Today I’d like to talk about Metroid: Other M, a game that’s being made through a collaboration between TECMO¹, the movie production team led by Kitaura-san, and Nintendo. Thank you for coming, everyone.

Thank you.

Now then, let’s have some introductions. We’ll start with you, Sakamoto-san.

I’m Sakamoto from Nintendo. I made the initial plans for this project, and have been co-operating with TECMO on the gameplay aspects and Kitaura-san on the movie aspects of the game during its development. Of the two, I’d say there is more work for me on the movie side this time. For example, as development progresses, we have to take great care with everything from choosing the characters’ lines to compiling the sample movies so that the gameplay and the movies are seamlessly integrated. This to ensure that the style that we aimed for with Other M works out smoothly as a game.

I have been watching this project from the sidelines, as it were, and I thought that the transitions your work went through were really interesting, Sakamoto-san. At first there was a period where you did nothing but think about the most basic aspect of the whole plan: ‘What is Metroid?’. After that, there was a period where you worried about what to do with the story. As soon as development had got under way, to an extent, you would dive into the details of the movies in a way that made me wonder ‘He’s thought this much about it?’

Yes, I did dive in... (laughs)

All right then Hayashi-san and Kitaura-san. Would you introduce yourselves now, please?

Of course. I’m Hayashi, from TECMO, LTD. I’m the team leader of Team NINJA². Sakamoto-san asked me to do this project, and I became the director for Metroid: Other M.

I’m Kitaura, representing D-Rockets co., ltd.³ I mainly work as a director of TV commercials, but I also make in-game movies for Tecmo, and I’m working on this project as the director of the entire movie portion. Thank you for inviting me here today.

Thank you all very much. Now then, I’m sure many people out there have the impression that Tecmo’s Team NINJA and Nintendo are as different as any two video game companies can be. What’s the story behind you asking Team NINJA to come on board as your development partners in the first place, Sakamoto-san?

When I was first thinking of the plans for this Metroid game, there were things that I found difficult to get people within Nintendo to understand. I think my ideas sounded outrageous, or seemed to be pipedreams. Things like wanting to create a steady 3D space, despite the player scrolling horizontally to progress through it, or wanting to have super-long movies, but having them seamlessly integrated with the plot so that the player follows the story while playing. I did think it was hard for people to understand such things when I mentioned them.

When Nintendo makes games, we usually start by creating the game systems and features, rather than the story or the appearance of the world. This time, however, because you wanted to present the story first, people initially found it difficult to understand the order of your approach. Is that right?

I think so, yes. That’s why there was a period when I backed away from that approach myself. During that time, as I wondered ‘How am I going to hammer this into shape?’, I thought I’d try having a meeting with Team NINJA, since I’d been playing Ninja Gaiden⁴, and it had really changed my impression of 3D games.

In what way did your impression of 3D games change?

Even though the game was very much focused on motion, the controls were simple, and it was actually really comfortable to play. I therefore thought that a team who could create such a game could also make the game I was thinking of a reality.

And when you actually met Hayashi-san, how was it?

My first thought was ‘He’s so young!’

(laughs) You really are young, though, aren’t you?

I’m twenty years younger than Sakamoto-san.

He may be twenty years younger than me, but when I actually met him and talked to him, I really felt he had the spirit of an old-school video game maker. I could see that he always puts himself in the player’s position, and always thinks seriously of ways to make the playing experience more enjoyable.

And Hayashi-san? How was it for you to meet Sakamoto-san?

First off, Sakamoto-san said ‘I want to create a Metroid that can be played with just one Wii Remote’. I didn’t really understand what he meant.

Just being approached regarding the development of a Metroid game must have been a shock for you, Hayashi-san, but to then be told ‘I want to make it playable with just one Wii Remote’... It must have made no sense at first.

That’s right. When I listened carefully to what Sakamoto-san had to say, though, I realised that he wanted to create an action game that would appeal to modern players, and that he wanted to do it using simple controls.

We’ve always made action games, but we inevitably end up thinking of game designs that use every available button. So although the player can do more things, there’s a tendency for the game’s controls to become more complicated.

What Sakamoto-san had in mind, however, was to make the controls as simple as those of a NES game. When I asked Sakamoto-san ‘So it’s ‘a NES game with the latest technology’, right?’ he replied ‘That’s exactly what it is’.

Hayashi-san understood what I was saying almost immediately. What’s more, he was really familiar with Samus and the Metroid games, so I thought ‘Samus will be all right in this guy’s hands’.

Of course, lots of other Team NINJA members apart from me had played the 2D action Metroid games when they were first launched, and I think that’s why they could catch on quickly too. Even when we entered into discussions about the exact game specifications, we were able to share ideas with relative ease. Furthermore, we had various fixations, or philosophies, regarding Metroid from an action game maker’s point of view. That’s why the challenge of making ‘a NES game with the latest technology’ in the Metroid style was really interesting for us, and we considered this project a really great opportunity.

So you didn’t feel that Sakamoto-san’s idea was a pipedream, Hayashi-san?

No, I didn’t think that was the case at all.

All right. I’ve got some questions for Kitaura-san as well. How did you feel when you were first asked to work on the development of a Nintendo software title?

`Huh?! Are you joking?!’ – Something like that.

(laughter)

When I first met Kitaura-san, he was really bemused and asked me, ‘Why are we going to work together?!’ (laughs)

So Nintendo and TECMO was an implausible combination for you, Kitaura-san?

Yes, because the images I had of the two companies were the exact opposite. As a result, I felt very strange as I looked at the Metroid: Other M scenario. I remember thinking ‘this is overwhelming...’.

What kind of things did you think were overwhelming?

Just the amount of material was overwhelming, of course. What’s more, all the work we’d done before this project had aimed for high-quality CG, not really related to video game content. For this project, however, we were requested to make the parts of the game that the player controls the same quality as the movies, in order to make them seamless. Furthermore, Sakamoto-san said that ‘In this game, I want to depict the emotions of a woman called Samus’. The way we’d been working previously, it would have been impossible for us to depict a woman’s world. As a result, we pretty much stopped working on making commercials, which was our main business, and decided to focus only on this project. You could say that I ‘dove in’ as well – just like Sakamoto-san (laughs).

Is it correct that until this project, Team NINJA had always made their own games internally?

That’s right. We sometimes cooperated with external experts in movies like Kitaura-san, but we basically made our games within the team.

Considering that you’d always done things by yourselves, therefore, didn’t you feel constrained on this project - working with Nintendo, and not being allowed to freely make your own decisions?

Not at all. We could discuss anything we wanted with Sakamoto-san while making the game, so we didn’t feel ‘constrained’ at all. Of course, there were times when we received instructions such as ‘it would be better this way’ about things that we’d made, but rather than feeling constrained, the impression we got from this was that we’d gained a really powerful partner that could help us improve on the things we’d been making by ourselves.

Does that mean that your personal definition of ‘Nintendo-esque’ changed, Hayashi-san?

This may sound a little bit impertinent, but I thought ‘we make games just the same way as Nintendo’.

Ah, I thought you’d say that. Actually, after speaking to Sakamoto-san about this, I got the feeling that your approach to making things had a lot in common. These things can’t be seen from the outside, but you soon realise them for the first time once you start working together.

That’s right. We originally produced games internally, so we have values that developed during this process. When Sakamoto-san told us about the concept of this Metroid, however, and after we’d discussed a few things with him, we got the impression that his values weren’t any different to our own. Team NINJA’s stance is: ‘Let’s try making it first’. In this project too, when it came to deciding how Samus would move, for example, we said ‘How about we show her running first, then we’ll think about it’, and Sakamoto-san replied ‘Let’s do that, I’d love to see her run’. For us, creating moving objects first and then actually getting your hands on them in order to decide their pros and cons is the easiest way of doing things.

Is that how you’ve always done things at Team NINJA?

That’s right. It’s probably not good form for developers, but we’ve never really prepared anything that could be called detailed specifications beforehand.

Actually, drawing up detailed specifications before development starts is not necessarily the main way of doing things even for internal Nintendo projects. Personally, I don’t think you can say that specifications are necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. I think the appropriate approach varies depending on the composition of the development team and the game they are making. As opposed to the method of having a complete vision in mind from the beginning and creating the game according to those specifications, there are lots of things in game-making that you have to try creating, or try getting a feel of, before you understand them. Nintendo have been making games in this way, which is why I know that detailed specifications aren’t always the best approach.

We’re the same in that respect. Even if you create a solid set of specifications, during development your focus gradually shifts as you’re working on the game, and eventually the specifications become meaningless. As a result there are a lot of projects that end up almost as a different game to the one detailed in the specifications.

All right. What things were you conscious of during the making of Metroid: Other M?

We’re trying things with Samus’s movement in this Metroid game that haven’t been attempted before, and at first we were getting a lot of directions along the lines of ‘that’s not the way Samus looks’. Making Samus look good when she moved, though, is exactly the kind of thing we excel at, so we were able to really go for it and polish it up.

That was one part of the game on which Team NINJA couldn’t be budged, wasn’t it?

That’s right. Another thing I became really conscious of was the control aspect. In the action games we’d made previously, almost every button on the controller was used to make our human characters perform all these different actions. As a result, we felt that perhaps we were putting some players off.

When Sakamoto-san told us about his ‘one Wii Remote only’ idea, therefore, we could see that this was a real chance for us.

That idea became the ‘NES game using the latest technology’ concept that you mentioned earlier, didn’t it?

Yes, we thought that if we could make a game that could be controlled with just one Wii Remote, we’d enable players who were put off by complex controls to enjoy 3D action games as well.

Why were you so focused on this idea of ‘just one Wii Remote’, Sakamoto-san?

Metroid⁵ was originally a game for the Family Computer Disk System, and so could be played using just the +Control Pad and two buttons. Back then the game had simple controls: Move with the +Control Pad and use the two buttons to jump and shoot. That’s why I decided this time to make a game that just used one Wii Remote and didn’t use the Nunchuk. Even in a Metroid world that ended up being constructed in 3D, the player feels more affinity with Samus when controlling her with the +Control Pad, even more so than with the Control Stick.

In other words, the Nunchuk was unsuitable for creating a ‘NES game with the latest technology’?

Yes. One Wii Remote doesn’t really have enough buttons, though. There were times when some problems, such as trying to implement special actions, could potentially have been solved by connecting the Nunchuk. Even then though, we had an understanding that we would never ‘resort to the Nunchuk’.

That’s right.

What I was conscious of, therefore, was ‘automation’. Instead of forcing the player to use complex button controls, we’d enable them to accomplish many things using just the Wii Remote by ‘automating’ various actions in the game.

For example, using the +Control Pad to move means that players are limited to vertical, horizontal and diagonal movement – eight directions. However, by automatically changing the camera angle on the game side, we can stop the player from feeling restricted in this way, and can allow them to enjoy being immersed in a 3D world that’s not limited to two axes.

Along with ‘automation’, we also made ‘reaction’ one of the themes this time. Many features came about from this.

What kind of features came about from making ‘reaction’ a theme?

The Sensemove, for example. When players are attacked by an enemy, they naturally try to evade the attack. Jumping and moving normally away from attacks, however, does not make for especially beautiful evasive manoeuvres.

Since we couldn’t use another button, we decided to try using the +Control Pad. Under ordinary circumstances, the +Control Pad is used to move, but when the player is attacked by an enemy, or when a projectile approaches them, ordinary movement is replaced with a Sensemove, allowing the player to evade enemy attacks at the last minute.

It actually looks really cool. The player will get the impression that they’re playing really well! (laughs)

I’ve actually tried it myself and I got that impression! (laughs)

Evading attacks in such a cool way feels really good. Another big theme in the Metroid series is ‘exploration’.

By exploring every nook and cranny, players can discover various items and so on, can’t they?

They can indeed. Since the Wii Remote can be used as a ‘pointer’, we decided to use this feature for exploration. Point the Wii Remote at the screen, and the viewpoint changes automatically. We call this the ‘Search view’. We make use of 3D space for this, enabling players to fully enjoy Metroid’s characteristic exploration aspect.

It’s simple to progress without paying attention to them, but actually the objects surrounding the player contain all sorts of hidden information. I think this game is absolutely chock-full of places that the player might pass by without noticing at first, but then go back, thinking ‘actually...’. I also think that such places will make experienced Metroid players think ‘Ah, this right here is Metroid gameplay.’

‘It looks like I can go over there’, or ‘this place looks suspicious’, or ‘what if I set a Bomb here, or a Super Missile there?’ – the sense of finding clues like these and trying out various things is what Metroid is all about.

Hayashi-san, was implementing the ‘just one Wii Remote’ control system a challenge like none other you’d had before?

Yes, I think so. I think that if the buttons are available from the start, you’ll inevitably end up using all of them. This time however, we were bound by our ‘no resort to the Nunchuk’ concept from the very beginning. Though there was a lot of trial and error, I think the result is that we’ve created a game that will be enjoyed not only by fans, but also by those who had previously been reluctant to play 3D action games. I think they’ll get the feeling that ‘even without all those buttons, you can still play this kind of game’.

Kitaura-san, the first step for you was reading the scenario that Sakamoto-san had written, wasn’t it?

Yes, that’s right. Before meeting Sakamoto-san, I read the scenario and prepared some storyboards. Since this was going to be a long-term project, I felt that it was important for us to have an affinity for each other. In fact, I was prepared to resign from the project if Sakamoto-san didn’t seem to like my storyboards when he saw them.

You had that much faith in your storyboards?

I did. That really was my intention. When Sakamoto-san saw the storyboards, however, the room fell completely silent.

There was no reaction at all?

No. Sakamoto-san was completely silent, so I thought there was no hope for me. I thought I should just go home there and then.

That wasn’t it at all! (laughs) The truth is that I was so inspired I couldn’t put it into words. I think anyone would become speechless if they were presented with storyboards that were so far beyond their wildest dreams!

(laughter)

So the storyboards were so much better than you expected that they had you lost for words, Sakamoto-san?

That’s right. Kitaura-san’s passion was really apparent in those storyboards. That’s why I decided to ask him to be responsible for all production, not just for the movies, but doing production for gameplay parts too. The game’s actual opening movie, incidentally, is exactly the way it was on those original storyboards.

So you got really earnestly involved with the production of the storyboard images, Kitaura-san?

I did, yes. I think I drew more than 300 storyboards in total. The image count was over 2,000. By this stage, I was also accounting for camera work and action, so they became really elaborate production storyboards. I think I took over six months to finish them.

That’s a little bit like the scale of a feature film or novel, isn’t it?

There was nothing ‘little’ about this scale! (laughs) Furthermore, because it was important to make the action parts and the movie parts seamless, I couldn’t just go ahead and work on the movies by myself. I’d be shown the game during development, and if Samus’s movement was faster in-game, for example, I had to adjust the movies to match the game. Also, let’s say we made Samus’s appearance in the CG movies too shiny. Then Sakamoto-san would say things like ‘She looks like a sports car...’

I suppose that meant she was too shiny! (laughs)

As a result, we had to deliberately add dirt and adjust the atmosphere surrounding Samus to make her blend in better. What’s more, the scenario that Sakamoto-san wrote was full of Samus’s thoughts and feelings.

This time I wanted to create an intriguing depiction of Samus’s humanity, showing that she’s not just cool, but also kind and sympathetic, and perhaps a little immature in her passion and earnestness.

...which is easily said, but such psychological aspects are the most difficult things to depict when rendering people in CG. That’s why I told my staff to carefully observe actresses’ eyes when they watched movies.

When you say ‘observe actresses’ eyes’, what do you mean exactly?

I think the movement of the eyeballs is extremely important when it comes to expressing emotions. I think you’ll notice when you watch our finished movies that characters’ eyeballs do not remain still, but move around.

Do you always go to such lengths when creating CG, Kitaura-san?

No, this is the first time I’ve taken things this far. What’s more, when portraying a character’s thoughts and feelings, every single minute detail of their expression becomes very important. So for this project we included more joint-like ‘rigs’ in Samus’s face than usual, and really focused on establishing the movement of the muscles connected to them. As a result, we were able to render Samus’s expressions in a more lifelike fashion.

For the creation of the CG, I made about 10 teams and requested each team to do a different scene. I’d praise the team that had created the best movie, telling them ‘You’ve done the best work’. I’d then show their work to the other teams and tell them ‘This is the minimum standard’.

I see! (laughs) So in order to raise the overall standard, you had the 10 teams compete against each other.

That’s right. The teams had always been capable of producing excellent work, but they really tried hard to create high-quality movies in order to compete with each other.

You went to the motion capture studio as well, didn’t you, Sakamoto-san?

I did, yes. I was able to see the CG production process in the flesh, as it were, and I really learned a lot from going to the studio and watching Kitaura-san directing the actors while shooting the movies, for example. I also thought the cameraman was especially skilful.

He certainly was. Motion capture is primarily a method of recording movement data. This time, apart from the 52 fixed capture cameras, we also had a professional cameraman record the scenes, in order to record the movies as they appeared on the storyboards⁶. However, since these were temporary movies, we were asking him to shoot things like Samus in tights, or polystyrene creatures, and there was no set to speak of. These are the kinds of things that you usually hate asking professional cameramen to shoot.

Because the scenes that they shoot aren’t used as they are?

Exactly. It’s never easy to ask a top-level cameraman to shoot scenes that are later going to be processed as CG. This time, however, an acquaintance of mine came to me saying ‘That sounds interesting – can I do it?’

This cameraman usually shoots commercials.

As you can imagine, we needed someone with a sense of angles and camerawork for the battle scenes, so we were really lucky that he could do it for us.

What was Sakamoto-san like in the studio?

He stood close to me, checking the monitors. When we’d shoot a particularly moving scene, I’d ask him ‘How was that, Sakamoto-san?’, but he’d be completely silent - again.

Just like when he saw the storyboards for the first time?

Yes! (laughs) I was really worried, thinking ‘Oh no, he doesn’t like it...’, but then when I peeked at his face, his eyes were full of tears.

Oh my...

Well, the movie did show Samus in tights. (laughs)

(laughter)

Yeah... But weren’t you crying as well, Kitaura-san?

Well, your tears were infectious, Sakamoto-san! (laughs)

How did you see the relationship between Sakamoto-san and Kitaura-san, Hayashi-san?

Well, when they were explaining the movements on the storyboards, for example, there’d sometimes be a reference to an obscure old monster film that only the two of them would get.

So these references meant nothing to you, coming from a different generation?

That’s right (laughs). They’d say things such as ‘This part is just like Gyaosu⁷’ – I was none the wiser what they meant.

Ah, Gyaosu, eh? (laughs)

It was just the two of us who understood.

Actually, I’m a member of the generation that knows about Gyaosu as well... (laughs)

(laughter)

We had to answer questions as basic as ‘What is Gyaosu?’.

Still, I actually think Hayashi-san is the most grown-up of the three of us. He’s really cool, too.

In contrast, I’m a man of burning passion but just running around in circles. (laughs) Well, while it wasn’t just the three of us working on this project, I really got the feeling that our individual personalities and characteristics coordinated in a very comfortable way.

I’ll ask this question to the cool one, then. Hayashi-san, during the development of Metroid: Other M, when did you first feel ‘Wow, this is great’?

Those kinds of reactions came at the moments where it felt like we’d just put the different pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together. During the early stages of development, the action parts and the movie parts of the game were created separately, and there was a lot of anxiety about whether the two parts would fit together well. Around the end of 2008, we put the beginning of the game together. As it happens, everything slotted into place really well.

The action and the movies went together seamlessly, didn’t they?

Yes, they did. When I saw that, I felt I’d seen a little of the ‘action game that tells a proper story’ that Sakamoto-san was always talking about, and I thought ‘This could really work’.

What about you, Kitaura-san?

I was exactly the same as Hayashi-san. The action parts were created on Hayashi-san’s side and the movies were created separately on my side. Sakamoto-san was able to see both sides objectively and I’m sure he had an image of how they would look when put together, but when I actually saw them combined, I thought ‘Nothing like this has ever been done before’.

Even though you created a lot of storyboards, and despite the fact that you always knew what the next scene was going to be when you created CG, it was still a surprise for you when you saw them put together, then, Kitaura-san?

Yes, I was really surprised.

I think the fact that we asked Kitaura-san to be responsible for the production of the whole game, not just the movies, was a big factor in making the action and the movies fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

I think so too, because Kitaura-san kept insisting that ‘We have to have the same Samus in the movies as in the action parts’.

Well, there’s only one Samus in the world, you know. Making Samus look really good in one part of the game would have been useless if it meant there was a ‘movie Samus’ and an ‘action Samus’. I didn’t want the player to feel there was any inconsistency, so I personally played the game parts several times myself. ‘Seamless’ was one of the themes of this project, but that wasn’t just about the transition from action to movies – I thought that making the player’s feelings seamless was also very important.

Making the player’s feeling seamless?

Yes. I thought it was important that the player could enjoy the story and the action without having any interruptions in the way they felt.

Funnily enough, both Kitaura-san and Hayashi-san have said that they felt a really positive reaction when the game parts and the movie parts were coupled together. What do you think about that, Sakamoto-san?

Metroid: Other M’s structure is basically that of an action game, but I thought that if we were able to successfully fuse the action and the story, we could make ‘an action game that’s like an adventure’, something that hasn’t been seen before.

Sakamoto-san, you worked on text adventure games such as Famicom Tantei Club⁸ in the past, didn’t you?

I did, yes. When I thought about creating ‘an action game that tells a proper story’, I did feel I could make good use of this experience, even though the experience of creating text-based adventure games seems completely irrelevant at first glance. In adventure games, the player selects and executes commands such as ‘examine’ and ‘move’ during intervals in the story. In an action game, the selection of these commands is replaced by the player performing actions such as fighting enemies and actually moving the character themselves.

You mean controls such as jumping and shooting enemies are equivalent to the commands in adventure games?

That’s right. I think that actually just moving a character for themselves gives a player a completely different sense of immersion in a game when compared to selecting commands. Story movies that start at important points further expand the game and present the player with new puzzles, providing motivation for them to proceed. With the player caught up in the tension of the story and being dragged along with Samus’s emotions, the game returns to the action part. That’s the flow of the game.

I see. So the movies are not simple breaks in the action or production decorations. The idea is that the player can enjoy the game as an unbroken chain, with the action parts and the movie parts providing the same sensations. This allows them to enjoy a whole new gaming experience.

I think we’ve been able to make a Metroid with an enjoyable story this time. I was really thinking that I’d like a large audience of players to enjoy this ‘action game with a proper story’ – that’s the reason for the simple controls, too. I wanted as many people as possible to try this game.

All right then. Finally, do you have a message for the people who’ve been waiting eagerly for this game? Let’s start with you, Kitaura-san.

Sure. We wanted to implement the highest possible quality of CG in this game, and we’ve really tried our best to do so, but actually I’d like players to pay attention to Samus’s voice actress as well. Samus is a woman who is poor at coping with life’s problems. As a result, we chose a voice actress not because she’s technically proficient, but because she could talk naturally in her own words.

So her essence is close to Samus’s.

Yes, that’s right. Also, regarding the sound in the game, we recruited Haishima-san as a composer who could tell the story with melodies⁹. He has created music for each scene which, I think, was powerfully helping us depict Samus’s feelings and emotions, and I think perhaps you were impressed with them too, Sakamoto-san?

Of course.

Furthermore, there is a great feeling of fulfilment to be had by completing this game, and I think it’s a work that can be deeply moving, so I hope that players enjoy it to the end.

Thank you very much. What about you, Hayashi-san?

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.

This game took three years to create, so it’s probably something I feel quite serious about, but like I said before, this is ‘a NES game using the latest technology’. That’s why I really want players, even those who have grown quite distant from action games, to feel ‘Action games these days can be this much fun?!’.

In other words, you want them to see that you’ve created a really exciting game using the latest technology and simple NES controls, yes?

Yes, that’s right. I’d also really be happy if players felt that there was a possibility that action games in the future could take this form as well.

All right. And finally, Sakamoto-san.

I think there will be some people harbouring negative assumptions about this game, such as ‘What’s this Metroid full of movies all about?’, or ‘This’ll probably be another game for hardcore players’. By posing the question: ‘Can’t we make a wider range of people happy with this style of Metroid?', though, I really feel we’ve challenged ourselves with this game. I think the incredible team we were blessed with was the reason we were able to accomplish this. I feel extremely grateful for this.

I hear the concept of ‘collaboration’ talked about a lot these days, but I think there are two types of collaboration: simple addition, and multiplication. I think this project functioned really well as an example of ‘multiplication’. That’s what I felt when I actually got my hands on the game, and talking to these two people today, I feel it more and more. You’ve been very lucky, haven’t you, Sakamoto-san?

Absolutely, I’ve been really lucky.

I’ve recognised anew that the team which created this project can be called, with no shame whatsoever, a ‘Superb Trio’. I also really hope that a lot of people get to see for themselves what results have been produced on this project by ‘multiplying’ the talents of three people from three different fields.

I think that the members of this collaboration were called by Samus herself. We empathised with her and we gradually helped to refine her. As a result, Samus is more beautiful than ever this time.

So it looks like more people will fall in love with Samus, does it?

Yes, so... (earnestly) I think Samus is going to be a very happy girl.