Iconoclasts is now available on Steam!

Join renegade mechanic Robin and uncover the secrets of a dying planet. Explore a big world filled with intricate puzzles, interesting characters and menacing bosses in a beautiful platform adventure that tells a personal story about faith, purpose and the challenge of helping people.

– Former technical lead engineer on Metroid Prime Jack Mathews on if Metroid being exclusive to Nintendo will affect future sales. 

In an interview with Shinesparkers (a Metroid Prime fan community), former technical lead engineer on the first three Metroid Prime games Jack Mathews looks back at his experience developing each title. 

When asked what the hardest thing to program in the games were, Mathews mentions the struggle to maintain 60 frames per second in SkyTown during Metroid Prime 3. “I remember the first time the concept was shown to me, I tried to get the area killed,” He recalls. “We had to write a bunch of tools to support it and make the artists jump through a bunch of hoops. But even today, I’m still awestruck when I get to SkyTown and am super proud at what we all accomplished.”

He admits, however, that the challenge wasn’t so much about programming, but practicing discipline for engineering and art. “The Metroid Prime series’ environment art was (and often still is) second-to-none, so it was a constant balance between keeping the game running well and still looking amazing,” Mathews explains. “This meant making sure that every artist was running the game on the console, that QA had the tools to spot and surface frame rate issues.” 

With the hardships of development also come the criticisms. Mathews acknowledges that there were things he would have liked to do differently if the team at Retro (the development studio of the first three Metroid Prime games) had more time and money. Some players have speculated over the years that Metroid being a Nintendo console exclusive may have hindered the games’ success in the long run.

But Mathews disagrees. “I feel like we could have built more, spent more, and made a cooler looking game on other consoles with more time. Would it have sold much more on more platforms? I’m not so sure about that any more,” He says. “The easy answer is to look at the critical success but low sales and blame the platform, but I think that answer is a bit of a cop out.”

Since Nintendo announced that Metroid Prime 4 was in development (although there have been no confirmations over which studio is developing it), Mathews expresses his hopes for the next title in the Metroid series. “It may be nice to see what a fresh team with fresh eyes does with it.”

Be sure to check out the entire interview over at Shinesparkers.

Starting at 2 p.m. PT today, members of the Xbox One Preview Update Alpha ring will begin receiving the latest Xbox One system update (1802.180116-1916). This update includes brand new features, such as expanded inactivity shutdown options and the “Do not disturb” option. Read on to learn more about these features (and features introduced last Sunday!) as well as fixes and known issues in the latest system update.

New Features:

Inactivity Shutdown Options

• We’ve added additional inactivity shutdown options to the Power mode & startup menu. In addition to shutting down the console after one or six hours of inactivity, you’re now able to select options for two, three, four and five hours. To enable the inactivity shutdown options:
  
  1. Under Options, select the “Turn off after” dropdown menu.
  2. Navigate to Settings > Power & startup > Power mode & startup.

Do Not Disturb

• Sometimes all you want to do is avoid all distractions and focus entirely on your game. We’ve included a “Do not disturb” online status, which will suppress notifications and let your friends know that you’re not available for another game or activity right now. To enable Do not disturb status:
  
  1. Open the Guide and select your profile icon to the far left.
  2. Select My profile.
  3. From the Appear online dropdown to the right, select Do not disturb.

Mini Game Hubs

• With Mini Game Hubs you can access great content for the games you’ve played recently from a Game Hub without ever having to leave the action. Mini Game Hubs provide an easy way to see friends who are currently playing, upcoming Achievements, Looking for Group posts, and more. To find the Mini Game Hub, launch the Guide and look for a new icon to the right of all Game tiles in the Home section.

Scheduled Themes

• You asked—we listened! We’re excited to announce that we’ve added the ability to put your themes on a schedule. In addition to choosing either the light or dark theme, you can now schedule a time to automatically switch between them. Simply follow these steps:
  
  1. Navigate to Settings > Personalization > Theme & motion.
  2. Select Scheduled from the “System theme” dropdown.
  3. Select the times at which you want the light theme to start and end.

Guide Enhancements

• A new icon will appear in the Guide.  The Guide Game Pass Discovery Tile (the “Surprise me with a random Game Pass Game tile”), now shows in Guide.

Fixes:

Home and Guide

• Additional fixes to address an issue which could cause Home and Guide to fail to display or crash.

Installation and Achievements

• Resolved an issue which caused the progress bars for downloads/installations and achievements to display incorrect information.

Known Issues:

System Update

• When downloading a system update, you may get stuck at a loading screen and only see the loading spinner. Workaround: If this occurs, please DO NOT try to factory reset or reboot the console—this is an issue with the update service and should eventually resolve on its own.

Guide

• The Guide may sometimes lose focus during navigation.

Party Chat

• Party chat sometimes crashes in the Guide.

Games Installation

• Games that are installed fail to launch. Workaround: If the games are installed to an external drive please copy the game to the internal drive or attempt to delete the title and redownload to fix the launch error.

Display

• We are investigating the inaccurate RGB colors that have been reported when displaying in 4K HDR mode when playing a UHD disc.

Avatars on Home

• Users can now represent themselves as an Avatar on Home by changing their settings. To do so, simply navigate to My profile > Customize profile > Show my avatar.

Tournaments

• The left and right navigation for selecting date and time during Tournament creation is currently reversed when the console language is set to Arabic or Hebrew.
• Left and right navigation in Tournament twists is reversed when the console language is set to Arabic or Hebrew.
• Left and right navigation in the bracket view of Tournaments is reversed when the console language is set to Arabic or Hebrew.

Consoles like the NES, SNES and Game Boy may just be fashioned from circuit boards, chips and plastic, but they’re a portal to a seemingly limitless world of possibilities and will, for many players, have provided a wondrous backdrop for entire childhoods.

London-based artist Jing Zhang was recently commissioned by Sony to create an infographic for its “Parents’ Guide” which added a little more magic to the reality of gaming tech, and she was then inspired to do the same for other classic hardware – mostly Nintendo-based. The images crack open some of the most iconic consoles of all time and add a little bit of fantasy to the internals.

The series features the NES, SNES, Game Boy, DS, Switch and Wii.

Even though we’re perfectly aware that all that lies inside our beloved consoles is cold, hard tech, we’d much prefer it if they contained some of the elements shown above.

LEGRAND LEGACY: Tale of the Fatebounds is Now Available on Steam!

A love letter to all time favorite JRPGs with a fresh take on classic turn-based combat and tactics. Wishlist us now and discover why Legrand Legacy is the “Most Promising Game” of the year!