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Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze Enguarde

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze almost brought back Enguarde, it’s been revealed.

Enguarde the Swordfish originally appeared in the first Donkey Kong Country game, and later appeared in the following sequels. He was also present in Donkey Kong Land 2, Donkey Kong Land III, and Donkey Kong 64. Other than an appearance in Donkey Kong Barrel Blast as a rideable animal buddy, he hasn’t been seen since. However, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze nearly brought him back.

Metroid Tactics

It’s been revealed Paul Tozour, who previously worked on the Metroid Prime series, once pitched a Metroid Tactics game for Wii internally at Retro Studios. Did You Know Gaming has the scoop on the title.

The pitch came about in late 2007, not long after Retro Studios wrapped up work on Metroid Prime 3. The story was planned as a prequel set long before all other games in the series. Furthermore, it would have marked “the very moment when Samus Aran first separates from the Chozo who raised her from childhood, encounters humanity, and becomes a bounty hunter.” Samus, along with an elite team of highly trained Galactic Federation troopers and bounty hunters, would look to stop the incursion on different Galactic Federation planets like Norion and Earth before battling the Space Pirates at their outpost on Planet Zebes.

Metroid Prime GameCube dev kit freezer

Believe it or not, the developers at Retro Studios working on Metroid Prime back in the day actually put their dev kit in a freezer while attempting to fix a particular issue that affected a small portion of GameCube owners.

Jack Mathews, a technical lead engineer that worked on the project, shared this story while reflecting on the 20th anniversary of the game. Nintendo had shipped a “bad batch” of GameCubes that affected the CPU, but it turns out that Metroid Prime was the only game that wasn’t working properly. Because of this, animated objects weren’t acting the way they normally would on any other console.

Several weeks ago, Did You Know Gaming? released a video providing details on a couple of cancelled spin-off games that Retro Studios (of Metroid Prime fame) had pitched to Nintendo for The Legend of Zelda series. Since then, they’ve managed to acquire new information on one of these two projects via an official 22-page document, a strategy game planned for the Nintendo DS titled Heroes of Hyrule.

The game would have featured a plot mostly exempt of Link, in which a young boy named Kori finds a book that, unbeknownst to him, was used to seal away Ganon 100 years ago. He would have gathered pages of the book unaware of its true purpose in order to learn more about the stories held within, which detail the adventures of a Goron, Rito, and Zora hero who venture to Ganon’s Castle in a effort to free Link from his evil clutches.

Heroes of Hyrule

Did You Know Gaming? has secured information about another Zelda spin-off that Metroid Prime developer Retro Studios pitched to Nintendo, which was known as Heroes of Hyrule.

The game would have a story involving three heroes that lived 100 years in the past: a Goron, a Rito, and a Zora. The trio actually went on a mission to save Link. Link himself was actually captured while trying to rescue Princess Zelda from Ganon. That’s where the three heroes come in. Eventually 100 years pass, and Link becomes an old man that owns an antiquities shop.

metroid prime Autechre

According to Sean Booth of Autechre fame, the music duo almost got a chance to create the soundtrack for Metroid Prime.

The information was revealed during a Twitch AMA with one fan asking about how Booth as well as Rob Brown – the other half of Autechre – were included in the game’s credits. Booth responded by saying that they almost handled the soundtrack for Metroid Prime, but the role eventually landed with Kenji Yamamoto, who handled music for other entries in the series.

metroid prime 1 remaster switch

According to Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb, who has a track record of leaking gaming news, a remastered version of Metroid Prime will be released on Switch this holiday. Additionally, Metroid Prime 2 and 3 will be appearing on the system at a later date as well.

Grubb shared what he’s heard about previous Metroid Prime games for Switch during his “Game Mess Mornings” show today. He started out by sharing the following:

While Metroid had a strong return late last year in the form of Metroid Dread, the series has been quiet when it comes to Metroid Prime 4. Nintendo did reveal the game’s existence way back in 2017, but a couple of years later, announced that the project’s development had been rebooted entirely with Retro Studios taking the helm.

There’s still not much in the way of news regarding Metroid Prime, but there’s been at least a slightly interesting discovery today. Over on Retro Studios’ Twitter page, some art has appeared as it’s showing up on the company’s banner – check it out below. It’s not any sort of indication that something is happening in the near future, but perhaps it can be interpreted as a positive sign. At the very least, Retro is still tinkering away on Metroid Prime 4 in the background.

In recent years, Nintendo developed a number of games under the 2.5D concept. These are titles that are completely modeled in 3D, but the gameplay functions primarily in two dimensions. That’s not the only definition of the term, though let’s stick to that.

The 2.5D style is a great way to bring back a lot of classic games from Nintendo’s huge catalog of hits. Personally speaking, there are two games in specific that I consider the best 2.5D creations from Nintendo: Metroid Dread and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. Both are amazing in a lot of aspects, and in today’s video, I discuss how well they explore the many possibilities provided by 2.5D. You can check out the video down below.

retro studios wii

We all know today that the Wii was one of Nintendo’s most successful consoles, but early on, the system garnered its fair share of doubters and people that were concerned about how it would perform – including Retro Studios.

Bryan Walker, who was with Retro starting with Metroid Prime 2 before going on to be a senior producer on Metroid Prime 3 and then the director on Donkey Kong Country Returns, revealed to Kiki Talkz that the company was “a little concerned” after seeing the console’s specs. It was only after Nintendo unveiled the Wii Remote and saw massive interest during its showing at E3 2006 that the staff at Retro Studios started to understand Nintendo’s approach.

According to Walker:


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