Retro Studios is a very important studio for Nintendo. The Western studio helped Nintendo out in the past by creating the Metroid Prime Trilogy. They also worked together on Mario Kart 7 to design some of the courses.
This collaboration between Western and Japanese studios is something Miyamoto would like to do more often in the future.
In a recent interview Miyamoto was asked if he wishes to work with Retro Studios or other Western studios in the future. His answer was unexpected. He would like to work together with Retro once more and even on one of the biggest franchises Nintendo own, The Legend of Zelda.
His full response:
“As you know, we have already collaborated with Retro for the Metroid Prime series in the past. And I think when we talk about any other franchise, Zelda might be a possible franchise for that collaboration,” he said.
“Specifically, they were taking care of the design of the courses and the artwork about that. But when it comes to the gameplay and the control mechanism itself, that’s being taken care of by EAD once again,” he explained.
The collaboration gave the game more freedom to cater to varying tastes and styles.
“People often say that videogames made by Western developers are somehow different in terms of taste for the players, in comparison with Japanese games. I think that means that the Western developers and Japanese developers, they are good at different fields,” Miyamoto mused.
“Mario Kart, I believe, was good in order to express that kind of different taste because we have many kinds of different courses for the Mario karts to run and race around. So for each of the different courses, we could identify: Retro is supposed to take care of this course, and EAD is going to do that, and such and such.
“Then, we were able to join forces in order to realize a variety of different courses, a variety of different tastes. I think that’s one reason how it worked out well between a Japanese development team and a Western development team.”
