Riding high on the massive success of Metroid Prime, Nintendo immediately ordered Retro Studios to begin production on a new Metroid Prime title. By January 2003, word leaked to the press that early planning stages had begun on the highly anticipated sequel, with the idea of including multiplayer being tossed around.

At E3 2004 Nintendo and Retro let loose the floodgate and revealed Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. With Echoes, Retro was not comfortable with merely reusing Metroid Prime's graphics engine and models, so they opted to scrap everything and start from scratch. "Our engineers, our designers, our artists are in no way satisfied with the normal approach. They really re-used nothing from Prime and made everything from scratch: new sound models, new weapon effects and new gun models. Everything is new," confirms Echoes' Senior Producer Bryan Walker.

Along with an impressive new engine, Retro also decided to make Echoes much more story driven this time around and included an impressive number of cinematic cut scenes in the game. "We wanted to be immersive in the storytelling aspect and we wanted a much better representation cinematically. It's been quite a challenge," comments Michael Kelbaugh. With better graphic and more gameplay modes, Echoes is primed to take GameCube owners by storm.

Although Echoes was able to deliver everything Retro promised, it unfortunately came at the high price of losing many of Prime's original and most influential architects. Among those lost were Gene Kohler, Rick Kohler, Mike Sneath, LeRoy Strauss, Sarma Vanguri, and James Dargie.

Though Mr. Dargie left very early in Metroid Prime's development cycle, December 2001, his influence on the title is very apparent. "Most every door you go through in Metroid is mine," explains James. "I thought that the 'iris' shutter door looked appropriate for our game and designed the glowing effect for the shields as well. Also, because of my experience from working on the holograms in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, I was tasked with design elements of the HUD and the way it operated. Many people had many different ideas of what it should look like and the process was a bit distressing at times. I had some other ideas for the HUD but the work I did was iterated many times by others and in the end I can only claim to have influenced the final product. Some of my main influences to the HUD can be seen in the FF movie especially the concept of the 'bobbing' or 'lagging' interface elements that are always trying to re-center themselves according to your movements. Ultimately I think it came out great and all of the people who contributed to it did an incredible job."

Though Echoes may have lost a decent size of its talent, especially in the artistic field, new individuals have already stepped in to fill their shoes. Among this new group of people is Paul Tozour, a member of the engineering team. Paul is well known in the videogame industry for his work with game AI (Artificial Intelligence), and has written a number of articles relating to the subject - some of which were for the Game Programming Gems book series.

Another newcomer to Retro is artist Ben Sprout. What's intriguing about Ben is how he came to be involved with the project in the first place. While researching for this article, we stumbled across a rather insightful discussion between resident Retro Studios lead concept artist Andrew Jones and Ben in the forums at Andrew's website, www.conceptart.org.
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-6720.html

Post by Ben Sprout:
"Hello, My name is Ben Sprout. I graduated from Ringling School of Art with a BFA in Computer Animation. Currently I reside in my hometown of Sarasota, Fl," states Mr. Sprout in his opening post. "I have expertise in many areas, both 2-D and 3-D, and I love to draw. I am very eager to focus now and work to do whatever it takes to help deliver the very best product."

Response by Andrew Jones:
"Benzo [Ben Sprout] gets the Android [Andrew Jones] seal of approval, he would make a high quality asset to any studio, get him while you still can." - Andrew Jones, May 28th, 2003

Also new to the scene is artist Nick Trahan from Nintendo Software Technology, whose previous credit is 1080 Avalanche. Artist Sean Horton and animators Ilya Nazarov and Quinn Smith, all students of the Nintendo funded game design school, DigiPen Institute of Technology, were also very fortunate to join Retro Studios as art interns on Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.

With Echoes completed and released in North America, Retro Studios is without a doubt already in early stages of production on their next title. As much as we'd love to tell you what they're working on next, speculation and hearsay are all we have to go on at this point in time. Judging by the amount of time it took Retro to complete its first two offerings; one might expect Retro's next game some time around late 2006, which coincidently coincides with the rumored launch timeframes of the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution. One could also speculate that since Metroid Hunters: First Hunt for the Nintendo DS seems to have done a terrific job selling systems thus far, and that Echoes' performance appears to be solid this holiday, that another sequel is not at all out of the question. I personally believe that gamers can fully expect Retro's next title to be a Metroid sequel for the Revolution, unless Retro decides to revive one of their former unfinished projects. If that were to be the case, then the possibility of playing Retro NFL Football retooled into "Mario Football" could be a likely scenario. Based on Nintendo's commitment to the Mario sports line, Mario Baseball being the most recent title announced, this scenario could very well be a possibility. Also possible is the chance that Thunder Rally could be revived, considering how far along it was in development, perhaps even for the Nintendo DS, so it could take advantage of the system's Wi-Fi multiplayer technology. Either way, another Metroid title is almost guaranteed.

When all is said and done, whatever Nintendo and Retro Studios are planning for the years ahead is sure to excite. Retro has already lived up to and far exceeded the expectations of gamers the world round.

We would like to thank the many credited and anonymous sources that contributed to this article, including James H. Dargie, Jason C. Hughes, and Ryan Wickerham. Without the help of all of our sources, this article would not have been possible.

Written by Kenneth Kyle Wade. Freehand art by Ricardo Arenas.
Other images, editing, and revision done by the team at N-Sider.