So a bunch of guys from Iguana (one of Acclaim's development houses) headed by Jeff Spangenberg leave to form a new company called Retro Studios. Since it's fairly common for talented game designers to leave large companies and form their own, this normally would be of little relevance to most people (at least until they saw some actual games in development). What's interesting here is that instead of becoming independent, developing for a number of systems (particularly such profitable ventures as the Playstation or the PC), Retro Studios is taking shelter under Nintendo's wing, developing solely for the big N. Even more interesting is that they aren't going to make a single Nintendo 64 or Game Boy game.

That's right, Retro Studios is developing games for Nintendo's next generation video game system. According to their website, the company is looking to hire new employees, including game designers, programmers, artists, and managers. The company is looking to build a staff of 100 or more people in five development teams. With "top talent from some of the finest developers in the world" (as said by a spokesperson) and Nintendo's guidance, Retro could very well be one of N2000's star developers (as Rare is to the Nintendo 64).

Right now there's not much information on Retro's upcoming games, but their website does give a clue. Among the positions they hope to fill are some for sports game designers. Given Nintendo 64's lack of a sports lineup when it launched, Nintendo is probably looking to fill that genre with some original titles from Retro Studios. There's little more information than that, I'm afraid. We'll have to wait and see what comes out of this alliance.

Oh yeah, what's the Treehouse? The Treehouse is Nintendo of America's liason to second-party developers. While there are different degrees of assistance that they give, having Nintendo watching over the shoulders of second-party developers certainly increases their potential to release a quality game.

Read all the details at Next Generation Online
Visit Retro Studios