Retro Studios

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Retro Studios

Type	Subsidiary of Nintendo[1]
Founded	1998
Headquarters	Austin, Texas[1]
Key people	Michael Kelbaugh, president
Industry	Video game industry
Products	Metroid Prime trilogy for Nintendo video game consoles
Employees	around 80
Parent	Nintendo[1]
Website	www.retrostudios.com

Retro Studios is an American video game developer based in Austin, Texas.^[1] It was founded in 1998 by Jeff Spangenberg^{[citation needed]} as an independent studio making games exclusively for Japan-based video game company Nintendo^{[citation needed]}. It is currently wholly owned by Nintendo^[1] (thus a first-party developer), with about 80 employees.

History

Retro Studios' exterior

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Retro Studios struggled in its early years, dealing with several canceled projects and lay-offs. In 2000, Nintendo offered the company the license to the long-dormant Metroid franchise which proved to be a turning point for the company. The first big project that Retro Studios worked on with Nintendo was Metroid Prime. This game would become one of the biggest titles for the Nintendo GameCube, receiving both critical and public acclaim. In 2001, then-president Jeff Spangenberg sold his share of stock in the company to Nintendo and left shortly thereafter. In 2003, Michael Kelbaugh was named president of Retro Studios. In 2004 Retro released Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, which proved to be just as much of a critical success as the first game. Retro’s latest release is Metroid Prime 3: Corruption for the Wii, which was released towards the end of 2007 in North America and Europe. Soon after the release, Retro confirmed that they will be "taking a break" from the Metroid series.^[2] It is unknown what they are currently working on.^[3]

On January 16, 2008, it was announced that one of Retro Studios' key programmers, Mark Haigh-Hutchinson, had died of pancreatic cancer the previous day at age 43. Haigh-Hutchinson has been a senior engineer on all three of the studio's Metroid Prime games.^[4]

In May 2008 game director Mark Pacini, art director Todd Keller, and principal technology engineer Jack Mathews left Retro Studios.^[5] It was later revealed that the group formed Armature Studio with Electronic Arts.^[6] When asked in an interview with G4 why Retro Studios was not developing Metroid: Other M, Reggie Fils-Aime said that Retro was working on something other than Metroid.^{[citation needed]}

Games

Nintendo GameCube

• Metroid Prime (2002)
• Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (2004)

Wii

• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (2007)
• Metroid Prime: Trilogy (2009)
• Untitled Wii project (TBA)^[7]

Canceled projects

Retro Studios was developing several video games for the Nintendo GameCube which eventually got canceled. These included an adventure game called Raven Blade; a driving game called Car Combat; an American football game called NFL Retro Football; and an unnamed action-adventure game. Slow development and the offer to develop Metroid Prime were the main reasons of cancellation.^[8]

References

• IGN’s Retro Studios page
• N-Sider: The Art of Prime (November 18, 2002)
• N-Sider: A Retrospective: The Story of Retro Studios (December 17, 2004) (engl.) (Mirror available at [2])
• [3]

External links

• Retro Studios official site