Samus Aran couldn’t have asked for a more perfect comeback than as a launch title for Nintendo’s Switch OLED.

Our friends at Nintendo kindly sent us both code and console to check out earlier this week. We’ll have coverage for both individually in the coming days, but I had to smash out my initial reactions because, wow!

Metroid has never looked better, glistening and sparkling on OLED, while firing bullets across the 2D scape. You’ve got E.M.M.I’s stalking you around the map, lava brewing to the left and water bubbling to the right. It all looks simply gorgeous!

The cinematic styling of Metroid Dread, coupled with the larger, more crystal clear and vibrant screen is a match made in heaven and, in this writer’s opinion, one of the best-looking handheld experiences ever designed.

I won’t go too deeply into the OLED’s features here, nor the nuances and finer details of Dread, but the screen vibrancy makes the colors truly pop. To the point where they actually seem a tad dim on my launch Switch. Lights flickering really catch the eye and reds radiate and are almost blinding at times.

I bounced between both systems a few times just for comparison’s sake, and while my launch Switch certainly holds up brilliantly well, it became pretty clear pretty quickly which version looked and sounded best.

Even the larger screen really befits the side-scrolling Metroid mazes whereas it feels a tad cramped on my launch Switch. After spending several hours with Metroid Dread on OLED, I found it very difficult to go back to my launch device.

I’ll talk a ton more about both the system and Metroid in detail later this week and in the months ahead. For now, I’ll just say there’s only one place to play the definitive edition of Metroid Dread and it’s on the format it was intended for.

And with the quality of the 2022 releases ahead, four and a half years later, Switch, much like Metroid, is about ready to enter its prime!