Retro Studios Discusses Evolution of Metroid Prime

Retro Studios president and CEO Michael Kelbaugh and game director Mark Pacini took time to discuss the evolution of the Metroid Prime series with Gamasutra. The two talked about the difficulties of converting the title to 3D and the challenge of integrating the Wii controls into Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

The series had a rocky start, beginning with strong criticism from Nintendo’s Miyamoto of game ideas for Metroid Prime. Once they had the go ahead from Nntendo, they had to translate the spirit of the Metroid games into first person 3D.

“We didn’t want to make just another first person shooter,” said Kelbaugh. “We wanted to bring the morph ball into 3D. We wanted to bring the screw attack into 3D. Making a first person shooter would have been a cheap and easy way to go. But making sure the themes and concepts in Metroid were kept was something that we wanted to do. And translating those things into 3D was a real challenge. For example, translating the morph ball was one of the hardest things to do.”

Challenges didn’t end with Metroid Prime’s success. Read the entire article at Gamasutra.