The impressive fan remake of Metroid II is out now

It's the 30th anniversary of the original Metroid this week, and Nintendo is celebrating by letting off one small party popper at its Kyoto HQ. However, the fans have other ideas for how to mark this auspicious occasion. Yesterday saw the release of the long-teased fan remake of its GameBoy sequel Metroid II, after over eight years of development. I played it a little last night, and it's excellent so far: a great game in its own right, whether you've played Metroid II: Return of Samus or not (I haven't).

It's a seriously impressive piece of work.

Will Nintendo send a cease-and-desist letter to shut the project down? Historically, they're less bothered about this sort of thing than other companies, but even if they do, we have it now; it's already out in the wild.

Thanks to Kotaku for the header image.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.