The Legend of Zelda is one the most successful video game franchises to ver come from Japan. It’s been mostly made by Nintendo studios in Kyoto, with some added efforts by Capcom, which is based in Osaka.
Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s top game designer and lead creator of the 25-year-old Zelda series now sees a team of Americans he’d be interested in tapping: Retro Studios.
“We have already collaborated with Retro for the Metroid Prime series in the past,” Miyamoto told Wired. “And I think when we talk about any other franchise, Zelda might be a possible franchise for that collaboration.”
Retro is based in Texas and is fully-owned by Nintendo. The studio did most of the development for the three acclaimed first-person Metroid Prime games, the last of which was released in 2007. Following the departure of three of its top creators, Retro nonetheless collaborated with Nintendo’s Japanese home office to create the well-regarded 2010 Wii side-scroller Donkey Kong Country Returns and played what appears to have been a junior role in collaborating on the creation of this year’s Mario Kart 7.
It is hard to nail down just what the meaningful differences would be from having an American studio work on Zelda rather than only Japanese ones, but Miyamoto himself was vague in telling Wired what he thinks the difference may be: “People often say that video games made by Western developers are somehow different in terms of taste for the players, in comparison with Japanese games. I think that means that the Western developers and Japanese developers, they are good at different fields. And that resulted in a different taste in [their games].” He said that Retro was assigned the development of certain tracks in Mario Kart 7 that suited their style.
Retro’s output has been well-reviewed. It’s hard to say what their hallmarks are, aside from impressive graphics. All of their games have been among the most visually-striking released by Nintendo in the last several years.
Miyamoto’s comments about Retro doing a Zelda confirm nothing, of course. But he is the guy who has said in the past that it was his idea to offer Metroid to Retro and suggested they make a first-person game.
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