Getting to Work
In 1999, with an office that was at least partially staffed, it was time to get started on the established mission of making kick-butt videogames, right? Right?! Well, you're half right. You see, Retro had some rather ambitious goals right from the beginning. Jeff didn't want his new studio to only work on a single title for the next 18 to 24 months. His goals were far more ambitious, soon involving as many as four projects. However, before simultaneous game development on multiple titles could begin, the first priority of the studio was to get cracking on a basic programming code database that could be used to speed up the development of future projects. By now Retro was home to some of the best programmers in the industry. We were able to get a hold of one such programmer, who was more than happy to sit down and discuss his experiences with us.
Jason Hughes, now Senior Software Engineer at Naughty Dog, was one of the first people to join Retro Studios. "I took a position at Retro Studios when the company had just opened up-I think I was employee number 13, and only the third programmer aboard," recounts Mr. Hughes. "So, the first six months were dedicated to building up a code base from absolute scratch and setting the groundwork for multiple titles to share it." As surprising as this may sound, virtually every game Retro Studios worked on, prior to Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, shared nearly 80 percent of the exact same basic code. Jason continues, "...it was in fact the goal from the beginning to build many titles out of a solid foundation, since there's no point in writing it several times. Some teams were better at sharing code than others, but on the whole it helped make programmers more portable between teams."
With the code base growing at Retro, it soon became time for the ideas to start flowing and the company to choose what games it would produce. "Full development really started almost six months later, in mid-2000, as the design began to gel and personnel were assigned to the project[s]," recalls Jason.
Around this time, Nintendo was preparing the "Project Dolphin" (later named Nintendo GameCube) launch lineup for the following year. One of its major goals for the system was to appeal to a mature demographic. While we weren't able to pin down precisely how much influence Nintendo exercised on which games Retro ultimately decided on developing, we do know that Nintendo was banking on Retro to produce a number of titles that would appeal to the 18 and older crowd. "Nintendo's relationship with Retro was clearly one of respect. While being a significant investor in the studio, Nintendo did not attempt to grab the reins in any way, to my knowledge," Jason reitterates. "They gave wide latitude to the management team and let them choose their own path, for better or worse. I'm told that Nintendo became more involved after the termination of several projects left them with fewer launch titles."
With an impressive code base in hand, Retro finally began full-fledged game development. Little did anyone realize that one of the studio's very first projects (described as an 'action adventure' game) would prompt Nintendo to entrust an unproven and inexperienced American developer with the critically acclaimed and coveted Metroid license.