Mike Wikan, a former senior game designer, reveals more about what its really like at Retro Studios
28Late in the production of our last big video about Retro Studios and “why they haven’t made a new game in seven years”, an interview with former Retro game designer, Mike Wikan, was published on YouTube by KiwiTalkz. The more than one hour long interview made gaming news headlines as Mike Wikan gave amazing new insights into the development history of Retro classics like Donkey Kong Returns and the Metroid Trilogy, as well as new information about what life was really like during Retro Studios’s more productive days. It’s a fantastic interview and its obvious that Mike Wikan is a brilliant manager and team leader and anyone interested in any of the above really ought to give it a listen.
The original interview can be found here:
https://youtu.be/hlbeRLmfCHk
For OUR purposes, however, this interview was timely and profoundly helpful because it corroborates our view that Retro Studios has been stifled by its unique dual-management from both local managers (in Texas) and mangers and developers at Nintendo of Japan. Mike Wikan gets SPECIFIC with some of the astonishing ways Japan has inserted themselves into Retro’s production, to mixed results. At this point I feel as though we still need more information before we can just baldly blame Japan, or the close relationship Retro has with Japan, but it’s undeniable that its, at the very least, a big part of the richer story that must be considered.
Anyway, Mike Wikan is the man. The more we learn about this dude the more we love him…..and thank you to KiwiTalkz for the outstanding interview! Keep up the great work.
- CCP Management
To see our original video about Retro Studios go here:
https://youtu.be/I6gd573TVaQ
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