To help development reach its finish, Retro Studios licensed out a PHP-based bug tracker called Mantis, working with Nintendo of America's product testing division to find bugs and the team's producers would enter bug reports.

Eventually, Metroid Prime went gold on October 29, 2002 at 2:21 AM, less than a month before the release date to give time to manufacture game discs. Programmer Zoid Kirsch described it as one of the most memorable days of his life, commemorating it by getting the development team's signatures on a magazine poster. Notably, none of the developers signed on Samus because they had a large amount of respect for the character.