Got Metroid Dread (Special Edition)

It pays to not work on Fridays as a Nintendo fan, since they always release their big hits on this weekday. I woke up, played some Animal Crossing: New Horizons, got this baby, did some chores and now I'm ready to fly for the rest of the day and the weekend.

Anyway, this is easily one of my favorite Special Editions from Nintendo so far. Generally, Nintendo's Limited and Special Editions for games have a very good price, only 80€ for this one, given that you were able to preorder at a retailer. This one only comes with the usual stuff: a steelbook, an artbook and some cards. But these Special Editions are usually worth it for the steelbook and the clean cover of the card case (without those gigantic USK ratings on them) alone.

The Special Edition for Metroid Dread is also quite big, as you can see. This is about the same size and style as the Special Edition for Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which was also quite good. But what's new here is that this one isn't just wrapped in some thin foil, it comes with a plastic casing, where you can put it inside again to protect it from dust and scratches. That's very nice and thoughtful.

The above photo shows the backside of the Special Edition inside the protective casing. The artwork would have been a nice alternative cover the game case, but it sadly doesn't come with a reversible cover...

This is all in all how I've imagined the Limited Edition for Link's Awakening would look like, which turned out to be quite the joke, sadly. It was only half of this size, didn't have a cleaned cover and not too many extras.

Both the artbook and the cards inside the Metroid Dread Special Edition are effectively a celebration of 35 years of Metroid. It focuses entirely on the main series, where the cards show the covers of all five main games. I've only skipped through the artbook, because I was afraid of even more spoilers, but about half of it is dedicated to the main series as well, including the two remakes, Zero Mission and Samus Returns.

There is absolutely nothing from Metroid: Other M or the Prime games in this, however, which is understandable. For Nintendo the Metroid Prime games are effectively a different series within the same universe, but there are totally different developers behind them. I'm sure that there will be a similar celebration of those games once Metroid Prime 4 comes out. And Other M is probably something they simply want to be forgotten for all eternity...

In case you're wondering why I don't have the amiibo yet, I did preorder them as well, but in Europe they had to be delayed until early November because of problems with shipment. But there is nothing overly valuable locked behind them this time anyway, just some extra tanks, so I won't be missing out here.