Lead designers say goodbye to Retro Studios
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 11:03pm by Jake
Metroid Prime designers Mark Pacini (lead dev), Jack Mathews (game engineer), and Todd Keller (art director) have left Retro Studios for “unknown reasons”. The trio developed the entire Prime trilogy, and has been with Retro from the beginning. Rumor spread fast that the three had left due to Retro being shutdown, but IGN has confirmed that the developer will not be closing their doors. Thankfully Retro has stated that they will continue to work as a 1st party Nintendo dev and put all effort into Wii software.
It’s sad to see these three brilliant game developers leave a company like Retro, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:18 pm
They’re not the only ones who’ve left in recent months. Bobby Pavlock, also one of the lead designers, is now at Gearbox Software (I’m not currently working directly with him, but he is on the floor below me on a different project). It’s one of those situations like Bungie. Guys have been there for the better part of a decade working on the exact same property over and over and they get the hankering for a little variety or change of scenery.
It’ll be quite a while until the next time we see Samus in a solo adventure, we’ve known that for a while now. But here’s hoping Retro’s next project (currently still in pre-production as they’ve not begun up-sizing for full production yet) is as beautiful and polished as the Primes were (God willing, it’s Kid Icarus).
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Shit no, not again, we all remember what happened to Rare when their lead designers jumped ship…
April 24th, 2008 at 12:58 am
Rare did it first, now Retro’s doing it. Sad to see this.
April 24th, 2008 at 4:47 am
GASP
Nintendo Western 1st Party Developers Companies CURSE confirmed!
April 24th, 2008 at 6:26 am
That is a shame… really. Retro are an awesome dev team, I just hope the games will be as good without these guys.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:45 am
What?? I wanted more Retro games
.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Given how poorly Nintendo handled Metroid Prime 3, I’d leave too. These guys have great credentials. I’m sure they’ll find positions in other development houses. BTW, Nintendo still owns Retro and they’re not shutting down so don’t worry about them not making anymore games.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I wouldnt worry- it’s like the godfather: these things need to hapen every 5 or 10 years. It stirs things up and puts new designers in collusion. maybe rare bit it some, but other developers have stepped up in the meantime.
btw- Kale- what do you do?
April 24th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
“Given how poorly Nintendo handled Metroid Prime 3, I’d leave too.”
Yeah. They just seemd to not care about propper advertising and hype for that game. They knew that the fanboys would buy it in spades, the first week, but what about after?
I would be pissed if I worked so hard, for so long on the game and Nintendo did not really do anyhing to promote it outside of the gamers who wer already going to pick it up anyways…
The good news here, is that these talents FINALLY get to do something NOT Metroid related, after what? A decade?