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Metroid Prime's Retro Studios Once Pitched A Zelda Tactics Game

Heimdall_Xtreme

Jim Ryan Fanclub's #1 Member

Metroid Prime Dev Retro Studios Pitched A Zelda Game Called 'Heroes Of Hyrule'


Retro Studios is currently developing the next Metroid Prime game, but there was a time in its history when it was apparently working on a Legend of Zelda pitch, codenamed Project X.

We've covered it extensively here on Nintendo Life in the past, and during a search for more information about it YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming? has actually uncovered another Zelda spin-off Retro pitched to Nintendo. It was known as Heroes of Hyrule.

This game - styled like Final Fantasy Tactics and sounding a bit like Breath of the Wild - would have focused on three heroes (a Goron, Zora and Rito), who lived 100 years in the past and set out to rescue Link. Time passes and Link would then be "an old man" who ran an antiquities shop.

The source featured some concept artwork alongside this surprise in its latest video and intends to share more details about this project in a future upload. When we learn more, we'll let you know.

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Thank God it was cancelled. I don't like the Tactics genre... Final fantasy tactics left me with a bittersweet experience.
 
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Chittagong

Gold Member
Why does Retro even exist anymore? Their output in the 6 years following the unveiling Switch - which isn’t exactly a demanding console to develop for - has been a single port of a Wii U game. Said game is the only thing they have put out in over a decade.
 

ckaneo

Member
Why does Retro even exist anymore? Their output in the 6 years following the unveiling Switch - which isn’t exactly a demanding console to develop for - has been a single port of a Wii U game. Said game is the only thing they have put out in over a decade.
They remade Metroid Prime 1 and are working on 4. I aint mad
 

Aldric

Member
Man the story about this Sheik game is baffling. On paper this sounds like an incredibly exciting project. An action rpg spinoff of the Zelda series where you play as Sheik, with Retro Studios amazing artistic talent and top tier level design sounds like a dream game... And then you reach the gameplay part and you realize that the best they could come up with is literal whack-a-mole Wiimote combat, the most uninteresting, most shallow sounding system you could think of.

I don't know what the fuck is going on with this team but my confidence in their ability to make a worthy successor to Metroid Prime 3 gets lower everyday.
 
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Bragr

Banned
Why does Retro even exist anymore? Their output in the 6 years following the unveiling Switch - which isn’t exactly a demanding console to develop for - has been a single port of a Wii U game. Said game is the only thing they have put out in over a decade.
The Donkey Kong games they made were very successful, for Nintendo, having a great western studio is a big deal, they gonna give them the time they need, I would assume.
 
Why does Retro even exist anymore? Their output in the 6 years following the unveiling Switch - which isn’t exactly a demanding console to develop for - has been a single port of a Wii U game. Said game is the only thing they have put out in over a decade.
Well first of, Nintendo hindered/interfered with them several times when pitching projects and you know what that does to morale. They're Nintendo, so most of the time they had a green light to pitch stuff it wasn't like they were doing this behind everyone's back, and then get rejected.

The story for the concept pitch is amateurish, but we don't know how many proposals they did before this one as it usually gets to a point where you should care but can't anymore, you simply don't know what is working or not anymore due to much refusal. Also, Nintendo is the sort of parent company that will order you around if they think they need to change things to whatever they want so it's usually the gameplay idea that has to entice them. Like the time they ordered Retro to stop doing everything they were doing and gave them Metroid, or the time Dinossaur Planet to become Starfox Adventures because a character in there looked like Fox.

If the Zelda department wanted to enforce any change they would. That said, seeing these pitches were going to Aonuma and Retro had an awesome track record back then, I'd say if it was his call they never had a chance. Aonuma would be afraid of them taking the franchise from him or reviewing better and would be rooting for them to fail (he's clearly not a team player if you're not on his side or his boss). So it's probably a good thing this didn't happen.

Second, they contributed as co-developers to several Nintendo titles in between.

Third, they are at work with Metroid Prime 4.

It doesn't look good, I agree, but it's not all on them, it would be unfair if Nintendo closed them because they threw all their work into the trash. Sometimes Development Hell is created by the situation and not the projects. Starting stuff and not finishing is also dev hell.
I don't know what the fuck is going on with this team but my confidence in their ability to make a worthy successor to Metroid Prime 3 gets lower everyday.
People who were there during the Gamecube and the Wii days are residual now at best.

They've been massively hiring for Metroid Prime 4. Best case scenario for them is if they hire a lot of Arkane Software personnel tbh. Prey 2017 had this Metroid Prime vibe and Dishonored 1/2 had a Zelda in first person vibe minus the in your face zelda puzzles. And part of their workforce is located in Austin, same place where Retro is.
 
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Shut0wen

Member
Why does Retro even exist anymore? Their output in the 6 years following the unveiling Switch - which isn’t exactly a demanding console to develop for - has been a single port of a Wii U game. Said game is the only thing they have put out in over a decade.
Well theres rumours that they were working on some new 3d donkey kong game but had to be put on pause since they were forced to work on metroid prime 4 because namco couldnt do shit, nintendo announced prime way to early
 
That’s an awesome concept, and Nintendo has historically trusted Retro with their core franchises. That’s a big deal, so I wonder why it didn’t end up working out. Poor quality, bad timing, office politics? They almost seem like a foreign experimental studio Nintendo uses to fuck around and then they break the glass once every 7 years when the cicadas descend, blessing us with a well crafted game making us thing “wtf are they doing with this studio?”
 

Robb

Gold Member
Don’t think I would have enjoyed a tactics game. The concept art looks great though, gave me vibes of an awesome, more action oriented, Zelda title.
 
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