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When Nintendo announced that Mercury Steam is the studio in charge of Metroid: Samus Returns, some fans panicked. After a well received and highly rated Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, they disappointed with a messy sequel. And Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate, the spin-off for Nintendo 3DS, was met with mixed reviews as well.

But previews of the new take on Metroid 2 for the 3DS are just the opposite. In fact, Metroid: Samus Returns was the best portable/mobile game at E3 2017 according to the Game Critics Awards judges.

In the wake of its announcement and subsequent plaudits, we caught up with the team leader, Enric Álvarez, to ask him what has changed from one project to another, and how it feels working with Nintendo.

"It has been an amazing experience and an incredible honour. We learned a lot from the best, Nintendo. This days, we often pinch ourselves just in case we are in a dream", he told us at Gamelab Barcelona 2017. He praised the studio's partners because "Nintendo teams are incredibly supportive".

"We have been working with the best. I think this explains pretty much everything about how things went during the development. We were very impressed about the devotion, the care, and the quality Nintendo treats the product, and we learned a lot from that."

While the Spanish studio is working as a team alongside the IP owners, they also want to leave their personal imprint. "Long time fans are going to be extremely pleased", he told us. "The game is the result of both, on one hand is a Nintendo game, a Metroid game, and on the other hand, I think people will see the Mercury Steam influence," he added later.

This is just one of the topics up for discussion, and Álvarez also told us about his own game, Raiders of the Broken Planet, which is coming this year as well. Check out the interview below for more on both games.