I got my start in this industry by almost pure luck. I was doing IT style work with a friend of mine, contracting for the state and others, and I came across an advertisement for Iguana. They were looking for people with art experience, and computer experience, but maybe not have merged the two together yet. I applied and they put me through a test, made me an offer, and it just continued on from there.

The early days of Retro are pretty simple: the Directors at Iguana had decided to get rid of Jeff. Since he was the one person who helped me get a memory map, which helped ensure the success of QBC ’98, the gears started turning. We actually beat Madden that year, so when they got rid of Jeff, and put the person in charge that I had to fight to make QBC in 3D (instead of just sprites) as the new head of the studio, I knew it was time to leave. We’d just finished QBC ’99 (I was the Lead after what Brian Watson and I did to bring QBC in 3D to fruition. The new studio head removed my name from the credits) I packed my office, called Jeff the next day and said alright what are we doing? At that point, a few more people started calling, and while nobody was ready to hop on just yet, we started trying to think up names, and line up a backer. There were a couple of candidates: EA and Nintendo. I had a job offer at that point with Nintendo Technology Development (Howard Cheng’s group) up in Seattle, and that if he took EA’s money I would take the job with Howard. If he took Nintendo’s money I’d stick around. We ended up going with Nintendo (Thx Cindy Armstrong!), and I stuck around. My Checks listed me as: Employee #00002. I still ended up working at NTD for Howard Cheng eventually (a couple of times), and really enjoyed working with that group, more than any other of my career. It was a great bunch of people, and I was really impressed by Nintendo.

Editor’s note: Cindy Armstrong was the CFO of Retro Studios when it first started. She is now a consultant for multiple game developers.

I really didn’t have an opinion either way, about first person vs third person. I thought first person was kind of cool because you get to be in this suit, and I just thought that was awesome, but there’s also good arguments for 3rd person as well. I think the bigger issue, and the larger discussions, were around the Morph Ball and what was your view like then. That was an iterative process, trying to find out what that looked like, what it felt like, and how to [adjust] your orientation during the transition. It was an interesting back and forth, and it’s one of the things in game development that I really enjoy: solving interesting problems.

There were a few differences, the main difference originally was going from third person of MetaForce, to a first person Metroid. Another major graphical change was the rustic style change to a more high-tech ‘clean’ look. If you’ve seen the video that I posted, with Cindy Crawford’s face, that was the original suit which had a more ‘Star Wars’ and less ‘Star Trek’, a little more beat up. Then it started to look kind of like Half-Life in space, no visor yet, very brown… it needed help.

So when Metroid was stumbling with its look, Steve Barcia gave me the game, and asked me for any ideas, while he was called back to Japan. I wasn’t a designer, but I came up with quite a few. When he came back from Japan I presented him with the document (I’ll send it to you) with a bunch of ideas. Everything from the HUD to what happened to it: steam, water dripping down, reflection of Samus, and all sorts of stuff. At the same time Steve came back with a document that Japan had given him that listed almost identically what i had said, you know all the bells and whistles that I had mentioned, that really made it feel like you’re in the suit. So I can’t say that they were all mine exclusively, but they didn’t come from Retro.

Why did I choose Cindy Crawford? Well, I’ve always been a Cindy Crawford fan to be honest, but she’s also got great eyes and more importantly great eyebrows. The whole reflection idea I got from playing as Buzz Lightyear. In and old N64 Toy Story game [Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue], I was looking around, and I caught Buzz’s reflection in the glass and i went “ohh!” and that’s what led me down that whole rabbit hole.

I didn’t do much mocap for Samus, It was mostly for testing purposes. I had done her rig, I had actually created an auto-rig for bipeds that I got into a little tiff with ILM about because it very closely mimicked their rig, and I was teaching it at Siggraph. I worked with a fantastic animator, Martin L’Heureux, who had come from there, and we created something that mimicked their controls, and “happy accidents”. It could automatically set up on any character, and I had a written a suite of tools to retarget it all within Maya. Since I’d never seen their rig, we just went back and forth until it responded right. I shot the mocap so I could put it on to her rig, and test out that tool-suite called cnMotools. I also wrote some stuff for her Varia Suit, for the [Morph] Balls, so that they would automatically move properly, but with a little override layer built in, just in case you needed to tweak it a little bit.

It was just time. I got another offer from Howard Cheng, and I wasn’t going to miss out on it again. I left with nothing: no payoff, no stock, nothing. I just walked away.

I was happy to finally see it released, but it was a little too painful to actually play. So it took me years to play once it came out on the Wii to be honest, and I loved the controls. I love it and I think it was really well done. I think there’s still some stuff that could have been done better, but all in all it’s a stellar achievement in the history of console games.

Yep, lol.

It took us six months from start to finish, we only shot for about two months, maybe 2 1/2 months. But the rest of it was just CGI, compositing and color correction. His [Robert Rodriguez, the director[ small group of five of us at Troublemaker did everything, from pre-production to production. Ideas, storyboarding, 3D storyboards, animatics, you name it. But we only got credit as, you know, “Troublemaker”, it never quite sat well with me. The main thing I remember is needing to get glasses after Spy Kids 3D was over! But also starting development on what eventually led to my contribution of what eventually became the 3DS. I actually showed Robert part of the movie shrunk down. I wrote a viewer (in assembly, C++ was too slow) actually for the Game Boy Advance and played it for him in pure anaglyph. It was remarkable how well it held up at that size, and that’s kind of what led me down that rabbit hole.

Designing consoles is like designing an original game, on steroids. It has to be able to be all things to all people, and it’s such an ambiguous space that it’s hard to even conceive of it at once. It can be difficult for a lot of people because it’s not a task based workflow, where you can just go: OK, do this, do this, do this. It’s a lot of being creative, being mentally and technically creative, and that takes to the right environment, more than anything else. Nintendo and its ideas foster that creativity, so it was fun, it was the most enjoyable time of my career.

That being said, what I know is limited in perspective. Personal views, on group events.

Oh absolutely! I’ve played it on the Switch, the new side-scrollers, all of them! I’ve enjoyed them all.

Honestly, I think the remaster is awesome! I love to see the graphical improvements. I wish we had access to some of the abilities of today’s hardware back then, and I don’t know of any artist (or tech artist) that doesn’t look back on anything they’ve done after a few months and go: “Wow. Wish I could do that!” Or “I’d have done this”. So I think it’s great especially if it keeps interest in the franchise, and the franchise keeps moving forward.

It got me excited for the franchise again, especially that last little bit! Keep in mind, Nintendo will only show what it wants you to see. Can you imagine what surprises they’re still holding back?!

I’m currently the Director of the Technical Art department at Certain Affinity. I still do some IC work here and there, but I’m mainly concerned with systems and bring up the next generation of TA’s. Since my wife passed, I’ve only gone to companies where friends were working, and I had been asked to join and help. It hasn’t always worked out.

With Nintendo in charge, rest assured its in good hands. Stay Tuned!