Wow, didn't know that tidbit. That's pretty telling that they could make a game look so good with such a small development team, especially in comparison to today's AAA/HD dev teams who number in the hundreds or so.
In my opinion, the difference is the knowledge of what does and doesn't work (you might say talent, which they have in spades) combined with the amount of time spent in iteration and the willingness to redo/throwaway large amounts of work. This gets harder as time goes on due to the time required to build the art content. As mentioned earlier in this thread MP2 had about fifty people, doing the same game (in terms of design) now would probably require three times that due to art/animation requirements.
It really is a milestone accomplishment. I think what helped is that they approached Metroid Prime 2 without having to "change up" the formula or add things around. They had a game engine that worked damn well and they could build on top of that. They pretty much looked at it as I suppose one could look at as an "Expansion" of a PC game as they used to be, though were able to jam a huge amount of content into it and make a full game out of it, and just adding all kinds of crazy ideas and designs that they could do since they thought of the game as something that mainly people who finished Prime 1 would play.
The Phazon Mines is probably the most "Action-packed" section of the game as the place is pretty much the Space Pirate HQ on the planet, and thus it has all the toughest enemies in the game. If you have trouble with the invisible Security Drone miniboss, go find the Wavebuster
After Prime 3 during the development of Trilogy. He was the best.
The Phazon Mines is probably the most "Action-packed" section of the game as the place is pretty much the Space Pirate HQ on the planet, and thus it has all the toughest enemies in the game. If you have trouble with the invisible Security Drone miniboss, go find the Wavebuster
If you're halfway through, at least try to reach Sanctuary Fortress. It's the greatest level in Metroid history and really redeems the game for me.
After Prime 3 during the development of Trilogy. He was the best.
That really sucks. To lose such a valued and beloved co-worker is always a terrible thing.After Prime 3 during the development of Trilogy. He was the best.
Seriously. I mean, look how freaking buggy camera systems are these days in "modern games" with even simple third-person cameras and not even mentioning transitioning between perspectives like is done so in Prime. Because yeah, it could (heck, maybe "should") have had loads of buggy issues with clipping and such. But the Camera is always on point and you're never really disoriented when going from First-Person to Ball and vice-versa. Truly a great accomplishment.
That sounds awfully like my first time playing through the mines. I no doubt died on that guy once or twice and then got the got through the Dynamo maze by the skin of my teeth. Good times
I intend on playing through the entire game so I'll eventually experience it. Greatest level in Metroid history? Well, that's quite a large claim.
North America.
I got the .bin file from the gamefaqs page renamed it like it said. Had the sd card on my laptop deleted everything I had on it, created a folder named private, inside that one created one named wii, inside that one one named title, inside that one one named r3me and inside that one I have the data.Bin file. I put the sd card on the wii u and I went to data transfer and only my external hdd appears but not the sd card. Am I doing something wrong? I haven't tried starting the game yet though I might if nothing else works.
After Prime 3 during the development of Trilogy. He was the best.
His camera system was and probably is so far ahead of its time. The amount of thought and time he put into it was staggering, working late hours even during MP3 to fix camera behaviour in the craziest situations. It would be very difficult for anyone to redo that camera system. His book on game cameras certainly would not be enough to cover the nine years of fixes and black magic.
I feel ya. I didn't bother with the fetch quest and final bosses in Prime. I'm gonna go through it in Echoes, though, because I've never played it before.
I've played the first game three times. It just gets better each time. You tend to notice all these little tidbits that you didn't the previous time. Agreed on the soundtrack, too. Damn.
Enjoy, my friend.
That's some amazing insight. I would hope that all his hard work is somehow still being utilized at Retro given he created some groundbreaking engineering. It really shows how dedicated people at the team were in delivering only the most polished experience for users they could. I mean, like this guy says:
I definitely have tried to "break" the camera just because I couldn't believe how good it was. And if I did, well, I didn't notice it at all. It's just truly amazing how seamless it is.
That is very interesting. I wonder if Lathentar could elaborate on that in general terms without getting into detail? That'd make it even more of an accomplishment that they actually only were in full production for only 6 months for this game.