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Jeff Spangenberg is an American entrepreneur and the original founder of Retro Studios. However, he left the company in 2001, before development of Metroid Prime had commenced. Spangenberg is also the founder of Iguana Entertainment (best known for Turok), Team Design, Punk Development and Topheavy Studios (best known for The Guy Game).
Retro Studios[]
Spangenberg founded Retro in 1998 as a second-party developer to Nintendo. Retro was poised to develop mature titles for the then-upcoming GameCube console. Spangenberg believed that Retro would become an American equivalent of Rare. On May 2, 2002, Nintendo purchased $1 million worth of stock in Retro Studios from Spangenberg, which gave them full ownership of Retro and turned it into a first-party developer. While Nintendo officially stated that Spangenberg sold his shares and left the company to "pursue new business interests," it is believed that Nintendo forced Jeff from his position due to unethical behavior (see below).
Employees of Retro during Spangenberg's tenure report that he was frequently absent, and between late 2000 and early 2002, delegated much of his role in Retro's projects and did not supervise them. This caused communication between Retro Studios and Nintendo to suffer. Additionally, in summer 2001, photos of Spangenberg in hot tubs with topless women surfaced on a website registered to a Retro Studios mailing address. The site and the photographs disappeared quickly afterwards. Nintendo bought out Retro from Spangenberg shortly after the photos were discovered. Spangenberg was succeeded as Retro president by Steve Barcia.
Since Spangenberg's departure, Retro had released the Metroid Prime series to great critical acclaim, and revived the Donkey Kong Country series as well. An anonymous source for n-sider stated that they had heard from friends still working at Retro Studios that the corporate culture had vastly improved, and credited the complete shift of the upper management.[1]
Subsequent career[]
Following his ousting at Retro, Spangenberg went on to found Topheavy Studios, best known for The Guy Game, which became highly controversial due to its sexual content and inclusion of an underage girl. Spangenberg has not worked in games since.
Trivia[]
- Zoid Kirsch said he liked Spangenberg when he first joined Retro Studios, but found him to be a "strange guy" after Metroid Prime was released.[2]
- According to Jack Mathews, Spangenberg told him that Retro would be making a Metroid game, and joked they would make a third-person game called Retroid to appease staff who wanted Prime to be in that perspective.[3]
References[]
- ^ http://www.n-sider.com/contentview.php?contentid=267&page=8
- ^ Zoid Kirsch (ZoidCTF). "Jeff was a strange guy. I remember really liking him when he hired me to work there in 2000, but then things got weird after we shipped Metroid Prime." 27 July 2020 4:32 p.m. Tweet. https://twitter.com/ZoidCTF/status/1287848366597013504
- ^ Dev Game Club. "DGC Ep 355: Metroid Prime Bonus Interview with Jack Mathews!" July 19, 2023. Retrieved July 25, 2023. https://www.devgameclub.com/blog/2023/7/19/dgc-ep-355-metroid-prime-bonus-interview-with-jack-mathews (starts at 36:26)