Nintendo subsidiary Retro Studios has hired Bharathwaj “Bat” Nandakumar as the lead engineer for Metroid Prime 4, according to VGC. The Indian programmer has a decade of experience at Activision working across every Call of Duty: Black Ops titles released.
He was reportedly hired in April and specializes in online games, tools, and gameplay programming. Nandakumar worked as a specialist engineer and senior software engineer for Call of Duty developer Treyarch and held a technical lead position on the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.
Retro Studios is working on the development of the reported Metroid Prime 4 and has been recruiting since the announcement of the new science fiction and action game in 2019. Nintendo announced early last year that it decided to “restart development from the beginning” for Metroid Prime 4 with the producer Kensuke.
Kyle Hefley, a veteran from Halo, also became the studio’s new lead character artist in August. Hefley is responsible for Master Chief’s design in Halo 5. He worked as the senior character modeler for the Halo series and modeled many of the armored super-soldiers and alien warriors that appeared in Halo 4 and 5. He’s also participating in the creation of the upcoming Halo Infinite title.
Adad Morales, Bryan Erck, and Nicholas Wilson are the most recent names recruited by Retro Studios. They worked on games like Battlefield Hardline, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Borderlands 3, respectively, as well as for New Super Lucky’s Tale developer Playful Corp.
Other roles have been filled by Mark Capers, who worked on New Super Lucky’s Tale, James Beech from Crysis 3 and DC Universe Online, and Stephen Dupree, who worked on Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.
Retro Studios’ jobs page is still advertising for several roles, such as lead animator and boss/AI designer, among other roles. Metroid Prime 4 is part of the Metroid franchise that first launched in 1986.
