the Wii."

When asked about the current 3-D Metroid games from Retro, Sakamoto noted that although he's not involved he'd be curious to see a sequel to Metroid Prime 3. 

"With regards to the Prime series, if the team at Retro comes up with an idea that does bring a sequel to the series to fruition, I by all means encourage them to do that. ... In terms of the Metroid series stories that I’ve told, the games that I’ve been involved in, I started with the NES Metroid and took it through Fusion. I’m hoping to tie the Super Metroid and Fusion stories together, and until I do that I can’t think about what happens after Fusion, but if the concept does come to me I’d like to continue the story and see how far it can go."

IndustryGamers has always been a fan of the Metroid franchise and we're quite eager to see how Other M turns out. As for Retro, it's not clear what they've been up to lately. Three key Retro members did leave last year to form Armature Studio. We sort of wonder if Retro's time with the Metroid franchise is done now that Sakamoto is working with Team Ninja to effectively reinvent the series. Frankly, Nintendo might be better off tapping Retro's talent to create another hardcore IP for the Wii.