James Dargie

This article is written from the Real Life point of view

James H. Dargie is an art director who worked for Retro Studios during Metroid Prime’s development. He left early in 2001 before the game shipped.

Dargie was responsible for modeling the Gunship in Metroid Prime, with Nintendo giving him carte blanche to design it due to his experience making ships for The Matrix and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It took heavy inspiration from the Super Metroid iteration of the Gunship, and the Millennium Falcon, with a tribute to the latter added in the form of guns under the Gunship.^[1] Dargie personally refers to the Gunship by the name Thrush Eterna and compares it to a "little immortal bird".^[2]

Dargie also designed the Hall of the Elders Chozo Statue, Hive Mecha (which he refers to as a Chozo Totem), all of the Iris Doors, numerous FX and animations, HUD designs and an unused room, the Reactor Room. Dargie was uncredited in the final release.

He was also part of the Metaforce development team before the game was turned into Prime. Dargie jokingly did not like the appearance of the Nintendo GameCube when it was finally shown to Retro Studios, partly because it was not actually cubical in shape.^[1]