Former Retro dev talks about Metroid Prime 2 & 3 struggles, and the cancelled Project X

The Kiwi Talkz podcast is back once again with another heaping helping of Metroid talk, this time coming from former Retro dev, Paul Tozour. Tozour talked about Metroid Prime 2 and 3, along with the cancelled Project X. You can see the finer points of the interview below.

• nearly every boss battle Retro completed and sent to Nintendo would get changed
• the final battle with Dark Samus at the end of Metroid Prime 2 was remade twice
• Tanabe originally wanted dozens of dark Samus’ flying around, but that caused a performance issue
• Retro would show Nintendo what they were working on, and Nintendo would request major changes
• a number of Retro devs were Halo fans, which led to it influencing Metroid Prime 3
• these devs would butt heads with Tanabe, as he didn’t care about Halo
• the first Metroid Prime 2 boss battle with Dark Samus was Retro’s attempt to make a boss encounter similar typical to a Western first-person shooter
• Project X was meant to show Nintendo that they didn’t need Nintendo’s oversight, but Retro eventually cancelled this project