Humanizing Samus Aran wrote:

Bitmob: Why Samus? Relatively few Nintendo characters are made to be "real." You don't hear Link talking about Ganondorf or Mario wondering what Bowser is up to...yet you hear Samus talking about the Mother Brain, Ridley....

Nate Bihldorff: I don't think it's a matter of the folks at NCL [Nintendo Co., Ltd., the Japanese headquarters] going into a room, looking at a dartboard of all their major properties and saying, "That one! That's the one we're going to grow!"

It's more that there's always been in [Super Metroid director Yoshio] Sakamoto-san's head a big story and a big background for Samus. You can take a look at some of the manga, which isn't necessarily related to the games, but there's clearly more story to Samus than has ever been shown in the games.

I think it's very appropriate in this case. I think Samus, more than anyone else, is someone whose story we've always wondered about, whereas, for various reasons, you don't really wonder about Mario's past all that much. And with Link, there have been so many Links over the years, you can get lost looking at all those.

Samus has been the same for years -- and sort of the same behind the wall for all those years. You haven't really gotten a chance to get a glimpse of what her backstory is. Everyone knows she was orphaned as a child, but we don't really know all that much about her other than her parents were killed by space pirates.

There's clearly a lot of motivation to her character that's been the same throughout the series. But it's never been something that's been explored in-depth because it wasn't something that really advanced the gameplay. And now that it can actually be explored, it's great -- it's nice to get that view into her world. It doesn't seem disjointed at all. I like hearing her talk.

Humanizing Samus Aran wrote:

Bitmob: So I gotta ask: You have Team Ninja [Dead or Alive] developing the game. And we've seen Samus in a bikini or her underwear before. And those guys love their girls in bikinis. Did that ever come up in any meetings or discussions? That they're going to have to put Samus in a bikini for Other M?

NB: [Laughs] You'll have to get that answer from Team Ninja and Mr. Sakamoto, because that was all happening in the clouds above our heads. By the time the localization work started, all those decisions have been made. It wasn't exactly something I put in my first email to the team: "Hey, are you guys doing anything with bikinis?" [Laughs]

Without giving anything away, you're not going to see beach volleyball in the middle of this Metroid game. I don't that'd be a surprise to anyone. But nothing that we've seen has raised any alarm bells for us. We trust that Team Ninja and Mr. Sakamoto will find a happy medium between classic Metroid gameplay and a little sexiness.