DEN
JPN
ENG
USA
POL
CAN
SWE
FRA
AUT
FIN
AUS
EST
BEL2026 Video Game Madness - South Region 2nd Round: 1 Metroid Prime Remastered vs. 9 Hollow Knight: Silksong
2026 Video Game Madness - South Region 2nd Round
South Region Round of 32 Matchup Preview: 1 Metroid Prime Remastered vs. 9 Hollow Knight: Silksong
The Landmark Remaster Against the Most Anticipated Indie Sequel of the Decade
Metroid Prime Remastered survived a closer match than most 1 seeds would want in the Round of 64, and the result tells you something important about what it is going to face in the South bracket as the competition tightens.
Its matchup against Vampire Survivors went to overtime. The South's top seed, a 94-rated remaster of one of the highest-scored GameCube games in history, needed extra time to put away a game that cost three dollars, won a BAFTA, and accidentally invented an entire genre. Metroid Prime Remastered won 3-2 in overtime with the seeding tiebreaker in its favor, and the margin tells you more about Vampire Survivors' fanbase than it does about any weakness in the 1 seed. The survivors-like community is enormous and it showed up. The 1 seed survived because 1 seeds eventually do, and because in overtime with the tiebreaker, the margin is always going to favor the higher-seeded game when everything else is equal.
What Metroid Prime Remastered is depends on whether you encountered the original in 2002 or are coming to it fresh through the 2023 release. For the former group, it is one of the definitive games of their formative years rendered in a fidelity that finally matches the memory of how good it felt to play. For the latter group, it is a masterclass in first-person exploration design that still feels entirely fresh despite being built on a foundation that is over two decades old.
The original Metroid Prime came out on the GameCube and scored a 97 on Metacritic, one of the highest scores in the platform's history. It took the Metroid series, which had existed as a 2D exploration game for over fifteen years, and translated its principles into three dimensions with a first-person perspective that felt unprecedented. The atmosphere was extraordinary. The world of Tallon IV, with its multiple biomes connected by a web of elevators and shortcuts, was a Metroidvania in three dimensions before that term had been applied to three-dimensional games. The story was told almost entirely through environmental details and scan entries rather than cutscenes or dialogue, creating a sense of discovery that pervaded every room.
The Remastered version gave all of that new geometry, new textures, new lighting, and new controls that bring the experience in line with modern expectations without compromising the design decisions that made the original extraordinary. It scored a 94 on Metacritic with over 70 independent reviews, met the VGM committee's standard for an eligible new product, and is here because it earned its place.
Its Round of 32 opponent earned its place in a way that nobody fully predicted.
Hollow Knight: Silksong defeated Super Mario Bros. Wonder in the Round of 64 by a score of 4-1, and that result was one of the most decisive upsets of the entire first round across all four regions. Mario Wonder is the best-reviewed 2D Mario game since Super Mario World in 1990. It scored a 92 on Metacritic and sold over 13 million copies. It won a nomination for Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2023. It got beaten 4-1 by a game that spent years in development as the most anticipated sequel in indie gaming history.
Hollow Knight: Silksong had been announced in February 2019. For years after that announcement, it existed as the defining example of a game that people desperately wanted and could not stop asking about. The original Hollow Knight came out in 2017, earned an 87 on Metacritic, sold over fifteen million copies, and became one of the defining games of its genre. The community that formed around it was large, devoted, and vocal about wanting the sequel. When Silksong finally arrived in 2025, it scored a 94 on Metacritic and won Best Action/Adventure Game at The Game Awards. Team Cherry's approach to Hornet and the world of Pharloom delivered on every expectation.
That fanbase had been waiting since 2019. They voted like it, delivering a 4-1 result against a game whose broader general audience could not match the specific intensity of people who had been counting down for years.
A 1 seed that survived overtime in the first round against a 9 seed that won one of the most decisive first-round results in the South bracket. The South is producing extraordinary results and this is the matchup at the center of it.
The South bracket continues March 22. 12PM.
