From the original through Dread
Nintendo’s art design is typically nothing short of fantastic. They’ve created tons of iconic covers throughout the years, and kept their assets very close to the vest, providing us with countless art books full of their works. And alongside of The Legend of Zelda, Metroid art, specifically Metroid cover art, is up there in one of the highest levels of that pantheon.
As part of their gigantic marketing push for Metroid Dread, Nintendo tweeted out very clean images of classic to modern Metroid cover art with the following message:
“***Galactic Federation Mission Assessment*** Subject: Samus Aran Status: Active Analysis: The galaxy’s greatest bounty hunter. She never fails.”
The Twitter thread spans from the original Metroid all the way through Dread, evoking tons of memories in the process. Pretty much every Metroid cover warps me back to the moment in time in which these games were released (except for the first, which I discovered a little after launch), and I rushed to play them. I’m going to be doing the same thing for Metroid Dread. It’s a little eerie!
While you never really know if the series is alive or dead at any given time (especially after Other M potentially killed it, whether that was fair blame or not), looking at these Metroid covers proves that it was there the entire time, waiting for its moment to return.
As a reminder, Nintendo also gave us high-res Super Metroid art recently. I love how Metroid Dread is trying to do its own thing, but is also very clearly built on the back of a series that people have a lot of memories with. That means there’s a lot riding on the game to succeed, but given Metroid Returns, I think there’s a decent chance at success here.
