Metroid Turns 40: The Case for Keeping Samus Exactly as She Is

Forty Years of Samus, and One Big Question

On August 6, 1986, the original Metroid launched on the Famicom Disk System in Japan. Forty years later, Nintendo Life is marking the milestone with a week of features examining where the series has been and, more pressingly, where it should go. Writer Ryan Gaur took on that last question, and his answer might surprise anyone expecting a call for reinvention.

Gaur opens by genuinely believing in evolution. He points to Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom as proof that change can define a franchise, expanding its audience while delivering something that feels like a peak. He admits that broader culture’s nostalgia fixation frustrates him, that the endless parade of remakes and retreads across games, film, and TV makes him want to push for something new.

And then he turns around and argues Metroid should stay the same.

What Prime 4 Got Wrong

The central piece of evidence Gaur presents is Metroid Prime 4 and its reception. The introduction of Myles MacKenzie, an NPC who talks in Samus’ ear throughout gameplay, struck Metroid fans as a fundamental misread of what the series is. The slick, silent isolation that defines the franchise was traded for something closer to a mainstream space-shooter, a genre Metroid technically belongs to but has always kept its distance from.

Gaur is not unsympathetic to Nintendo’s reasoning. Metroid, historically significant as it is, has never moved units the way Mario or Zelda does. The biggest seller in the franchise prior to Dread came in at just over 3 million copies. From a business perspective, shaking things up made sense. The problem, as Gaur sees it, is that the specific changes chosen cut directly into the qualities that make Metroid worth playing in the first place.

There are moments in Prime 4 that feel authentically Metroid, he notes. The grassy sci-fi environments, the puzzle rooms that demand patience, the tight and satisfying combat. But those moments shrink when a voice is chattering in your ear, or when a new psychic powers mechanic pulls you out of the rhythm, or when a long desert sequence arrives with no apparent purpose. The result, according to Gaur, pleased neither longtime fans nor the broader audience Nintendo was trying to attract, with Prime 4 finishing below first-party expectations commercially.

Dread as a Blueprint

Gaur’s preferred model for the franchise’s future is Metroid Dread. Released during a period when the Switch’s enormous install base was regularly turning smaller Nintendo franchises into genuine hits, Dread sold approximately 3 million copies and became the best-selling entry in franchise history. Gaur describes it as a game organized entirely around feel: how it feels to shoot, to parry, to jump, to slide. The momentum of Samus’ movement, the tactility of the environments, the tight controls and visceral visuals all working together.

He acknowledges the complications honestly. Three million copies is not the foundation for the kind of billion-dollar multimedia expansion Nintendo is pursuing with its IP. And releasing during the Switch 1’s peak install base era may have represented something close to the series’ commercial ceiling under current conditions.

But his argument is that the alternative, bending Metroid into something unrecognizable in pursuit of a wider audience, has already been tested and found wanting. The tension at the heart of his piece is not really nostalgia versus progress. It is a genuine question about whether the qualities that make Metroid great are compatible with the scale Nintendo needs from its franchises, or whether trying to bridge that gap just produces something that satisfies nobody.

As Samus turns 40, that question does not have a clean answer. But Gaur’s piece makes a credible case that the series’ best commercial result came from doubling down on exactly what it has always been.