When Retro Studios was driving high on the success of the Metroid Prime trilogy, not many expected them to jump off the space bounty hunter’s ship and into the jungle of Donkey Kong Country Returns. This amazing platform game rebooted the Donkey Kong Country series from SNES with beautiful graphics, tight platform games and funky music, and it’s no surprise that a sequel followed suit. But fans were looking for a different game than Retro Studios at the time – one Zelda game.
In an interview on the Kiwi Talkz podcast on YouTube, Eric Kozlowsky – who worked as an artist on Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze during his time at Retro Studios – talked about how the team handled the rumor mill while working on the upcoming sequel.
Kozlowsky had previously worked on Brütal Legend and Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, so his varied back catalog and experience working on adventure games lead many to believe that Retro would work on a brand new Zelda game. Kozlowsky jumped between a few studies in the run-up to his tenure at Retro, talking about how this affected people’s expectations and how he had to adapt.
That was the fun part when I joined Retro and everyone was looking at my portfolio and like “oh my god he’s been working on Uncharted, it must mean Retro is working on a Zelda game” and I’m like, no, I’m just a versatile artist. I could do realistic things, I could do comics. I am adaptable and I believe that in order to have longevity in this industry, you need to be adaptable.
When asked if he and the other Retro developers went online and looked at these rumors, Kozlowsky jokingly admitted that they actually did, and that they laughed at it, but that it could also be frustrating because it created ” false expectations “.
I think it happened when we announced Tropical Freeze, you know, everyone was like “oh, they’ve been working on a Zelda game, they’re working on a Zelda game”, it’s like … no. And we advertised Tropical Freeze, and it looks phenomenal, and it looks great, and then people’re like, ‘Oh, but it’s another Donkey Kong,’ and then, you know, people’re geeks at NeoGAF or whatever. , and you’re like “oh man”.
So while the developers were able to laugh at the rumors, Kozlowsky felt it was “frustrating when it [rumours] continues a little too long “, which is understandable, for Tropical Freeze turned out to be a great game.
However, there is reason to believe that Retro Studios was working on a Zelda title, even though this was before Kozlowsky’s tenure in the company and during the Wii era. Concept art from the canceled project came out to the public last year in a huge leak.
You can listen to the full interview with Eric Kozlowsky on Kiwi Talkz ‘podcast below.