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A former Retro Studios developer has detailed the crunch he and his team went through to get the original Metroid Prime finished on time in 2002.
Crunch is a hot topic in video game development right now. The process of a studio and its employees working tirelessly to make sure a game hits pre-determined targets and release dates. Although it is only an issue that has been recognized by most relatively recently, it has been a problem for decades.
That was recently highlighted by Mike Wikan, a former employee of Retro Studios. During an appearance on Kiwi Talkz, Wikan discussed the nine months of hell he and the rest of the team working on Metroid Prime went through to make sure the first 3D game in the series launched on time. Wikan describes the nine months prior to Prime's release as a “death march”.
“I had two times where I was there for 48 hours straight with one hour of sleep, and then a couple of 36 hour days,” Wikan revealed. The team was expected to work on the game 24/7 for nine months prior to its launch. By the time Prime finally hit the market, multiple members of the team who worked on it were ready to quit, including Wikan. That's when Nintendo stepped in.
“Nintendo realized what was going on, and they came in and took over the company,” said Wikan. Nintendo of America's Michael Kelbaugh was put in charge of Retro Studios, a position he still holds to this day. Work practices improved drastically after Nintendo bought Retro, and Wikan says even though crunch still happened, it was minimal compared to the nine months prior to Prime.
The ongoing wait for Metroid Prime 4 should prove as evidence that crunch may well be a thing of the past entirely at Retro. Nintendo is taking its time on the next game in the series, briefly mentioning it earlier this year. It has eased the pressure on the Prime 4 team even more by announcing Metroid Dread. A game more than a decade in the making that will bring a close to a different telling of Samus's story when it launches next month.