This game would have been created at the studio that developed the Metroid Prime trilogy and would have been a prequel to Metroid if Retro Studios’ management had signed off on the concept.

In the latest episode of Did You Know Gaming (embedded below), a senior Metroid Prime developer spoke about how they had a concept that would have been similar in style to the XCOM series. Paul Tozour worked on Metroid Prime, and according to him, it was XCOM but set in the Metroid universe. They came up with the concept in late 2007, after Metroid Prime 3 was finished for Nintendo. According to the draft document, this game was to be a prequel to Metroid and would have been set “long before all other games in the Metroid series.” It would have involved the protagonist, Samus Aran, being separated from the Chozos (who raised her), meeting humans, and eventually becoming a bounty hunter.

“Metroid Tactics allows the player to control the legendary Samus Aran, a squad of elite Galactic Federation troopers, and various other bounty hunters as they defeat the Space Pirates. Along the way, the player can hire new units and upgrade all of the units in his team with many different kinds of new armor, weapons, skills, and abilities – with Samus and the various bounty hunters having a large number of unique abilities that will prove invaluable in combat,” the game’s pitch documentation self-describes.

Nintendo was not even presented with the concept, as Retro Studios’ management voted it down. “If there was a way to pitch something from inside Retro Studios that would make it up the chain to Nintendo and get approved for production, then I never figured out what it was, and no one else at Retro did either. To succeed, a pitch would have had to enlist the support of then-design lead Mark Pacini, studio head Michael Kelbaugh, and Nintendo producer Kensuke Tanabe, and those three individuals had wildly different tastes and perspectives on gameplay and different goals for what they wanted to see Retro Studios working on,” Tozour said.

Too bad! It could have been a successful idea.

Source: VGC