Another feather in Retro's DK cap

While many of us would love to work 10,000km away from your boss, when you're creating new instalments in some of Nintendo's best-loved series, it's not ideal. That's the situation at Texas-based Retro Studios, but after years of working with Nintendo's Japanese headquarters the developer has learnt a valuable skill: how to think like Nintendo.

Edge issue 227 will feature an interview with the Texan studio in which Donkey Kong Country Returns supervisor Kensuke Tanabe speaks about the increasingly streamlined collaboration process between the two teams:

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The job itself hasn’t changed so much, but when we worked on the first Prime I was focused on the controls, and the visor system was something I thought up with Retro. So I would do a lot of brainstorming, firming up specs with them. Moving onto Donkey Kong, we were doing a lot of the same things.

But one thing that really has changed over the years for us is that Retro has gradually come to really think like Nintendo. So there’s been a lot less need for explanation and supervision.

If Retro could bottle and sell that skill, it'd be able to make countless millions from Nintendo's competitors. Bet Iwata and company are glad the studio belongs completely to Nintendo, then.

[source next-gen.biz]