I believe Retro studios should never make a Donkey Kong game again!

[F0X]

OneTwoThree said:

F0X said:

I mean that Retro cannot prove their ability to make an excellent Mario or Zelda game unless they actually make one. Now, Metroid and Donkey Kong have many similarities to Zelda and Mario, so I wouldn't doubt Retro's ability to make excellent action/adventure games or platformers. In fact, the first Metroid Prime alone is considered to be around the same level of quality as the best of Zelda, and DKCR is arguably better than Nintendo's recent 2D Mario efforts. From that point of view, how has Retro not proven itself as among Nintendo's finest? Whether or not they can pull of an excellent Zelda title will ultimately remain up in the air until Retro actually does make one, but given their track record, I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

"Arguably", "is considered" - what does that mean? It depends on who you ask. I liked NSMBWii much better than DKCR, and Metroid Prime is not for me. 

It was a smart move by Nintendo to establish a NoA developer, cause they are better at making certain types of games for western markets. Zelda and Mario are different beasts though. Previous experiments with outsourced Zelda games did not go well, the Capcom parts are the only ones I never finished. Felt like Capcom was given a LttP construction kit...

Why not leave Mario & Zelda in the hands of their creators? I mean, you don't want the next album of your favourite band to be recorded by another band either, right?

I would be happier to see Mario and Zelda in the hands of those who care about them the most, yes. It wouldn't be right to have Retro make a Mario of Zelda game for the sake of, and their work on Metroid and Donkey Kong was mainly because those franchises needed a new home. However, I think you're analogy is totally wrong. New creative talent is being injected into Nintendo's development teams for every single game, and the creator (Miyamoto) does not play the same role he has had in the past. Mario and Zelda have already survived changes in their development teams on multiple occasions (nearly every game), so I think a more apt analogy would be a comic series. A wide variety of writers and artists do "runs" on a series, and the original run is not always considered the best. But ultimately, the comic will always share the same producers in any situation to keep things on track.

By the way, DKCR was very well-recieved in Japan. I don't think it's right to assume that Retro can only make games suited to Western markets. :/