Thursday, June 14, 2012

No Retro Zelda For You

So, when Miyamoto talked with Wired about how smooth the collaboration with Retro Studios went while making Mario Kart 7, he hinted that Zelda might be next.

Of course this caused massive hype among Zelda fans including myself. Retro understood perfectly what made the classic games great and they knew how to infuse this into a modern game. The Metroid Prime Trilogy is simply one of the finest Nintendo products of the last ten years and Donkey Kong Country Returns was a fun platformer. Zelda fans want Retro to work on Zelda, because those guys could bring Zelda back to glory.



But now Miyamoto denies in an interview with IGN that Retro is working together with Nintendo on the next Zelda, because the collaboration suddenly would be too difficult. Seriously...?

Okay, I understand that in Mario Kart 7 the labor division was probably a lot easier, since Retro was working on their own tracks. But you could still split the work of a Zelda game. Retro could make the dungeons for example. I trust in (old) Retro that they would return to the non-linear, maze-like dungeon design of the classics. So, at least the dungeons would be awesome.

But the problem seems to be a lot deeper than just issues in collaborating. According to these reports (as seen on ZI) Retro Studios is falling apart, most of the core employees have left the company over the past few years. Retro is not the same company anymore, who made the Prime Trilogy. So, Retro has to prove yet again that they're the right guys to work on projects like Zelda. Let them revive another classic franchise, let's say Starfox or F-Zero, so they can show what the new Retro can do.

I'm sad about what's happening at Retro, because I saw a chance for Zelda in this studio. But now this chance seems to be gone.

1 comment:

K2L said...

There's no chance the next Zelda will surpass OOT in popularity and sales anyway (I mean, if none of the games from MM to SS could,...), so I'm pretty much indifferent.