Retro Studios, Inc. is an American video game company owned by Nintendo. It is located in Austin, Texas, and is most famous for creating the Metroid Prime and Donkey Kong series. The company has also worked on other Nintendo games, such as Mario Kart 7.
Retro Studios was started on September 21, 1998, as a partnership between Nintendo and Jeff Spangenberg, the founder of Iguana Entertainment. The goal was to make games for the GameCube console aimed at older players. At first, the company worked on four games, but all of them were canceled when Retro focused on Metroid Prime, the first Metroid game made outside of Japan. The success of Metroid Prime led Retro to create three follow-up games. Later, the company helped bring back the Donkey Kong series with Donkey Kong Country Returns.
History
Retro Studios was founded on September 21, 1998, as a partnership between Nintendo and Jeff Spangenberg, an experienced professional in the video game industry. Spangenberg started the company from his home on October 1, using money he earned from earlier projects, including a company called Iguana Entertainment. Nintendo saw an opportunity for the new studio to make games for the upcoming GameCube console, targeting older players, similar to the popular Turok series made by Iguana Entertainment for the Nintendo 64. Retro began with four key people in late 1998 and opened an office in Austin, Texas, in early 1999 with 25 employees, many of whom had previously worked at Iguana Entertainment. Even though the studio did not have access to GameCube development tools, they started work on four projects: an action adventure game called MetaForce, a vehicular combat game named Car Combat (also known as Thunder Rally), an American football simulator named NFL Retro Football, and a role-playing game called Raven Blade. By the time development began, the company had grown to 120 employees. The company continued to grow during production, eventually reaching over 200 employees.
The work environment was disorganized, with delays in development and Nintendo executives expressing concerns about the quality of the games. In 2000, producer Shigeru Miyamoto visited the studio. He was not satisfied with most of the games, except for the MetaForce game engine, which he believed could be used to create a new game in the Metroid series. Shortly before the 2000 Nintendo Space World conference, Nintendo gave Retro the license to develop Metroid Prime, and the studio shifted all resources to this new project.
Retro eventually stopped working on their other projects to focus only on Metroid Prime. In February 2001, the company ended development of NFL Retro Football and Thunder Rally, laying off about 20 employees. Although Retro showed Raven Blade at E3 in 2001, the team faced many technical problems. In July 2001, Retro canceled the project, keeping only nine team members to work on Metroid Prime. Artist Android Jones was the lead concept artist for Metroid Prime.
On May 2, 2002, Nintendo purchased $1 million worth of Retro Studios stock from Spangenberg and reclassified the company as a first-party developer, making it a division of Nintendo. Steve Barcia, founder of Simtex, replaced Spangenberg as president of the company.
During the final nine months of Metroid Prime’s development, Retro’s staff worked 80- to 100-hour weeks to meet their goals. Despite challenges during production and initial doubts from fans, the game was released on November 17, 2002, in North America. It received widespread critical praise and sold over two million copies worldwide.
After the success of Metroid Prime, Nintendo asked Retro Studios to create a sequel. The developers chose to use new features, such as updated sound models, weapon effects, and art designs, instead of repeating elements from the first game. A multiplayer mode was also added. In April 2003, Steve Barcia left the company, and Michael Kelbaugh, who had worked with Nintendo for over 15 years, became president, a role he still holds today. Retro attempted to include extras, such as a hidden version of Super Metroid, but had to stop due to time constraints. Producer Kensuke Tanabe later said the game was only 30% complete three months before Nintendo’s deadline for a 2004 holiday season release. The game received mostly positive reviews but faced some criticism for its difficulty. Sales for Metroid Prime 2: Echoes were lower than the first game, with 800,000 units sold.
Retro Studios then worked on the next game in the Metroid Prime series, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. The developers planned to create larger environments than Echoes and wanted to use the WiiConnect24 feature to add online content. Retro announced that Corruption would be the final chapter of the Prime series, with a story about closure set against a large-scale conflict. After the Wii Remote was introduced, Nintendo demonstrated how Metroid Prime 3 would use the controller’s special features with a modified version of Echoes shown at the Tokyo Game Show in 2005. Originally planned as a launch title for the Wii in November 2006, Corruption faced delays and was finally released in August 2007. It received generally positive reviews and sold over 1.6 million copies worldwide.
While working on the Prime sequels, Retro had to decline involvement in the Nintendo DS game Metroid Prime Hunters. The game was eventually developed by Nintendo Software Technology (NST), who worked closely with Retro to ensure the art and characters matched the Metroid series.
In April 2008, Retro lost three key developers—designer Mark Pacini, art director Todd Keller, and principal technology engineer Jack Mathews—who started their own company, Armature Studio. Around the same time, Shigeru Miyamoto asked Kensuke Tanabe to recommend a studio for a new Donkey Kong game, and Tanabe suggested Retro. Michael Kelbaugh, who had worked on the Donkey Kong Country series earlier in his career, was interested in continuing the franchise. Retro accepted the task and began developing Donkey Kong Country Returns. Like New Super Mario Bros., the game aimed to bring back nostalgic feelings through its art style and music while offering new gameplay. Returns used fully 3D graphics with more textures and polygons than Corruption, and programmers had to rewrite two-thirds of the game’s tools and engine. Development sped up in early 2010, and the project was becoming more cohesive by the time of E3, when it was officially announced. Although the game was planned for release in autumn 2010, the team still had 70 levels to create or refine.
At E3 2011, Nintendo announced that Retro Studios would help develop Mario Kart 7 for the Nintendo 3DS. Initially, Retro would design one of the Donkey Kong-themed levels, but later expanded to creating the designs for 16 tracks as other teams at Nintendo EAD worked on other projects and the game’s deadline approached.
In 2012, Retro Studios received a Wii U development kit and was reportedly working on a Wii U game. Shigeru Miyamoto expressed interest in collaborating with Retro on a new Legend of Zelda game, but stated that the current project was unrelated to Zelda. At E3 2012, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé told IGN that Retro was "hard at work" on an untitled Wii U project.
On February 28, 2014, Kensuke Tanabe announced that Retro Studios was working on a new game, which CEO Michael Kelbaugh said had been in development for several