Metroid Prime Remastered gets a shadow drop, Steam Deck emulates it on day one.
Like many high profile Nintendo Switch games, Metroid Prime Remastered finds its way onto Steam Deck.
Metroid Prime Remastered was shadow-dropped during yesterday’s Nintendo Direct and no more than an hour or two later, people were already emulating the game on their Steam Decks. It’s rather fitting seeing the last Metroid game, Metroid Dread, was the subject of how quickly the game was playable in 4K in Switch emulators like Yuzu and Ryujinx.
What I’m really impressed with is how Nintendo managed to release the game with no leaks of the announcement at all... unlike the $70 starting price of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom being leaked ahead of the Direct.
The remaster boasts enhanced visuals and sounds (specifically it looks like HD textures and new models to go along with some added post-processing), modern FPS controls along as well as the original controls, and a new casual difficulty option for greater accessibility. While the game released digitally yesterday, there will be a physical release later this month, both priced at $40.
The remaster currently doesn’t run flawlessly on either Yuzu or Ryujinx, but it’s a promising start for less than 24 hours after release. Linux Gaming Central’s Mark Dougherty bared the burden of testing the GameCube’s highest rated game in both emulators for a full report.
:: Mark Dougherty
While Yuzu had no mention of visual glitches, it did had framerate issues, fluctuating wildly between 60 and 30 depending if the camera is third or first person respectively.
Not the best start but Ryujinx had better luck with framerate at the cost of visual accuracy. Textures were missing with Samus and her ship, but at least framerates were more consistent at 60.
The devs of Ryujinx work fast, though, as they already pushed out an update that addressed Metroid Prime Remastered crashing in the 1.1.614 release. I have no doubt both emulators will run the game flawlessly in a couple of weeks at the worst, giving Metroid fans another way to enjoy Nintendo’s most beloved shooters.
Steam Deck users didn’t have to wait for this albeit solid looking remaster to play Metroid however. Of course you could’ve played the original releases of Metroid Prime, Prime 2, and Prime 3 in the GameCube/Wii emulator Dolphin or just gone with one of the best experiences which is PrimeHack.
PrimeHack is a specialized fork of Dolphin dedicated to running the Metroid Prime Trilogy, the Wii collection of all three games on one disc. PrimeHack leverages the Wii motion control aim for the three games and turns them into joystick/mouse aiming to make the game feel at home on a PC. Personally I’ll be revisiting the franchise with PrimeHack because I don’t feel like waiting on the other two games to be remastered and sold for another $40 each.
What do you think? Will you be buying Metroid Prime Remastered to emulate it on your Switch? Leave a comment below and let us know!
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