Donkey Kong Country Returns and Metroid Prime Were Built on the Same Engine

When Nintendo revealed Retro Studios as the developer of Donkey Kong Country Returns, fans were a bit puzzled to say the least. After all, it seemed like quite a large leap from a 3D, first-person adventure title like Metroid Prime to a 2D platformer like Returns. Well, it seems that the leap may not have been as significant as we may once have thought! In a recent interview with GamesTM Magazine, Retro Studios president Michael Kelbaugh revealed that Donkey Kong’s latest adventure was built on the same engine as Samus’s first excursion into 3D.

“Specifically answering your question about 3D to 2D, what you may not realise is that we constructed the levels in Donkey Kong Country Returns and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze in very much the same manner as we did the levels in Metroid Prime,” said Kelbaugh. “However, levels in Returns and Tropical Freeze are much, much larger and more detailed. And I’ll share this with you; we used the Metroid Prime engine and tools to develop Returns, so technically, the lessons learned on Metroid Prime were directly applied.”

While game studios are constantly applying what they’ve learned from one project to the next, it’s still interesting to discover just how much seemingly disparate titles can influence one another. Perhaps we’ll see even more of Metroid Prime‘s influence when Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze releases next month.

Source: Siliconera