Why Metroid 64 was Never Created According To The Super Metroid Director

Yoshio Sakamoto, the director of Super Metroid, explains why Metroid never came to the Nintendo 64 in this old interview from GamesRadar.

The Super Metroid on the Super Nintendo was very succesful yet we didn’t receive a follow up until Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion on November 17, 2002.

It took almost a decade until Nintendo wanted to create the next entry into the series.

But the Nintendo 64 received nothing.

Lava Cut Content, a website and YouTube channel that revisits cut content from both new and old games, found a past interview on why the series didn’t make its way to the console.

This comes from GamesRadar and the director of Super Metroid, Yoshio Sakamoto.

In the interview, Sakamoto stated:

“I was actually thinking about the possibility of making a Metroid game for N64 but I felt that I shouldn’t be the one making the game. When I held the N64 controller in my hands I just couldn’t imagine how it could be used to move Samus around. So for me, it was just too early to personally make a 3D Metroid … Nintendo at that time approached another company and asked them if they would make an N64 version of Metroid and their response was that no, they could not. They turned it down, saying that unfortunately, they didn’t have the confidence to create an N64 Metroid game that could compare favorably with Super Metroid. That’s something I take as a compliment to what we achieved with Super Metroid.”

It came down to the weird design of the N64 controller.

Sakamoto says that it pushed him away from creating the next rendition of the series.

This reveals how a controller has the power to scare off developers.

And asks the question of what other games could have come to the Nintendo 64 if it had a different controller?

What do you think about this piece of Metroid history?

Let us know in the comments.