Aug/30/2001

Can't these guys get anything right?

It has been confirmed that the last game in development at Retro Studios - the much-anticipated Metroid for the GameCube - has been cancelled. This comes hot on the heels of the company's cancellation of three other games over the last six months; said to be due to "restructuring" (read: we bit off a whole lot more than we could chew).

It's understood that Nintendo were "less than impressed" with their last progress report, when it was discovered that the latest build of Metroid that Retro sent them, was in fact, done with Macromedia Flash 5™.

"It wasn't even the full version, they were using the free trial for Christ's sake!" said one of our sources inside Nintendo. "We had no choice but to pull the plug."

With the cancellation of this project, the last actual game that Retro was working on, the culling of several more designers and programmers was again necessary. "Yeah, there's only three of us left now, but you have to look on the bright side of things" said Ben, the last programmer left at Retro. "This allows us to really focus on the important aspects of our work."

Apparently, this work involves the "tying of our shoelaces."

The next project for Retro.

Asked how the company plans to attack this problem Ben said "Yeah it was a bit of a problem before, but now we have the 10 years of experience in shoelace completion that John from Marketing brings us, and Phil from Sales is actually a Velcro strap kinda' guy, so he brings knowledge from that side of the business to our group. Who knows, one day we might actually get back into the games business!"

Asked weather they had any other goals for the future, Ben commented "Well, we're also looking at getting to work on time and not pissing-off Nintendo for a FULL month!"

URNN wishes them luck for the future, particularly on that last goal.

-Blake