By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
curl-6 on 07 March 2016
Edit Thread
foxtail said:

curl-6 said:

 I actually meant the original Metroid Prime on Gamecube.

It has an incredibly difficult production; draconian work conditions, 80-100 hour work weeks, embezzlement of funds, key staff being kicked out/leaving and being replaced willy nilly, major layoffs...

It's a wonder it even got finished, and a miracle it turned out as great as it did.
curl-6 said:

Yeah, it's hard to believe looking at the final product, (which is one of the best games ever made in my opinion) but apparently it's development was a very rocky road.

Nintendo apparently replaced two of Retro's presidents during the production of Prime due to mismanagement.

A lot of those things above in bold  happened before and because Retro was working on 4 other games prior, all of which were not progressing well.

Those games were:

  1. Car Combat game, 
  2. NFL game, 
  3. Action/Adventure game,  
  4. Raven Blade RPG.

They were also poorly managed and unorganized at the time, in part due to an absentee president.  

During Production of Metroid Prime all the other games were cancelled with a core team being formed to work solely on Prime.  The then president and founder Jeff Spangenberg was replaced with all his shares in Retro being bought by Nintendo.  The former Vice President Steve Barcia then became President and remained President until Metroid Prime was finished.  The Prime Team did work hard and grueling days to get Prime finished, but they made an amazing product when they were done.

Some time after Prime was released the president Steve Barcia was again replaced by Michael Kelbaugh on April 11, 2003 who was a NOA guy who had a lot of experience as a manager.  Some people that were at Retro didn't like that they were getting a another new president so soon and who was from outside Retro and left when the new president joined, though a lot stayed.  Retro went on to make 2 more Metroid games and 2 Donkey Kong games.

Yeah, I'm aware of all this, I just forgot that Prime was out by the time Barcia was replaced by Kelbaugh.

I'm pretty sure production was well underway on Prime at the time of the embezzlement, layoffs, etc. Production on Prime began in 2000, and Jeff was kicked out with Nintendo's purchase of Retro in 2002, for instance.

I feel like I'm just dragging the thread off topic here though.