| This article is written from the Real Life point of view |  |
This article is about the real-life CEO of Retro Studios. For the in-universe Galactic Federation Marine named after him, see [.
| “ | My job is to try to mediate between our friends at NCL and Retro staff. I need to try to train Retro staff - or at the time, needed to train Retro staff to think like a Nintendo developer. | „ |
—Michael Kelbaugh[1] | ||
Kelbaugh in his office at Retro Studios.
Michael Kelbaugh is the President and CEO of Retro Studios in Austin, Texas. In this capacity, Kelbaugh is also the Executive Producer of the Metroid Prime series. He appeared in the Developer's Voice featurette promoting the Metroid Prime Trilogy compilation on Wii.
Early career[]
Kelbaugh served in the U.S. Navy from 1983 to 1989, managing communications for the United States Naval Special Warfare Command and the USS Pledge (MSO-492). He joined Nintendo of America in 1988 and became Director of Business Development.
By early 2000, Kelbaugh was involved in nearly all of Nintendo's bigger first- and second-party releases, working to manage and remove bugs for the QA cycle before the games shipped to retail. Even as recently as 2002, he was still overseeing testing at Nintendo's American headquarters as Testing Director for the recently released Metroid Prime.
Kelbaugh had previously worked on the original Donkey Kong Country series while he was employed at Nintendo of America. However, he is uncredited in the first game.
Metroid Prime series[]
Prime's release marked a turning point for developer Retro Studios, and with Nintendo's backing, they were able to make two sequels, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and later Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and Metroid Prime Remastered. In April 2003, Kelbaugh was appointed the new president of Retro Studios, succeeding Steve Barcia, and began overseeing the rest of Retro's work on the Prime franchise. Kelbaugh assisted in the composition of Corruption's music, playing bass.[2]
Michael Kelbaugh appears on a list of deceased Federation Marines in the G.F.S. Valhalla trailer video that was shown in the Metroid Prime 3: Corruption Preview. The body appears in-game in the Ventilation Shaft.
GameSpot interview[]
Transcribed from this video.
| “ | We really, um... we are a Nintendo studio. When I think of who made Metroid Prime 3 I think of the Metroid Prime team. I don't really think of Retro as an individual entity, of our friends at Nintendo as an individual entity, I think of the Metroid Prime team. Some of that team happens to be in Japan, some of it happens to be in Redmond, Washington and we all get together a lot to build great games.
It's not a typical developer-publisher situation because Retro is Nintendo and we are constantly held to that same bar that EAD is held to, that all of the Japanese developers that make Nintendo games are held to, constantly. I really want to stress it's a team effort. It's not Retro's ideas and NCL's ideas, it's really how do we make the best game and how do we utilize everybody's skills to do that? We don't consider ourselves a Western developer, we consider ourselves a Nintendo developer. We just happen to be in Texas. Understanding Nintendo's design philosophies, what they care about quality is absolutely powerful, because if you approach a Nintendo title with the Western style of development mentality you will not succeed. Every little pixel counts and that is much different from the way Western developers develop games. |
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Trivia[]
- Kelbaugh disliked Jack Mathews' first design for the Dark Visor, due to the "trails" it had, which looked 16 bit to him.[3]
Gallery[]
External links[]
References[]
- ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a962z4jmDs
- ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20090228072301/http://www.music4games.net/Features_Display.aspx?id=174
- ^ Kiwi Talkz. "#116 - Jack Mathews Interview (Metroid Prime Trilogy, Prototypes, Business, Armature Studios etc.)". YouTube. November 26, 2021. Retrieved June 8, 2022. (starts at 23:16)