In the summer of 2002, before anyone outside the company had played a finished level of Metroid Prime, IGN Unplugged summed up the mood around its developer. After “two years of rumors regarding Retro Studios’ stability”, the playable demo at that year’s E3 show was so polished that “almost instantaneously, Retro Studios was being heralded as one of Nintendo’s best-kept secrets”. In the midst of “numerous internal management firestorms”, the magazine said, the team “had done the impossible” and made a first-person Metroid that felt like the old ones.
Retro was an unusual thing: an American studio founded to make games only for Nintendo, which within four years had cancelled most of its projects, laid off dozens of staff, lost its founder and been bought outright by Nintendo. The one game it had left began a trilogy, and Retro is still making Metroid games.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1998, in Austin, Texas, by Jeff Spangenberg with Nintendo’s backing.
- Owner: Nintendo, wholly since 2002.
- First game: Metroid Prime (GameCube, 2002).
- Metroid Prime series: Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (2004), Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (Wii, 2007), Metroid Prime Remastered (Switch, 2023), Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (2025).
- Donkey Kong: Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii, 2010) and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Wii U, 2014).
- President: Michael Kelbaugh, formerly of Nintendo of America, by 2004.
A studio for the next console
Jeff Spangenberg had founded Iguana Entertainment, the Austin studio behind Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, and sold it to Acclaim. In April 1999 the Brazilian magazine SuperGamePower reported that he was leaving the company he had founded to start another, Retro Studios. The new company worked only for Nintendo, on several projects, none of them for any console then on sale. The magazine took that as a sign that Nintendo’s next machine was already up and running.
Nintendo was investing in developers it trusted. “We have other companies that we are making strategic investments in,” Howard Lincoln, the president of Nintendo of America, told Edge that autumn, “but we’re very careful to limit those investments to really first-class developers. Retro Studios comes to mind.” Michael Kelbaugh, who had worked for Nintendo of America, helped to set Retro up.
Spangenberg recruited widely, partly from Iguana’s Turok teams. The British programmer Andy O’Neil, who had moved to Austin in the summer of 1999 to work on Turok 3 at Iguana, remembered Spangenberg picking him up in his Ferrari, taking him to brunch and offering “loads more money than I was on to join Retro Studios”. “There are loads of Brits in the games industry in Austin,” he told Retro Gamer; Spangenberg “knew there were loads of really good programmers in the UK” who were badly paid at home. The studio began four games for the console code-named Dolphin, which became the GameCube: an American football game, a vehicle combat game called Car Combat, a role-playing game called Raven Blade, and an action-adventure.
Cancellations
The projects did not survive. In April 2001 IGN Unplugged reported that “Nintendo forced the layoffs of more than 20 Retro employees and ordered that all work cease immediately” on Car Combat and Football 2002, even though Car Combat was the most complete game the studio had. Raven Blade followed on 20 July 2001. “Retro, along with Nintendo, has decided its most effective approach as a videogame developer is to focus on Metroid and give it the attention the franchise deserves,” Nintendo said. “To do that, they refined staffing and are laying off 26 people, mainly the team that worked on Raven Blade.”
What was left was the action-adventure. Retro Gamer’s history says that on a visit to Austin, Shigeru Miyamoto was unimpressed by most of what he saw, but liked one team’s prototype with a female lead. Retro was given Metroid, and it was Miyamoto who suggested switching it from third person to first. The doubts were public. Miyamoto held back a playable demo at E3 in 2001 because of worries about the controls, and again at Nintendo’s Space World show that August. “Discovering no sound and poor control just a few days ago made me decide not to present it,” he told Edge, which reported “rumours coming out of Retro Studios of development hell”.
In May 2002 Nintendo bought the shares in Retro it did not already own. The Australian magazine Hyper put the price at $1 million and reported that Retro was now “wholly owned by Nintendo”; Nintendo fans, it said, could sleep easy knowing that Retro “will only ever make GameCube and GBA games”. Retro Gamer records that Spangenberg was ousted and the management changed.
Metroid Prime and its sequels
Metroid Prime was released in North America in November 2002. Edge, which had been sceptical, gave it nine out of ten and admitted it “should have had a little more faith in Nintendo’s decision and been a little more confident in Retro’s ability”. In May 2003 it named Metroid Prime its game of the year. The game’s story, from the scan visor to the Morph Ball, is told in the Metroid Prime entry.
Nintendo’s producer on the series, Kensuke Tanabe, said later that the scan visor was “something that I thought up with Retro”. At a round table in 2004 he recalled the reaction to turning a 2D series into a first-person game: people had told them “You can’t do that.” Kelbaugh, by then Retro’s president, described his job as managing the business and “the daily interaction and communications with Mr. Tanabe”. Retro followed the first game with Metroid Prime 2: Echoes for the GameCube in 2004, in which Samus moves between light and dark versions of the planet Aether, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption for the Wii in 2007. Edge thought it “logical that Retro has allowed the Wii Remote to define the focus” of the third game, which leaned further towards action. The three were collected for the Wii in 2009.
Donkey Kong and Mario Kart
Retro’s next game revived another series that had been made outside Japan, Rare’s Donkey Kong Country. Donkey Kong Country Returns came out for the Wii in December 2010. Edge found that “with motion control, Retro Studios has combined the precision platforming of Rare’s originals with the satisfying, chest-thumping physicality of Jungle Beat.” Retro then built courses for the 3DS game Mario Kart 7 (2011), and Edge remarked that the studio had found itself “becoming the ‘new Rare’”. Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, again produced by Tanabe, followed for the Wii U in 2014, and Retro ported it to the Switch in 2018.
In 2011 Edge asked Kelbaugh and Tanabe how the partnership worked. Kelbaugh said deadlines came second: “it’s never done as far as we’re concerned. It’s constant refinement.” He would “much rather be judged based on the quality of my product as opposed to whether or not it made it out on time”. Tanabe said that over the years Retro had “gradually come to really think like Nintendo”, so there was “a lot less need for explanation and supervision”.
Back to Metroid
In January 2019 Nintendo announced that development of Metroid Prime 4, begun elsewhere, had been restarted at Retro. In February 2023 it released Metroid Prime Remastered for the Switch, Retro’s rebuilt version of the first game, and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond followed in December 2025.
Sources
- SuperGamePower (Brazil) issue 61, April 1999, p. 13: Spangenberg leaves Iguana to found Retro Studios, which works only for Nintendo on projects for no current console.
- Edge issue 77, autumn 1999, “An audience with… Howard Lincoln”: strategic investments in “really first-class developers”, naming Retro Studios.
- IGN Unplugged issue 1, April 2001, p. 26: Car Combat and Football 2002 stopped and more than 20 staff laid off; Retro’s remaining work on Metroid and an RPG.
- IGN Unplugged issue 5, August 2001, p. 8: Raven Blade cancelled on 20 July; Nintendo’s statement and the 26 lay-offs.
- Edge issue 103, November 2001, p. 56: Space World 2001; Miyamoto’s quotation; “rumours … of development hell”.
- Hyper (Australia) issue 105, July 2002, p. 12: “Nintendo secures developer”: $1,000,000, the remaining shares, “wholly owned by Nintendo”.
- IGN Unplugged issue 15, August 2002, pp. 8–10: Metroid Prime’s path from Space World 2000 to E3 2002; “two years of rumors”, “best-kept secrets”, “internal management firestorms”, “had done the impossible”.
- Edge issue 119, January 2003, p. 64: Metroid Prime review, nine out of ten; the E3 2001 demo; “a little more faith”.
- Edge issue 123, May 2003: Edge Awards, Metroid Prime game of the year.
- Hyper (Australia) issue 131, September 2004, pp. 20–21: round table with Retro Studios and Nintendo; Tanabe, Sakamoto and Kelbaugh; Echoes and the light and dark worlds.
- Edge issue 179, September 2007, pp. 47–48: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption preview and the Wii Remote.
- Edge issue 222, Christmas 2010, p. 92: Donkey Kong Country Returns review, released 3 December.
- Edge issue 227, May 2011, pp. 14–15: interview with Kensuke Tanabe and Michael Kelbaugh; Kelbaugh’s time at Nintendo of America; the visor system; the quotations.
- Edge issue 230, August 2011, p. 17: E3 2011, Retro Studios on the 3DS Mario Kart, “the ‘new Rare’”.
- Retro Gamer issue 103, June 2012, pp. 60–61, “Future Classic: Metroid Prime”: founding in 1998 with former Iguana staff; Miyamoto’s visit; the switch to first person; Nintendo’s purchase in 2002 and Spangenberg’s departure; the football game and Raven Blade; the 2009 Wii collection; Mario Kart 7. Page 88: Andy O’Neil on joining Retro and its four projects.
- Edge issue 256, August 2013, p. 55: Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze preview, Wii U, developer Retro Studios, producer Kensuke Tanabe.
- Wikipedia, “Retro Studios” (accessed October 2026) (web, secondary): founding date; the purchase on 2 May 2002 (citing GameSpot); the 2018 Switch port of Tropical Freeze; the restart of Metroid Prime 4 announced on 25 January 2019 (citing Game Informer); Metroid Prime Remastered on 8 February 2023; Metroid Prime 4: Beyond in December 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retro_Studios