The long and winding history of Metroid Prime

[jedimas4]

We all know about it , Game of the Year, best game on the GC to date, and one of the best games of last generation. The Metroid Prime Trilogy was such a great success. It helped revive a long dorment franchise and catapulted a little known company to stardom, but many of us know full well of the turmoil that surronded the development of the first Prime.

A Short history of Metroid

It all began in 1987, when Gunpei Yokoi, the man that would mentor Mr. Miyamoto, and a small team of developers created a game called Metroid for the NES. It was a hit, one of the first non-linear games on a console. It emphasis on exploration, finding items, and timing jumps helped drive sales. It's also home of one of the most shocking endings in gaming history today: the revealing of Samus Aran's gender, it was unheard of.

Metroid II was released in 1991, it further cemented metroids popularity by introducing many new mechanics that would be a part of any metroid game today, but the franchise's shining moment was Super Metroid for SNES, touting more complex graphics, music, and story, it was later considered on of the greatest games of all time. Then tragedy appeared.

Gunpei Yokoi, an extremely important person in the franchise, developed the Virtual Boy, Nintendo's ill-fated 3D console and its only commercial faliure. Many people blamed him for the Boy's faliure. In 1996, Gunpei resigned from his position at Nintendo due to that fiasco. However, the question regarding Metroid's fate wouldn't be considered untill Yokoi's fatal car accident in 1997, Metroid is the only franchise at Nintendo to have lost its creator.

So that's Metroid so far in a nutshell. The History of Prime to come momentarily.

 

[jedimas4]

Part 2

Formation of Retro Studios

Retro Studios was created as part of an alliance between Jeff Spangenburg and Nintendo in 1998. As part of the deal, Nintendo asked the new company to produce games for the new console Nintendo was developing, the Gamecube. Apparently though, Retro had been negotiating for the rights to creating Metroid games. When it was announced to the public, the Metroid fans were skeptical of the company's ability to produce a quality Metroid game. Ideas began to develop, and Retro began to work on its games, however, as time progressed it was clear that they wern't progressing, and Nintendo began to step in, Jeff Spangenburg didn't like this and eventually left the company. Nintendo then bought Retro Studios, thus Retro becoming a first-party developer.

Developement of Prime

Not wanting the Metroid franchise to burn to peices, Nintendo sent in Mr. Miyamoto to take control of the Metroid project, including scrapping all other projects to concentrate more on Prime and constantly firing and hiring people. At this point, Metroid fans saw this as the end of Metroid, they apparently found leaked pics of the game, with terrible graphics, not looking at all like the finished product. Miyamoto and Retro worked hard to save the game. Metroid fans continued to boycott the game, what with the constant reshuffuleing of the staff and was growing increasing violent on the forums. The situation looked increasingly grim for Retro and Nintendo.

In 2002, Metroid Prime was released to the US and Canada, and took the industry by storm and completely laid all the critisims to rest. Maintaining the Metroid look and feel, it became hailed by the fans and the critics as the greatest game in the Metroid franchise.

So there's the history of Metroid Prime, feel free to comment, this is my first true article.

 

[Andrakis_Scarr]

Very Nice - That was a great read