Metroid Database.com

1up reveals the latest Famitsu interview with Yoshio Sakamoto and Yousuke Hayashi. While some of the information is a restatement of what is already in the video interviews, there are plenty of new insights and surprises:

• Search view was necessary because it allows players to find hidden items, passages, and other secrets: "Metroid is all about having suspicious-looking hiding places and finding items there," what MDb founder TJ Rappel has called "the Metroid feel."
• Same number of items as in any other Metroid game (100 items), though most players will only find about 30% on the first play-through.
• The developers strove to make transitions between cutscenes - and even saving - as seamless as possible, "ensuring the player isn't cut off from the scene and can get into the story."
• Once the game is completed, a 'theater mode' is unlocked that allows you to view every cutscene seamlessly linked together with prerecorded gameplay footage. The developers wanted to ensure players would not miss anything in the story. At nearly two hours (over an hour of which is cutscenes), that's a feature-length film!
• Yousuke Hayashi sees Other M as a new Team Ninja title - not just another game in the Metroid series.

I have to say, this 'theater mode' sure has me intrigued! Again, the smooth transitions between cutscene and gameplay is something Project M has been restating over and over: you shouldn't be buried under a mountain of cutscenes that interrupt you every five minutes. This is Metroid, NOT Xenosaga.

UPDATE 07/29: Gonintendo has a translation of the article (or rather, the responses) as well as a scan of the article itself! Not much new that wasn't in the 1up article, but worth the second look all the same! Thanks to Robert Aitor Mboro for the tip!

Until next time...
Captain Commando