Retro is kind of a beautiful mess of a black box of a company. Nintendo's take on a homegrown 'mature' Western studio started as a semi-reincarnation of Iguana Entertainment, a studio which saw some success with publisher Acclaim Entertainment on many Nintendo (and other) platforms. They had some decent games, but it's kind of a weird fit, right? So they pitched some generic-ish concepts, including that car combat game, some football sim, and the sprawling vapoRPG, Raven Blade! A bit of mismanagement, strippers and cocaine on Nintendo's dime, yada yada, and Big Daddy N had to step in for some tough love. They cleaned the place up, cancelled pretty much EVERYTHING, and repurposed one of their concepts into Metroid Prime, a project doomed for failure if there ever was one. And THEN Nintendo upended the tea table again (maybe several times) during development!
I'm a fairly optimistic guy, particularly when it comes to Nintendo games, but I was absolutely positive that Metroid Prime would be horseshit. Most of us were, probably. I mean, it had everything working against it. Western-made, troubled development, first-person...
And then the reviews hit and staggered us all. And THEN we all played it and found it to be completely overrated, due to the goddamned Scan Visor!
Right?!
Nah, it was alright. Pretty good, even (aside from the scanning). And Retro went on to make Prime 2 and Prime 3, changing up the formula a bit each time. And then another huge shakeup rocked the company: the departure of several of its key team leads. The most visible ones, really.
Could they recover? Would Armature create a Metroid-killer on the HD twins, free from Nintendo's tech constraints? Was Retro just a husk of its former self?
Well, Armature, needless to say, suffered from the Nintendo ex-second-party curse. Cut free from Nintendo's guidance, funding, and total disregard for release dates, Armature has struggled in the wake of Prime. They've released a few original titles, but nothing has really caught fire, critically or commercially speaking. And they were reduced to a porting house, before Microsoft gave them a chance at a second-party title with Recore. Wasn't quite the smash hit that they wanted. But they're still around. They've done what they had to and kept the lights on, culminating in the apex of their legacy to date: the Switch port of Duck Game, perhaps the greatest game of our time, complete with touchscreen level editor!!
Anyway, enough about Armature. What was Retro up to? Whaaat? A 2D Donkey Kong game?? Are you kidding? Wait, this is waaaay better than Metroid Prime! There's no scanning whatsoever!
Seriously, though, Retro kept the hits coming with Donkey Kong Country Returns, seemingly not having lost a step from the high-profile departures that have forever plagued the company. DKCR was timed exactly right to capitalize on the Wii boom and sell a bajillion copies. And then Tropical Freeze... !
Didn't. But it was on the Wii U. And it was still really good! Meanwhile, Retro was contributing to some big Nintendo franchises, like Mario Kart (7 & 8, I believe)? They still had the golden touch.
Finally, after years away from the franchise that put them on the map, Nintendo announced that things weren't working out with its externally-developed (Namco?) approach to Metroid Prime 4 and handed the reins back to Retro. And the world rejoiced!
But wait a minute... What the hell have they been working on since Tropical Freeze? And has making two 2D games really consumed the majority of their resources from 2007 to 2014?? What IS the unspoken history of Retro, which has continually shed key staff members like a snake sloughing its skin? How many games have been dragged behind the shed, shot, and buried? How much confidence does Nintendo really have in them right now? Will whatever they've been working on since 2014 ever see the light of day? And why scanning, why, god, WHY???
At the end of the day, though, regardless of their crazy journey, look at that scoreboard, baby! All killer, no filler! Long story short, how do you feel about current Retro? Still got it? Never had it? Inquiring minds want to know!
Source for all research and information: My ass. Wikipedia was consulted only at the very end to verify release dates.URL to share (right click and copy)