Retro Studios Rumour Round-up & Speculation (Patreon)

"What's Retro up to?" - This has been the question on my lips for about two years now. While I do not know myself, I wanted to share some of the insights that I have gathered over the past year or so about Retro. I will tell you as impartially as I possibly can what has been said, and leave it to you inquisitive readers to interpret it how you see fit. Retro Studios is a very secretive company, and all I hope to achieve in sharing this is that the community can enjoy having something to discuss and speculate about. 

You may be interested to hear that Kensuke Tanabe and Retro Studios are allegedly no longer on good terms. I have heard this from someone at a certain Nintendo studio who has worked with him before, as well as two other close sources.

Last year, I was investigating Tanabe with regards to this. This involved speaking to a number of developers who had worked alongside him. The way in which they all described Tanabe's directorial style was fascinating. Their words built up a portrait in my mind of a Gordon Ramsey-esque figure who strived for perfection and berated anything short of it. It's difficult for me to fully convey my impressions of him without explicitly detailing the anecdotes shared with me in confidence, which could compromise those involved; but I will try my best to elaborate.

The majority of those I spoke to about their experiences with Tanabe told tales of how he would quite often explode with great passion on certain designers when one of them either made what he perceived to be a mistake, or boldly challenged a creative decision of his.

None of these employees spoke of the producer begrudgingly, however. On the contrary, they described him as a competent creative and leader; albeit a fiery personality. If that makes him sound a bit like J. K. Simmons' character from Whiplash, that's not completely off the mark; minus the hurling of furniture and general psychological torment.

That Retro Studios and Tanabe aren't working together, at the very least in the same capacity as before, is unprecedented. He has either co-produced or produced every last project of theirs prior to their newest one, so why the sudden change? The rumours say that certain employees at Retro were unhappy after working with him on Tropical Freeze, and this lead to the subsidiary's management appealing to NCL regarding the matter. By speaking to those who had first hand experience of Tanabe, I hoped to understand more about why this might have been. However, I don't have Tanabe's side of the story on this unfortunately, so please keep that in mind.

Around the time of Tanabe's leave in 2014, Retro had apparently begun to seek a greater level of autonomy from NCL. Previously, Tanabe was NCL's man on the ground there. He was their chief representative, who upheld the Japanese creative sensibilities of Nintendo at this Western studio. Retro, however, felt that his assistance was no longer necessary. They were campaigning for more freedom; although not just because some individuals had issues with his behaviour, but because they were under the impression that they had earned it. They thought that they had more proven themselves and that they didn't need an NCL producer holding their hand anymore.

If the rumours are to be believed, a certain NCL member responded to these requests by removing Tanabe and assigning a new NCL producer in his place. While they have enormous respect for what the developers there have been able to accomplish over the years, they still feel the need to have one of their closest representatives present, overseeing projects. The identity of Retro Studios' new NCL producer is one that I am not entirely certain of. One source, who is very credible in my eyes, and recently contributed to my story about Nintendo Software Technology's amiibo project (a rumour which was proven to be 100% true), claims this individual is none other than Yoshio Sakamoto. Whether or not this is true, I cannot say for sure. I am only sharing that to allow fans an interesting rumour to discuss. Having said that, don't take it as fact. It's a rumour that even I am unsure of.

Yoshio Sakamoto is known for his work with the Metroid series and most recently, Tomodatchi Life for Nintendo 3DS. In 2014, he made a lot of comments about wanting to make "new experiences" in favour of traditional games, so I would advise anyone against jumping the gun and proclaiming "it must be Metroid!" (mainly because I get way too excited at even the thought of that).

Before I close, I want to highlight one aspect that gives these rumours some credibility, which is the timing when they were initially shared. I first heard talk of Tanabe leaving Retro as far back as late 2014 - well before the announcement that he had gone over to work with Next Level Games on Metroid Prime: Federation Force. Then, around the time of E3 2015, a source elaborated on this with the claims of Sakamoto taking over and that Tanabe wasn't set to work at Retro for the foreseeable future due to issues + lots of other information I can't disclose. Shortly after E3, in August, US Gamer released an interview with him, in which he had something incredibly interesting to say:

USG: Should we expect to hear news on what Retro is working on some time soon?  

KT: I’m not quite sure about the stuff that they’re working on at this time

Full article here: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/kensuke-tanabe-on-metroid-prime-federation-force

Tanabe has been Retro's NCL producer for over a decade prior to recent events. Unless he really had ended his relationship with them, he would absolutely know what they were up to. In that interview, Tanabe also discloses that Retro are contributing to Federation Force in some small way:

USG: Is Retro involved in this project at all?  

KT: The whole development has been done by Next Level Games. There was just one part — for the design for the mechs, Retro had the supervisory role for this game.

If Tanabe still has a good relationship with Retro, a company which he has worked with for many years, it strikes me as an incredibly strange dynamic for him to not know what they are working on when they are still connected like this. This, however, is ultimately just speculation. I implore you to do the same - dig, scrutinise, speculate; go nuts. Whatever Retro is doing, I'm sure it will be wonderful. Let's just try to have some fun on our road to the reveal!

- Liam