Primeban

One notable feature of Nintendo's showing at E3 2014 has been its willingness to unveil new IPs or, if not entirely new brands, spin-off small ideas or franchises into new releases. Intelligent Systems is bringing us Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., for example, while one of the largest — and popular — areas of the Nintendo booth was devoted to its colourful Wii U shooter Splatoon. With those moves into some new brands, however, come inevitable questions about potential new entries in established franchises.

One of these series' is Metroid, with a lingering disappointment in Nintendo Life HQ that it didn't make an appearance, especially as our last title in the franchise was back in 2010. That naturally raises fears that the franchise has been put on the backburner, but Nintendo's Shinya Takahashi has given cause for optimism; below is what he said to Kotaku when asked about the Metroid franchise.

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So it has been a while since we released the last one and we're having discussions internally about what we can do next. So at this point we have two different types of Metroid games. We have the Prime style of Metroid game and we have the more traditional style of Metroid game. We feel that we do need to take care of both of these styles of play. And the hope is that at some point in the near future we'll be able to share something about them.

This certainly plays into fantasies of a continuation of the Prime franchise and a return of the 2D series — in our Nintendo games we'd love to see feature earlier this year we mused that Metroid Prime IV for Wii U and a revival of the 2D Metroid Dread for 3DS would do nicely. As for Takahashi-san and Shigeru Miyamoto, they're naturally fans of both styles of game.

Takahashi: I like them both. They both have a different style of appeal.

Miyamoto: I have the New Super Mario Bros. series [for 2D], so I like Prime. I think there's still a lot of new things that could be done with the Prime series.

We'll see what "near future" means in due course, though naturally we hope Takahashi-san hasn't been overly-liberal with the term; at least we have fairly regular Nintendo Direct broadcasts to keep us dreaming.

Are you excited by news that Metroid is on the agenda at Nintendo, and which style of the franchise do you prefer? Prime, or traditional 2D?

[source kotaku.com]