Thanks to a recent interview on Reece Reilly’s Kiwi Talkz podcast, today she provided some pretty interesting details about Retro Studios and Nintendo. We had the funny story of how the blowing mechanic was added to Donkey Kong Country Returns, and some interesting ideas about developing Metroid Prime trilogy. These nuggets were given to them by Mike Wikan, who used to work in the studio and played a key role in several major projects.
Another interesting segment, for us, was a discussion about crunch at Retro Studios. It is an important issue in the industry, of course, and it is no secret that long hours and unreasonable working conditions have been a prominent issue among several companies.
Wikan remarkably closes the stories by which Nintendo applied the unreasonable deadlines to the study Metroid Prime 2: echoes, and highlighted how the company intervened when it realized there was a serious problem after the end of the first game. The decision to move forward with Echoes in its eventual form was a change of heart on the part of the parent company, although the “dark and light” mechanic allowed the team to work intelligently and use the rooms twice, for example.
After Metroid Prime 1 we rarely got crunchy, we had a change of leadership between 1 and 2 …
We had some issues (in 2), but it wasn’t the nine-month death march we had at the end of Prime 1. That was the worst.
I had twice where I was 48 hours in a row with an hour of sleep, and then a couple of 36 hours a day, for the last nine months we were there almost 24 hours, every day …
By the end of this time, everyone was ready to quit, we were like we were “finished”. I had two job offers from two different companies and, at his fingertips, Nintendo realized what was going on and took over the company, bought it. They put Michael Kelbaugh at the helm. He is a beloved, very good, he was the head of Nintendo’s quality control department. He said “guys, give me a few weeks to turn it around. And he did.”
… He restored faith in leadership and enterprise. I loved working for Nintendo.
Michael Kelbaugh remains President and CEO of Retro Studios and had worked at Nintendo for over 14 years at the time of his appointment. Later in the interview, Wikan spoke briefly about his plans to play Metroid Prime 4, the project with a lot of delay that was initially done elsewhere before Nintendo reversed the course and gave it to Retro Studios. He is confident that the current team will achieve its results.
And Metroid 4 will be fantastic. Many of the team’s top designers are guys who were there when I was. They understand, they understand what a Metroid game is.
Nintendo has been known to delay some projects to prevent excessive teamwork, and mentions the need to take care of its employees when it originally retired. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, as an example. Metroid Prime 4, of course, has no significant release window at this time, so the project restart is clearly time consuming.
Let us know what you think of Wikan’s comments and if you’re still full of optimism for Metroid Prime 4.