Metroid Prime - Development

Development

Further information: History of Retro Studios

After Super Metroid, Metroid fans eagerly awaited a sequel. It was supposedly slated for the Nintendo 64 or its ill-fated accessory, the 64DD, but while the game was mentioned, it never entered production. Producer Shigeru Miyamoto explained that it was because Nintendo "couldn't come out with any concrete ideas". Metroid co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto declared that he considered creating a new installment for the Nintendo 64, but was uninterested in being part of its development, particularly because of the console's controller – "I just couldn't imagine how it could be used to move Samus around". Sakamoto also said Nintendo approached another company to make an N64 Metroid, but the offer was declined as the developer felt they could not make a game that could be up to Super Metroid's standards.

Metroid Prime was developed as a collaboration between Retro Studios and important Nintendo EAD and R&D1 members. The only part of the game created outside Retro was the music. Retro Studios was created in 1998, by an alliance between Nintendo and former Iguana Entertainment founder Jeff Spangenberg, where the studio would create games for the forthcoming Nintendo GameCube targeted at an older demographic. After establishing its offices in Austin, Texas in 1999, Retro started working on four different GameCube projects. When producer Shigeru Miyamoto visited Retro in 2000, he did not like the games being produced, but suggested the development of a new Metroid game, considering the studio could deal well with the license after seeing the prototype of a first-person shooter engine they created. In 2000 and early 2001, three games were cancelled at Retro, and in July 2001, an RPG called Raven Blade was terminated so that Prime would be the only game in development. During the last nine months of development Retro's staff worked 80 to 100-hour weeks to reach the deadline imposed by Nintendo.

"We didn’t want to make just another first person shooter. 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."

—Michael Kelbaugh, Retro Studios president since 2003

The Japanese crew, which included producers Miyamoto, Kensuke Tanabe and Kenji Miki, as well as game designer and Metroid co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto, communicated with the Texas-based studio through emails, monthly phone conferences and personal gatherings. The game was originally envisioned as having third-person perspective gameplay, but this was changed to a first-person perspective after Miyamoto intervened, causing almost everything already developed to be scrapped. Among the reasons for leaving the third-person perspective were Rare's trouble with the camera in Jet Force Gemini, shooting in third-person "not being very intuitive" and exploration being easier using first-person. Miyamoto has also professed a fondness for games to be in the first person perspective in an interview with Satoru Iwata. He then said he even wanted The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to take place in the first person perspective. Lead designer Mark Pacini said that after picking that perspective, the crew decided not to make a traditional first-person shooter, as "We weren't trying to fit in that genre. We had to break down the stereotypes of what a first-person game is and make a fun Metroid game.

Pacini stated that Retro tried to make the game so that the only difficult parts would be boss battles, so players would not be "afraid to explore", because "the challenge of the game was finding your way around". Senior designer Mike Wikan also declared that the focus on exploration led to development team spent much time making the platform jumping "approachable to the player", and that the resulting gameplay had "shooting a very important, though secondary, consideration". Retro Studios developed the storyline of Metroid Prime under the supervision of Yoshio Sakamoto who verified the plot ideas to be consistent with the lore of the series' earlier entries. Kraid, a boss from Metroid and Super Metroid, was intended to make an appearance in Prime, and designer Gene Kohler modeled and skinned him for that purpose. However, time constraints prevented him from being included in the final version of the game. The development team also considered implementing the Speed Booster power-up from Super Metroid, but discarded as they considered it would not work well due to the first-person perspective and the "limitations imposed by the scale of our environment".

The first public appearance of the game was a ten second video at SpaceWorld 2000. In November of the same year, Retro Studios confirmed its involvement with the game in the "job application" part of its website. In February 2001, the game was confirmed by Nintendo, who also announced that despite the first-person perspective, it would be more of a first-person adventure than a first-person shooter due to focus on exploration. On May, the game was showcased at E3 2001, with its name confirmed as Metroid Prime. The first news of the game had mixed reactions from fans, due to the change from 2D side scrolling to 3D first-person.