It looks as if Nintendo was planning for the E3 2021 digital event was intended to be a pretty hearty one. The anticipation and surprises are mitigated once again by some information that has allegedly has been spilled ahead of the presentation, as leaks reveal a rather busy remainder of the calendar year for Big N. While some have already been confirmed, there intended to be some pretty juicy announcements.

As with most speculations like this, the information is to be taken with a grain of salt, though the source is reliable. Smash Bros Ultimate leaker Zippo shared in a blogpost about Nintendo's upcoming plans. Naturally, some of the data confirmed were projects that were already public knowledge, such as Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild 2 (doesn't have a release date) and Miitopia.

Other titles included the reveal of a new Donkey Kong game developed by EDP Tokyo (Nintendo Japan's Entertainment Planning & Development). Retro Studios has their hands tied with other matters, more on that later. A new Fire Emblem is in the works. The franchise has picked up in worldwide popularity with the success of Three Houses. There's also more "99" projects to come, and it will be fascinating to see which new IPs joins the battle royale fray. A Super Mario Party 2 may see a reveal as well, along with a new Mario Kart. Nintendo got quite the mileage out of Mario Kart 8, topping 35 million copies sold.

Leading the report is a new 2D Metroid is in the works and it's allegedly completely finished and waiting for a reveal. The development was in the hands of Mercurysteam, who worked on the remake of Metroid II: Return of Samus that was released for the 3DS in 2017. Clearly Retro Studios is tasked with Metroid Prime 4, which has been hidden from the public eye since reports of the game going into full rebuild mode since 2019. Other than the occasional smattering of hires for the project, Metroid Prime 4 remains hushed. The decision to release a 2D Metroid for a mainline Nintendo console has been something Metroid fans have wanted for ages. Though there have been offerings on the Gameboy Advance, like Metroid Fusion and the aforementioned Samus Returns, those games failed to light up the charts.

Come E3 2021, it'll be interesting to see how many of these projections come to fruition.

SOURCE: Zippo, Inverse