Should Retro Studios Make A Zelda Game?

In the short space of no time at all, Retro Studios, Inc. had risen from a small, aspiring second-party game development company in Austin, Texas to the world-renowned studio that had brought one of the strongest games to the Nintendo GameCube platform, Metroid Prime. It was this technical marvel which had garnered Retro Studios with the commendable praise they deserve, and as a result of this success, the studio wasadopted directly by Nintendo as a first-party developer. From then on out, it was a sure thing that the company had become one of Nintendo's most valuable assets - a development team comprised mostly of Americans, Nintendo had left it to Retro to cater for the Western audiences with the rest of the Prime trilogy.

The studio had done just that, and before long the first Prime game and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes werepioneering the 'Cube for hardcore gamers - some would argue they even put up a worthy fight against Master Chief's UNSC fleet on the Xbox, at least for a time. Retro had worked on the Metroid series for so long that they eventually became directly associated with it, taking it all the way to the Wii with Prime 3: Corruption. Wishing to pursue other interests, the company came out with a revamp of the Donkey Kong franchise with Country Returns on the Wii in 2010, and had in turn successfully reinstated Nintendo fans' faith in the true King of the Jungle. Currently, they're co-developing Mario Kart 7, to be released for the Nintendo 3DS later this year.

There's no denying it, Retro Studios make some great games. But could they handle a franchise as huge, expansive and utterly precious as The Legend of Zelda? It's a big question. In the series' twenty-five-year life-span, there have been so very few developers of whom Nintendo has actually trusted with the intellectual property rights of the franchise, to develop a fully-fledged entry in the legendary series. Philips was the first company to obtain these rights, to which they assigned two (too-often-considered) incompetent software companies, Animation Magic and Viridis, to develop three entries in the Hyrule fantasy: Wand of Gamelon,Faces of Evil and Zelda's Adventure. And, well, you know how the story goes, they just couldn't wait to bomb some Dodongos, and they ended up dropping an oversized turd on the franchise, which Nintendo had to ultimately clean up, by giving Philips and the CD-i console, the boot. We in the Zelda fan community make every attempt not to recall these absolutely horrid and embarrassing games.

Undoubtedly, the most notable software developer to make a contribution to the Zelda frachise would be Capcom - specifically, a division within the company, known as Flagship. To further expand the series in the handheld market, Nintendo had assigned Flagship to develop a series of immense, linked Game Boy Colour games not unlike Game Freak's Pokémon games, to which they came out with the fan-favourites, Oracle of Ages andSeasons. Continuing with the "linking" mechanic known to handheld games in those days, Flagship went on to produce the multi-player experience Four Swords (which is to be re-released as a 3DS download this year) and an A Link to the Past remake on the Game Boy Advance, and later, the brilliant Minish Cap, a 2D adventure that mimicked the 3D games in terms of scale, plot, cinematics and design (and contrary to popular belief, Flagship did not develop Four Swords Adventures). The Flagship company eventually closed in 2007, never to produce another Zelda title, an outcome many dedicated Zelda fans deem as highly unfortunate.