Metroid: Other M Comes On Dual-Layered DVD, Has No Gravity Suit

Most Wii games come on a regular 4.7 GB DVD. There are a few exceptions, however, like Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Metroid Prime Trilogy. In the case of those games, dual-layered DVDs were required due to the amount of content in them.

You can add Metroid: Other M to that list as well. Due to the sheer amount of content — largely due to the game’s cutscenes — Other M comes on a dual-layered disc. In a second Iwata Asks segment, this time with members of Team Ninja, we discover that even while using a dual-layered DVD, the development team barely managed to squeeze all the content in.

Team Ninja tell Iwata that they were literally shaving mere seconds off movies in places in order to be able to squeeze the game’s data onto the disc without any noticeable visual inconsistencies during the cutscenes.

We also discover that the purple Gravity Suit may not be in the game.

During development, Team Ninja assumed that Samus would go through her usual colour changes throughout the course of the game as she upgraded her Power Suit, and they modeled the iconic Gravity Suit as well. The Gravity Suit is the last major suit change Samus goes through in Zero Mission, Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. It lets Samus travel at her regular speeds underwater and increases her defense.

We already know the Varia Suit is in the game because we’ve seen Samus go from pale yellow to orange. However, Father Brain of the Metroid franchise, Yoshio Sakamoto, felt that the Gravity Suit, with its purple theme, looked odd and out of place during a series of serious events toward the end of the game. Subsequently, he requested the development team to get rid of it and find another way to indicate to the player that they had the Gravity upgrades equipped.

This was the result:

Instead of the purple add-ons to the Varia Suit, the lights on the chest will now glow purple to indicate that the Gravity upgrade is in effect.