Retro Studios

Retro Studios is an American video game developer based in Austin, Texas. The company was founded in October 1998 by the video game veteran Jeff Spangenberg after leaving Acclaim Entertainment, as an independent studio making games exclusively for Nintendo. The studio started with four Nintendo GameCube projects which had a chaotic and unproductive development, but Retro's work impressed Nintendo producer Shigeru Miyamoto so much that he suggested them to create a new game in the Metroid series. Eventually the four games in development were cancelled so Retro could focus only on Metroid Prime, which was released for the GameCube in 2002, the same year Nintendo acquired the studio completely by purchasing the majority of Spangenberg's holding stock. Now a first-party developer and division of Nintendo, Retro since then developed two sequels to Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the compilation Metroid Prime: Trilogy, and the revival for another Nintendo series, Donkey Kong Country Returns. The studio also collaborated with the development of both Metroid Prime Hunters and Mario Kart 7.