As many Metroid fans will know, Nintendo's popular sci-fi series about the arm-cannon touting bounty hunter Samus Aran famously skipped out on appearing on the N64 during the console's run, despite being teased in magazines of the time like Next Generation.
In a 2010 interview with GamesTM, the Metroid producer Yoshio Sakamoto shed a little light on the series's absence, stating that he didn't think he should be the one to make it and that he "couldn't imagine" how the N64 controller could be used to move the character around.
He revealed that Nintendo, therefore, offered the project to another company to see if they could come up with an idea to take the series into 3D, but ultimately that developer passed on the opportunity, believing it couldn't create something that "could compare favourably with Super Metroid". Because of this, its lead character's only major appearance on the console ended up being as a guest fighter in the original Super Smash Bros, to the disappointment of fans who had been eagerly anticipating the latest entry in the series.
On account of this, there's always been a bit of an interesting "What If?" situation surrounding a possible Metroid game on the N64, with fans wondering how the series would have looked if it had made the jump to 3D several years prior to Metroid Prime. This has led to a couple of promising fan projects that aim to interpret a game in a style reminiscent of games released for Nintendo's 64-bit console, with the hobbyist developer Luto Akino being among those creating their own spin on the title.
Back in 2022, our friends at Nintendo Life published an article about Akino's project (which is being built in Unity 3D and features a third-person perspective). At the time, they called it "fantastic" and stated that they couldn't wait to see more.
And it appears that since then, Akino has continued working away on the project, introducing further improvements, such as a new auto-targeting system, an update of the morph ball, and new enemy types.
Despite this, as Akino states in the comments, a release date for the fan game is still a mystery, with the developer claiming "there is still a lot to do" before it is ready to be played.