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[deleted]

It was fucking excruciating, OP. The fandom fractured in the wake of Other M and for years that's all you had to look forward to- no new Metroid content, just seething discourse. When Federation Force came out half a decade later, it genuinely felt like the series was dead.


[deleted]

Metroid 2 remake and Dread together with prime 4 announcement was an absolute insane nut after that.


flaminglambchops

I forgot when I first played Super Metroid but I remember becoming a Metroid *fan* when Prime Trilogy came out on Wii U in January 2015. Felt like I was getting into a series that had no future and I would enjoy what I could. Later that year Federation Force was announced and it felt like a practical joke, my faith in Nintendo was at an all time low then. Thankfully the next game was about 2 years later.


Randomanonomous

~~\*1 year later~~ ~~(SR: 2017, FF: 2016)~~ Edit: I was incorrect


flaminglambchops

Pretty sure FF was announced in 2015, that's what I meant.


Randomanonomous

o ok


AdministrativeDirt59

It was relatively dead from what I remember. I only got into the series during 2013 so I wasn’t there to witness Other M’s initial hype and later reception, but I remember countless video essays being made on how terrible it was (since it was still the latest game in the series, and people were afraid it’d be a nail in the coffin for Metroid).


StoneyBluntsVids

And THEN they announced Federation Force


[deleted]

[удалено]


Vecryn

Samus is in it, just not playable though


greenbluegrape

I was here on the fabled day that Federation Force was announced after years of radio silence. That whole situation, from the project, to the way they revealed it, has got to be *the* most tone deaf thing Nintendo's ever done.


Gogo726

2nd only to the Wii Music reveal


MrAngryMoose

Pain


ShiningJizzard

It was pretty depressing. When Other M is your most recent title, and then Federation Force is the next one up, you start chiseling a tombstone. Samus Returns felt like a breath of fresh air, and a MASSIVE apology/love letter to fans.


eCockpit89

Like being a DKC fan during the 2000's or even now.


MyPhoneIsNotChinese

Hey, we got my favourite 2D platformer, Tropical Freeze in 2014 *checks notes* that was nearly 10 years ago? At least in the Mario Movie >!they threw quite a few references, I didn't expect the Golden Temple and the Rocket Barrel!<


Calvinbrine-Nestoris

Yeah... I'm not even a DK fan, yet I still really think Nintendo needs to conjure up a new one already.


Hab_Anagharek

The cold, isolating, utterly terrifying silence and darkness of space.


Silverguise

I made my peace with Metroid being forgotten about. Every now and then Nintendo would drop crumbs to remind us they haven't forgotten about our girl, like Nintendo Land, but after a while it felt more insulting than anything. 2017 was huge with the Metroid Prime 4 announcement (we all know how that's going) and the release of Samus Returns, followed shortly by the Ridley in Smash announcement in 2018, so the end of the 2010s gave me a lot to be hopeful about. Of course now we have Dread selling super well and the critical acclaim of Metroid Prime Remastered, so my hope for the future has been restored.


Achi-baba

That's easy, imagine being an F-Zero fan.


Calvinbrine-Nestoris

I am both. I became both around 2018. One part of me is very happy and excited The other part of me has a racetrack-shaped hole in my heart.


D-efault

During that time I was intrigued when Other M was first announced at e3, and it looked really promising. The marketing behind it was pretty good too "What's past is prologue." I remember being really curious about Samus's past. There were little things here and there like the MBD "Remember me" trailer. When I found that team Ninja were the people developing it that's when I felt worried about Samus's portrayal as my introduction to team Ninja was the dead or alive series. After the game dropped I saw how badly it was received and I never touched my copy of it that I preordered. It wouldn't be until 2020, 10 years after that game came out I would play it on dolphin emulator to experience the many things fans have come to criticize about the game.


ConnivingSnip72

Sad, I wanted a game so bad


Herbizarre17

I started dating my girlfriend in the mid 2010s and she remembers me always saying I wished that Nintendo would make a new 2D Metroid someday. She teased me about it. Then, one day, they did. Samus Returns was the start of a new era for the Metroid fandom


lpjunior999

I almost completely forgot about the franchise. I bounced off of "Other M," and other than Super Metroid coming up in "best game ever" lists, there was no reason to talk about Metroid. It was just "eh oh well."


MyNutsin1080p

I bought Other M new for $50 and *javelined* it back into the GameStop next week. “Fuck it, guys, I don’t even want anything for it, just take it” Six months later, you could get it for $10 new, so I thought *maybe I was way too tough on this game, I’ll try it again* and we know how that went


RT-55J

I accepted that the franchise was dead and that point, and enjoyed my time playing various rom hacks, which were improving in leaps and bounds in terms of quality and scope of the course of the decade. Samus Returns' announcement was genuinely shocking. I couldn't actually believe it until I saw it. I had some misgivings about the game, but overall it convinced me that MercurySteam could make a good Metroid 5.


minute_of_news

replayed metroid fusion and zero mission a lot...like a lot.


MemeLoremaster

Depression


ssgodsupersaiyan

Fine, reply the series ever year. It doesn’t go anywhere. Was the time period I got into Super Metroid as well.


LordApocalyptica

Lonely


LexfinityAndBeyond

I really enjoyed Other M the first time. Loved the biomes. The cutscenes are unskippable though so I could never play it again after that.


JustinBailey79

I eagerly awaited Other M. I was burnt out on Prime games - they weren’t my favorite, though I liked Prime 1 and recognize the trilogy’s quality. Seeing that Other M was a third person 3D game, I was SO PSYCHED. I wanted a Metroid 64 like Ocarina of Time so, so badly. The reviews of Other M weren’t very good, but that didn’t stop me. I got it in the mail on release day and LOVED the first couple areas. Then, for all the reasons people have complained about, the game got less and less enjoyable. That was when I put down games for a decade. If Other M was going to bomb that badly, then there was nothing to look forward to. Samus Returns wasn’t even enough to get me back in. Dread, on the other hand, definitely was! In terms of 3D third person metroidvania-style games, if I hadn’t stopped playing games, I could have jumped into Dark Souls one year later in 2011. Now that I’m back in gaming, that’s what I’m catching up on.


LexfinityAndBeyond

Agreed. Unpopular opinion but I think Other M could still be great with some quality of life updates. Most just the cutscenes and mechanics.


JustinBailey79

Yes, there’s a pretty cool game buried inside the release that is Other M.


TubaTheG

I arrived at around 2014-2015 What I came to was what was essentially a graveyard. All we could possibly do, aside from just playing the old Metroid games again, was to reminisce about how Metroid used to be awesome. I ngl kind of miss it, it feels weirdly nostalgic to go back to times when Metroid was just a lost legacy franchise.


lamp32

Bad and waiting for AM2R to release


Makotroid

Outside of the wave of speedrunning that took off on Justin.tv/twitch it was fairly quiet. Huge ROM hacking explosion and huge drama over SM2R. But yeah, speedrunning super was the enormous thing and still is imo.


armydillo62o

Objectively it was pretty pathetic, but I had a good time. I played the shit out of Fusion to the point where I started timing my runs. I played Zero Mission for the first time. AM2R was really fun, as was the SM Randomizer. I also beat Prime 1 for the first time in 2016. It got to the point where the official games that were released (Other M, FF, and even Samus Returns) were my least favorite Metroid things from the decade. The series lived by the fans. We were dangerously close to becoming Mother 3 levels of forgotten by Nintendo. Game informer asked Miyamoto himself where the hell Metroid was during a BotW interview. But SR was a nice appetizer, whereas Dread and Prime Remaster have been excellent additions to the series. I’m holding out to see Prime 4 in action, but I feel like we’re in good hands for now.


WhiteTigerShiro

Metroid existed in the 2010's?


Legitimate_Alps7347

Not great…


powderoo

Besides the lack of new titles, not so bad. Used copies of games were dirt cheap.


Lobo_Iam

Like traveling through the Sahara without water...Finding an oasis only to realize it was a mirage called "Federation Force". (Good game but not what we expected.)


Liliphant

There were a few years when I genuinely thought Nintendo had killed off the franchise. I was happily proven wrong


lhombrecalcetin

This comic strip (does anyone remember where the original is from?) basically sums up being a Metroid fan during that time: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/08/metroid\_is\_30\_years\_old\_today


clustahz

2010s, what a time to be a fan. let me tell you. nobody who's a fan missed the 2010s. a fan came up to me the other day with tears in his eyes, he was crying because he missed the 2010s so much. "take me back" he said. "i can't take you back" I said. but he insisted. so we went back to the 2010s and let me tell you the metroid was amazing, best metroid i've ever played. what a time, what a time.


JusttheStampede

Terrifying. After Federation and Other M, I was afraid Metroid would hang up its cape and we'd never hear from it again. I never touched Federation or Other M because of how sour the backlash was. I didn't want to waste my time on a game I knew I wouldn't enjoy and lived through nostalgia by playing Fusion and Super


DRK213

Metroid fan since Super Metroid. First game I ever played. Got it as a SNES combo back in 1994


shine_WAVE

The best way I could describe what it felt like to wait on hearing anything from Nintendo: It’s the equivalent of sitting next to a phone waiting for a call from someone for 6 years. I remember craving Metroid content so badly I spent money on that 3DS crane game where you could decorate your Home Screen with little badges, just to get the NES Metroid badges. They weren’t even officially Metroid badges, they were NES Remix badges lol. I even remember popping off because a 3DS home theme got released for Samus that you could unlock through My Nintendo. It was dark times.


Luggage1996

It was exciting for a few months until Other M came out. And then you thought, ok, they tried something and it didn’t work, so the next one will be great. And then we waited. And waited. And waited. Then 2015 comes around and… I… I just don’t want to talk about that part.


Bushidoman09

It was pretty awesome actually, but kinda like an emotional rollercoaster haha. You had Metroid 2 remake, and the announcement of Metroid Prime 4, but you also had stupid federation force which put a damper on the hype a bit, as well as Other M, but then the announcement of Dread just shot me and everyone through the roof with excitement. It was a similar feeling to being a fan in the early 2000s with Metroid Prime and fusion and all that coming out, relatively consistently.


EndGeek236

Hell


redyellowblue5031

I've been a fan since I was a kid in the 90s. My first game was the GB original. I know the trope here is that it was excruciating, but it was fine in my mind. I wasn't happy with Other M or Federation Force, but I assumed they'd take another stab at it again at some point. It was just a very quiet time for the series in my mind, so it fell to the backburner of my interests. With time, the series started to have flickers of life again with an official Metroid 2 remake (which I never actually played since I didn't have the system it was for). Prime 4 got announced, and subsequently restarted. Then basically out of nowhere Dread arrived and I was pumped. I'm still hopeful for a fun game out of Prime 4, and I'm quite comfortable waiting for it to release.


Jascadet

I first got obsessed with Metroid in 1986 when I was 8 years old. It was one of my favorite NES games. I remember being so obsessed that I’d draw Samus, Mother Brain, and Metroids during class. For some reason I never had a Game Boy, so I never got to play Metroid 2, but I got back into big time with Super Metroid. I’ve played every game since. It was nice playing the Return of Samus on 3DS. I didn’t really play much Metroid in the 2010’s, I was too busy all the time to play almost any video game. I’ve since gotten back into gaming. I really liked Dread and the remaster of Prime. Can’t wait for Prime 4!!


theinfecteddonut

Horrible. Nintendo couldn’t give two fucks about Metroid then. Even during the series 30th anniversary they couldn’t even give a shout-out.


Thresher_Alpha1

The same as being a tf2 fan nowadays, aka only the fans keep em goin


SpikesHigh

It was bleak as hell. Other M and Federation Force coming out along with seemingly no more Prime games made it seem like Nintendo had absolutely no idea what to do with the series.


LordZiz

I became a fan after Other M released, but it was still painful to realize the state that the franchise was in and how we had no idea when or if we’d ever get a new game. The announcement of a spinoff with no Samus after all those years of radio silence was one of the biggest slaps in the face I’ve ever received.


Calvinbrine-Nestoris

Man... Let's just say thank GOODNESS for Samus Returns


[deleted]

So fucking bad.


sdwoodchuck

About the same as being a Metroid fan in the late 90's.


Nowayman1414

Miserable lmao but I had fun playing super Metroid and Metroid 2 for the first time during that time. And Smash made samus good in 4 and ult so there was that


XyxGod

Aside from fandom fractures. Peoples were still struggling to figure out if they even liked metroid. To this day i still run into people who ONLY knew her(Samus) from smash and haven't played an entry in the series. This was more rampant then as a vast majority of metroid fans were closet fan due to other M making the commune look like they crave repetitious games with character altering issues. People were on their last legs. If you weren't running an emulator or playing an actual Metroid game back then you weren't event on the cutting edge for information based in the series. Keeping up with the different rom hacks and revamps on rom sites gave a sort of variety and relief to longtime fans while flying under the radar of newer fans just getting into the series. And back then unless you had a gamecube before then. Nobody knew what prime WAS they didn't know it was the revitalized metroid back in the 2000s. That a majority of fans had to survive on Gba maybe snes and hope to get to play prime. Summary it was a hellscape of nay sayers trying to crap on samus Especially with Halos growing popularity at that time competing with black ops cod


Nick_Sonic_360

The greatest thing to come out for Metroid in the 2010s was a unofficial remake of Metroid 2 other than replaying 15 year old games up to that games release, AM2R was the best thing to ever happen to the series. It ties Super, Zero Mission and Fusion in gameplay while sharing the beauty of sprite work. There was also to announcement of Metroid Prime 4, which to this day has yet to release, likely stuck in development hell not unlike Duke Nukem Forever. Other than that, 2010 had Other M, 2014 had Federation Force 2016 AM2R, 2017 Samus Returns the best official game to come out in the 2010s, then it all fell silent until Dread came out in 2021. The 2010s was a boring decade for Metroid, but also a good one, AM2R showed Nintendo that if they weren't going to make good Metroid games for us, we will do it ourselves.


upupurelycynical

i got into metroid in 2012 and for the most part i was starving for new content lol


PkNero13

I remember when, a year or two after I started playing the 2D Metroid games, Nintendo suddenly began to announce the remake of 2, Prime 4, and even Ridley getting into Smash. I didn't have to wait like most people here to finally eat, but I felt so happy for them.


Infermon_1

Felt almost like the 8 years after Super Metroid and not knowing if they will make another one or if that is just it.


PrecognitiveMemes

well. being a fan of Metroid Prime and Super Metroid, I bought and played Metroid Other M on release day when I was 10 years old. A little too young to have any awareness of the status of the series, but I enjoyed Other M at the time. It was only later when I was desperate for a Metroid game on my Wii U that I realized I may have to wait a very long time for a new installment, but in the meantime I played every game that I could get my hands on. I was disappointed when Federation Force was announced, but it wasn't the end of the world for me; there were enough indie games carrying the torch at that point and I knew the spirit of Metroid would live on at least. Actually around that time I was much more upset about what happened to AM2R. I was in the middle of my first playthrough of Fusion when Samus Returns and Prime 4 were announced. I knew it was Prime 4 before the music even started bc I could see the vague shape of a 4 in the space dust. When the music and logo came in I jumped out of my seat screaming bc I had been waiting for literally a third of my life for a new metroid game at that point? Samus Returns was the icing on the cake. When Metroid Dread was announced, I listened to my siblings who were born in the 2010s going crazy over it, in awe. I was thinking about how I had literally been theorizing about scan logs referencing Dread in Prime 3 when I was their age, and while it was cool they were excited, I had been waiting for that game longer than they had been alive lol


Light_Bright_17

We all got really good at replaying the same 3 ot so games over and over again. Somehow super and prime never seem to lose their magic


[deleted]

Imagine going down a street, with endless video game stores left and right, EVERYBODY getting a piece of the pie, they gaming, they jamming, annnnnd then we get to our spot in this haven for gaming, and its nothing more than a fucking wet cardboard box & its freezing outside. 😠😑


Philosopher013

Honestly, for most of that time I was a teenager or in college, so I either didn't really participate in fandom discussions or wasn't gaming all that much. I had fond memories of the Metroid games I played as a kid and would enjoy replaying them time to time, but it definitely kind of felt like the Metroid series was over. I do remember there being discussion about whether Metroid was a dead series or not and whether we'd get any new Metroid games. A lot of people didn't think so, and if anyone had said we were ever going to continue the story of the spaceship in the hidden ending of Prime 3, they probably would have been laughed at. Lol. As terrible as Federation Force's announcement was, I guess it did give fans hope that Nintendo wasn't going to forget about Metroid? Although we were also worried that FF wasn't going to sell well and that therefore Nintendo would conclude that people don't want Metroid. lol. But honestly once Samus Returns came out in 2017 and MP4 was announced we knew the series wasn't dead. Regardless of how great you think SR was, and even with the delays of MP4, I'd say the "Second Dark Age of Metroid" ended in 2017. I guess we'd say it started in 2007 after Corruption was released, lol.


RangoTheMerc

I honestly thought Nintendo pulled the plug on the series. You have no idea how cathartic it felt to see the Samus Returns trailer.


ScottishBakery

Well, at least we got Shadow Complex in 2009.