A fan game that looks like Metroid and retells the story of Metroid Prime now has a public demo after years of work. The creators of the fan remake have done an excellent job, and the game looks interesting enough that I encourage everyone to try and play the demo before Nintendo’s lawyers get hold of it.

This “demake” reimagines Metroid Prime in the style of one of the two-dimensional games, like Super Metroid. Called Prime 2D, the game was developed by Team SCU and has been in the works since 2004. The team added in a forum post that, while progress on the game appeared to be slow, it’d been doing some “foundational work” in that time (I notice Samus’s animations have improved since the 2017 trailer). They also said that the game is, to a certain extent, an exercise for them: “Instead of copying the source material exactly, we are instead focused on taking the core concepts, translating those, and then implementing them in a logical 2D solution.

If you’re a Metroid Prime fan, it’s worth it just to see how the developers have nailed the atmosphere and style of the game (your mileage may vary, of course). If nothing else, the art is spectacular, and the demo is worth downloading for that reason alone. You can find the demo here.

I have a feeling it’s only a matter of time before Nintendo’s lawyers swoop in to get this remake taken down. I really hope that’s not the case because this looks genuinely interesting, but Nintendo’s track record isn’t very encouraging. It’s also more than a little annoying that Nintendo will likely ardently defend their intellectual property when they’re currently not doing much with it. We haven’t heard any news on Metroid Prime 4 in quite some time, let alone any other new Metroid projects.