Don't believe the latest Metroid Prime Trilogy remastered leak for Switch
Despite how much we might want Samus to return in her own game, it doesn't seem like it'll happen anytime soon.
There has been a glaring absence of Metroid games on the Nintendo Switch, especially since the highly-anticipated Metroid Prime 4 has faced enough delays that the franchise seems even more lost in space than ever before. But there was a glimmer of hope for fans on Sunday when an alleged leak for a Best Buy listing seemingly revealed that the long-rumored remastered version of Metroid Prime Trilogy (2009) would soon be coming to the Switch. Just how accurate is this "leak," however
Sadly, the sad truth is just a year-old April Fools' Day joke that has somehow been recycled to spread misinformation yet again.
This leak set off Inverse’s BS alarm from the outset, and as much as we want to believe that Samus will make her glorious comeback on the Switch sometime soon, there’s too much evidence that suggests this latest Metroid information is a total fake.
It all started with a screenshot of Best Buy’s website that was tweeted by Metroid fan account McTrOiD on Sunday. The image showed a listing for “Metroid Prime Trilogy - Nintendo Switch.” We're led to assume that the retailer accidentally published the landing page for the game before Nintendo even announced the title.
The Best Buy screenshot that made waves Monday.
McTrOiD’s tweet was written about by several video game news sites Monday morning, which stirred another wave of Metroid Prime Trilogy rumors. When Inverse asked the leaker where they found the alleged Best Buy listing, McTrOiD’s story didn't quite add up.
“It was around 6:30ish [Sunday]; [I] went on Google and I just saw this article of the [Metroid Prime] situation,” the person who runs the McTrOid account told Inverse. “It has a link to the listing and I instantly had to tweet that out since no one else was talking about it.”
They claimed that they found the information about Best Buy Metroid Prime Trilogy page in a Sunday news article by TechPlusGame. When Inverse visited the link on Monday, it did not work, but it has since been restored. Even then, the link it provides to the Best Buy listing produces an error.
The same URL TechPlusGame linked out to in its story — the same one that McTrOiD supposedly got their screenshot from — was also posted on Reddit on April 2, 2019 (mere hours after April Fools' Day ended). The redditor who originally posted the image to Reddit, u/alch3m1stz, explicitly said that they made up the link based on an April 2019 Metroid Prime Trilogy leak by trusted games insider Wario64.
The TechPlusGame post where McTrOiD claims he found the Best Buy link.
Wario64 has accurately leaked details about Valve’s Index virtual reality headset and that Overwatch was being ported to the Nintendo Switch, so they do have some credibility. In early April 2019, Wario64 tweeted screenshots of Best Buy’s employee system which mentioned the Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Nintendo Switch. These documents contained the game’s alleged stock keeping unit (SKU) code that Best Buy would use to archive it in its system. But we also have to take into consideration that Wario64's information came in the wake of April Fools' Day, casting a cloud of doubt on everything.
Alch3m1stz seemingly used Wario64’s leaked SKU to take an educated guess about how the Best Buy site would generate a link for Metroid Prime Trilogy. It appears that TechPlusGame used that link for its brief Metroid Prime Trilogy story on Sunday. McTrOiD claimed that the direct link to Best Buy worked on Sunday, but it's unclear if that's the truth.
IfTechPlusGame had included a screenshot or more details about the circumstances of the Best Buy listing, then this might seem more believable. But the published story makes McTrOiD’s screenshot seem like it was fabricated after the fact — something that's become an alarming trend lately.
Wario64's leak that allegedly revealed the 'Metroid Prime Trilogy' SKU.
There have been similar alleged leaks about games like a new Assassin’s Creed and The Last of Us 2 that emerged this year. The Assassin’s Creed image turned out to be faked and the verdict is still out on the TLOU 2 “leak.” It’s fairly easy to photoshop an image of Best Buy’s website and add new information to make it look legitimate all to stir up rumors, which appears to be the case in this instance.
There’s still some hope for Metroid fans, though.
While this most recent information is more than fishy, Wario64 has a positive track record for leaking Switch game launches, and they seem to believe that this remastered release for the Nintendo Switch is still possible. The Metroid Prime Trilogy might still arrive eventually, but we still haven't received any definitive signs other than Wario64's year-old information that again, may or may not be just another prank.
