After the release of Metroid Dread and Metroid Prime Remastered, Nintendo and MercurySteam came under scrutiny by former members of their staff who were left out of the credits. The controversy has not abated, especially with Donkey Kong Country Returns HD failing to include the original credits alongside those of the remaster.
Well, in actuality, there are instances of Metroid developers being left out of the credits dating back to Super Metroid in 1994, thirty years at the time of writing. This feature will tell you who these developers are, and what their contributions were, so that even if the games won’t do it, there will be a record.
Super Metroid
Years ago, Super Metroid dataminer Kejardon discovered unused names within the credits of Super Metroid, while hacking a savestate. The precise order and roles for these credits are unclear, with one exception. The names are: Keiko Tamura, Takehiro Izushi, Isao Hirano, Kenichi Sugino, Ryoji Yoshitomi, Yoshinori Katsuki, and Hiroshi Yamauchi. Yamauchi, the then-President of Nintendo, was credited as an Executive Producer. This credit was likely intended for the end of the roll, as was the case with his successors as President.
Tamura was likely a translator, as this was the role she was credited in for EarthBound and Metal Combat – Falcon’s Revenge.
Izushi, who retired from Nintendo in 2018, was a producer whose special thanks credits in Metroid II and Metroid Prime were used, and he produced Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission.
Hirano was either a programmer or designer. He programmed Metroid II, and designed enemies for Metroid Fusion. He no longer works for Nintendo.
Sugino created and designed most of the Game Boy consoles at Nintendo RED, and he created the Virtual Boy as well. For Metroid, Sugino debugged Metroid II, so he may have done the same for Super Metroid. He is now the general manager of RED’s Design Group.
Metroid Fusion
At least two Nintendo of America developers are known to have been left out of the credits. Christopher A. Smith, a former quality assurance tester, tested Fusion according to his LinkedIn page, along with other Game Boy Advance and GameCube titles around that time.
Jim Wornell was a graphic designer at Nintendo of America who designed the logos of Metroid Prime, Fusion, Echoes and Hunters, and was uncredited for his contribution in all of these games.
Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime is the first example of a significant number of the developers of a Metroid game being uncredited. Even though the work was frequently restarted from scratch, it is still important to acknowledge the contributions of everyone.
John Whitmore was the Lead Developer of the project that preceded Metroid Prime, MetaForce. In an interview with DidYouKnowGaming?, Whitmore recalled that he was led to believe the GameCube was more powerful than the reality. He left Retro out of dissatisfaction with this, the continual resetting of development, and an office conflict over whether Prime should be in first or third-person perspective. Whitmore was not credited.
Cid Newman was the CG Technical Supervisor and also provided motion capture for Samus in the early iteration of Metroid Prime. Additionally, he created an early face for her based on Cindy Crawford. Cid’s design ideas were used, even if his work was not, and he was left out of the credits. He later worked at Nintendo itself on the Wii, Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, and now works for an independent studio. We interviewed Cid in 2024; you can read the interview here.
Cindy Armstrong was the original CFO of Retro Studios, and helped secure the Metroid license from Nintendo. Despite this, she was not credited in Prime, potentially because she departed from Retro in 2001.
Tommy Tallarico, the renowned video game composer, did some early work for Metroid Prime on contract that survived into the finished game. He was interviewed by our founder Darren in 2011, and you can read the interview here. On his website, Tommy claimed to have received an apology for being left out of the credits and shared an email he received from Retro’s current Audio Lead Scott Petersen, praising his and Joey Kuras’ work on Prime, which would have lasted until about July 18, 2001. Tommy Tallarico Studios’ contract ended when Retro Studios was restructured and their early non-Metroid projects were cancelled, and Retro’s internal audio department took over from him.
In our interview with him, Tommy said that Shigeru Miyamoto directed him to design weapon sounds before the visuals were created, when usually it is done the opposite way. Clark Wen, in our later interview with him, said that the Power and Combo Beams were implemented in the game when he’d joined the project, seemingly contradicting Tommy’s account of the extent of his involvement. This discrepancy was noted in a 2022 video from hbomberguy that examined claims Tommy made over the years.
Tommy released the sounds his studio created as part of the SFX Kit library. There’s a twist. Joey Kuras’ name appears in the metadata for every Prime sound present in that package, suggesting that he created them, and not Tommy. Tommy is instead credited as the kit’s executive producer. This was discovered by SynaMax and shared in a video, viewable here.
Jennifer Hale needs no introduction to the seasoned Metroid fan. She recorded the effort noises for Samus Aran, but was never credited for it until a 2010 profile in Nintendo Power. We investigated the claims that she had voiced Samus and confirmed in our interview with Clark that it was her.
However, Samus actually had two uncredited actresses for the game, the other being Vanessa Marshall. Clark used her recorded death scream as he wanted one with a higher register to match Samus’s scream in Super Metroid. Vanessa had no idea she was in Metroid Prime until I told her in DMs on Cameo in early 2023.
James Dargie was an artist on the early iteration of Prime, and who left in 2001. He modeled the Gunship in Prime, with Nintendo giving him creative freedom over it due to his work designing ships for The Matrix and Final Fantasy. His version of the Gunship was inspired by Super Metroid’s Gunship and the Millennium Falcon. James’ other contributions include the statue in the Hall of the Elders, the Hive Mecha, and various animations and HUD designs. Perhaps because of his departure before the game’s restructuring, James was uncredited. He also designed a platforming section for Prime that was cut when the game switched to a first-person perspective.
Greg Luzniak is a concept artist who worked at Retro on Metroid Prime and the cancelled Raven Blade. Some of his concept art depicting Zebesians, War Wasps, the Parasite Queen and a Flying Pirate survived into the finished game, while other creature designs did not. He drew concept art for Kraid, the Sabergauth, and what may represent the Blood Monkey, a creature alluded to by Jack Mathews on Twitter and in our second interview with him. Greg left Retro in 2001, and this may explain why he wasn’t credited.
Ludovic Texier worked at Retro in the early days of Prime. He created the Arm Cannon for the original Samus model that was seen during the Space World 2000 demo, and early footage from 2001. Rodney Brunet skinned the Samus model, which was designed by Mike Sneath (who was credited, and whom we interviewed as well). When Gene Kohler joined Prime, he was asked to re-skin the original model, and later to scrap and replace it with the one we got in the final game. Both Ludovic and Rodney left Retro in 2001 and were not credited for their contributions.
Bernadette LaCarte was a principal artist at Retro from its inception until 2000. She conceptualized the original user interface for Metroid Prime, including the Samus Data Screen (file screen), but her work does not survive into the finished game and she was not credited. She is now a multimedia artist.
Jared Carew was an employee of NOA’s quality assurance department. During development of Metroid Prime, he worked with NOA Lot Check, which proofreads games and manuals published by Nintendo to ensure they meet internal guidelines. These employees are usually not credited, but on LinkedIn, Jared said that one of the games he evaluated was Prime. He did receive a special thanks credit in Metroid Prime Hunters.
Matt Kimberling, according to Jack in an interview with Dev Game Club, was a software engineer on Prime early in development. He left in 2001 and was not credited. He now works for Treyarch.
Lastly, numerous translators at Nintendo were left out of the credits despite their work. Nintendo has or had a policy where a maximum of three translators per language would be credited. The translation teams would decide who made the cut based on who could escape the Frigate Orpheon with the fastest time. This was revealed in a video from Hard4Games that showed debug test footage for the European version of Prime. Unfortunately, this shows Nintendo has a history of not giving their employees the proper credit.
Metroid: Zero Mission
Daniel Chay was a contract product tester at Nintendo of America who tested both Metroid: Zero Mission and Metroid Prime Hunters. Because of his contract, he was left out of the credits.
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes
Tommy Tallarico, Joey Kuras, Jennifer Hale and Vanessa Marshall’s work on Prime is reused in Echoes, but they remained uncredited. Jim Wornell, who designed Echoes’ logo, was not credited for it either.
Retro Studios outsourced some of their audio work to Danetracks, with the company itself receiving a credit, but none of the individual team members. Clark Wen named Bryan Watkins as the Danetracks team leader in our interview with him.
On the QA side, Marianna Sacra, the Lead Quality Analyst at Nintendo of Europe, and Richard/Rick Bauer, a QA tester at NOA, were also uncredited. Marianna included it as one of her games (along with Metroid Prime Hunters, in which she was credited) on her website, and Rick mentions it on LinkedIn. He also tested Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt.
Metroid Prime Hunters
Hunters had multiple uncredited developers. Again, Jim Wornell was not acknowledged for designing the logo, and neither was Daniel Chay (QA tester) as stated.
Alan Diekfuss and Jesse Bernoudy were UI interns at Nintendo Software Technology for four to five months in 2005. Perhaps because of their internships, they were uncredited. On LinkedIn, Jesse said that he collaborated with the 2D artist to make the UI in Hunters, including the HUD and Samus’s Gunship console, and he designed a suite of menu design tools.
Chris Hicks was a QA tester at NOA through the temp agency Mentor 4, and tested Hunters, but had no credit. On LinkedIn, he said that he led a group of 20-30 QA testers in “methodical and extensive testing” of the game’s online functions and multiplayer mode. His omission is likely due to working through a temp agency. Similarly, Jesse Nickell was a tester for Hunters through Aerotek who went uncredited.
Nicholas Tey and Ooi Chun Gee were employees of Silver Ant, an animation studio based in Malaysia. They created the CG cutscenes in Hunters and for NST’s cancelled game Project H.A.M.M.E.R. Shigeru Miyamoto’s intervention forced NST to sever ties with Silver Ant, and they were not credited for their contributions despite their cutscenes being retained in the game.
Rocky Newton was an artist at NST who created the Title Screen for Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt, and modeled, textured and animated Samus for it. First Hunt has no credits, and his role was not acknowledged in Hunters. He also created the 3D laser engraved Samus crystals given to every NST employee, including Richard Vorodi, as a celebratory gift for completing development.
Lastly, Trevor Johnson was another artist working for NST as an Environment Artist for Hunters and their other games. He was not credited for unknown reasons. As of 2021, he has returned to Nintendo as an Art Department Manager.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
Again, Tommy Tallarico, Joey Kuras, Jennifer Hale and Vanessa Marshall did not receive legacy credits.
Bobby Arlauskas, a contract sound designer who worked with Matt Piersall, was uncredited in Corruption while Piersall was. They later founded their own company, Gl33k, to design sound on contract for Retro’s Donkey Kong Country games. Bobby has since been hired by Retro full time, and he has worked on both Metroid Prime Remastered and now Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. He was credited in Remastered.
Karl Holbert worked for Retro Studios as a contract senior environment artist in 2005, very early in Corruption’s development. Possibly because it was so early, or because he worked on it through a contractor (Critical Mass Interactive, a defunct video production service), he was not credited. Karl actually worked before at Retro in 2000 to develop games for the GameCube, then known as Project Dolphin. Whether Metroid Prime was one of them is unknown; it is equally possible that he worked on any of the cancelled games.
Filippo Ghisolfi was a German localization tester for Corruption. In that game, only one translator was credited per language; in the German language’s case, Jan Peitzmeier. There could be dozens of translators who worked on Corruption whose names we do not know. Filippo, for his part, still works at Nintendo, now as a Senior Product Analyst.
Josh Stomberg was a QA tester at NOA through Aerotek for four months in 2007. He tested Corruption, but was not credited.
Jacob Casper was a QA tester at Retro Studios in the months before Corruption’s release. He wrote about his experience in blog posts on GameSpot, which are still online, under the screen name UnlivedPhalanx. Due to his NDA, Jacob was limited in what he could discuss, but he foreshadowed the Preview channel hours before it was added to the Wii Shop Channel and said he’d requested changes to the opening sequence. He was active on Giant Bomb up until June 2024. Whether Jacob’s blogging led to his omission from the credits is unknown.
Jeff Brown, a former NOA employee, said on Twitter that he worked on both Trilogy and Corruption, but he was not credited.
Metroid Prime Trilogy
John Sheblak is the Lead Graphics Engineer at Retro Studios. On his personal website, he indicates he worked on Trilogy, but he was not credited in the game. He did receive a credit for Metroid Prime Remastered, and he is now working on Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.
As stated, Jeff Brown worked on Trilogy and did not get credit.
Metroid: Other M
Three people went uncredited in Other M. Arthur Geraerts, who managed the Dutch localization process, Jing Wang, a brand strategist who handled the North American launch of Other M, and Rex Young, a product testing associate with NOA through the Aerotek agency,. In Jing’s case, she may have gone uncredited because she worked for GolinHarris on NOA’s behalf, rather than for Nintendo themselves.
Metroid Prime: Federation Force
Dustin Blackwell, a public relations manager formerly at Golin on Nintendo’s behalf, supported the launch of Federation Force and other 3DS games. Perhaps because of his contract role, he was left out of the credits.
Metroid Dread
Metroid Dread came under scrutiny after its release from developers who found they were left out of the credits. It emerged that MercurySteam has a policy where staff are not credited if they did not work on 25% of a game’s development. In Dread’s case, production lasted four years, so to receive credit each developer would have had to work on it for a year. When we spoke to MercurySteam about this policy, they indicated there are exceptions to this rule for “significant creative contributions”, which could include “designing a playable character [Samus], writing dialogues, lore.. anything substantially important to the game. On the 25% this is something based on our experience. Of course it can be seen differently elsewhere.”
Frank Morales worked for six months, half a year, at MercurySteam as a cinematic animator and did not receive a credit. Irene Escuer was a 3D character animator for Dread who worked at MercurySteam for less than a year. Without mentioning being left out of the credits, she posted about the game’s release on LinkedIn and hoped fans would enjoy it.
Manu Herrador, a 3D modeler, worked on Dread as well as Metroid: Samus Returns. While he was credited in the latter, he was not in the former. According to a congratulatory post he wrote on LinkedIn, he made some creatures and modeled the E.M.M.I. That sounds like a “significant creative contribution”, so why was he left out?
Natalia de la Fuente Mier worked for MercurySteam as a 3D rigger on Dread for less than a year between 2019 and 2020, and was not credited. She worked closely with the animation, programming and VFX departments of MercurySteam.
Odín Fernández Moreno was a modeler and texture artist for both Samus Returns and Dread. He was credited in the former game, but not Dread. On ArtStation, he shared his renders for Samus Returns, including all of Samus’s suits and various creatures, with and without textures.
Pablo Mendoza Peces, a concept artist, was left out of the credits for working just a month shy of a year on Dread. His artwork remained in the Metroid Mission Logs art book that came with Dread’s Special Edition. In a LinkedIn post, he wrote that he was proud of the game despite his disappointment with MercurySteam’s omission of him in the credits.
Roberto Mejías, a 3D artist, and Tania Peñaranda Hernández, a 3D character animator, were similarly vocal in their disappointment with being uncredited in Dread despite it using their work. Roberto had no idea he was left out until a friend who completed the game told him. He explained to Axios that he ran afoul of MercurySteam’s notice policy requiring 42 days minimum notice of resignation, longer than the standard two weeks. Roberto left for another company early and was financially penalized by MercurySteam as a result. He said another unspecified employee who left before 42 days was sanctioned as well.
Víctor Guerra Varela, who is now the Art Director of MercurySteam, was previously a concept artist there on both Dread and the studio’s MMO game, Spacelords. Presumably because he left MercurySteam before working on Dread for a year, Victor went uncredited. He returned as Art Director in October 2021, the month of Dread’s release.
Lastly, a Nintendo EPD employee went uncredited in Dread: Minoru Uenaka, who designed the high definition 3DCG for the game’s key art. Why he was uncredited is unknown. Uenaka-san completed his work in 2020 and detailed it in a post on the Japanese Nintendo recruitment website, which was translated by Nintendo Everything.
Metroid Prime Remastered
Metroid Prime Remastered garnered criticism from original developers Zoid Kirsch and Jack Mathews when the remaster’s credits omitted the original developers, instead including the following message: “BASED ON THE WORK OF Metroid Prime (Original NINTENDO GAMECUBE and Wii Versions) Development Staff“.
Ashley Rochelle, a new artist at Retro Studios who worked on the remaster, stated on Twitter that she had been credited under Retro’s special thanks despite doing significant work on remastering the environments. She further said that everyone in the special thanks had left Retro before the credits were made, one artist was left out completely, and so was any employee laid off during development.
Lastly, Elisabeth Pring, a former contract QA tester at Nintendo of America, tweeted that Remastered was her first game, but she was not credited for her work, something that made her and other testers cry.
Nintendo was proven to have a practice of only crediting the new developers of remasters when Donkey Kong Country Returns HD was released, and it contained a similar message as Metroid Prime Remastered at the end. What was worse is, because Retro Studios did not work on that remaster, they were never mentioned in the new credits at all.
When approached for comment by Eurogamer, Nintendo stated: “We believe in giving proper credit for anyone involved in making or contributing to a game’s creation, and value the contributions that all staff make during the development process.” Well that’s just not true, is it?
Shinesparkers wishes to thank every single developer across all Metroid games. Every one of you have been a part of a wider legacy of excellence in game design, music and atmosphere, bringing a remarkable warrior from space to our screens and creating lifelong memories with her. Thank you for all that you do. See you next mission!
Written by: Roy