Today, Nintendo announced a new Super Family Restaurant is opening at the Nintendo Museum in Kyoto this fall/autumn. Along with that, they shared an image of the interior, which reveals a Metroid artifact on display: the Varia Suit model from the Japanese Metroid Fusion commercial! Said commercial recreated the introduction sequence of Fusion and Samus’s X Parasite removal surgery, with constructed busts of the Fusion and Varia Suits. It’s wonderful to see that this prop has survived all these years and will now be on display for the public to enjoy.
You can read our translation of the official interview with the commercial’s director, Yasuo Inoue, here.
We have officially started the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of Metroid! Our annual poll is now online, and this time on StrawPoll. We have made the choice to rank things differently this time as well, letting you give 5 points to your very favourite Metroid game!
The options are laid out in accordance to the release order, with five blank votes on top so that the default vote doesn’t give any points to a given game. Additionally, blank votes may serve as an option to those that have played less than 5 games, so that they can still participate in a ranked choice poll, while also letting people adjust the distribution of points in accordance to how they wish to!
Due to the nature of how ranked polls work, the top result will always be worth 5 points, while the subsequent placements get decreased by 1 point. 6th place and below will therefore not receive any points.
We have also made it possible to comment on the poll, and we strongly encourage you to do so! We are lucky to have such a special franchise, and each and every game has a reason to be the most liked entry! We would absolutely love to read some of your personal stories with these games.
The results from this poll will be announced on the 6th of August, and you can participate in it here.
Metroid Dread: Speed Booster Contest
In addition to the annual poll, we’ve also decided to have a competition for the speedy devils out there! The Speed Booster in Dread is incredibly flexible, and it can be combined with plenty of moves to keep the ball rolling. As such, we’ve decided to partner up with the Metroid Dread speedrunning community, and the contest is live right now!
We’ve prepared a video to keep you up to speed with the rules and purpose of the competition:
A winner will be announced on the 6th of August, and we hope to see you participate! A Jury of four people will decide who the winner is, and the gist of it is that we want to see some incredible action from you. The rule of cool is certainly applicable here, and we believe you will manage to do well if you give it an honest shot!
Regarding one of the rules; we have allowed people to use any kind of glitches in this contest. To some this may seem discouraging if you haven’t learned them yet, but speaking as one of the jury members, I want to make it clear that they are not a requirement to do well in this competition! They are a tool that can make some routes work that would otherwise be impossible, but you have ample opportunities to win this competition without them!
As always, we’ll have more content to share in June and throughout the rest of 2026, so keep your eyes peeled for that! In the meantime, we’ll see you next mission.
A new feature for May 2026 is live! Our newest team member Seth analyzes the history of the Lamorn in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, what happened to their civilization, and how they parallel the Chozo from Metroid Prime. He also shares his theory on where the Lamorn’s story arc goes next. We hope you’ll enjoy reading what we hope is the first of many features from Seth!
Games Done Quick has finalized its schedule for SGDQ 2026, and we will get to see a special category for Metroid Dread!
All Bosses will be defeated in this one, and the speedrunner Hobbit may use nearly every trick in the book! This run will mark the first time that Metroid Dread is ran in the Unrestricted glitch category in GDQ history.
Metroid Dread is known to have bosses that are difficult to fight at first, but the skilled Hobbit knows all of their moves already, so we can imagine how satisfying it will be to see them defeated as quickly as we used to be in our first playthrough!
This run will go live 10th of July, at 1:45 AM EDT / 5:45 AM UTC. We wish you the best of luck, Hobbit!
Summer Games Done Quick 2026 is live between July 5th – 12th,
benefitting Doctors without Borders!
Today, Metroid Dread and Metroid: Samus Returns developer MercurySteam announced they have conducted layoffs, or as they called it, “a workforce adjustment process.” Unfortunately, they are only the latest studio to make job cuts in what has become an unacceptably common trend in the gaming industry. MercurySteam didn’t provide an exact number of affected employees and have pledged to support them in their next chapter.
To the developers affected by these layoffs, the team at Shinesparkers want to thank you for your contributions to the Metroid franchise. You revitalized the 2D Metroid series and successfully realized two installments that fans had awaited for decades. We encourage you to lean on your industry peers, family and friends, and we hope you find your next opportunities as quickly as possible.
Earlier today, Nintendo released their latest earnings report, covering the fiscal year ending in March 2026. These reports include a list of games that have sold one million copies or more on both Switch 1 and 2. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is not on either list, suggesting that neither the Switch 1 nor 2 versions have sold more than one million individually.
This may sound ominous for the future of Metroid, but remember: according to previous reporting back in December, Beyond has sold one million units when the Switch 1 and 2 numbers are combined. Also, these sales figures only report physical sales, so digital is likely to be higher. All that to say, don’t assume this is a bad sign for our favorite Bounty Hunter. Even if Metroid Prime 4 wasn’t the smashing success Nintendo hoped for, it is not a death knell for the franchise.
As always, we’ll have more content to share in May and throughout the rest of 2026, so keep your eyes peeled for that! As always, we’ll see you next mission.
Our newest feature is now available! Irene, our Deputy Director, came up with a list of things she would love to see in a Nintendo Switch 2 update for Metroid Dread. It was last updated with Boss Rush mode in April 2022, but Irene had some ideas for quality of life improvements that could be made to enhance the experience even further. For example, slight changes to the map for increased world building and new speedrunning strategies, new E.M.M.I. death animations, and a Randomizer mode!
On another note, this is our 100th feature since we relaunched Shinesparkers in 2017! The Shinesparkers team wishes to thank each and every one of you, our readers, for staying with us all that time, and ever since our original founding in 2010. We would not have made it this long without your support. Here’s to another 100 features!
As reported by Nintendo Everything, Samus is featured in one of the eShop gift cards. The gift card for Samus is valued at $150, though in our hearts she is obviously valued infinitely more than that!
The main render of Samus as she appears in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is used for the eShop gift card, and it is only available digitally for the time being.
