 | |
| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Video games |
| Founded | September 21, 1998; 27 years ago (1998-09-21) |
| Founder | Jeff Spangenberg |
| Headquarters | , U.S. |
Key people | Michael Kelbaugh (president andCEO) |
| Products |
|
| Parent | Nintendo (2002–present) |
| Website | retrostudios.com |
Retro Studios, Inc. is an Americanvideo game developer andsubsidiary ofNintendo based inAustin, Texas. The studio is best known for its work on theMetroid Prime andDonkey Kong series and has contributed to several other Nintendo-developed projects, such asMario Kart 7.
Retro was founded on September 21, 1998, as an alliance betweenNintendo andIguana Entertainment founderJeff Spangenberg, hoping to create games for the upcomingGameCube aiming at an older demographic. The company began work on four games, all of which were canceled once Retro focused their resources onMetroid Prime, the firstMetroid game developed outside Japan. The success ofMetroid Prime led Retro to work on three sequels and later to become involved with reviving theDonkey Kong series withDonkey Kong Country Returns.
Retro Studios was founded on September 21, 1998, as an alliance betweenNintendo and industry veteranJeff Spangenberg.[1] Spangenberg subsequently launched the company from his home on October 1, using funds he generated with his previous ventures, includingIguana Entertainment.[2][3] Nintendo saw an opportunity for the new studio to create games for the upcomingGameCube targeting an older demographic, in the same vein as Iguana Entertainment's successfulTurok series for theNintendo 64.[3] Retro began with 4 key people in late 1998 and opened an office inAustin, Texas in early 1999 with a staff of 25 people, including several former Iguana employees.[3] Despite not having access to GameCubedevelopment kits,[4] the studio immediately began work on four projects for the GameCube: an action adventure game namedMetaForce,[5] a vehicular combat game with the working titleCar Combat (also known asThunder Rally), anAmerican football simulator namedNFL Retro Football, androle-playing gameRaven Blade. By the time development began, the studio had already grown in size to 120 employees.[4] The company continued to grow during production, eventually peaking at over 200 employees.[6]
The working environment was chaotic, with development getting behind schedule, and Nintendo executives complaining on how the games turned out.[7] In 2000, producerShigeru Miyamoto visited the studio. He was disappointed by the games except for their demonstration of theMetaForcegame engine, which led Miyamoto to suggest that Retro could use the engine to develop a new game in theMetroid series.[6] Shortly before the 2000Nintendo Space World conference, Nintendo granted Retro the license to createMetroid Prime, and Retro shifted all development resources fromMetaForce to the new game.[3]
Retro eventually canceled development of their other projects to focus solely onMetroid Prime. In February 2001, the company ended development of bothNFL Retro Football andThunder Rally, laying off about 20 employees.[8] Although Retro demonstratedRaven Blade atE3 in 2001, the development team was plagued by technical setbacks. In July 2001, Retro canceled the project, retaining only nine team members to work onMetroid Prime.[9] Notably, artistAndroid Jones served as lead concept artist on the development ofMetroid Prime.[10]
On May 2, 2002, Nintendo secured $1 million worth of Retro Studios stock from Spangenberg, and reclassified the company as a first party developer and division of Nintendo.[11]Steve Barcia, the founder ofSimtex, replaced Spangenberg as president of the company.[2]
During the final nine months ofMetroid Prime's development, Retro's staff worked 80- to 100-hour weeks to reach their final milestone.[6] Despite its troubled production cycle and initial skepticism from fans,[12] the game was released on November 17, 2002, in North America to universal critical acclaim and commercial success,[13] selling over two million units worldwide.[4]
After the critical and commercial success ofMetroid Prime, Nintendo asked Retro Studios to produce a sequel. The developers decided against recycling the features of the first game while creatingMetroid Prime 2: Echoes, and instead used new sound models, weapon effects, and art designs.[14] A multiplayer component was also added to the game.[15] In April 2003, Steve Barcia left the company. Michael Kelbaugh, who had worked with Nintendo for over 15 years, was appointed president, a job he retains to this date.[16] Retro tried to include some extras, such as a hidden version ofSuper Metroid, but were halted by the short development time.[15] ProducerKensuke Tanabe later revealed in an interview that the game was just about thirty percent complete three months before the strict deadline Nintendo had set for a release in the 2004 holiday season.[17] The critical reception forMetroid Prime 2: Echoes was very positive,[18] but earned some criticism on the game's high difficulty.[19][20] Sales forEchoes were lower than the firstPrime, with a total of 800,000 units.[6]
Retro Studios was then put to produce the next game in theMetroid Prime series,Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. Retro intended to giveMetroid Prime 3: Corruption larger environments thanEchoes. The developers were also interested in using theWiiConnect24 feature to provide additional content for the game that would be accessible from the Internet.[21] Retro announced thatCorruption would be the final chapter of thePrime series and would have a plot "about closure, told against the backdrop of an epic struggle".[22] After theWii Remote was revealed, Nintendo demonstrated howMetroid Prime 3 would take advantage of the controller's special abilities with a version ofEchoes modified for the Wii and shown at theTokyo Game Show in 2005.[23] Originally envisioned as a launch game for the Wii in November 2006,[21]Corruption suffered many delays, but eventually being released in August 2007 with generally positive reviews, and over 1.60 million copies sold worldwide.[24]
While Retro was busy with thePrime sequels, they had to pass on theNintendo DS gameMetroid Prime Hunters. The eventual developer,Nintendo Software Technology (NST), worked closely with Retro to design the game's art and characters to make sure that they fit into the overall Metroid series.[25][26]
In April 2008, Retro saw the departure of three key developers, designer Mark Pacini, art director Todd Keller, and principal technology engineer Jack Mathews,[27] who went on to form their own company,Armature Studio.[28][29] Around the same time, Shigeru Miyamoto asked fellow producer Kensuke Tanabe to recommend a studio that could develop a newDonkey Kong game, and Tanabe recommended Retro. Kelbaugh had worked on theDonkey Kong Country series during his years at Nintendo of America, and had interest in continuing with the franchise. Retro accepted the task, and thus started development ofDonkey Kong Country Returns.[30][31] Similar toNew Super Mario Bros., the game was developed with the intention to invoke nostalgic feelings in the player with its art style and sound, while trying to provide them with new gameplay experiences.[31]Returns employs fully polygonal 3D graphics with three times the amount oftextures andpolygons thatCorruption offered,[30] and over the course of six months, two thirds of the game's tools and engine had to be rewritten by the programmers.[30] Development accelerated at the outset of 2010, and the project was just "beginning to cohere as a game" around the time ofE3, when it was officially announced to the press.[32] Although the game was set for release in autumn that year, the team still had 70 levels to create or refine.[33]
AtE3 2011, it was announced during Nintendo's Developer Roundtable that Retro Studios would be involved in the development ofMario Kart 7 forNintendo 3DS.[34] At first, Retro would contribute assets to developing one of theDonkey Kong-themed levels,[35] but the number evolved to the stage design of sixteen tracks in the late stages of development, as the Nintendo EAD crew started working on other projects and the game would not be finished before the December 2011 deadline.[36]
In 2012, it was revealed that Retro Studios had received aWii U development kit, and was reportedly working on a Wii U game.[37] Miyamoto has said he would like to work with Retro Studios in an installment forThe Legend of Zelda; however, he says that the current game Retro Studios was working on is not related toZelda.[38] AtE3 2012, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé told IGN in an interview that Retro is currently "hard at work" on an untitled project for the Wii U.[39]
On February 28, 2014, Kensuke Tanabe announced that Retro Studios was working on a new game, which CEO Michael Kelbaugh declared had been in development for a few months sinceDonkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was finished.[40] In August 2015 however, during an interview aboutMetroid Prime: Federation Force, Tanabe said that he was not quite sure about what Retro Studios was working on, leaving the impression that he was no longer involved with their unannounced project.[citation needed] Retro released an enhanced port ofTropical Freeze for the Nintendo Switch in 2018.[41]
Nintendo announcedMetroid Prime 4 atE3 2017, showing only the logo. Shortly after the announcement,Bill Trinen, Director of Product Marketing atNintendo of America, confirmed thatPrime 4 would not be developed by Retro Studios, the studio that developed the previousMetroid Prime games, but would be produced byKensuke Tanabe, the producer of the previous games.[42][43] In 2018,Eurogamer reported thatPrime 4 was being developed byBandai Namco Studios in Singapore.[44] However, in a video released on January 25, 2019,Nintendo EPD general manager Shinya Takahashi announced thatMetroid Prime 4 had been delayed, and that development had been restarted with Retro Studios. Takahashi said that development under the previous studio had not met Nintendo's standards.[45] Nintendo's shares fell by 2.8 percent in the week following the announcement.[46] By this time, only half the development team that worked onMetroid Prime 3 was still at the company.[47]
During this time, Retro made some key hires to fill out the team. It brought on Halo character modeller Kyle Hefley in October 2019.[48] In January 2020, Stephen Dupree, lead designer ofDonkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, returned to the company after two years away.[49] In February 2020,EA DICE art director Jhony Ljungstedt joined Retro.[50]
On February 8, 2023, Nintendo announced and releasedMetroid Prime Remastered, an HD update to the 2002 original from Retro Studios.[51] It was later revealed that Retro had wanted to produce new cinematics for the game, but Nintendo chose to keep the originals.[citation needed]Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was finally released in December 2025.[52]
| Title | Genre(s) | Platform(s) | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metroid Prime | Action-adventure | GameCube | 2002 |
| Metroid Prime 2: Echoes | 2004 | ||
| Metroid Prime Hunters[a] | Nintendo DS | 2006 | |
| Metroid Prime 3: Corruption | Wii | 2007 | |
| Metroid Prime: Trilogy | 2009 | ||
| Donkey Kong Country Returns | Platform | 2010 | |
| Mario Kart 7[b] | Racing | Nintendo 3DS | 2011 |
| Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze[c] | Platform | Wii U | 2014 |
| Nintendo Switch | 2018 | ||
| Metroid Prime Remastered | Action-adventure | 2023 | |
| Metroid Prime 4: Beyond | 2025 | ||
| Nintendo Switch,Nintendo Switch 2 |
| Title | Genre(s) | Platform(s) | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| MetaForce | Action-adventure | GameCube | The game mostly consisted of concept artwork, design documents, and a mock up engine for a third-person game that was reworked into a first-person game due to pressure from Nintendo and Retro executives. This game was eventually cancelled, but apparently inspired Shigeru Miyamoto to hand Retro theMetroid license, thereby moving the development team to produceMetroid Prime instead.[3][5] |
| NFL Retro Football | Sports | The game designers initially wanted to make aMario Football game, but Nintendo settled on a realistic simulator with theNFL license due to Retro's purpose of creating mature games.[3] The game was canceled in February 2001. A possible cause wasElectronic Arts andSega agreeing to port theMadden NFL andNFL 2K series to the GameCube.[8] | |
| Car Combat /Thunder Rally (working titles) | Vehicular combat | It was initially pitched to Nintendo as a mix of "QuakeWorld,Twisted Metal 2, andMario Kart 64 with shades ofMad Max andStreet Fighter II". Despite being the project with most progress at Retro, it was canceled along withNFL Retro Football in February 2001. Two members of the development team, programmer David "Zoid" Kirsch and modeler Rick Kohler, joined theMetroid Prime project.[3] | |
| Raven Blade | Role-playing | The game was showcased atE3 2001, but production was plagued with technical setbacks,[53] and the game eventually got canceled in July 2001 so Retro could focus onMetroid Prime. Nine members of its development team joinedPrime.[9] | |
| UntitledThe Legend of Zelda title | Unknown | Wii | ALegend of Zelda title starring aSheikah in a story that explores the origins of theMaster Sword.[54][55] |
| Heroes of Hyrule | Unknown | Unknown | A rejected pitch for aLegend of Zelda title starring aGoron, aZora, and aRito who set out to rescueLink.[55][56] |
| Star Fox Armada | Unknown | Wii U | A rejected pitch for aStar Fox title featuring a puppet visual style and online multiplayer.[57] |
| Harmony | Role-playing game | Nintendo Switch | An original role-playing title with singing mechanics. The game was cancelled in favor of development onMetroid Prime 4: Beyond, restarting previous development of the game.[citation needed] |
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