Metroid Database.com

FINALLY! Someone at NOA is paying attention! Wii.com has finally released an official translated version of the Iwata Asks interview featuring Yoshio Sakamoto, Yosuke Hayashi, and Ryuzi Kitaura, the directors of Project M. Give it a read; there are some direct-feed videos scattered throughout the interview as well.

Here are some highlights from the interview:

• Sakamoto felt the ideas his ideas for Other M were difficult to understand by the internal development teams at Nintendo. Therefore, Team NINJA was asked to help.
• Kitaura and Hayashi were both taken aback when given the opportunity to work on a Nintendo game.
• When Kitaura showed Sakamoto his storyboards for the first time, Sakamoto went completely silent. Kitaura felt that he was a failure, but in fact, Sakamoto was actually moved speechless by Kitaura's storyboards.
• Over 300 storyboards (2000+ panels) were created for the game.
• Kitaura created 10 CG teams at D-Rockets, and made them compete over the quality of their animation by showing teams' work to other teams and telling them they had to match that as a "minimum standard."
• Though Hayashi was the youngest of the group, Sakamoto and Kitaura felt his passion and drive as a game developer was more in-tune with that of an old-school, mature developer.
• Kitaura emphasized a "seamless" experience and really pushed the importance of making the Samus from cinematics and the Samus from the gameplay the "same Samus."
• Hayashi: "For this project, we at Team NINJA created Samus's body, but it was Sakamoto-san that made the blood pump through her veins, and Kitaura-san that provided her soul. And so, while it is an action game, I think it has a genuine story to enjoy, and I think it has the power to stir the emotions."

--Infinity's End