Metroid Prime 2: Echoes Nearly Featured Playable Space Pirates

2004 sequel introduced multiplayer

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes is celebrating its 20th anniversary this week after an initial Gamecube launch on 15th November 2004. In a new interview with developers Jack Mathews and Zoid Kirsch from Kiwi Talkz, it’s been revealed that the game’s multiplayer mode nearly featured playable Space Pirates.

The Space Pirates are an iconic, recurring enemy type within the Metroid franchise, and their similar stature to Samus would no doubt lend itself well to the first-person gameplay in the Prime trilogy, but alas, it wasn’t to be. Like many things in the tricky world of game development, playable Space Pirates simply fell by the wayside and weren’t implemented into the final game.

Here’s what Mathews had to say (timestamped at 48:37):

“Maybe this was the narrative behind multiplayer, but like, most of it I believe you would either play as Samus or as a Space Pirate. The Space Pirates had fundamentally different abilities to Samus, like I remember we prototyped clinging to walls and stuff like that, so you could lock on to a wall point and jump towards it.”

Matthews and Kirsch clarify that the idea didn’t get particularly far into development, stating that they hadn’t produced any first-person arm cannons for the Space Pirates. Ultimately, the final game would simply feature different colour variations on Samus’ Varia Suit.

Retro Studios is currently hard at work on development for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond on the Nintendo Switch, which is scheduled to launch in 2025. Originally announced in 2017, it was previously being handled by Bandai Namco before Nintendo restarted the project from scratch over at Retro Studios.

Do you think playable Space Pirates would have been a good fit for Metroid Prime 2’s multiplayer? Let us know your thoughts with a comment down below.

[source youtube.com]

Nintendo Life’s resident horror fanatic, when he’s not knee-deep in Resident Evil and Silent Hill lore, Ollie likes to dive into a good horror book while nursing a lovely cup of tea. He also enjoys long walks and listens to everything from TOOL to Chuck Berry.

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