In the wake of what at least feels like a strong September for Nintendo’s Wii U, what with The Wonderful 101 hitting and Wind Waker HD coming shortly thereafter, further good news surrounding the struggling console’s future is absolutely a welcome and heartwarming thing. The numbers will tell the real story, of course, but at least the black cloud of relentless negativity has ceased to follow the Wii U wherever it goes.
There’s nothing more exciting to Nintendo fans than the hint of a new console Metroid title, and legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto recently dropped some hints regarding who may or may not work on the series’ next game.
In an interview with Official Nintendo Magazine, Mr. Miyamoto had the following to say regarding Retro and their current positioning.
Retro is a very capable studio and can design a lot of different types of games and I know that because I produced Metroid Prime. But when it did Donkey Kong Country Returns on Wii, apparently it had a lot of fun making that title and from what I’ve heard it put in a request and said that it wanted to do a new Donkey Kong Country game on Wii U themselves. In particular the company built up quite a lot of knowhow in that specific style of gameplay and as a consequence felt that it could leverage that again in creating something new in that same style for Wii U. I think Retro has really come to a point at which it’s possible for it to have multiple lines running at the same time and having different projects in development. I totally think there are possibilities to see different projects from Retro in the future.
Interesting. Not only does this confirm that Retro did indeed choose to work on a new Donkey Kong Country, but it reiterates the idea that the studio is now approaching the size and experience required to manage multiple projects at once. This was the theory of many hopeful fans when Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was announced – that Retro was secretly also working on Metroid. While I doubt that’s true, something like that could be true in the future, apparently.
Regarding Metroid as a whole, he had this to say.
Certainly the Metroid franchise is one that, when you talk about really bringing the world to life, we feel that Metroid and the characters established are really important for Nintendo. So important that they were included, obviously, in Nintendo Land. I definitely think it’s a franchise that we value and we certainly want to see what we can do with it in the future. And, obviously, Retro is a very high priority in terms of the potential team that would be considered for working on a Metroid game.
Well, I suppose that’s a bit of a relief. While it would be hard to fathom Nintendo ditching the series for too long, Other M was such a train wreck publicity-wise that a very long hiatus wouldn’t have been surprising. The worst case scenario now, at least, is that a new game gets underway once the latest DK has been completed. The best case? Retro’s new Metroid game is well underway, secretly and simultaneously with DK, just like Miyamoto said the studio is capable of doing. But that is probably just wishful thinking.