The Nintendo Treehouse product development division seems to share the same red-nose jolliness as the rest of kid-friendly Nintendo in its various gameplay livestreams, but former Silicon Knights president Denis Dyack says it has a dark side. "They were like these alien gods that no one could touch," Dyack recalls. "They didn't answer to anyone. They just played games and rated games, and they just didn't give a shit." Eternal Darkness producer Henry Sterchi talked to Dyack about Treehouse like it was a one-way portal to Hell, telling him that, although Nintendo of America loved Eternal Darkness, they were certain Treehouse wouldn't. Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes producer says Kojima and Miyamoto's secret is that they work "really f**king hard" Bloober Team CEO says the studio's Nintendo-exclusive horror game adds a new twist "that could only exist on Nintendo hardware" N64 dev spent 2 years making games for the ill-fated 64DD add-on, only to have Nintendo continually say they sucked "'They're brutal,'" Dyack remembers hearing from Sterchi. "'They don't like anything. They're super hypercritical, but that's OK, we can deal with it.' And I remember the way he said that – it didn't give me confidence." Sterchi apparently warned Dyack not to speak to anyone from Treehouse – he wasn't even supposed to know who its members were – as the institution that is Nintendo Treehouse was considered to be that serious, that violent of an adversary. "Everyone was terrified of them," Dyack concludes. But at least "Nintendo generally picked good games" – and Eternal Darkness eventually became one of them. Revealing a 3D Mario game too early would be "dangerous," former Nintendo marketing leads say: "Think about Metroid Prime 4."