You won’t have to wait too long now for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.

Nintendo surprised us so soon after the Kirby Air Riders direct with another direct showcase today. Clocking in at a luxurious 60 minutes, the direct covered a bunch of games (and movies) coming in the latter quarter of the year and beyond. But one of the bigger pieces of news was Metroid Prime 4: Beyond which Nintendo has announced will launch on December 4th.

Along with the release date, Nintendo revealed another look at the game. In the teaser, Samus has gone beyond the cramped quarters of derelict space stations and alien-haunted caves to cruise wide-open sand dunes on a brand new speeder bike that we’ve never seen before. It was so cool and interesting-looking that it almost felt like a completely different game.

Metroid Prime 4 has the ignominious distinction of being one of the rare first-party Nintendo games to get stuck in development hell. This game was announced way, way back in 2017. Metroid Prime 4 is so old that when it was announced: Reggie Fils-Amié was still the Nintendo of America boss, the original Switch was just three months old, and… we still had an E3 which is where the game was first announced.

The reason for this extensive development time was that apparently Nintendo wasn’t satisfied with the way the game was progressing and rebooted its development back in 2019. In the years since, Nintendo remained quiet on Samus’ next first person 3D adventure while releasing two other Metroid games and remastering Metroid Prime in the interim.

The Verge

Metroid Prime 4 goes beyond, launching this December

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