Metroid Prime 4’s producer has story plans for multiple future games, but the series will have to go on without him.
A lot of Nintendo’s longest running staff members are approaching retirement age and, sooner or later, they’ll have to step down and relinquish the reins to younger faces.
At 72, Super Mario and Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto is already less hands-on with individual games and more focused on Nintendo’s film efforts, such as the Super Mario animated movies and the upcoming live action Legend Of Zelda.
Now, Kensuke Tanabe, 62, who’s been with Nintendo since the 80s, is retiring from the company following his work on Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, leaving behind his plans for a whole new storyline for the series.
Tanabe’s first credit is as director and course designer on 1987’s Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic, which was significantly altered and sold in the West as Super Mario Bros. 2.
He then went on to have a very respectable career across a variety of Nintendo franchises. He was the scenario writer on two beloved Zelda games – A Link To The Past and Link’s Awakening – and co-producer on the original Metroid Prime.
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Tanabe would later become producer on the entire Metroid Prime subseries, as well as the more recent WarioWare games (which have been great) and the modern Paper Mario games (which have been not so great).
That’s just a few examples of his work, though, and according to an interview with Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream (which has been uploaded and shared to Chinese social media site Weibo), Tanabe has decided to call it quits after fulfilling his role as producer on Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.
Interestingly, according to that interview, Tanabe had long term plans for Metroid Prime, particuarly regarding villain Sylux who debuted in 2006 spin-off Metroid Prime Hunters.
‘Considering my age, I felt that making this Metroid Prime series might be my last chance. Therefore, I conceived and planned this project as the ‘first instalment of the Sylux Saga,’’ said Tanabe.
This is also why Samus’ confrontation with Sylux is left unresolved at the end of the game. But Tanabe has said he will ‘no longer be able to participate in the production of the series,’ and only hopes that Rita Tabata – assistant producer on Prime 4 – and developer Retro Studios will continue the storyline with a sequel.
While it’s too early to tell if Nintendo will greenlight a Metroid Prime 5, the promise of more Sylux isn’t all that enticing. Despite years of build-up, he was ultimately a lame duck of a villain who barely appears in Prime 4, with his backstory, which is kept back as a secret ending, proving highly unconvincing.
Tanabe admits he expected the game’s ending to illicit some negative reactions from players, saying, ‘Personally, I’m more likely to be impressed by movies that leave a lasting impression, like a thorn in my side, than those with happy endings. So this was also a challenge: could I achieve that in a game?’
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There is no doubt a storied tale to tell about Metroid Prime 4’s development, between Nintendo restarting development, design choices antithetical to the series, and just how long it took to come out, but we’re unlikely to ever hear the full truth of it.
Tanabe hasn’t gone into too much detail, but he does acknowledge that the game ‘took longer than I had imagined to complete’ and expresses regret at having to cut certain gameplay segments and events that would have ‘deepened our bond’ with the Galactic Federation soldiers. Perhaps other aspects of the game were heavily altered or abandoned as well.
‘It’s been 40 years since I joined Nintendo. This Metroid Prime 4 will be the last game I work on at Nintendo,’ concludes Tanabe. If this truly is his final work at the company, it’s not the most glamorous highlight he could’ve gone out on.
It’s a shame, as his early work at the company was extremely important and he’s obviously very talented. But in Paper Mario (over which Miyamoto still has a strong influence) and Metroid Prime he may have been handed something of a poisoned chalice.
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