Currently the two biggest gaps in Metroid release history is Mar. 1994-Nov. 2002 (8 years & 8 months) and Aug. 2010-Aug. 2016 (6 years).

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1 1994-2002

Many probably didn't realize Super Metroid was intended to be the finale of the story of Metroid as stated by Yoshio Sakamoto. From Super's Japanese guidebook:

• Interviewer: "With this story, this time it’s on the same planet – Zebes is the setting, isn’t it?"
• Sakamoto: "This time I wanted to complete the Metroid series. Also, I wanted to bring back an old enemy. A nemesis would be revived, and for the sake of portraying an image of this showdown with Samus, this time it could only happen on Planet Zebes. This is what I thought. The battle between Samus and Mother Brain would come to an end. I wanted to show what happens at the end of Metroid."

Super being the original finale of the series' story would be acknowledged by Metroid: Other M's Japanese guidebook which states Fusion and Other M were considered "after stories" set after Super.

In a 2010 interview Sakamoto would elaborate further why he didn't develop a N64 Metroid game, as well as why a third party studio Nintendo talked with also turned down making a N64 Metroid:

• GamesTM: "This apprehension over 3D gaming, is that the reason there was never a Metroid 64?"
• Sakamoto: "I was actually thinking about the possibility of making a Metroid game for N64 but I felt that I shouldn’t be the one making the game. When I held the N64 controller in my hands I just couldn’t imagine how it could be used to move Samus around. So for me it was just too early to personally make a 3D Metroid at that time. Also, I know this is isn’t a direct answer to your question but Nintendo at that time approached another company and asked them if they would make an N64 version of Metroid and their response was that no, they could not. They turned it down, saying that unfortunately they didn’t have the confidence to create an N64 Metroid game that could compare favourably with Super Metroid. That’s something I take as a complement to what we achieved with Super Metroid."
• GamesTM: "Can you say who that company was?"
• Sakamoto: "Sorry, I cannot."

The reasons for the hiatus of 1994-2002 were:

1. The Metroid story was complete with Super Metroid.
2. Sakamoto's position was changed to handheld development and couldn't work on N64 games as easily, and felt a GBC Metroid would be seen as inferior to Super Metroid.
3. An unknown third party was contacted by Nintendo to develop a N64 Metroid, but declined feeling they wouldn't live up to Super Metroid.

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2 2010-2016

Many believed this "hiatus" was caused by the less than ideal sales of Metroid Other M. However, there is nothing to support this claim, and in fact is actively debunked when one realizes there was a Metroid game in production during this period.

Before getting into that however, one needs to understand why there was the lack of Metroid Prime 4 from Retro Studios during this time.

After the release of Metroid Prime Trilogy for Wii in 2009, Retro would not work on Metroid for a decade.

The reasons for this was due to many staff feeling fatigued of making Metroid games after Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, but especially after Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

Both Principal Technology Engineer Jack Mathews and Senior Producer Bryan Walker (ex-Retro devs) would go into detail over feelings of fatigue.

• Walker: "After Prime 2, Retro was really trying to think of what we wanted to move forward with, what was next. We were starting to feel franchise fatigue with the Prime series"

Walker would go on to talk about how the death of Senior Engineer, Mark Haigh-Hutchinson, affected the team:

• Walker: "We also suffered at the time a huge cultural setback with the team at the loss of Mark Haigh-Hutchinson who we lost to pancreatic cancer. That was really hard...that was really hard. It just really didn't feel right from a creative standpoint, a cultural standpoint to immediately move forward into another Prime game at the time"

2008 would then see several key members of Retro, Designer Mark Pacini, Art Director Todd Keller, and Jack Mathews, leave to form their own studio, Armature Studio. This comes after Andy O'Neil and Marco Thrush formed Bluepoint Games in 2006.

The remaining Retro staff, still feeling fatigued of Metroid, wanted to work on other Nintendo IPs and would go on to work on non-Metroid IPs for the next decade; Donkey Kong Country Returns (2010), Mario Kart 7 (2011 co-developed), Donkey Kong Country Returns 3DS (2013 co-developed), Donkey Kong Country Returns Tropical Freeze (2014 + 2018 Switch port), and the canceled Project Harmony (seemingly from 2014-2017).

In 2019 it would be announced that Retro Studios would return to Metroid by restarting development on the 2017 announced Metroid Prime 4. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond would release Dec. 4th 2025.

Metroid Prime Remastered began development in Spring 2018, and would be announced and released Feb. 8th 2023.

Despite Retro Studios stepping away from Metroid after 2009, Kensuke Tanabe, Prime series producer, would still continue his efforts in making a Metroid Prime game.

Tanabe would first hint at the potential of another handheld Prime entry in 2009, as well as state his desire to always be planning new Prime games, in an interview with Online Nintendo Magazine.

• ONM: "Do you think that Samus will ever return to the DS?"
• Tanabe: "We are always planning to make new games in the Metroid Prime series. Depending on the timing and the situation, we cannot deny the possibility of realising it on DS or DSi."

Metroid Prime Federation Force, released in 2016, began development in 2009 and was an idea Tanabe had since at least 2007 when making Prime 3.

• Tanabe: "Well, first I would say that the focus on the battle between the Federation Forces and the Space Pirates was an idea I had since I was involved in Metroid Prime 3,"

He also stated he intended the game to launch alongside the New 3DS model, which came out in 2014, but wasn't able to do so.

• Tanabe: "In making this game we initially intended it to launch alongside the New Nintendo 3DS, but we were a bit late in doing that," "The team who's schedule was free at the time was Next Level Games, and so we turned to them."

In a 2016 promo video, he would go into the full history of the development of Federation Force:

• Tanabe: "Development on this game started on 2009. At that time, we started with the idea of developing a new online multiplayer-focused Metroid Prime series title for a handheld system.
• Early experiments began in collaboration with our reliable partners at Next Level Games, who I had worked with on Mario Smash Football for Nintendo GameCube and on Punch-Out!! for Wii.
• But at that point, we were working on it on Nintendo DSi, and with DSi it became clear that we wouldn't be able to achieve the type of performance that fans would expect.
• When we saw New Nintendo 3DS a few years later, we knew that the system would address these performance issues, and also welcomed the expanded control options provided by the C Stick.
• We wanted to tell the story of the battle between the Galactic Federation and the Space Pirates. I had always imagined battles between these two within the universe... But we had never really explored that in the previous games, and I had been wanting to for over 10 years. I was ready and excited to try it."

In between the original 2009 DSi attempt and the finalized 2016 3DS release, Tanabe would work with Next Level Games to release Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon for the 3DS in 2013.

For Sakamoto's side, he stated in a 2017 interview he had wanted to make a 2D Metroid game since around 2012-2013.

• Sakamoto: “I have been wanting to make a 2D Metroid game for four or five years,”

As stated in another 2017 interview, he would begin development on Metroid Samus Returns around 2015.

• Sakamoto: "We started around two years ago, so it’s been about two years... It’s almost there. It’s quite a ways along."

The reasons for the 2010-2016 "hiatus" was:

1. A Metroid game actually was in development since 2009, but wasn't completed until 2016.
2. Another Metroid game started development in 2015, but wasn't completed until 2017.
3. Several key Retro staff left to form their own studio.
4. Retro staff felt franchise fatigue for making three Prime games back to back for 8 years straight and wanted to do something else. They worked on Donkey Kong Country, Mario Kart, and a canceled project from 2010-2018.

I would like to address that during all of this, Shigeru Miyamoto seems to be a big supporter of the Metroid series and is actually one of the main people at Nintendo wanting more Metroid games, even if the actual directors of the games are working on other games.

This can be seen in an interview for the Nintendo 64:

• "What remaining 16-bit sequels might we see on the Nintendo 64?"
• Miyamoto: "Well, Metroid. Although I am not the Metroid producer, whenever I come across the opportunity in a company meeting, I try to suggest it."

He would actually go on to become the producer for the original Metroid Prime on Gamecube.

He would later suggest Retro Studios could have been a good pick for Metroid on the Wii U. And he even came up with some ideas on how to use the Gamepad, which could be conceptually seen in Nintendo Land.

This all goes to show that even someone as high up and powerful as Miyamoto within Nintendo does still want more Metroid games to come out and that these hiatuses seem to be entirely a decision from the creatives involved in the series's creation and not necessarily a factor of sales, which does seem to line up with Nintendo's satisfaction with Metroid Samus Returns fairly poor sales, as well as series producer Sakamoto's philosophy that games can be art and not necessarily a commodity to just be sold.

• Sakamoto: "I think that defining games as art is a delicate subject. Of course what we are making is an entertainment commodity, and if people define art as something you are only going to appreciate by watching, I don't think I should make games in that format as well. On the other hand, you could simply say "no, a video game is no more than a simple commodity and the only important factor is sales", well, again, that is not something that interests me, and it's not a view that I share. So if I can talk about my interpretation, I'm always trying to incorporate some artistic nature into my games, but the most important element is entertainment. So if there is a way that artistic elements can be worked into the game naturally, then that is a mission I will always try to accomplish."

A final thing to consider is that unlike The Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma, who has exclusively directed/produced Zelda games since the release of Ocarina of Time in 1998, both Sakamoto and Tanabe work on multiple Nintendo IPs that's not Metroid.

Sakamoto has been a producer, supervisor, and/or writer on: Famicom Detective Club, Wario Land, WarioWare, Tomodachi, Rhythm Heaven, etc

Kensuke Tanabe has been a writer, director, producer, or supervisor on: The Legend of Zelda, Paper Mario, Donkey Kong Country, Chibi-Robo, Kirby, Luigi's Mansion, Super Mario Bros, etc.

Due to this it's sometimes possible their creative desires to work on other franchises may not align with the Metroid fanbases' desire for more Metroid games. I feel we should respect their decision to work on non-Metroid games. They may also need to do so in order to stay creatively fresh.

A "creative dead end" is something Sakamoto talked about in a 2010 interview:

• Sakamoto: "Of course, there was the choice for me to work on a game more similar to Super Metroid but I don’t know if that would represent a true evolution of the series. We might be able to come up with a better Super Metroid but, some day sometime, we would work ourselves into a creative dead end if we were simply moving forward in one direction. I, myself, have been seeking new stimulations and new play feels with the games that I’ve been working on so at least I am trying to avoid repeating the same things."

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3 IN CONCLUSION

It's worth noting that since 2000 to the present of 2025 there hasn't been a single year where at least one Metroid game wasn't in production or pre-production.

Sadly there are sometimes issues and setbacks with game development that can cause significant delays. We've seen this happen with Metroid three times: Metroid Dread, Metroid Prime Federation Force, and Metroid Prime 4, have all been internally delayed long past their originally planned development schedule.

The real people behind making these games can have other desires beyond making Metroid; whether it's Retro, Sakamoto, or Tanabe, I feel we should respect their decision to not always exclusively focus on Metroid.

I feel the developers deserve to take their time when creating these games, and shouldn't be forced to release games every couple of years, if they need to take 5-6 (or more) years on a single game, then so be it. Give them time to fully extract their creative visions into the final product.