Metroid Database.com

Fellow Metroid fansite Samus.co.uk tipped off its visitors to Nintendo's sneaky new marketing for Metroid Prime 2: a couple of websites that, so far, have loose ties to the new game. The Channel 51 site, in particular, has some "photos" of alien life which are clearly screenshots from the new game, and some alien autopsy-type photos with some creatures that look kinda familiar.

Amusingly, the person claiming to be behind Channel 51 identifies herself as "Samantha Manus," which is just an "-antha Man-" away from being "Samus." Even a WHOIS search for channel51.org turns up that name as the registrant of the domain. If that's not cute enough, she's from Sumas, Washington (believe it or not, there is actually a small town called Sumas in NOA's home state -- check it out).

Although the sites contain links to other "legitimate" sites, so far it seems the main promotional sites are channel51.org and orbislabs.com. Not sure if some of the other sites that are linked from these sites are part of the gimmick, and I dunno if this is going to turn into some sort of ARG (Alternate Reality Game) like the ilovebees thing that those Halo guys are doing. More as it develops.

--TJ