Former Metroid Prime manager on how Nintendo fixed the crunch and its full confidence in Metroid Prime 4

This afternoon we were able to hear interesting news from Reece Reilly’s Kiwi Talkz podcast, where Mike Wikan, a former member of Retro Studios, has offered details about Donkey Kong and Metroid Prime.

Well, now we bring you even more information from this meeting, focused on the crunch they suffered in the studio with unreasonable working conditions between Metroid Prime deliveries 1 and 2. Apparently, these situations come from unreasonable deadlines that Nintendo set for Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. He points out that later Nintendo intervened again after realizing there were serious problems finishing the first game.

These were his words:

After Metroid Prime 1 we rarely had a crunch, we had a leadership change between 1 and 2… We had some crisis (on 2) but it wasn’t the nine month death march we had at the end of Prime 1. That it was the worst.

I had two moments where I was there 48 hours in a row with an hour of sleep, and then a couple of 36 hour days, for the last nine months we were there practically 24 hours a day, 7 days a week …

At the end of that period, everyone was eager to finish, we just said, “We are done.” He had two job offers from two different companies, and Nintendo realized what was going on and took over the company, bought it. They put Michael Kelbaugh in charge. It’s a sweetheart, very good, he was the head of the quality control department at Nintendo. He said, “Guys, give me a few weeks to turn this around.” And he did.

He restored faith in leadership and in the company. I loved working for Nintendo.

At the same meeting, Wikan commented that they have full confidence in the Metroid Prime 4 development team:

And Metroid 4 will be great. A lot of the central designers on the team are guys who were there when I was there. They understand, they understand what a Metroid game is.